Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 1st, 2025

[Duff Conacher]

Blind trusts are not blind at all. You choose the trustee. You can also give them initial instructions. They can give you regular updates, and you know what you put in the blind trust.

Further, for Prime Minister Carney, the holdings are actually outside the blind trust. For the Brookfield conglomerate—the 103 companies—he knows that he owns them. He knows that he owns stock options in Brookfield until 2033. He knows he's in a financial conflict of interest, and there's nothing preventing, prohibiting or penalizing it.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Conacher.

Ms. Church, you're starting with six minutes.

I understand you're sharing your time with Mr. Saini. I'm going to give you a little extra time too, because we went 30 seconds over on that one.

Go ahead.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being with us today, Mr. Conacher.

Can you talk to me a little about what you see as the difference between and the nature of having both a Conflict of Interest Act and a code for members, and whether it is useful to have two separate systems governing conflict of interest for members of the government and members of Parliament?

[Duff Conacher]

A lot of the provinces have one law, but they have special provisions for the members of the executive—cabinet ministers, their staff, top government officials and all cabinet appointees. Even if you combine it into one law, you should have a sliding scale of accountability and standards. The more power you have to make decisions, the higher the standard you should have to meet. It doesn't really matter whether you have two laws or one.

We also have a Prime Minister's code, which is separate. There used to be a code that covered cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister, etc. When the act was created in 2006, some of the key rules from the code were taken out and put in the Prime Minister's code, which has been maintained since then. They're very strong rules. You can't be in an apparent conflict of interest under that code. It's required. There are no exceptions. There is no general application loophole like there is in the act. However, it's enforced by the Prime Minister and the Prime Ministers have not been enforcing it.

In fact, the current version of the code that is up on the Prime Minister's website is from 2015 and signed by Justin Trudeau. Mr. Carney has not even re-enacted the code in his own name. Maybe he's planning to weaken it or cancel it.

Those rules from the PM code should just be added to the act. Any Prime Minister would do that if they were serious about having ethical standards that were enforceable for all top government officials.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

You mention an “apparent conflict of interest”. I'm curious because of the approach you have described and your preference for the types of reforms that should be made.

Can you describe to me what you see as the difference between an apparent conflict of interest and an actual conflict of interest? What's the distinction between the two?

[Duff Conacher]

It's well defined. It's been defined by the Supreme Court of Canada, by the Parker commission and by the Starr-Sharp report. Both the Parker commission in 1987 and the Starr-Sharp report in 1984 recommended that office-holders be required to sell their investments as the only way of getting rid of a financial conflict of interest. Also, both recommended that blind trusts should be prohibited because they were just a sham facade.

Their definitions.... It's essentially known for judges as reasonable apprehension of bias. For an apparent conflict of interest, a reasonable person who is reasonably well-informed would perceive that there is a conflict of interest.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Is it your position, then, that any public office holder should divest themselves of the entirety of their financial investments?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes. That's the only way to solve financial conflicts of interest. Any other solution will leave a financial conflict of interest. It will leave the system open.

The Conservatives propose selling the investments and then giving the money to a trustee, who would reinvest them, but you would still be invested and the trustee could easily communicate to you, even if it was prohibited.

It's just better to sell them. That's what was recommended in 1984 and 1987 by a federal government task force.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Are you talking about all types of financial investments? Are you talking about RRSPs? Are you talking about mutual funds?

[Duff Conacher]

If those are going to be something that you have any role in directing or you know what the investments are, then yes, you would have to do that.

Konrad von Finckenstein said that this was going to cause a huge tax hit or tax implications. The better way to solve that is to give exemptions from those tax hits for people who enter public office. That would actually be an incentive to serve the public.

As long as you allow financial investments, you are allowing financial conflicts of interest. There is no other way of stopping it. That's why it was recommended in 1984 and 1987 as the solution.

[Leslie Church, Liberal, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Conacher, how do you reconcile that with the purpose of the act, which actually specifically delineates that part of the reason for having this conflict of interest regime is to encourage experienced and competent persons to seek public office and, especially, to facilitate the interchange between the public and private sectors? How do you balance those objectives of the act with a position that would ask everyone who seeks public office to relinquish all of their financial investments?

[Duff Conacher]

Preventing conflicts of interest is paramount because if you don't, you are allowing private interests to trump the public interest and you are allowing corruption. The Supreme Court of Canada said that if the Conflict of Interest Act and other similar laws are not enforced strictly and strongly, we are not a democracy. That's the priority.

You can facilitate and actually incent competent people. Lots of competent people are not wealthy, but the ones who are can still come into public office. It would actually be an incentive because they could cash in their investments without a capital gains tax or with a reduced tax on that, put their money into GICs and government bonds, earn a fixed rate of interest with no conflicts of interest financially while they serve the public.

These people are paid in the top 1% to 5% of salaries in the country. They have one of the best benefit and pension plans. How greedy are they? Do they really want to serve the public? If so, you have to leave your financial interests behind and cut ties to businesses. It's not just by leaving boards but by actually cutting your financial ties, because financial conflict of interest is the most serious type of conflict of interest. This law has to prevent them, prohibit them and penalize them. Otherwise, we are not a democracy.

That's what the Supreme Court has said in several rulings.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

You have 20 seconds left of the six and a half minutes.

[Gurbux Saini, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

I am very concerned about the way Mr. Conacher spoke at the beginning when he said that the Liberals should not be looking at the prepared points.

Why are you picking on one party when there are members of the other parties sitting here? It seems you have a very biased opinion before you even start as a witness.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I need a quick response to that, Mr. Conacher.

[Duff Conacher]

I watched the first two hearings and saw the questions asked by the various sides. That's why I expressed what I expressed, hoping that you will open your minds to the fact that this act currently allows unethical, corrupt behaviour. If you support it the way it is now, you are supporting that it should be allowed.

I had heard prepared questions and prepared statements. I'm hoping you're opening your minds to actually changing this act, finally.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Conacher.

Mr. Thériault, you have the floor for six and a half minutes.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Conacher, I just want to clarify my position: One of the pillars of my political commitment is to reintroduce ethics into politics, not the other way around. In that sense, I think we agree.

Several things bother me. I'm sure you'll agree with me when I say that ethics are more demanding than the law. It is often said that just because something is legal does not mean it is moral. The revision of the Conflict of Interest Act, which we are undertaking as members of Parliament, is serious work.

The first thing that bothers me about the position taken by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner is the second objective he mentioned. He said that public officials needed help managing their conflicts of interest so that the most competent and qualified people could join the public service. To me, that is secondary. What is important is to define the criteria that we consider optimal so that there is no appearance of a conflict of interest and no conflict of interest. This is important because people's trust in institutions is at stake. Furthermore, is someone from the private sector more competent than someone who does not have money and does not come from the private sector? I don't think so. In my opinion, this is a position that should not be taken and is very secondary.

What do you think?

[Duff Conacher]

I would remove the other purposes from the act, because they contradict what the act is entitled. The Conflict of Interest Act is supposed to prevent conflicts of interest. The Supreme Court standard is that conflicts of interest have to be prevented to the point where the public not only perceives that the whole system has integrity but that it actually has integrity.

Unfortunately, the current Ethics Commissioner and past ethics commissioners, but especially the current Ethics Commissioner, Konrad von Finckenstein... If you focus on facilitating people with big business interests and investments entering public service as the main focus of the Ethics Commissioner and ignore that the purpose of the act is to prevent, prohibit and penalize conflicts of interest, you're essentially facilitating unethical behaviour that will corrupt policy-making.

This act is the Conflict of Interest Act. If it doesn't prevent, prohibit and penalize conflicts of interest, just get rid of it. It doesn't do that 99% of the time now. It's pretty much useless. It's a sad joke. Fulfill that purpose first. If you need to facilitate people getting into the business other ways, do it, but never in a way that sacrifices preventing, prohibiting and penalizing conflicts of interest.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

This is something that really bothers me. They claim that there is no conflict of interest when it comes to general application. They talk about Mr. Carney, but that's one specific case. It's an unusual situation. We have never seen such a large apparent conflict of interest. I know you are aware of this, so I will not go back over these examples. We are faced with a scenario that should be studied.

Don't you think that certain profiles are incompatible with the office of prime minister?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes. We don't actually know whether we've had a situation like this in the past because there was even more secrecy before. Certainly, Paul Martin owned a shipping company and had many other investments. We don't know the extent of them.

We do know the extent to some degree in this situation. When it's the Prime Minister, you have another problem. All cabinet ministers, all cabinet appointees and staff, serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister. When they have these conflicts of interest, does the cabinet not also share those conflicts of interest? How do you escape them?

Again, that's why the only solution is divestment, actual divestment, not these sham blind trusts that aren't blind and ethics smokescreens that just hide conflicts and don't prevent them. For the Prime Minister, it's even more important, because of the Prime Minister's power over other public office holders, who, again, all serve at the Prime Minister's pleasure.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

It's not necessarily about focusing on the Prime Minister. He was elected, but it was under a law that was full of loopholes. Today, we must try to ensure that this does not happen again without the individual having to choose between becoming prime minister and ensuring that they are not caught up in a web of potential conflicts of interest. That's no small thing.

Let's say I'm the head of Brookfield, which has interests everywhere, and I introduce Bill C‑5, which says we need to rebuild Canada's economy because we're in a tariff war. This was presented as if there were a link between the two, when in fact there is no link at all. Once we reach an agreement on the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, there will no longer be a problem and everyone will be able to continue with their activities. Now, as luck would have it, I have a financial interest in all of these investments. With the blind trust, I don't know how much I will gain from these decisions, but I do know that I will gain.

Is the filter sufficient? What kind of filter would be needed? Shouldn't we expect the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to periodically monitor how the two people under Mr. Carney's supervision are managing the conflict of interest filter?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I need a quick response, Mr. Conacher, please, if you don't mind.

[Duff Conacher]

I had mentioned that tomorrow the Ethics Commissioner could require full transparency in how this ethics smokescreen is working. Every time you step aside, you have to disclose it, which is what the act says and requires. Get rid of the smokescreen, and let's have transparency.

It's going to show the “general application” and “broad class of persons” loopholes, which mean that Prime Minister Carney is never stepping aside. He's taking part in all sorts of decisions that affect Brookfield and other companies he's invested in.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Conacher.

Thank you, Mr. Thériault.

That completes our first round.

We're going to the second round, and I am sticking on time.

We're going to start with Mr. Hardy for five minutes, followed by Mr. Sari, but we are going to be on time for each line of questioning.

Mr. Hardy, you have the floor for five minutes.