Information & Ethics Committee on Oct. 1st, 2025

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Would you say that the Prime Minister is entitled to future carried interest payments based on the performance of those funds?

[Duff Conacher]

I wouldn't say the infamous phrase that he's entitled to his entitlements, but yes, he's entitled to that and to the value of the stock options when they eventually mature in 2033-34.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

It's a remarkable throwback. I appreciate that very much, sir.

Let me ask this. In New York, when the Prime Minister was there just last week, he met with a variety of investment managers, all of whom are implicated in funds that he holds. That places him in a pretty precarious position of conflict. Is that correct?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Now, if it's highly likely that Mark Carney's Liberal government has made or will make public policy decisions that will impact the success of the holdings in these funds, Canada is at risk of entering a massive conflict of interest scenario. Is that correct?

[Duff Conacher]

In Canada's policy-making process...? Yes, because of the central role of the Prime Minister, who is, in the end, the boss over all policy-making processes.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

Mr. Conacher, shouldn't the Prime Minister be absolutely required to disclose the assets that exist within these funds?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes, there should be full disclosure. It adds a bit of transparency, but it doesn't resolve the conflict of interest. Transparency is transparency, and removing a conflict of interest is removing a conflict of interest. The one does not do the other.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

It's a devastating indictment that you've laid out here in terms of the risk that the Prime Minister is in. It's very well documented. In your research, have you been able to identify another Prime Minister who may have been anywhere remotely close to this level of conflict?

[Duff Conacher]

The only one we know the details about, because there was not disclosure of investments until the act came into effect, is former prime minister Paul Martin with his shipping company and other investments. We did not know the details. We just knew for sure about the shipping company. It was a conglomerate itself.

Otherwise, no, we don't know of any Prime Minister being in this kind of position because of secrecy in the past.

[Shuv Majumdar, Conservative, Calgary Heritage, AB]

I appreciate that.

Let me thank you for your testimony today. Let me thank you for your riveting honesty and for your clarion call for accountability and transparency in something that obviously poses a great risk to the integrity of our government.

Thank you very much, Mr. Conacher.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Majumdar.

Ms. Lapointe, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to our committee, Mr. Conacher. It's nice to meet you.

You stated before this committee in 2020 that blind trusts should be banned—and you said so again today—as should conflict of interest screens. Some of your concerns were around potential conflicts of interest in those situations. However, in his presentation to this committee a few weeks ago, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner expressed concern that such measures could discourage people from certain backgrounds, particularly in the private sector, from running for public office.

Do you share that concern?

I'm going to make a connection with what you said earlier. You seemed to be saying that good people who want to serve the public sector should not come from the private sector. I'd like you to tell us more about that.

[Duff Conacher]

I'm sorry. I didn't catch the end.

I think more good people would be encouraged to enter politics if they knew that the ethics standards across the board were strong for everyone. Then, knowing that conflicts of interest are prevented, prohibited and penalized, and therefore discouraged, they would know they wouldn't be tainted as being guilty by association with some other public office holder who is there to serve themselves and is caught and exposed.

Again, I think it's entirely possible through tax breaks to create an incentive for people who are wealthy and have investments to enter the public service. Just give them a tax break for serving the public on the capital gains they have from their investments. That would be a great financial windfall for someone entering the public service. Invest in GICs and government bonds, earn a fixed rate of interest while you're here, serve the public and then leave. When you leave, go back to serving yourself.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

You talked about the perception that a person is subjective. I come from a family that had businesses, including a family business. You're saying that people should sell their family business before they go into public service. For them, it would be the end of the company and they would have to start from scratch once they left the public sector.

I think what you're suggesting is quite harsh. You're saying that people are all subjective and have bad intentions as soon as they run for office and put their name on a ballot.

[Duff Conacher]

No. I'm sorry. I've never said that everyone has bad intentions. What I've said is that you need to have a system that prevents, prohibits and penalizes conflicts of interest. You need a system that the public will have confidence in and perceive that it has integrity, and a system that actually has integrity.

There would be an exception, and thank you for pointing this out. As the Parker commission set out, you would not have to sell a family business, but you would have to recuse yourself whenever you're in the appearance of a conflict of interest concerning that family business with no exception—no “general application” exception and no “broad class of persons” exception.

That's what Justice Parker recommended, because of course you can't penalize your entire family by forcing the sale of a family business just because you've decided to enter into public service.

Otherwise, in terms of investments and shares and other financial instruments, the rules should be divestment, as the two federal government task forces that were set up to look at this issue in the last 40 years both recommended.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you.

I'm going to continue in the same vein because I sincerely believe that the House of Commons benefits when people come from different backgrounds and have different experiences. I think we have to find and attract different people.

Your organization has been gaining experience and skills for 32 years. Which country are you looking toward to come up with the conflict of interest rules that you would like us to look at?

What do you have in mind?

[Duff Conacher]

Actually, there are two international standards. As I mentioned, politicians write the rules for themselves, worldwide, and generally have written rules that facilitate these kinds of financial conflicts of interest. However, the international standards that Canada signed on to, under the United Nations Convention against Corruption, state that conflicts of interest need to be prohibited, prevented and penalized. You don't have a law that does that now. You know about it; MPs have known about it for 28 years, which was the first time I presented on this. No one has done anything about it.

If you look at the polls that show only about 20% of Canadians trust politicians, you shouldn't wonder why. You know a law allows for financial conflicts of interest and unethical activities. All the federal parties have known about it for 28 years, in detail, and they have not closed any of the loopholes. In fact, they've increased the loopholes. Why would the public trust politicians when they know that they're leaving these kinds of loopholes open.

[Linda Lapointe, Liberal, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Someone mentioned Tanzania the other day.

You never suggest other countries' rules?

[Duff Conacher]

There are some countries that have put in place certain standards, but they're not complete and not very specifically focused on the loopholes that are in our law, which are specifically designed with this idea of the ethics screens, and things like that. Those are Canadian creations, so the reforms that we need to implement in Canada need to be designed to close the specific “dirty dozen” loopholes in our law.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Conacher and Madame Lapointe.

Mr. Conacher, I have one question, and it relates to something that Mr. Majumdar asked. I can only cite this example because, over a period of a week, the Prime Minister said that he had met with institutional investors, investment bankers and community, both in New York and in London. As you are aware, the Prime Minister has 103 declared conflicts of interest. He was asked whom he met with, but he was rather evasive in that response.

Do you believe that Canadians have the right to know, given the scope and scale of the conflicts of interest that the Prime Minister has declared, whom he met with and why? Why do you think that?

[Duff Conacher]

Yes. Even if there wasn't this scope of conflicts of interests, I think the public has a right to know what public officials are doing on the job, including who they're communicating with, in detail, especially when you have financial conflicts of interest, which again are the worst types of conflicts of interest. You need full transparency.

I suggested as well, for the ethics screen, how much more transparency could be added tomorrow by the Ethics Commissioner if the Ethics Commissioner were taking the issue of financial conflicts of interest seriously.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Conacher. That concludes our first hour of testimony. I want to thank you for being here today.

We're going to suspend, briefly. I understand Mr. Stedman is online and ready to go. I see our other witness is here as well.

We're going to suspend for a couple of minutes and prepare for the second panel.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Welcome back, everyone, to the greatest show on earth.

I'd like to welcome everyone for our second hour.

Appearing as individuals today, we have Ian Stedman, who is an associate professor at York University. Lori Turnbull is also here. She is a professor in the faculty of management at Dalhousie University.

Mr. Stedman, I'm going to start with you. You have up to five minutes to address the committee.

Go ahead, sir. Thank you.

[Ian Stedman, Associate Professor, York University, As an Individual]

Thank you so much.

Good evening, everyone. I'm sorry I can't be there in person with you. Let me start by thanking the members of this committee for inviting me to contribute to this review of the act.

The issues outlined in the motion are very familiar to me. I've had occasion to think about them quite a bit over the past four or five months. I'm glad to see that you've also had a chance to speak to Dr. Conacher. That's nice. There are some matters on which I will align with your other witnesses, including both Dr. Conacher and Dr. Turnbull, and there are some on which I have a different perspective to offer.

Let me start by saying that I think that every elected official needs to care about avoiding the perception of being in a conflict of interest. It's no longer good enough to do good; you must—and I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone here this—be seen to be doing good.

Should the commissioner be given the power to investigate allegations of potential or apparent conflicts? Eventually, yes, is my opinion, but I think that this should be a multistep development. I would first like to see the act amended so that it is clear that the commissioner can and should be giving advice about potential and apparent conflicts. I think we need to establish some strong behavioural customs, and then we should revisit whether and how to enforce the avoidance of potential or apparent conflicts.

First, we have to socialize the new standard quite well—advice now, enforcement later.

This ability to give advice about compliance with the act and about avoidance of conflicts—whether real, perceived or potential—could extend to candidates for public office. The commissioner's office should be available for consultation with candidates, and parties should encourage, if not require, that serious candidates consult with the office. In making that recommendation, I do worry about overburdening the commissioner's office without also providing that office with adequate resources. However, I think the office should definitely be available for anyone seriously considering becoming a candidate or taking a position or an appointment.

The commissioner's office would be able to tell people what is and isn't covered in the ethics rules, but then it could also give them advice about how to get their affairs in order and advice about what being seen to be doing good might look like for them in particular. I would hate to think that some people are becoming candidates or accepting positions without having their eyes wide open to the unique challenges of public life, which your previous witness explained quite a bit about.

Speaking of candidates, I do think that the ability to get this kind of advice should also apply to leadership candidates, even if they don't currently hold a seat. Of course, the Ethics Commissioner should be expected to meet with them to discuss their obligations, and those obligations should be at least the same as they are for elected officials currently under the act.

Should the rules for leaders be more onerous? That's probably the biggest question everyone has been trying to wrap their head around lately. Are blind trusts good enough? That was very much the theme of the previous hour. This is where I might differ from your other witnesses.

I don't think that blind trusts are enough to make it so that a public office holder can no longer make decisions that they will benefit from. As Dr. Conacher noted, the only way to do that is to have no assets at all and, as Mr. Poilievre suggested, to force all market assets to be liquidated and the resulting cash put in a blind trust for an arm's-length trustee to then reinvest. That's the only way the public office holder would not know what's going on. I think that this should be an option, but I don't actually think it's an appropriate or suitable approach for every circumstance.

Currently, we do have a very interesting case of a Prime Minister having options in a company that has an interest in basically every major industry of our economy. Depending on the potential value of those options, is someone really going to give them up for the privilege of taking on public office? I think that's a tough question, and we really don't have much data on it. As Dr. Conacher noted, we haven't had anything like this in the past that we can point to. We haven't learned from anything similar. My guess is that forcing the sale of assets, particularly a robust portfolio of unique assets, might serve as a disincentive to people running for office.

For me, the better route is to educate all candidates about what makes public service ethics different from other domains of ethics so that they can understand what the risks are and make informed choices about what kind of scrutiny might be coming their way if they take office with their assets in their current order.

Next, let me address the question of whether we should enhance transparency.

My answer to this is always going to be yes, but I do think it has to be within reason. As a member of the general public, I don't need to know what a member's brother's father-in-law does for a living, but I do need to be reassured that the member knows they're not to make decisions that improperly benefit their brother's father-in-law. I need to be reassured that they have received adequate education about the expectations we have of them so I can feel like it's okay to be angry with them and hold them accountable if they do the wrong thing.