Here's the deal. Blind trusts have frailties, as we've discussed here this morning. We have a formal blind trust arrangement, as does Commissioner Dawson. The real need is for people to be able to stand in the House and speak to any subject that comes up without there being an assertion or an accusation that there's a ventriloquist dealing with them and the ventriloquist is their portfolio.
We've had some interesting situations. We had a premier of the province, Gordon Campbell, who was negotiating with Alcan to renew some arrangements up in Prince Rupert with respect to one of their installations. The government and Alcan were in heavy negotiations and suddenly there was a complaint that the premier had shares in Alcan. It was obviously a conflict for him to be, in those circumstances, negotiating with Alcan. That came to our office before I arrived, but just as I was arriving.
Mr. Campbell, as it turned out, had 10 shares in Alcan. More importantly, because we're worried about how and not how much, Mr. Campbell got statements every month from his brokerage firm, but he never read them because he didn't have time. Most of us around this table would probably put ourselves in that same category. He had no idea that the broker to whom he had given all kinds of discretion had made that quite small purchase. Anyway, that was an embarrassment to him.
That led us to discuss whether there was some way we could easily and effectively deal with that kind of thing. We have what we call hold-mail accounts, which are exactly as the title would describe. All of this only works if members are prepared to give to their brokers complete discretion on how they will be investing. If you're not prepared to do that—and some people aren't—then this isn't for you. If you are prepared to do that—and most people now do give that kind of discretion, as a practical matter, to their brokers anyway—then what you're saying to your broker is to go out and make the investments you want, but hold the mail. Don't tell me in a statement what I have. I want to receive a statement from you, but I only want to do it in bottom-line, global terms. I want to know how much the account is worth because I want to see whether you're driving me to the poorhouse or whether you're being successful. I can get that weekly, monthly, quarterly, however.
We found immediately that the brokerage firms and the securities industry, which are obliged by every law in the land to make full disclosure of everything and tell their clients everything, went nuts. They said they couldn't possibly become involved in a scheme that would prevent them from giving information out to clients. We negotiated that and got a few of the large firms on board by explaining why we were doing it.
Then we had a problem in the sense that shares in some companies create or attract dividends, and that money is income that has to be disclosed for tax purposes. That's why there's now a side agreement whereby the accountant for the member and the broker correspond, to the exclusion of the member, in terms of reporting.
The bottom line is that we have a lot of people who are probably living their financial lives in exactly the same way that they used to, but they were running the risk before of standing up and saying something that might be interpreted as having been influenced by the fact that they had shares in Bell Canada, or they had shares in something else. It costs nothing. The large firms will do it for nothing. They'll only do it because of the competition and because we got some people on board early who were prepared to understand why it's important.
It's something that every member should have, in my view, to help to innoculate yourself from assertions of conduct based on investments.