moved:
That, given accusations by experts that the Minister of Finance’s family business, Morneau Shepell, stands to benefit from the proposed changes outlined in "Tax Planning Using Private Corporations" and assurances by the Minister that he has abided by his Public Declaration of Agreed Compliance Measures with respect to his family business, the House request that the Minister table all documents he submitted to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner between November 4, 2015, and July 18, 2017.
Mr. Speaker, the Finance Minister of Canada has awesome powers to help or hinder individual businesses, particularly those businesses that deal in products like pensions. A minister of finance knows beforehand about government decisions that move markets and push individual companies up or down, and his decisions can impact the direct bottom line of companies in which everyday Canadians invest and for which they work. No one in government has more power over taxation, regulations, tariffs, subsidies, or government bond auctions, all of which have direct impact on the fortunes of individual businesses.
He who has the most control over the nation's finances should have the most transparency over his interests. From those to whom much is given, much is asked. We give ministers the power to impact the lives of everyday people. We expect that they prove they are exercising those decisions in the public interest and not the private interest. This is especially true of the Minister of Finance, for whom these powers are so vast.
We are not dealing with an ordinary Minister of Finance. His father built a billion-dollar financial services firm. According to last available insider trader reports, the current finance minister held over $30-million worth of shares in that fine family business as of 2015. Since he became minister, he stopped disclosing his holdings, which is greatly ironic: we knew more about his interests before he was finance minister than we do now.
Public filings with the insider trading reports ensured that he, as a corporate executive, was accountable to his shareholders. He now has no similar accountability to the 35 million shareholders we call Canadian citizens. This company is of direct interest to the minister's department.
I will read from the Morneau Shepell website:
Morneau Shepell is the largest provider of pension administration technology and services in Canada. We offer a full range of solutions from software to full outsourcing of pension administration.
Who regulates pensions in Canada? It is the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. To whom does that office report? Why, it is the finance minister, and that office regulates “...1,200 pension plans”.
Interestingly, if we go to the Morneau Shepell website, it makes direct reference to that office, saying that the office appoints Morneau Shepell to wind down the pension plans of bankrupt companies. If a company pension plan is going under, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions needs someone to oversee the pension. In the meantime, it picks from a variety of providers. Of course, there is a financial benefit to whoever is selected, and Morneau Shepell brags on its website that it offers its own services to this office that reports directly to the finance minister.
There are broad and sweeping regulations at a national level to federally regulated pension plans. Of course, Morneau Shepell offers those pension plans. Pension plans also purchase government bonds. The finance minister sells government bonds.
Every year we have new issuances of government bonds as the government runs deficits and needs to borrow money and past bonds come to maturity and need to be renewed. They are sold to institutional investors, such as pension funds, of which Morneau Shepell is one. The finance minister's family business buys government bonds and the finance minister sells government bonds.
Then there is the issue of taxation. The finance minister, of course, is responsible for setting tax policy for the whole country. That is important for everyone, but especially for companies whose interests and activities are so dramatically impacted by tax levels and tax rules. Allow me to provide one example.
The minister proposed in his July 18 consultation paper to double tax the investment income private businesses earn within their companies. The result is that many of them would be forced to take their retirement savings out of their private companies and put them into individual pension plans, a unique and not well-understood product. A few Canadians hold them, and far fewer companies offer them. One of those companies is Morneau Shepell. The minister might say that he did not take that into consideration when he made his public policy proposal, but we do not know that, because we are not familiar with what holdings he continues to possess.
Furthermore, the minister has defended Canada's 40-year-long tax treaty with Barbados. That treaty allows Canadian companies and wealthy individuals to pay only 2.5% tax in Barbados and to then ship the rest of their profits back to Canada tax free. The minister's family business has registered a subsidiary in Barbados to take advantage of exactly those favourable tax conditions, so the finance minister is responsible for reviewing a tax treaty with a tax haven where his family business has a subsidiary.
Here is what we know about the finance minister. His father built a billion-dollar family business. As of 2015, the finance minister was receiving employment income from that family business, and as of that same year, he had $30 million in shares in that company. Since he has become minister, we no longer know if he holds on to those shares, and it is not because the minister has not been asked. He has been asked on probably a dozen occasions, and he simply refuses to answer. For the longest time, most people thought he could not answer. It is in a blind trust, so he would not know.
On Twitter late last week, I had an exchange with the Liberal member for downtown Toronto, who came leaping to the finance minister's defence by saying that the money is obviously in an arm's-length blind trust, so how could the minister possibly know where his money is, as it is all blinded to him. I do not blame that Liberal member for saying that, because most of the press gallery thought exactly the same thing. Everyone just assumed that if a finance minister has shares in a financial company, they would have to go into a blind trust.
Through two weeks of intrepid investigative journalism, The Globe and Mail finally was able to extract the fact that the minister does not have a blind trust, so he knows what he holds. He knows his assets. He knows what they are. Why will he not tell everyone else? Some might suggest that this is an intimate, private detail that we could not possibly ask someone to volunteer to strangers. That is an odd response, given that he was, as a corporate executive, forced to reveal exactly the same facts. Am I the only one who finds it peculiar that a corporate executive had a higher standard of public transparency than the Minister of Finance?