Mr. Speaker, there are two issues here. One is, did the finance minister follow the law? The second is whether the finance minister is acting in the public interest.
Let us start with the law. The finance minister appears to have broken the law in failing to report his offshore private corporation in France. With respect to the $30 million in shares he owned and may still own in Morneau Shepell, he may or may not be in compliance with the law. However, it is not enough to follow the law; that is the bare minimum. It is not enough for him to say, “Oh, I found a loophole, I do not have to report what I own because I managed to slide it into a family trust or I stashed away those shares in a private corporation and therefore they are out of public view. That loophole protects me from transparency.”
That is not enough because the second standard I mentioned is the public interest. Consequently, even if the minister has found a way, with all the best lawyers and consultants and lobbyists, to benefit from a loophole from the law—loopholes are something he was attacking not so long ago—he still has to uphold the public interest. That is his duty in this place. Our role is to uphold the public interest, and the only way we can do that in this case is if he is transparent about his private interests.