Debates of Oct. 23rd, 2017

Opposition Motion—Minister of Finance and Conflict of Interest Act

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order, I want to remind members that they will have an opportunity to respond on this side. Please allow the parliamentary secretary to speak without being heckled.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Madam Speaker, after 10 years of anemic growth, we now have growth that leads the G7, which was over 4% in the last quarter. Since we came to office, we have created over 400,000 jobs, most of them full-time jobs. Last week, the Minister of Finance did something that represents a consensus in the House. He lowered small business taxes to 9%, which puts us among the lowest in the western world.

I would ask the hon. member if all of this conjured and contrived debate today is not just an effort to obscure the economic facts and the very real good news that Canadians are enjoying.

[Peter Kent, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Madam Speaker, my hon. friend and his counterparts on the benches opposite may consider this a contrived debate, but the public voice defending liberalism in the country, the Toronto Star, in its lead editorial had this to say. Remember, the Toronto Star, by its founder, elected to speak only support for the Liberal Party.

As the finance minister attempts to justify the ethical morass of his personal finances, he is showing himself again to be tone-deaf and out of touch, the exact frailties that have jeopardized his government's vital push for tax fairness.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I did not mean to interrupt the member while he was responding. I was in the process of getting up to remind members.

If the hon. member for Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix and the hon. member for Longueuil—St-Hubert wish to have a personal discussion, they should leave the House because they are being disrespectful of those who have the floor.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to follow my distinguished colleague from Thornhill, who was also a journalist, but at a time when I could not yet read or write, which goes to show the wisdom of the man and especially of what he says.

It is with great pride and pleasure that we second this motion, even if it was moved by the NDP; this it is not a question of partisanship but of ethics. Let us be very clear. Nothing can do more harm to a politician’s reputation than ethical issues.

I want to be clear that when we talk about ethics, we talk about a very fragile issue, so that is why we have to take it seriously. First I want to pay all my respect to the Minister of Finance, not for what he has done but for running in politics. We can see this guy is a knight on Bay Street, but on the other hand, when he is so high, he must have a higher standard of ethics. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for the last two years.

When the current Minister of Finance entered politics, it was a good thing because of his experience on Bay Street. When a figure of such stature becomes involved in politics, the political class as a whole is the better for it. However, politics come with strict ethical standards, standards the minister has failed to meet over the past two years.

Morneau Shepell, a company founded by his father and that he managed to grow quite well, applies federal tax and budgetary measures, the very measures that are crafted by the Minister of Finance. That is what is called a total conflict of interest between his current duties and his former duties in the private family business. The Minister of Finance should have avoided any appearance of conflict of interest from the outset, which, unfortunately, he failed to do.

Let us talk about the Minister of Finance's bilan for the last two years. It is not good. I heard the parliamentary secretary a few minutes ago talk about the economic situation of Canada. Let me remind him that the current government was elected under the hope of a small deficit of $10 billion and zero deficit in 2019. The reality is that the government and the minister tabled a budget that is three times the deficit expected, and it has no idea when Canada will get back to a zero deficit. This is a shame. We have to go back to the worst years of the Trudeau government, the father not the son. That was the government that invented and created the deficit when we were not at war or in a huge crisis. Unfortunately, the son is taking the footpath of his father.

Deficits are three times higher than expected, and no one knows when we will return to a balanced budget. The government pays lip service to lofty principles by saying it will make the wealthiest 1% pay, and yet, three weeks ago, the Department of Finance tabled a study that shows that the wealthiest Canadians pay $1 billion less in income tax than they did two years ago under the Conservative government. Once again, the Liberals pat themselves on the back for their lofty principles when, in truth, they are not getting the job done.

Also, the Liberals cannot go 30 seconds without mentioning how they are helping families and the middle class, when that is not true at all. The Fraser Institute concluded that 80% of middle class families have been paying $840 a year more in taxes since the Liberals came to power. These people say one thing and do the exact opposite, and, when I say “these people,” I mean the Minister of Finance, whom we are discussing today.

Let us now look at the crux of today's NDP motion, the issue of conflict of interest. As I said, the Minister of Finance called the shots at Morneau Shepell, a publicly traded company worth $1 billion. That is fantastic, but that company is in a direct conflict of interest with the Minister of Finance, since he comes up with tax measures and Morneau Shepell applies them. This is the very definition of conflict of interest. I will come back to this in greater detail later.

On top of that, the Minister of Finance is showing that he has a selective memory. The member for Carleton stood up in this House less than a month ago with a document that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Morneau Shepell has a business in the Bahamas, a tax haven. The Liberals had a little egg on their face when they realized that.

They just forgot to mention that they had this company in a tax haven. CBC had to use some hard-core journalistic tactics to find out that the Minister of Finance owns a villa in Provence, in France, and forgot to mention that. This is another example of his selective memory.

It was the same thing when the Globe and Mail revealed barely two weeks ago that the Minister of Finance had not reported all of his assets to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner and that he had not put them in a blind trust or sold them. Once again, it was not handled properly. It is sad to say, but the reality is that the truth did not come out until he was backed into a corner, until he had no choice but to set the record straight. That is what happened with the Bahamas, with the villa in Provence, and with his assets. What a dismal state of affairs we saw last week. We are talking about the Minister of Finance, after all. His week began so well that the Prime Minister said:

“I am the Prime Minister. I will answer all the questions. You have the chance to speak with the Prime Minister. I am here to answer all the questions.” That was the Prime Minister himself.

Apparently he thinks pretty highly of himself. The Prime Minister's treatment of his right-hand man was insulting. I do not want to take anything away from anyone. There are 338 of us here, we are all equal, and so on and so forth, but the fact is that there is the Prime Minister, and then there is the Minister of Finance. We all know that the finance minister is the government's heavy hitter. When the Prime Minister treated him like a newbie, that was an insult to our whole system of government. That is the problem.

He explained the whole thing by admitting that there was a loophole in the rules that allowed him not to declare it. How sad to see such an honest, upright, upstanding man fumble around with such pathetic excuses. No Bay Street baron should ever have to utter such blithering nonsense. Such a person deserves the utmost respect. That is my whole point: this motion is about ethics. When one is Minister of Finance, one's conduct must be 110% ethical, and when one has been at the head of a Canadian corporate jewel with a brilliant international reputation, one must act with utmost dignity.

Unfortunately, the Minister of Finance failed to do so, and now here we are with this motion. I remind members that, in recent months, this minister has been conducting a full-on attack on SMEs, because his leader, the Prime Minister, said that most SMEs were simply used as ways to avoid paying taxes. That is shocking, contemptuous, and insulting. The Prime Minister has an utterly unacceptable bias against small and medium-sized companies.

This minister did everything he could to take millions of dollars from Canadian business owners, when he should have been doing everything he could to help them, to grow their assets, and to create more jobs and wealth. The Minister of Finance finally understands and has taken a step back because of the hard work of the official opposition, led by our extraordinary leader and, frankly, the quarterbacking by the member for Carleton. This member, with the support of members of Parliament, led chambers of commerce from across the country in an attack against the minister's comments.

Once again, we see these people attacking our least fortunate citizens. This weekend, we learned from the Canadian Diabetes Association that the government is trying to squeeze more taxes out of people with diabetes, which is unconscionable. The Minister of National Revenue acknowledged as much and said that they would look into it, because it is very concerning. To me it is not just very concerning, but unacceptable. Only when cornered does this government finally admit fault. That is why, despite my great respect and esteem for the Minister of Finance, we are going to vote in favour of this motion. When the Minister of Finance is also the heir to a hugely successful family business, it is all the more important for him to demonstrate rigour and ethics and avoid any conflict of interest. Unfortunately, over the past two years, this government has had a whole slew of conflicts of interest.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. He is quite the orator; it should be said from time to time.

However, beyond the litany of offences to democracy showcased in the many examples he gave involving the government, it is really beyond the pale to think that the Minister of Finance would work on Bill C-27, which benefited him directly, without first placing his assets in a blind trust.

I would like to hear the member's thoughts on that.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and applaud him for his undeniably Canadian turn of phrase.

There is no doubt that finance ministers should not get involved, and above all, should avoid any conflict of interests. If the minister was fortunate enough to be able to grow his business when he was in the private sector, then he would be obligated to set up a blind trust or to sell all his shares in order to act freely.

That is not what happened, however. He designed, tabled and debated Bill C-27, which has a direct impact on pensions and is directly linked to the business he worked with. This is exactly what we were saying. Regreattably, he did not take the necessary steps to distance himself from his past affairs before taking on his current duties.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague.

The member might have emphasized the government's economic accomplishments, but instead he talked about full-on attacks on SMEs, if I remember correctly. Last week, SMEs benefited from lower tax rates at 9%, the lowest in the western world. They also got clarifications after a long consultation on the new rules that will get us closer to tax fairness.

The attacks came from a party that was unable to keep its promise to balance the books during its decade in power. I do not think we need lessons on the economy from that side of the House. Regarding the issue at hand, in light of the measures announced last week, the minister did his duty, and then some.

Does the member not think this is all just smoke and mirrors to obscure the good economic news that Canada is getting today?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, this member mislead the House. We left the house in order with a $2.6-billion surplus, as stated by the finance minister. It is sad that the parliamentary secretary does not even believe his own finance minister.

Must I remind members that our government passed legislation to lower the small business tax rate to 9%? However, the current government's first budget contained a measure that would abolish the law allowing companies to pay less tax. That is unheard of. The Liberals made a promise during the election campaign, which they broke when they tabled their budget, and now they are announcing that they are going to keep that promise.

They really outdid themselves, as this is the first time they make an announcement to say that a promise was broken when they themselves broke it. Way to go, guys, really top notch. That is the Liberal Party for you.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, the member talked twice now about the deficit. It must be a little embarrassing for him considering the huge amounts Brian Mulroney added to the deficit. When Mr. Harper came into power with a balanced budget, even before the financial crisis, he was adding to the national debt, and did so for every year of his reign except one. It must be a bit embarrassing for the member, who I have great respect for, to talk about his party's contribution to the national debt.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I welcome that kind of question because it gives me the chance to express to everybody here in the House and around the world that our country, behind the strong leadership of former prime minister Stephen Harper, was the first G7 country to come back after the most impressive crisis we had to address in the last century. Yes, I am proud to be a Conservative.

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.

Today we are debating what the finance minister would like Canadians and parliamentarians to believe was just a series of misfortunate events, a “distraction”, to use the minister's own words.

I do not share the Minister of Finance's assessment of the matters we are debating today. Instead, respectfully, I would say what has transpired for the minister is not a distraction, is not an administrative error, and certainly is not of the making because of the advice of the Ethics and Conflict of Interest Commissioner, but instead an error in judgment made by the minister. The minister must now find a way forward, so that Canadians can trust that their interests are first and foremost in his mind.

Let me share specifically what we are debating today since we have gone a bit off track when we heard from members on the other side.

What are these so-called distractions?

After being elected to Parliament in 2015, the Minister of Finance led Canadians to believe that he had placed his shares in Morneau Shepell into a blind trust while having never done so. He used a loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act to place his shares in a private numbered company instead of divesting them or placing them in a blind trust.

On October 19, 2016, the minister sponsored Bill C-27, a bill that would reasonably be expected, by reasonable people, to profit Morneau Shepell and the Minister of Finance in light of his continued ownership of shares in Morneau Shepell and through a company he also controls.

The minister remained in charge of regulating the pension industry in which he has a personal economic interest.

Finally, he has failed to live to up to the ethical standards set forth by the Prime Minister in his mandate letter to the minister.

The motion also clearly outlines what needs to happen going forward, a proposal so that the Minister of Finance is not distracted by circumstances of his own making and can resume his focus on the important work of a finance minister.

The motion provides a way forward for all ministers and all parliamentarians by asking the government to close the loopholes in the Conflict of Interest Act as recommended by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.

Two years ago, like many Canadians I believed that the then newly elected Liberal government was going to lead differently and bring real change. I personally, along with many others here in the House, made the decision to run for political office to change Parliament and government for the better so that we could better serve all Canadians. More specifically, I ran to advocate for the constituents of Saskatoon West, the community where I have lived and worked for over 30 years.

I have taken every opportunity to point out when I believe the government has followed through on commitments that help my constituents, when, as the labour critic, the government has made important policy changes that support workers' rights and make workplaces safer. I have also pointed out when the government did not follow through on commitments and promises that it made during the election.

When I read the Prime Minister's mandate letters to his cabinet ministers, I was optimistic that we would see a different kind of government, not only in stark contrast to the previous government but a different kind of Liberal government than we have seen in the past. I believed that what was written down on paper in the ministerial mandate letters would be acted upon and would be more than just words.

Here are some excerpts from the finance minister's mandate letter that stood out for me personally and led me to be optimistic that real change was not just possible but indeed would happen:

“We have promised Canadians a government that will bring real change—in both what we do and how we do it”.

“We have also committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government”.

“Its important that we acknowledge mistakes when we make them.”

Finally, the phrase most relevant to today's debate, “...you must uphold the highest standards of honesty and impartiality, and both the performance of your official duties and the arrangement of your private affairs should bear the closest public scrutiny. This is an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law.”

Last week, the finance minister, because of pressure from the opposition and an investigation by journalists, did the right thing and after two years as the finance minister, divested himself and his family of all shares in Morneau Shepell. This was the right thing to do.

Madam Speaker, I would say that the finance minister still has more to do to live up to the Prime Minister's expectations, as stated in his mandate letter. Let me elaborate by focusing on Bill C-27.

The tabling of Bill C-27 by the finance minister when he still had business interests in his company, and thus would benefit if the bill were enacted, also put the minister at odds with what was asked of him in his mandate letter from the Prime Minister. This clearly was a conflict of interest. It is possible that he may have indeed personally benefited from simply tabling Bill C-27. I say this because we know that shares in Morneau Shepell increased in value after the bill was tabled.

We also know from news reports that the Minister of Finance, while still in private life, advocated for such a bill. The bill would amend the pension act, allowing employers to change their current commitment to defined pension plans to target benefit pension plans. Morneau Shepell is a major provider of these types of benefit plans.

Bill C-27, should it be enacted, would erode pension security for thousands of federally regulated workers by allowing employers to remove their legal obligations to current and future retirees by converting defined pension plans, even retroactively, to target benefit plans. The bill would allow all the financial risk in future pension benefits to be shifted to individual workers.

Beyond the fact that the Minister of Finance would have benefited financially from the bill, and beyond the fact that he presented a bill that would make changes in regulations that he advocated for in his private life as a business owner, Bill C-27 was introduced without any consultation with Canadians, pensioners, or unions. As well, it broke a specific election promise made by the Prime Minister. When the previous Conservative government proposed similar legislation, it was met with such opposition by retirees and other stakeholders that the effort was abandoned.

I ask the minister why he introduced the legislation. Does he not see how Canadians and parliamentarians would be somewhat suspicious about in whose interest the minister acted when tabling Bill C-27? I would respectfully ask the minister to do the right thing and tell Parliament and Canadians that he will not proceed with Bill C-27.

I believe that Canadians expect the Minister of Finance to go above and beyond, not simply to technically be in compliance with ethical guidelines but to do in word and deed as he was asked by the Prime Minister in his mandate letter, and that is to carry out his duties so that his actions can “bear the closest public scrutiny. This is an obligation that is not fully discharged simply by acting within the law.”

Canadians deserve a finance minister who does not see questions about ethics as distractions. Canadians deserve a finance minister who acknowledges that he has made a mistake.

I believe I have outlined a number of actions the government and the finance minister could take to move forward for the benefit of all Canadians, such as eliminating loopholes in the Conflict of Interest Act, protecting federally regulated defined pension plans, and following through on commitments made by the government during the election.

There is always an opportunity to do the right thing. I urge the Minister of Finance and the government to do the right thing as soon as possible.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, whether it is the Minister of Finance or any other member, I suspect that all members of this House have been doing the right thing. We have an independent officer of Parliament, the Ethics Commissioner. We all have an obligation to report to the commissioner and to follow her advice and recommendations. That is exactly what the Minister of Finance has done.

Having said that, both opposition parties, day in and day out, have been taking the opportunity to criticize every measure this government has put forward. Whether it is the tax on Canada's wealthiest, the tax cut for Canada's middle class, or any other measure the Minister of Finance has put forward, the opposition members have opposed it.

Why does the hon. member believe that Canadians should have faith in what the opposition has to say about the Minister of Finance, when we have an independent commissioner who has the responsibility to ensure that there is no conflict, and the Minister of Finance has been following the commissioner's advice?

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is nice to hear the government side coming back to the issue at hand today.

What I mentioned in my speech is that the mandate letter the Minister of Finance received from the Prime Minister, which I would assume he would follow, asked him to go above and beyond. It asked that the activities, duties, and actions he carried out stand up to the closest public scrutiny.

To me, the next sentence in the mandate letter is extremely important. The Prime Minister said to the Minister of Finance,“This is an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law.” My comment is that the finance minister has not followed what the Prime Minister asked of him, and I think Canadians deserve better.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, the reality of these mandate letters is that they were not written for the finance minister or for ministers in general. They were for public consumption. They said things the government wanted the public to think were instructions to the minister, when in fact, the permissive attitude taken by the Prime Minister and the cabinet toward the finance minister makes very clear that the Prime Minister and the government do not at all take seriously the ethical injunctions that were put in those documents for public consumption.

We have a very clear case where the finance minister continued to own shares and significantly profit from something happening outside of his office while he was regulating the company he continued to own shares in. That is an obvious conflict of interest. He should not need to ask the Ethics Commissioner to know that it is completely unacceptable and unethical.

Can the member clarify her thoughts on the reality that the government does not take the ethical instructions to its ministers in the mandate letters at all seriously?

[Sheri Benson, NDP, Saskatoon West, SK]

Madam Speaker, during my remarks, I said that I thought the mandate letters were more than just words on a page. My colleague has referred to the fact that they were created and put on the website but that there was not a lot of intention behind actually following what was in those mandate letters. I tried not to be cynical for a very long time, but the circumstances that have come up with respect to the finance minister lead me to believe that the mandate letters were not taken seriously and were not read. There was no expectation that they would actually inform the work plans of the ministers, which were included within the mandate letters as well. I think people refer to them to find out what is important for the government going forward, so like my colleague, I am quite disappointed that this does not appear to be the case.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to talk about the NDP motion. Although it would give me even more pleasure not to have to talk about this issue, the Minister of Finance's indiscretions give us no choice. He wounds our collective psyche by acting as though there was no apparent conflict of interest between his decisions and the companies he owns.

Before I begin my speech, I would just like to remind everyone that our entire democratic system rests in large part on confidence. Canadians elect 338 members of Parliament, the majority of whom form government and a cabinet of ministers whose job is to serve the public. The entire system rests on 36 million Canadians having confidence that those 338 people will act in their best interest and serve them. The things the Minister of Finance did and did not do destroy the confidence underpinning our system.

If the citizens we work for, such as the people I meet on Papineau Avenue or Beaubien Street in Montreal, for example, have the impression that we are here only to serve our own interests, our entire system could fall apart. This is no joke. People need to be absolutely certain that we are here for them and not to fill our pockets. For the past two years, however, the minister has only been fuelling the public's cynicism, when Canadians already fear that we are not here for them, but rather for ourselves first and foremost.

The Minister of Finance could have come clean from the very beginning and distanced himself from his own pecuniary interests. The long and short of it is that he failed to do so voluntarily. That is no accident, much like when he failed to disclose that he owns a villa in France. It really is unbelievable. That is not the kind of thing that ordinary folks tend to forget.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet]

Maybe once or twice.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I stand corrected, Madam Speaker; the member for Hochelaga says it can happen once or twice.

Despite its constant refrain about the middle class and those working hard to join it, it seems like all of the decisions made by this government actually benefit the top 1%, the very elite to which the finance minister belongs. I will come back to this.

The Liberal government brags that it has helped middle-class Canadians by lowering the tax rate for some of them. However, bear in mind that the Liberal tax cut primarily benefits people earning at least $120,000 a year. Anyone who earns less than $45,000 a year falls under their radar. They do not exist. People who earn $30,000, $35,000, or $42,000 a year do not fit in the Liberal Party's definition of the middle class and do not need help. Bear that in mind, because it is important to remember that the people who benefited most from the personal income tax rate adjustment scheme were those earning more than $120,000 a year. It is unbelievable.

Furthermore, the Liberals broke their promise to put an end to CEO stock-option tax loopholes, which cost us $800 million a year. The Liberals are not going to go after CEOs or the richest 1% because that would mean going after their Bay Street buddies. Instead they will keep picking on the little guy.

Not only is the tax cut utterly laughable, as it will not help the low-income Canadians who need help the most, but a tax loophole that benefits CEOs remains untouched, and Canada is still doing business with tax havens.

In March, the NDP moved a motion in the House, and all of the Liberal Party members voted in favour of it. Among other things, the motion called on the government to take a close look at all of our tax treaties with tax havens, such as Barbados and the Cayman Islands. The Liberals went ahead and did that. Then they said the list was incomplete and that there might be one more to add to it.

The NDP was so naive. We thought the Liberal vote meant the government would shorten the list of countries with which it does business, but the government is actually making that list longer. It added the Cook Islands, a British protectorate down around New Zealand whose corporate tax rate is zero. People who stash money there pay no tax. Then they bring it back to Canada, claim that it was taxed in another jurisdiction, and avoid paying tax in Canada.

Here is a very conservative estimate I am sure my friends will like: every year, we lose between $5 billion and $8 billion because of tax havens. Those numbers come from Statistics Canada. It is probably much more than that because we have no real way of knowing.

In that same vein, the Liberals never attack people who take advantage of the system and use the personal income tax rate, the CEO loophole, and tax havens to avoid paying their fair share. What do the Liberals do instead? They introduce Bill C-27, a direct attack on our country's employee pension plans, which were negotiated in good faith with employers. These pension plans provide employees with a guaranteed amount once the employees reach old age. These are defined benefit pension plans, which means that these people know that they can count on getting a certain amount every month on retirement. This allows them to budget for expenses such as rent and vacations, and for helping out their grandchildren financially when they go to university.

The Liberal government is attacking defined benefit pension plans with Bill C-27. The thing is, the Minister of Finance's company, Morneau Shepell, specializes in managing pension plans.

[An hon. member]

No kidding!

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Indeed. What good fortune. The Minister of Finance may just have one million shares. That is debatable. He probably has two million shares in Morneau Shepell, and he introduces Bill C-27, which would bring business to his own company, from which he profits.

Bill C-27 would replace defined benefits with target benefits. These benefits are essentially like Jell-O. It is a Jell-O retirement plan in which no one has any idea how much they will have in retirement. There is a target, an objective. For example, you would like to have $1,000 a month, but there is no guarantee that this will happen. This type of plan is extremely complicated to manage. Companies like Morneau Shepell manage them.

Did the Minister of Finance place all of his assets and shares in a blind trust, as he indicated in the beginning when he was elected?

[An hon. member]

I certainly hope so.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Surprise, surprise, Madam Speaker, the answer is no. I can feel the disappointment.

The Minister of Finance is a very smart, but sometimes wily, man, and he used a loophole to avoid putting his shares and assets in a blind trust. He put them in a numbered company. He thought that no one would realize, and meanwhile, his own company, and therefore his own bank account, would profit from Bill C-27, which he introduced.

The Minister of Finance put himself in a blatant conflict of interest. As soon as Bill C-27 was introduced, it had an effect on the markets. Morneau Shepell shares went up.