Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
As the member of Parliament for the riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, located in the heart of the Ottawa Valley, I am pleased to be allowed this honour to thank the constituents for the trust they have placed in me to represent their interests in the Parliament of Canada.
I also take this opportunity to congratulate my eastern Ontario colleague, the MP from Carleton, for his exemplary service to Canadians as the shadow finance minister and author of the motion we are debating today.
The motion presented by the Conservative Party, Canada's government in waiting, calls on the finance minister to reveal all of the assets he has bought, sold, or held within his private companies or trust funds since he became the finance minister to determine if his financial interests have conflicted with his public duties.
I have heard from many Canadians that they do not trust the finance minister, the member for Toronto Centre. They see him as a one percenter who made his money helping other Toronto wealthy one percenters avoid paying their fair share of taxes through the use of complicated tax avoidance schemes like offshore bank accounts. They do not believe the silly, repetitious talking points prepared for them by Gerald Butts in the Prime Minister's Office, and they do not believe the controversial Ben Chin, the recently hired excuse writer for the hon. member from Toronto.
Ben Chin is a refugee from Kathleen Wynne's Toronto Liberal Party. His specialty is finding ways to increase people's power bills. Explaining tax increases to pay for bad deficit spending is his current job description. He is doing a lousy job, and Canadians are not buying what his party is selling. What Canadians see is a very greedy, rich Liberal Party insider.
Let us be clear. The Toronto Centre MP has seen his personal financial holdings substantially increase since he was appointed finance minister by his fellow one percenter and trust fund beneficiary, the Prime Minister.
Morneau Shepell, the family company that we think the finance minister holds a million or two shares in, but do not know the exact number because he refuses to come clean with Canadians, reported a 2017 third-quarter profit of $9.7 million. That is up a whopping 85.3% from the same period in 2016. The Toronto Centre MP knows about the big jump in profits because he neglected to put his vast personal holdings in a blind trust, which is what he was required to do, and he misled Canadians into believing he had done so. We know he broke the law because he was found guilty by the Ethics Commissioner of Parliament and fined for not setting up a blind trust.
The Parliamentary ethics officer is investigating the contravention of Canada's ethics laws by the Toronto Centre MP from his introduction of legislation that could personally benefit his vast private fortune. That legislation, Bill C-27, has been identified by outsiders as a massive conflict of interest.
Canadians will not be able to judge the conflict of interest until the finance minister reveals all of the assets he has bought, sold, or held within all his private companies or trust funds since he became the finance minister. Only then will Canadians be able to determine if his financial interests have conflicted with his public duties and whether Bill C-27 is worth supporting.
One thing Canadians know for certain is that $9.7 million would pay for a lot of snowsuits and warm boots. This is particularly true in my riding in eastern Ontario, where many parents are forced to choose to heat or eat, thanks to the corrupt environmental policy of the Toronto Liberal Party. Taxpayers ask how corrupt the policy is. With figures from Stats Canada, there are between 550,000 and 700,000 households at risk of having to choose either to heat or eat in Ontario.
Another example of bad deficit spending this year is that the Toronto Liberal Party will add $660 million to the provincial deficit to pay for the bad hydro policy it has blamed on man-made global warming, not including the $40 billion in deferred taxes that will have to be collected after the next election to pay for the unfair hydro plan.
The finance minister and his Toronto Bay Street buddies do not care about seniors who are impoverished by their energy bills. They avoid paying their fair share of taxes using complicated tax schemes and offshore tax shelters. Canadians know this is the case, as the amount of taxes collected from the wealthiest Canadians has been dropping since the finance minister was appointed.
This is not the first time that smart voters in Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke have made the connection between Liberal Party insiders and the attack on seniors, veterans, and pensioners by the finance minister. In the 2011 election, the finance minister's party parachuted a Toronto Bay Street lawyer into my riding, Christine Tabbert, a partner at the Toronto Bay Street law firm Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, which included then Liberal Party president Alfred Apps. In a clear demonstration of how smart Ottawa Valley voters are, parachuted Liberal candidate Christine Tabbert came fourth in that election, behind even the NDP, the worst ever Liberal Party showing in Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
Ms. Tabbert would go on to seek the Liberal nomination for the Toronto riding of Trinity—Spadina, only to be convinced to withdraw from a nomination race marked by controversy and legal challenges. She was rewarded for dropping out of the nomination with a political appointment after the last election, only to find herself losing that position after the minister she was chief of staff for was demoted for failing to help veterans.
Ms. Tabbert came to the attention of the Liberal Party and Mr. Apps by being counsel for Kerry (Canada) Inc., representing the company against a group of company pensioners. The employees lost their case to be protected from the company's withdrawing of funds from their pension plan.
The lawyer who represented the former Kerry employees said the big losers in this case were members of defined pension plans. The lawyer said that the decision would lead to the erosion of defined benefit plans. In particular, he stated, “I don't believe this is in the best interest of workers in this province or in this country.” The lawyer for one of the intervenors in the case, the Association of Canadian Pension Management stated, “A number of companies were already doing this.... They would have been exposed if the decision went the other way.”
Morneau Shepell, the company the finance minister held shares in, is currently an executive member of the Association of Canadian Pension Management, so Canadians know that the finance Minister was closely informed of this court case.
Could it be that before he was finance minister, he was advising companies to raid workers' pension plans?
Could it be that when he was appointed finance minister by our entitled Prime Minister, he knew there was a problem that required a fix? Could it be that the fix was Bill C-27?
Canadians need answers.
On September 18, The Globe and Mail revealed that retired postal workers had warned the Ethics Commissioner in a letter that the finance minister could be in a conflict of interest over the pension legislation, Bill C-27, and its potential benefits for Morneau Shepell. The same letter was delivered to the Toronto Centre MP's office on Sept. 18.
It is now over two months later, and still the finance minister refuses to practice openness and transparency with all Canadians.
The Conservative Party believes that all parliamentarians, regardless of their professional background, need to follow the rules and disclose their private interests publicly. Canadians expect openness and transparency from their government.
Canadians have a right to know if the member for Toronto Centre is profiting from his position as finance minister and whether or not his financial interests have conflicted with his public duties.
Currently, three members of the Liberal cabinet are being investigated by the Ethics Commissioner, including the Prime Minister and the finance minister. The finance minister was caught exploiting loopholes to shelter his wealth, and secretly profited in the millions of dollars from a publicly traded company while implementing policies and regulations that directly impact that company. Now he is under investigation for introducing pension legislation that could profit that company, Morneau Shepell.
It is time for the Prime Minister to come clean with Canadians and order his finance minister to reveal all of his assets. Let Canadians be the judge of whether his government is suffering from conflicts of interest.