Madam Speaker, I rise today to address a question. On September 9 of this year, before Parliament came back in session, the Liberal Party of Canada, not the Government of Canada, asked Mark “carbon tax” Carney to join the Liberals as a special economic adviser to advise on the economics of the country. Again, this is not the Government of Canada, but the Liberal Party of Canada, and that is to avoid the conflict of interest rules that are incumbent upon officers that serve the government. He is a special adviser for a special new task force on economic growth, a task force of one person. He is doing this himself. He is not talking to anybody else. My colleagues have called for an examination of this and for the lobbying commissioner to look into whether this is a conflict of interest and how it should be properly dealt with in the House of Commons.
Who is Mark “carbon tax” Carney? Well, amongst other roles in which he serves a lot of rich people around the world, he is the chairman of Brookfield Asset Management here in Canada. Brookfield is a very large corporation. It invests in all kinds of credit and equity around the world, and it has assets under management of $1 trillion U.S., so it is a significant fund. That is a little less than half of Canada's GDP in one fund, which Mark Carney helps oversee. I do not begrudge the fact that he has done well heading up a corporation like that. He has never actually worked there, but being a chairman, he is rewarded. How does Mark Carney get rewarded? He gets rewarded with deferred stock units and other options to participate in the financial success of Brookfield Asset Management.
Now, let us say there are $1 trillion of assets under management. Usually, these types of funds get paid as a percentage of the assets they hold under management. It can be as high as 2%, but let us say it is 1%. That is $10 billion a year in compensation that goes towards the managers of Brookfield Asset Management. I can be corrected on that number at some point in time, if someone would like.
On September 17, Brookfield proposed to lead a new $50-billion fund focused on Canadian assets, leading with $10 billion, not from a pension fund, but from the Government of Canada. This is not the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, but the Government of Canada. This is $10 billion from a broke government that actually does not have any money, but is $50 billion more in deficit this year, plus another $40 billion that it is proposing from pension funds.
Where is it getting that notion? It is getting that notion because back in the spring, in April, the finance minister had a different former Bank of Canada governor look into how we need to address the productivity crisis that is happening in Canada and find out why pensions are not investing in Canadian business. That is because, quite frankly, it is a broken financial system under the government. It has broken the regulatory environment. CPPIB, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, in fact only has 12% of its assets invested in Canada. The rest is offshore. It does not invest in Canada. Investment funds are now flowing outside this country.
Let us look at that conflict of interest. After we have been debating in the House of Commons for how many weeks the conflicts of interest involved in SDTC, how can the Liberals continue on this path to have another Liberal insider try to take some more funds from Canadians and not face the conflict of interest regulations?
You are protecting your friends. Have you learned nothing? Will you actually accept that this should be a conflict of interest?