Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP also agrees to apply the vote and will vote no.

[Transportation Modernization Act, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP agrees to apply the vote and will vote yes with the addition of the member for Windsor—Tecumseh.

[Indigenous Affairs, October 30th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, according to the 2016 census, the first nations population in Canada has increased by 43% since 2006. That is four times more than the non-indigenous population.

Last year, one in five indigenous people lived in crowded homes and homes in need of major repair. That is shameful, and it is a federal responsibility.

Will the minister immediately commit to implementing a targeted housing strategy for indigenous people living on and off reserve?

[Excise Tax Act, October 25th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Calgary Forest Lawn voted but unfortunately left before hearing the results of the vote. I believe his vote should not be counted.

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we ask that the vote be deferred until tomorrow, Tuesday, October 24, 2017, at the expiry of the time provided for oral questions.

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, given that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner told us that there was a problem with the act as far back as in 2013, I would be very surprised if the Minister of Finance did not know about it. I have my doubts about that.

All of the speeches we have heard from the Liberals and all of the questions they have asked have sought to change the channel. Why? I think it is because the Liberals do not want to answer the real question. Perhaps they too have doubts. They are trying to elevate the finance minister to sainthood by listing all of his good deeds. It is as though I broke my sister's doll and, when my mother scolds me, I tell her that it is not a big deal because I made my bed this morning. One has nothing to do with the other. That is exactly what we are hearing from the other side. What they are saying has nothing to do with the question we are asking today. We are asking a question about ethics.

The Liberals are not answering and they are saying that we are the ones who are changing the channel. The Liberals are the ones who are changing the channel.

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is true that we sometimes disagree, but I have to say that, during this Parliament and the previous one, even when I did not agree with what the Conservatives were saying, I understood and I knew in advance what they would say and what they were setting out to do. With the Liberals, I never know what to expect because they change like the wind.

In this case, we are talking about the Minister of Finance. Canadians have to be able to trust the Minister of Finance. If Canada's Minister of Finance finds a loophole that enables him not to break the law but to get around it, that says a lot about how the government does things.

We had the same problem when a Canadian prime minister registered his ships in another country because he did not have to pay taxes there. There is something fundamentally wrong with all this. If a government wants people to trust it, its actions must show that we can trust it. This time, the minister circumvented the rules and found loopholes. That is a poor way to earn anyone's trust.

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Windsor West.

Today we are debating an NDP motion calling on the Minister of Finance to apologize to the House and to Canadians for breaking their trust and calling on the government to close the loopholes he exploited in the Conflict of Interest Act, in order to prevent a minister of the crown from personally benefiting from their position or creating the perception thereof.

There are some people in this life who are clearly lacking in subtlety, and the Minister of Finance is unquestionably one of them. Fortunately, this gave us the chance to note that the minister had placed himself a situation that, at the very least, presented the appearance of a conflict of interest, that he had abused the trust of the House and the Canadian people, and that he had used a loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act for his own personal gain.

The Conflict of Interest Act clearly states that:

...a public office holder is in a conflict of interest when he or she exercises an official power, duty or function that provides an opportunity to further his or her private interests...

In the weeks following his election in 2015 and his appointment as finance minister, the minister suggested that he had complied with the Conflict of Interest Act, which, generally speaking, requires members to divest themselves of their shares or to place them in a blind trust if their duties could place them conflict of interest. However, we recently learned that this is not what the minister actually did. Instead, as we finally found out, the minister took advantage of a loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act to place his half of his shares in Morneau Shepell in numbered companies. In other words, the finance minister no longer holds shares in Morneau Shepell; the numbered company does. However, since he is the sole shareholder in the numbered company, this is just a matter of semantics.

The minister betrayed the trust of Canadians and the House by leading them to believe that he had followed the spirit of the Conflict of Interest Act when really he had made use of a loophole. The spirit of the act serves to ensure that those serving in the role of minister do not find themselves in a real or perceived conflict of interest. If he had truly been abiding by the spirit of the act, the minister would have placed his shares in Morneau Shepell in a blind trust or simply divested himself of all of his shares.

Instead, what he did was use a loophole to circumvent the spirit of the act and put himself in a position where he could personally benefit from the policies he implemented as the Minister of Finance. He did that for two years.

None of this passes the sniff test, especially since we are not talking about pocket change here. The shares in Morneau Shepell that the Minister of Finance directly or indirectly owns are valued at over $20 million as of October 20, 2017. It seems to me that any reasonable person standing to become finance minister that owns more than $20 million in shares in a company that bears his name would have seen a huge red flag with the word “danger” flashing in neon lights, and perhaps asked himself whether he should put all those assets in a blind trust so as to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. That all seems like common sense to me.

There is more, however. On October 19, 2016, on the first anniversary of his election by the way, the Minister of Finance introduced and sponsored Bill C-27, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, which would increase the use of target benefit pension plans. The Minister of Finance's former company, Morneau Shepell, is a strong proponent of target benefit plans and manages related services. Those plans are that corporation's bread and butter. Should Bill C-27 pass and come into force, the company stands to be one of only four corporations in Canada that would benefit from the new pension administration rules.

While the current finance minister was in charge of Morneau Shepell prior to being elected, the company lobbied for greater use of targeted benefit retirement plans and became the Government of New Brunswick's lead consultant in implementing its new pension plan.

The Minister of Finance's company would absolutely cash in by helping existing clients switch to targeted benefit plans and producing the annual actuarial valuations that would be mandatory under the new law. The current system requires them only every three years. That would generate even more business for his company. Clearly, as a major shareholder in his company, the minister would derive personal financial gain if this bill were to become law.

The worst of it is that the Minister of Finance is the one sponsoring this bill. Ordinarily, because he still holds shares in a corporation that would directly benefit from the legislation, he should have declared his interest and recused himself from any cabinet discussion of the bill. Instead, he celebrated his first year in office with the gift of bill sponsorship. That is a pathetic way for a Canadian finance minister to behave.

To top it off, within days of the Minister of Finance introducing Bill C-27, Morneau Shepell shares were up almost 5%. We can all agree that that is no coincidence.

I repeat:

...a public office holder is in a conflict of interest when he or she exercises an official power, duty or function that provides an opportunity to further his or her private interests...

We are no longer talking about appearances here. The Minister of Finance is in a direct conflict of interest, but he waited for it to be discovered and for the media to report on it before fixing the problem. On top of that, when he was elected in 2015, the value of the minister's shares in Morneau Shepell was $32.1 million. As of last Friday, as I mentioned earlier, his shares were worth $42.6 million, which means that his shares generated a profit of over $10 million in the past two years. If he still owns half of what he had in 2015, that means an extra $5 million in his pocket, while he is the Minister of Finance.

When the information was made public last week about his shares in the company bearing his name, it took us asking him nearly 20 times before he would finally confirm that he still has considerable holdings in Morneau Shepell, as though he had something to hide. This Minister of Finance is like a kid who was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, with chocolate around his mouth, but who still denies doing anything wrong. This reminds of the time when one of my brothers was caught licking another brother's ice cream cone, and he said that his tongue simply fell on it.

This is not a matter of cookies or ice cream. We are talking about millions of dollars. When the minister finally held a press conference to announce that he would divest himself of his shares, the price of his company's shares dropped by $0.41 in the three following hours, costing the minister an estimated $410,000. It is easy to see why he hesitated to respond and do what was necessary to put an end to this situation, which was strongly perceived as a conflict of interest. How can the minister continue to try to lead us and Canadians to believe that he went into politics for the right reasons and that he is really working in the interests of the middle class and those working hard to join it?

How many middle-class Canadians earn $5 million in two years? We now see why the finance minister was reluctant to tax the wealthiest Canadians. I grew up in a family where my parents had to work hard to make sure that their children had everything they needed in life, and I want to thank them for that here. Thank you, Mom and Dad. I decided to go into politics to help families have the same opportunities that my parents gave me. We are not here to help the rich get even richer.

At the very least, the minister should apologize to Canadians and members of the House for betraying their trust and leading them to believe that he was carrying out his duties in the interest of the public, rather than in his own personal interest. Ministers have lost their limos for far less than this. The government must also immediately commit to eliminating the loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act to ensure that the sorts of antics we are seeing today never happen again and that the spirit of the Conflict of Interest Act can no longer be circumvented by semantics.

[Business of Supply, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the minister just put his holdings in a blind trust. He did not do it two years ago.

The letter that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner sent the minister said that “if an official function provides you the opportunity to further your private interests...you are considered to be in a conflict of interest situation.” That is exactly what the minister did.

How can Liberal members, including this MP, claim that the minister was not in a conflict of interest situation up until yesterday?

[Pensions, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, one thing is perfectly clear: our bankruptcy laws do nothing to protect our workers, and this government is doing nothing to fix that. Sears Canada workers are getting laid off without any severance pay. Retired workers could have their pensions reduced. Meanwhile, are the executives going to get bonuses?

Who else benefits from this agreement? None other than the Minister of Finance.

How can the Liberals accept that their minister is making money on the backs of the unfortunate employees and retired workers of Sears Canada?