Pierre Poilievre

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance introduced a bill allowing his family business to make millions of dollars setting up targeted benefit pension plans. As a $20-million shareholder in that company, the finance minister stood to profit from his own bill. He used public powers for his private profit.

Did the finance minister have the permission of the Ethics Commissioner to introduce a law that would profit his own company?

[Ethics, October 23rd, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, type 1 diabetes requires half a dozen blood tests a day and regular insulin treatment, without which patients can suffer heart failure, comas, amputation, or even death.

Diabetes sufferers have been eligible for the disability tax credit for over a decade, but now the government is stripping it away and raising taxes by over $1,000 on these vulnerable Canadians.

Why did the finance minister use a loophole to make $65,000 a month from a company he regulates while targeting vulnerable disabled Canadians with a tax increase?

[Ethics, October 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member talks about an ethics screen requiring the minister to recuse himself from any matters affecting his company, Morneau Shepell. I have three questions. Did he recuse himself from any discussions on the Barbados tax haven where his company has a subsidiary? Did he recuse himself from any discussions on target benefit pension plans, from which his company stands to profit in the millions? Did he recuse himself from tax policies forcing small businesses to invest in individualized pension plans, from which his company stands to profit?

[Ethics, October 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, if the minister thought it was appropriate to own $20 million in shares in a company he regulates, why did he suggest to the media, to his caucus, and to Morneau Shepell that he had put it all in a blind trust? It reminds us of the offshore company in France. He broke the law in failing to report it to the Ethics Commissioner from the start.

The minister always does the right thing after he is caught doing exactly the opposite. When will the minister reveal all the investments he has in his nine numbered companies and trust funds across the country?

[Ethics, October 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, no one in Canada has more power to enrich the fortunes of an individual company than the finance minister. He has put forward legislation creating target benefit pension plans that his company sells. He has put forward tax proposals that would force small businesses to put money into individualized pension plans, which his company sells. The Bank of Canada, for which the finance minister is the only shareholder, gave lucrative renewed contracts to his company while he was minister.

Does the government, and the Prime Minister, not see the obvious conflict of interest in all of these actions?

[Taxation, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member spoke about this ethics screen that was supposed to prevent the Finance Minister from involvement in any matters touching upon Morneau Shepell. He committed in writing to the Ethics Commissioner that he would do nothing that would affect the interest of his family business in which he continued to own approximately $20 million in shares.

Well, he has been involved in the Canada-Barbados tax treaty. Morneau Shepell has a subsidiary in the tax haven of Barbados. He was the person who introduced the target benefit pension plan legislation. Morneau Shepell is one of the very few companies that administers those plans. He introduced tax policies that would force small businesses to take their savings out of their companies and invest them in individualized pension plans. Morneau Shepell is one of the only firms that administers those pension plans.

Does the member believe that in those three cases the minister actually respected the ethical screen he committed to when he became minister?

[Taxation, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, we learned this week that the Minister of Finance had been keeping a secret from the House. Since the last election, he has held in his possession stocks in Morneau Shepell, his billion-dollar family business. His holdings amount to tens of millions of dollars. The finance minister has vast powers and long, far-reaching tentacles into all aspects of economic and financial policy in our country. In short, his decisions can make a lot of money for financial companies, like the one in which he had invested tens of millions of dollars.

Morneau Shepell administers pensions. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, which reports to the finance minister, decides who will administer the pensions of bankrupt federally regulated companies. The finance minister sets policies to collect $300 billion worth of taxes. The specificity of these tax policies have the potential to help or hinder individual businesses. For example, one policy the government promoted under this finance minister would encourage small businesses to put their money in individual pension plans. Morneau Shepell, his family business, sells those pension plans. It is one of the unique companies that do so.

The finance minister proposed a bill creating something called targeted pension benefit plans. Morneau Shepell is one of the only companies in Canada that administers targeted benefit pension plans. For example, when these plans were created in New Brunswick, it was Morneau Shepell that set them up, and it would be Morneau Shepell that would profit from them if we did it at a federal level. We know this because Morneau Shepell has bragged about that fact on its own website. The finance minister spoke about it when he was the executive chairman of Morneau Shepell.

For these reasons, the minister was in an obvious conflict of interest, in a position that he was able to use his powers to profit a company that was paying him dividend cheques monthly. According to David Akin, a respected journalist, that company was paying him $65,000 a month in dividends, while he was finance minister regulating that same company. Worst of all, he did not tell anybody outside of the Ethics Commissioner.

When Paul Martin was the finance minister and he had vast holdings in Canada Steamship Lines, we all thought it was a conflict of interest. However, at least we knew about it so we could debate it. When he introduced bills that affected shipping lines, we knew what he was up to. The current minister told the media that he was putting his interests in a blind trust. He told Morneau Shepell that all of his holdings would go in a blind trust. He sent out parliamentary secretaries from the Liberal government on Twitter to claim that his holdings were in a blind trust. Only after the truth was uncovered by numerous investigative reporters did the finance minister finally admit he still held those shares and they were not in a blind trust. The minister always does the right thing after he is caught doing the opposite.

This conflict of interest allows the minister to enrich himself at the expense of everyone else. He has not lived up to the standards that are expected of someone with his authority. How does his parliamentary secretary defend the actions of the minister?

[Ethics, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has vast powers at his hands that he would be able to use to advantage the company in which he had tens of millions of dollars of secret holdings. He committed to the Ethics Commissioner in writing that he would recuse himself from any matters that might advantage Morneau Shepell. Could the minister tell us how many times he recused himself from matters relating to Morneau Shepell since he took office?

[Ethics, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, for the last several months, the finance minister has said that our farmers, plumbers, and other small business owners are a privileged few, using fancy accounting schemes to avoid paying their fair share.

We now learn that the finance minister used a loophole, putting millions of dollars of shares he was otherwise banned from owning into a numbered company in Alberta in order to continue to earn millions of dollars.

Now that this hypocrisy is exposed, does he not think it is time to apologize to those business owners he slandered?

[Ethics, October 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister hid his offshore company in France until he got caught, and then he reported it. He hid from Canadians his millions of dollars in Morneau Shepell shares in a numbered company in Alberta, despite wrongly telling others it was in a blind trust, until he got caught, and now he is selling them.

Why does he expect us to blindly trust that he is not hiding other conflicts of interest in his eight additional numbered companies that he has across the country?