Ottawa, ON – Michael Barrett, Conservative Shadow Minister for Ethics and Accountable Government, sent the following letter to Mark Carney:
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Mr. Carney,
I am writing to follow up on the serious matter regarding the immediate disclosure of your financial assets and all potential conflicts of interest. I know that you would like to consider this matter closed following comments you and your campaign have made to media, signaling your intent to follow existing conflict of interest laws. But such commitments are hollow and wholly unsatisfactory.
After a decade of your Liberal colleagues engaging in countless ethical violations and conflicts of interest, you might believe that following the letter of the current law is sufficient. But Canadians deserve better. Voters deserve full transparency, disclosure and accountability – something you have notably refused to provide prior to your potential assumption of office as Prime Minister.
Take your campaign’s recent statement to the Toronto Star, where you claim that you will place your assets in a blind trust. While you present this as going above and beyond the requirements, it is, in fact, the bare minimum required by law. It also raises serious questions about whether someone with financial interests as vast and complex as yours – spanning massive public and private corporations – could even enter into a truly blind trust. Notably, it is unclear whether some of your non-stock assets at Brookfield could even be placed into a blind trust, as you already know what the funds are invested in. Full divestment might well be your only option.
Deceptive arrangements that merely provide the illusion of compliance – such as when then-Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau moved his shares into a separate numbered company that he still controlled – will not suffice.
Furthermore, many Canadians would rightly be skeptical that you could achieve full and proper compliance before taking office, given the power you would wield to influence matters that could provide you with personal financial benefits.
As I have previously pointed out, your commitment to completing the standard ethics disclosure process only after taking office leaves Canadians in the dark about your personal financial interests and potential conflicts of interest. The law as written is insufficient, as it would allow you 60 days without any disclosure to the Ethics Commissioner and double that amount of time before any disclosure to the public. This four-month period of zero transparency would allow you to assume office – and potentially go through an entire general election – without being honest with Canadians about your conflicts and personal financial positions, which could be worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
Essentially, you are asking Canadians to trust that you have nothing to hide. Unfortunately, having told multiple lies to Canadians over the past few weeks, you have no reputation for trustworthiness to rely on. You also do not have a record of ethical business practices for Canadians to trust, as your former company, Brookfield, has been identified as a leading culprit in tax avoidance and potentially Canada’s top tax dodger. This concern has been raised not only by me and my Conservative colleagues in the past, but also – just yesterday – by your Liberal coalition partners, the NDP.
Ultimately Mr. Carney, this leaves you with only one choice. If you have nothing to hide, then you should publicly disclose all your assets and interests for Canadians to judge. You should do so before the conclusion of the Liberal leadership race on March 9th. Anything less will raise serious suspicion about your motives and further erode Canadians’ ability to trust anything you have to say.