The conflict of Mark Carney’s interests: Ivison

Article content

In a moment of national crisis, Canadians don’t seem to be in the mood for politicians getting their elbows up on one another at home.

Pierre Poilievre tacitly acknowledged that on Friday when he prefaced his hyper-partisan press conference with an attack on Donald Trump, who he said should “knock it off and stop the chaos.”

Poilievre has something of a Trump problem, with some polling suggesting people believe that he is similar to, or even friendly with, the president.

Article content

On Friday, Poilievre took a hard line to disabuse that notion, saying he would keep Canadian tariffs in place until all of Trump’s tariffs are removed. “You can’t have half-measures. If he wants a fight, we will fight back.”

The director Stanley Kubrick once said that great nations always act like gangsters and small nations like prostitutes. Canada is fortunate that all its prospective leaders are determined that this country will not debase itself or give in to intimidation.

But politics is a blood sport, and the Conservative leader quickly pivoted to more partisan concerns.

Poilievre remains the most likely counterpart to Trump after the next election, but the polls suggest he is now in a competitive race with the resurgent Liberals.

Given the spending advantage the Conservatives have, Poilievre cannot afford to wait until the writ is dropped in an election campaign to go after the presumptive Liberal leader, Mark Carney.

As Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, put it this week, the Liberals are standing on the credibility of one individual and the political strategy for dealing with that is obvious: make Carney more unpopular.

Article content

Article content

Poilievre did his best to do just that over the public disclosure of the former central banker’s financial assets.

He conjured up the hypothetical case of a prime minister who has millions of dollars of financial interests and who profits from insider knowledge at the expense of taxpayers.

“What if his interests lie with foreign, hostile governments that can undermine our country? Then he is not working for you, he is working against you,” he said Friday.

Poilievre said that Canada’s Conflict of Interest and Ethics Act requires disclosure of those interests but that they do not apply to party leadership candidates. If Carney were to win the next election, he would have 60 days to inform the ethics commissioner of his business interests and 120 days to make a partial public disclosure of them.

“Mr. Carney could win the Liberal leadership and become prime minister without revealing to Canadians his massive, multi-million-dollar foreign holdings,” Poilievre said. “Worse, he can simply put the existing holdings in what is called a blind trust, while his trustees keep him invested in all the same things, so he could go on and govern for years, quietly and subtly knowing what investments he has and making decisions that profit himself at the expense of the Canadian people.”

Article content

Poilievre said Carney’s first decision after Trump threatened tariffs was to move the headquarters of the company he chaired, Brookfield Asset Management, to New York from Toronto, “sending Canadian jobs to America.”

“There’s nothing in the law that prevents Mr. Carney from doing the right thing today. He could voluntarily disclose to Canadians all his holdings and then people could judge for themselves. He could offer to sell them all, so that he wouldn’t be in a conflict of interest. But he’s being sneaky. What is he hiding in all these finances and how could he possibly negotiate with President Trump?”

Poilievre’s performance was a master class in kicking a political opponent in the guts.

But its success will ultimately depend on whether voters hold him in higher regard than his target. At the moment, they do not.

Poilievre tried, and failed, to take the head of former finance minister Bill Morneau during the small-business taxation saga in 2017, when Poilievre (then the finance critic) accused Morneau of engineering tax changes so that his former firm, in which he still held $40 million of shares, could benefit.

Article content

Poilievre painted a picture of a very rich man who was taking advantage of tax loopholes to stay rich, while closing loopholes for people less rich than himself.

Morneau survived, partly because it emerged, he had donated $10 million of the proceeds he made from Morneau Shepell to charity. But mainly because nobody believed he was corrupt or had engaged in insider trading.

Are people prepared to believe that Carney is in it for the money, or that he would work with “foreign, hostile governments to undermine our country”?

We will find out in due course, but it comes across as a desperate gambit at a time when made-up ethics scandals are a distraction the country can ill-afford.

Carney has said he will not only comply with all applicable ethics rules but surpass them.

“The office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has already been contacted ahead of time to help ensure all appropriate steps can be initiated right away and assets immediately placed in a blind trust,” a Carney spokesperson said.

The assets would still have to be disclosed, even if placed in a trust, so the idea that Carney could govern in his own interests with impunity is not realistic.

Article content

But the lessons of nine years of Liberal government suggest that Carney needs to go further still. He was less than transparent about the movement of Brookfield’s headquarters, saying the formal decision to move came after he ceased to be chair, even though it is clear that the board voted unanimously in favour before he left.

He tried to suggest he didn’t play a role, which in the words of Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey “causes problems of sufficient magnitude to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.”

Carney was head of Brookfield’s $10-billion Global Transition Fund, aimed at investments to accelerate the transition to net zero.

He should disclose whether he still has a financial interest in the fund and whether he would benefit from any clean energy decisions he makes as prime minister.

He should also appreciate the Liberal party’s checkered history when it comes to ethical controversies. Far too often, senior Liberals, most particularly Justin Trudeau, acted as if the rules didn’t apply to them.

Nobody is keen to have their financial history laid bare, particularly wealthy individuals who are trying to come across as a men of the people.

But, as with Caesar’s wife, the next prime minister must be above suspicion.

National Post

jivison@criffel.ca

Article content