The conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is pointing out a list of assets that Prime Minister Mark Carney transferred to a blind confidence as evidence that the liberal leader was not honest with Canadians in the campaign.
Last week, the Ethics Commissioner advertised a list of Carney investments before being transferred to the trust. Carney transferred his assets shortly after winning liberal leadership, but before being sworn as prime minister.
“We want him to explain why he told the Canadians the opposite of the truth during the electoral campaign,” Pailievre said Monday during a press conference in Ottawa.
During the campaign, Carney refused to say what actions he had transferred to the trust, stating that he had gone beyond what is required in the ethics rules.
Blind confidence means that the administrator is the legal owner of the assets and can buy them and sell them as best seems. The administrator is prohibited from looking for contributions from Carney, Passy is forbidden to know what assets are in the trust.
Pailievre said that Carney had made “false statements” in saying that he did not know what was in trust, although he would have known what the assets were when he transferred them.
Pailievre also pointed to Carney saying that he only had cash and personal real estate as an example of a false statement.
“It was evident and very false for him to say that he had nothing more than effective and real estate,” said the conservative leader.
But those comments referred to the assets that Carney had outside The Blind Trust. The dissemination of ethics shows that the only other asset that Carney has outside the trust is the copyright of his book Values).
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is asking Prime Minister Mark Carney who sells all his financial assets and make an administrator reinvest in a “truly blind trust.” The power panel analyzes the current and passed politics around blind trustees, ethics screens and possible conflicts of interest.
The presentation shows that Carney had had hundreds of different shares in an investment account administered by a third party.
Pailievre says that Carney should sell all her assets, arguing that they compromise their decision making.
But it is not entirely clear if Carney could do it, since the administrator legally controls them.
Prime Minister’s office (PMO) said in a statement on Friday that Carney has worked “not only to comply with its obligations under the conflict law, but to overcome them, including that your team works with the [ethics] Commissioner even before being chosen, and will continue to do so. ”
CBC News has asked PMO for a response to the specific statements of Poilievre.
According to the presentation published by the commissioner, Carney also had assets in Brookfield Asset Management and Stripe, Inc. previously sat on the board of directors of both companies.
The law requires the commissioner to make public the ethics disseminations of the prime minister within 120 days after the position.
The Ethics Commissioner also published details about the conflict screen designed to prevent Carney for decisions for the benefit of its former employers.
Marc-André Blanchard, the Bodye Cabinet Chief, and the Secretary of the Private Council, Michael Sabia, have the task of guaranteeing that Carney is not aware and does not participate in “any official matter or decision-making processes that involve” Brookfield and Stripe.
Duff Conacher, director and co -founder of the non -profit Canadian organization and the Democracy Watch non -partisan organization, agrees that Carney should sell the assets within the blind.
“The Carney Ethics screen is a little ethical smoke curtain full of lagoons, since it allows it to participate in almost all the decisions that affect the companies in which it has invested,” said Conacher in a statement.
Pailievre has defended blind trusts
Pailievre seemed to have no problems with public offices holders who use blind trust.
In 2010, Nigel Wright was considered the chief of cabinet of Prime Minister Stephen Harper after a career in the private sector.
Wright appeared before the Chamber Ethics Committee, of which Pailievre was a member, to discuss his appointment, a conflict screen that was established with the Ethics Commissioner and a blind trust.
Pailievre, a parliamentary secretary at that time, said that the opposition parliamentarians had “attacked” Wright’s reasons to take the job and asked him to explain his blind trust.
“I transferred to all my controlled assets to blind trust at the end of October. The blind administrator is the legal owner of all of them now, and I will not have any communication of any kind: without address, without advice, without information about what is there. I don’t know and I don’t know what is there,” Wright told the committee.
Pailievre responded by recognizing Wright’s experience in the private sector.
“There will be people in this world of public service that come from different origins,” he said.
“But that is a strength for our country. We hope to invite people from several sectors, in this case the business sector, but from all sectors, to make a future contribution to our country.”
During his press conference on Monday, Pailievre said that current ethics laws must change and that their party would present proposals.
