This is an opinion column, but let us first start with a few uncontested truths.
Fact: Before entering public life as a Liberal MP and Justin Trudeau‘s Finance Minister, Bill Morneau was already a very wealthy man.
Fact: He left a thriving family business, the large consulting corporation Morneau Sheppell, to enter public life.
Fact: Morneau did not put his assets into a blind trust, as would normally be expected of a wealthy finance minister, and instead placed many of his assets into corporations that he then controlled.
Fact: The federal ethics commissioner confirmed to Morneau that this was legal, as it technically met the requirement of Morneau not directly controlling financial assets that he could benefit via his official duties.
Fact: The federal ethics commissioner had previously recommended that this loophole be closed, as it is an obvious oversight.
And a further fact: once Morneau’s unusual financial arrangements were revealed, after considerable public backlash, he agreed to sell off his stake in the family business and put his remaining assets into a blind trust.
That’s the record of Morneau’s recent public relations disaster on the ethics file. The entire thing stank, but nothing discussed above was illegal. Unwise, I would argue, but legal. He did the right thing eventually, but only under duress and after the entire affair became an embarrassment for the government that was in the middle of reforming the tax code to — ooooh, this is awkward — close loopholes that the government contended were providing an unfair advantage to the rich.
Damage was done to his reputation and credibility, and the government embarrassed, but Morneau seemed to survive. The issue died down eventually, as they usually do. The news moved on.
And now it’s back.
This week, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre claimed in the House that in November of 2015, just after the Liberals had taken power, Morneau sold roughly $10 million worth of shares in his company. (This was quickly confirmed by the National Post’s John Ivison.) Several days after the share sale, Morneau announced changes to Canada’s tax rates, and the stock market dropped. Had Morneau sold the shares after his announcement, he would have netted roughly $500,000 less than he did. The opposition has been absolutely hammering Morneau in reaction to this news, peppering him with sharp questions. The implication is clearly that Morneau used his knowledge of forthcoming changes to the law to benefit himself financially.
The whole thing gets messy after this. Morneau called the charges outrageous and absurd; he said the opposition clearly doesn’t understand the stock market and dared Poilievre to repeat his questions outside of the House of Commons, where he would not be protected by Parliamentary privilege and could be sued civilly. Poilievre, undeterred, literally marched out of the Commons and repeated the question, daring Morneau to sue. So there’s a lot of political theatre unfolding now.
But set all that aside and the crux of the issue is this: even if Morneau did absolutely nothing wrong, this is the finance minister yet again looking terrible. Suing the opposition won’t make him look any better, and could actually hurt, especially since it would compel Morneau to disclose a bunch of things about his personal finances he might rather not.
The bottom line is this: the entire affair looks awful on the finance minister. There’s no smoking gun that proves misconduct, but it shows a remarkable political naïveté and horrific judgment on the part of Morneau and his advisers. It’s entirely plausible that Morneau was acting in good faith (to be blunt, he’s so rich I’m not sure the extra $500,000 he netted on the sale really matters that much).
If you’re Bill Morneau, though, you have a serious problem: it’s impossible to prove good faith. The opposition will delight in hammering him with loaded questions, and Morneau will try to limp along a few more weeks until the Christmas break. Unless an investigation is launched — and that’s possible, I suppose — this will blow over.
But that’s not a vindication, that’s a reprieve. This is all yet more proof, as if any more were needed, that Morneau erred massively in not putting all his assets, including his stake in Morneau Shepell, into a blind trust from day one (or even before). Getting cute and slipping through a few loopholes might have seemed like a neat idea at the time, but this is now the second public relations debacle that could have been completely avoided: if Morneau had simply done the reasonable and responsible thing from the outset, his only response to questions this week could have been a shrug and “I don’t know. I put all those assets into a blind trust.”
Wouldn’t that have been nice?
Blind trusts aren’t just for the benefit of the public, after all. They aren’t some silly cross we insist our elected officials bear for our satisfaction. They are as much to protect the official as the public — protect their judgment from outside influence and their reputations from unfair attack. Morneau should have simply set up a blind trust, but he didn’t. That makes it very hard for him to demand the benefit of the doubt when the opposition comes with pointed questions about suspicious million-dollar paydays.
Matt Gurney is host of The Morning Show on Toronto’s Talk Radio AM640 and a columnist for Global News.
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