THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 8, Season 7
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Host: Vassy Kapelos
Guest Interviews: Minister Bill Morneau, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Mike Morden
Location: Ottawa
On this Sunday, Finance Minister Bill Morneau meets with the ethics commissioner and announces he’ll donate money made off shares of his former firm while in office, to charity. Is this an admission he did something wrong? We’ll ask the finance minister.
Then, Baghdad rejects an offer from the Kurds to hold off on their move towards independence. With Canadian troops based in Iraq, is there a role for Canada to play to help prevent a possible civil war?
Plus, heckling in Question Period—it’s nothing new, but is it getting worse? And what does it say about civility on Parliament Hill?
It’s Sunday, October 29th. I’m Vassy Kapelos, and this is The West Block.
What a week it was for Finance Minister Bill Morneau. Following the revelation he still holds about a million shares of his former firm, Morneau Shepell. The ethics commissioner is looking into whether Morneau broke conflict of interest laws by introducing a pension bill that could have boosted share prices. Facing intense pressure from critics, he’s promised to sell those shares. And late last week, Morneau announced he’d donate the capital gains from the sale to a charity.
And joining me now is Finance Minister Bill Morneau. Thank you so much for being with us on the program Minister, I really appreciate it.
Minister Bill Morneau: Good, glad to be here.
Vassy Kapelos: I want to ask you about your announcement to donate any money that you make off the sale of the shares that you own in your former firm, Morneau Shepell. First, I wanted to ask you about the numbers. By our calculation, it’s about something like $5 million. Is that correct?
Minister Bill Morneau: Well I don’t know of course. I mean stepping back, the reason I’m doing this is to give confidence to Canadians that we’re working on their behalf. And in order to do it, I need to work with the ethics commissioner. So my financial advisors will work with them and get to the conclusion. Of course, I can’t know the outcome because it hasn’t happened yet, but we’ll know soon.
Vassy Kapelos: You said a couple of weeks ago you had about a million shares and they’re selling right now around $21 a share, so I guess around $5 million.
Minister Bill Morneau: So you’ve done your homework.
Vassy Kapelos: So where will you be donating the money?
Minister Bill Morneau: I haven’t worked that out either. As you probably know my family and I have been very involved in the community and a lot of charitable giving over our lifetime. The kind of things I’ve been involved in, I was chairman at Covenant House, a home for street kids in Toronto. I’ve been donating to Covenant House. I was chairman at St. Michael’s Hospital for inner city people and others in Toronto where I’ve made a lot of donations. Right now my wife and I are working to bring some refugee girls from a school that we founded in a refugee camp in Kenya, to Canada in order to get a university education, so that’s a project we’ve been working on for a while. So these are all ideas, but I don’t actually have the answer to your question yet.
Vassy Kapelos: So when will you determine that?
Minister Bill Morneau: We’ll be working towards that in the near future, but of course that’s something that our family will come to together to figure out how we can have the biggest impact.
Vassy Kapelos: Is donating the money an admission that holding the shares in the first place is a conflict of interest?
Minister Bill Morneau: Really no.
Vassy Kapelos: Why not?
Minister Bill Morneau: I mean let’s just think about the steps here. I came into office having had a level of success in the business community. That meant I had to work with the ethics commissioner and find out the right way to arrange my affairs. And so when she recommended the approach that she recommended, I took those recommendations. Really what I’m doing, what I’ve done over the last week is to say to Canadians that the work that I’m doing now for me is as important as the work I did before and my business career was to me. I think this work’s much more important. The work for Canada is much more important. And if there’s something that I can do to make sure that people have absolute confidence, I’ll do it. So taking those extra steps, saying that my family and myself are going to sell the shares in the company that I’ve built over 25 years with my father, that was an important step I think for telling people that it’s more important that I work on their behalf. And the blind trust is really something that I just want to make sure people see that there’s another way of ensuring no conflict. And this final decision is one that’s consistent with what I’ve done in the past. I’ve always been making donations. But in this case, it gives people absolute assurance because any gains that would have happened in those shares since the time I’ve been in office we’re going to donate and we’re pleased to do that.
Vassy Kapelos: But by acknowledging that Canadians need absolute assurance, are you also acknowledging that there was an appearance, maybe not a certain, but an appearance of conflict of interest?
Minister Bill Morneau: What I’m saying, Vassy, it’s really that’s what happened over the last generations, what the other 337 MPs how they’re handling their affairs, which is on the advice of the ethics commissioner, that people are asking whether that’s good enough for a finance minister and that’s new. But since my goal is to work on behalf of Canadians and not to have these sorts of questions, I’m taking these steps.
Vassy Kapelos: Do you agree with their questions, though? Do you understand where they’re coming from because I think when you say, in the past, you’ve called them distractions? It almost feels like you’re belittling the concerns. Do you agree that those concerns are valid?
Minister Bill Morneau: What I agree with is that we need to keep doing the things for Canadians that we’ve said we want to do. So this past week, as you know, we introduced a Fall Economic Statement that was a fantastic report card on our economy. We made commitments to do additional things that are going to help Canadian families with more Canada Child Benefit and more tax credits for working people. So these are the sorts of things I want to get on. This backdrop, the discussion around my personal finances, is something that shouldn’t be something that’s in the way of us doing that work. And so I’m just making sure it’s not. And for myself and my family making donations, that’s something that we’ve been lucky and so doing that is something that we’re pleased to do. And if it has the benefit of making sure Canadians have absolute confidence, then that’s great.
Vassy Kapelos: With all due respect, though, that doesn’t really answer the question that I asked which is do you think that Canadians concerns over what appears to be conflicts of interest are valid or are you just trying to move on?
Minister Bill Morneau: I’m of the view that the recommendations that the commissioner gave me to ensure that I didn’t have a conflict of interest were appropriate, those recommendations that we followed. I was a witness to those screens that have been in place for the last two years. I believe that when people have questions you need to listen to those questions and decide if there’s a way that you can assure people that they’re not something they need to be concerned with. And I’ve chosen a way to do that that makes absolute assurance that no one can have any question. And doing it in a way that’s really consistent with my and my family’s values is positive.
Vassy Kapelos: If you had a do-over would you have done all of this earlier?
Minister Bill Morneau: We don’t have do-overs in life and all I can say is I’m –
Vassy Kapelos: Do you regret not taking these actions earlier?
Minister Bill Morneau: Let me tell you what I absolutely don’t regret. I don’t regret deciding to get into public life. I don’t regret having the opportunity to make a huge difference for our country. I don’t regret being part of a government that’s had a huge impact over the last couple of years and I’m certainly looking forward to having more impact. So if making sure that these steps enables me and us to have that impact in years to come, then they’re the right steps. And the fact that they’re steps that we’re very comfortable taking, that makes me very comfortable doing it.
Vassy Kapelos: And no regret over the fact that it did take some time to get to those steps.
Minister Bill Morneau: Not very long. I mean really, what we’re talking about is that there have been some questions for a week. And during that week I evaluated whether what I had been doing was absolutely making sure I was free of conflicts. I came to the conclusion it was, but I also had to consider whether people were going to keep asking questions and I assumed they would. So in that context, I just decided to do something for my family and for myself, for my wife and I, we think it’s the right thing to do. So I’m pleased to do that. It will of course enable me to continue being a contributor to causes that are really near and dear to our heart, to making a difference in our community. So that’s a positive.
Vassy Kapelos Okay, we’ll leave it there. Thanks for your time Minister, I really appreciate it.
Minister Bill Morneau: Thanks.
Vassy Kapelos: Up next, as tensions mount in Iraq between Baghdad and the Kurds, is there a role for Canada to help prevent a civil war?
Vassy Kapelos: Welcome back. Late last week the Iraqi Government rejected the offer by the Kurdish Regional Government to freeze moving forward on its independence vote. Tensions in the country are escalating, with Canadian troops on the ground in Iraq. Where are our troops based? And what is our mission there? Here’s your West Block primer.
The mission in Iraq has gone from trying to defeat ISIS to trying to keep the country together, a country on the brink of civil war. Thirty thousand Kurds in Northern Iraq have been displaced by fighting between Kurdish forces and the Iraqi military. Last month, the Kurds voted overwhelming in favour of independence in a referendum Baghdad deemed illegal. Iraqi forces moved quickly and forcefully to secure the City of Kirkuk and other areas in the oil-rich region. But caught in the middle of it all are at least 150 Canadian troops stationed in Kurdistan’s capital city. Their original mission to fight ISIS now transformed into something far less defined, but just as dangerous.
Last week, the Kurdish Regional Government Representative to Washington, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, was here in Ottawa meeting with government officials. I sat down with her to talk about Iraq and whether her government’s offer to freeze its independence vote is really a capitulation. Here’s that conversation.
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman: I don’t know what a capitulation means. Prime Minister Abadi has been saying that we need to rescind, or revoke, or cancel the referendum, the result and then he will enter into dialogue. I’m not sure how you can cancel a referendum when it’s already taken place, when millions of people have already expressed their opinion. I don’t know how you can do that. But what we can do is suspend the results of the referendum because clearly we have more urgent matters to deal with right now. The important thing for us is that Baghdad should cease the aggressive nature of its military positioning and begin talks with Kurdistan. We have not asked for talks specifically on the referendum. We have said that we’re willing to discuss whatever Baghdad wants to discuss.
Vassy Kapelos: You’re here in Ottawa speaking with officials in the Canadian Government and Department of Defence about this issue. What are you asking of them?
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman: What we’re asking from Canada and from other coalition partners as well, are to encourage Baghdad to cease these hostile deployments of its troops to stop the Iran-backed militias from what they’re doing and to encourage Baghdad to begin a dialogue with Kurdistan. Canada has tools that it can use. Canada has been a key partner in the coalition in the fight against ISIS. It has supported the Peshmerga, also Iraqi forces. Canada is an important player in the UN. There are many things that Canada can do and if we look, for example, to the example of France. President Macron has offered to mediate has offered to dialogue between Erbil and Baghdad and I think we need more of that from the international community. Canada also has the ear of Washington. So this is why we’re here and we’re asking our friends to remember that we are friends and allies in the fight against Islamist terrorism and that we need Canada’s support.
Vassy Kapelos: Have you seen any indication from anyone you’ve spoken to that Canada is willing to play a role like one you’ve described?
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman: Certainly the members of Parliament and the government officials that we’ve spoken to have listened to us, and they’ve expressed their concern about the situation and the willingness to what I have just set out.
Vassy Kapelos: How important is it, do you think, for Canada to publicly articulate that kind of a position? And I ask because the U.S. one has not been as clear.
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman: The U.S. actually is becoming clearer. Of course, the U.S. position was to continually say negative things about the referendum, but we’ve gone way beyond that now and I think there is recognition in Washington. And last Friday, the state department issued a very strong statement saying that the disputed territories remain disputed even though Iraqi forces now occupy them, and also asking for no more manoeuvres on a military front by either side and a call for dialogue. We welcomed that statement by America. Secretary Tillerson also made similar statements when he was in Baghdad just a couple of days ago. So I think the U.S. position is beginning to shift. It is useful to have countries like Canada, who as I said, have taken a very prominent role in the fight against ISI and in supporting Kurdistan and Baghdad in that fight. It is important that statements are made. And more than statements, that there is an engagement. Then it’s clear to our partners in Iraq, to our neighbours, in the neighbourhood—by that I mean Iran and Turkey, that the Kurds aren’t alone, that the international community wants to see an outcome that is peaceful and a good way of resolving the current crisis.
Vassy Kapelos: Are you disappointed that you haven’t heard anything specifically like that from the Canadian Government yet?
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman: I wouldn’t say it’s just Canada. The international community at large hasn’t been very vociferous or very proactive. I think they tried to minimize the role of Iran in all of this, but the evidence is now overwhelming. So I think they will. Certainly in the United States, we’re beginning to see a shift and I believe in the international community we’ll see that too. You could say that the international community generally takes time to act and react, but we are now two weeks into this and we need the international community to act and specifically we’re asking Canada not to choose between Erbil and Baghdad or Kurdistan and Iraq. You don’t have to choose between us. You can support both of us. Otherwise there is a potential for war in Iraq and that doesn’t serve anybody’s interest.
Vassy Kapelos: I wanted to ask you about that. How close is the situation to war?
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman: It’s very tense. Our position is that our Peshmerga forces are in a defensive posture. We have not triggered any attacks or any deployments that hasn’t been in response to Iraqi deployments. But our Peshmerga will not attack. They will only defend. But it is a very tense situation and it won’t take much in a near trigger situation for something to go wrong. That’s why we need de-escalation, not just in words but also in deeds. And we need the dialogue to begin because in the absence of dialogue, then it’s only the military that speak.
Vassy Kapelos: Okay, we’ll leave it there. Thank you very much for your time today.
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman: Thank you for having me.
Vassy Kapelos: I appreciate it.
Up next, we tell our kids not to do it, so why are politicians allowed to heckle each other in the House of Commons? That’s right after the break.
Mr. Speaker: Order!
Mr. Speaker: Order!
Elizabeth May??: I would like to ask for some maturity from some members in this place.
Vassy Kapelos: Those are scenes from Question Period just this past week. Screaming and heckling can make it really hard to hear what MPs are actually saying. A new study by Samara Canada suggests that most MPs think heckling has gotten out of control and that civility in Question Period has deteriorated over the years.
Joining us today is Mike Morden, research director at Samara Canada. Mike thanks so much for being on the show.
Mike Morden: Thanks for having me.
Vassy Kapelos: So this kind of surprised me. Your study found 53 per cent of MPs say heckling is a problem, 36 per cent of them see it as a form of harassment. I’m pretty sure when I’ve sat in QP. I’ve seen every single one of them do it. Were you surprised at all by the numbers?
Mike Morden: Yeah, really interesting. I mean there is an essential paradox there as you identify. MPs don’t seem to like heckling that much, but overwhelmingly they do it. So we were challenged to try to pull that apart a little bit and try to figure out okay, why might that be the case?
Vassy Kapelos: And why do you think it is the case?
Mike Morden: Well, I think MPs are looking for opportunities to make themselves heard in constructive ways, substantive serious ways and sometimes in the absence of those opportunities, that’s how we end up with heckling. So just to give an example, overwhelmingly MPs say that they heckle to hold one another accountable. This is the most common reason given. Call a member out for an untrue statement and that kind of thing. But only about 15 per cent actually think heckling increases accountability in the House of Commons, so they want tools to do their jobs as MP. And sometimes in the absence of those tools they end up just making noise.
Vassy Kapelos: So do you think based on your study and the conclusions you’ve drawn, is there a negative impact of heckling on democracy or like you said, as some argue, help them hold each other to account?
Mike Morden: Sure, so the kind of heckling we have is having a negative impact. But this is a small piece of a bigger puzzle, but it is a piece. So there’s good research evidence to suggest, for example, that just watching politicians behave rudely to one another drives down our trust in, not just those politicians but in government and our institutions. So it does matter. We know Canadians don’t like the way Question Period sounds. And MPs mostly acknowledge that while a little bit of back and forth, a pithy comment here and there could serve a useful purpose. The group shouts, the bullying and then the heckling that clearly crosses the line content wise, has to go.
Vassy Kapelos: What about gender? Did you find that gender plays a role in all of this?
Mike Morden: Yeah, interestingly, we asked MPs had they heard sexist heckling. Two thirds of our female respondents said that they had, only 20 per cent of men. Okay, it’s a fascinating finding given that they’re all in the same room.
Vassy Kapelos: And what constitutes sexist heckling?
Mike Morden: Well we suggested any heckling that makes reference to gender and then left that up to MPs to interpret. Nonetheless, we think that’s a fairly intriguing outcome. Female MPs hear one thing, male MPs hear another. But there’s also good evidence going back over the course of 100 years in Parliament that women are statistically more likely to be interrupted. So this is part of the reason it’s a problem. It’s a problem for recruitment of women and retention of female politicians.
Vassy Kapelos: And longevity was also a factor. I know that rookie MPs had almost a different take than ones who had been around for a longer time.
Mike Morden: That’s right. Rookies were more likely to be offended by the practice. Half of rookies wanted to see it gone altogether. It seems like you spend more time in Parliament you start to become acclimatized a little bit. You start to get used to it. When you first arrive it’s really something quite unusual, nothing like what we experience in the workplace otherwise. So what’ interesting about that is this is a Parliament that has seen a lot of new MPs, almost 200 rookie MPs. And this is one of the reasons we wanted to visit this question now. Is there a critical mass that would permit us to really make some change?
Vassy Kapelos: So when we start looking towards solutions, I know that your study has some recommendations. What are the main ones that you would want our viewers to come away with?
Mike Morden: There’s a lot we can do. In part, we want to treat heckling more as a symptom of a broader problem, which is a debate that is too insubstantial, too stage and theatrical. So there’s small ways we can free the debate up so it’s a little bit more authentic. More time for questions and answers, less written aids, so less scripted talking points. We also think maybe it’s a good time to revisit how we broadcast in Parliament. We’ve been doing it a certain way for 40 years with a camera just faces on the person who is recognized to speak. You can misbehave off screen. We don’t really know who’s saying what. And since MPs themselves agree with us that the public, generally speaking, doesn’t like heckling, we think we capture more of that behaviour on camera. It might be a real strong disincentive.
Vassy Kapelos: And just quickly before we go, have you had any reaction from MPs to those recommendations, especially the one about moving the cameras?
Mike Morden: Sure, we’ve had a number of conversations on the Hill before the report came out and after and there’s a lot of openness to trying some new things, which is great.
Vassy Kapelos: We’ll see what happens. Thanks a lot for joining us, appreciate it.
Mike Morden: Thanks so much for having me.
Vassy Kapelos: And that is our show for today. We’re always eager to hear from you. You can find us online at www.thewestblock.ca. You can also reach us on Twitter and Facebook, and you can listen to our podcast on Apple iTunes and Google Play. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m Vassy Kapelos. See you back here next week. Have a wonderful day.
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