Bill Morneau will sell its shares of Morneau Sheppell

Photo Agence QMI, Sebastien St-Jean

Maxime Huard

Thursday, 19 October 2017 14:27

UPDATE
Thursday, 19 October 2017 14:27

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OTTAWA | The controversy of the last four days was finally transferred to Bill Morneau on Thursday. The federal minister of Finance announced that it will sell its shares of the firm of Morneau Shepell.

Its other financial assets will be placed in a blind trust.

“Maybe I was naive to think that it is sufficient to follow only the recommendations of the ethics commissioner. But I have to do more,” said Bill Morneau during a press conference held at the Parliament, just before question period. He called the controversy a “distraction”.

The members of the family of the minister départiront also of all of their shares of Morneau Shepell, the company that Mr. Morneau headed before entering politics.

The NDP dissatisfied

For the New democratic Party (NDP), the proclamation of the minister of Finance does not dispel the doubts about his integrity. “He left a lie to continue for two years and now, only because he got caught, he reacts”, criticized the spokesman néodémocrate in ethics, Nathan Cullen.

The NDP judge harshly the fact that the action of Morneau Shepell, has appreciated nearly 5 % in October 2016, five days after the tabling of bill C-27 on pension benefits. They accuse Bill Morneau, will be enriched thanks to the project of law that it has itself developed.

The conservatives have abounded in the same direction. “He should be held responsible for what happened during the last two years. He owned tens of millions of dollars of shares of a company subject to its laws. He had the power to make decisions that benefited the company,” said the spokesperson for the conservative in matters of Finance, Pierre Poilievre.

In the Commons, where he shone by his absence since the beginning of the week, the minister has swept away the allegations of the reverse side of the hand Thursday.

Ethical controversy

The minister Morneau is entangled in this controversy since the beginning of the week, while it was revealed that he had not placed its considerable financial assets in a blind trust. Still, he had promised to do so at the time of his election, in 2015.

Mr. Morneau held a little over two million shares of Morneau Shepell, assets valued today at more than $40 million.

The ethics commissioner Mary Dawson did not recommend to the minister to put his assets in trust, because it indirectly owns. “A trust without the right to look is not necessary,” she wrote in a letter sent to Mr. Morneau in February 2016.