Prime Minister Mark Carney and other Canadian prime ministers should be required to divest their investment portfolios when they assume office, not just put them in a blind trust, the House of Commons ethics committee recommends in a new report.
In its report made public Thursday morning, the committee said putting assets in a blind trust isn’t good enough, recommending instead “that the Government of Canada amend the Conflict of Interest Act that, for the application of subsection 27(1) the prime minister, as a reporting public office holder, is fully divested from their controlled assets through sale, since placement in a blind trust does not constitute true divestment.”
The committee also wants the law amended to require public disclosure of “high-level holdings categories placed in a blind trust by reporting public office holders (sector/asset class, and whether the holdings are Canadian-market concentrated),” a recommendation that could shed new light on the financial interests of a number of top officials and cabinet ministers.
Sorry dude, but I still feel that way. Carney has more than enough money to live comfortably without any more income for the rest of his life. If money is more important to him than Canada, then yeah I’d rather him not be PM. That doesn’t mean I like the conservatives, but if we never fix our political problems then people like Polievre will continue to be a problem forever.
No you’re missing the point on the Poilievre thing. I didn’t mean to imply that you would like conservatives, I’m saying that PeeWee Bumblefuck who lost his own riding and had to cobble together a face saving Alberta seat to remain quasi relevant is a career politician. Trudeau who was weak in almost every facet of his tenure was a career politician AND a nouveau aristocrat wealthfare baby.
Trudeau didn’t have to worry too much about assets because they were already locked into his inheritance.
Poilievre got elected before he had to shave regularly and has been nuzzling the public tit since.
Neither of those people are who we want to lead us, but the idea that we will be choosing socially responsible, wise and selfless leaders as PM if we force candidates to abide by a liquidation law is laughable. We will end up with career politicians or worse, career civil servants who are able to mount campaigns not because they are the sharpest minds available but because they know how the game is played and they are the most able to cut the throats of their opposition. Or perhaps we’ll have the odd child of a Laurentian aristocrat unfrill their sleeves and deign to spend their salad days playing Parliament.
I would rather the middle-class-raised, self-made-dynamo Mark Carneys of the world have a path to mount a campaign without the price being too high to make it worth their while, and these people are the ones who would be stung by this law, not the Trudeau aristocrats or PP government cheese mice.