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.
THANK YOU!
This is the first substantive reason that anyone has given. I hadn’t thought about deferred maturation.
That said, if they can’t be exercised, that usually means he can’t fully divest himself of them, so he’d be facing the same issue.
In either case, I guess the answer would have to be something like setting a fixed payment structure on them (maybe tied to a TSX index).
At the extreme end, forcing him to abandon all non-vested options wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Honestly this is what I think should happen.
I mentioned this elsewhere, but Carney’s own book champions the idea of company managers/executives getting bonuses paid in things like future stock options, because he notes that it creates an incentive for that person to make decisions that are good for the company (or, I guess, for its stock price) on a longer time scale than “this quarter” or “this year”.
Well, turns out that same system also creates incentives for that person if they suddenly hop over into government. Carney only has himself to blame for this ending up as a conflict of interest.