Tory claims do not hold up, Corcoran,

Somewhere the Andrew Scheer Conservatives must have policies and messages that counter the Trudeau government’s parade of unfocused fiscal and ideological spins. If the Tories continue to place the lynching of Finance Minister Bill Morneau as their top priority, voters may never find out whether Scheer offers meaningful and principled alternatives to the Liberals.

That the Morneau attacks could backfire looked more likely this week when the Conservatives’ weekslong attacks on Morneau’s personal investment issues took an extreme turn. Rising in the House of Commons during Question Period Wednesday, Scheer issued a pompous ultimatum: “After careful consideration, in my capacity of Leader of the Opposition, I am officially calling on Bill Morneau to resign as finance minister.”

Morneau, supported by Prime Minister Trudeau, did not resign. So now what does Scheer plan to do? If Morneau is still finance minister a year from now and the allegations of conflict of interest and insider trading prove to be the legally and politically bogus allegations that they seem to be right now, Scheer will have been reduced to looking like an ineffectual spreader of political dirt rather than an upstanding leader with high ideals and a clear plan for the country.

Original allegations of conflict of interest, bolstered by higher-voltage charges of insider trading, are already on the brink of backfiring. Even Ottawa’s political reporters, usually keen to pounce on even the faintest hints of financial wrongdoing, are having a hard time connecting all the dots scattered by the Conservative and NDP opposition activists.

The attacks on Morneau’s ethics are beginning to look unethical in themselves. Tory finance critic Pierre Poilievre has been particularly aggressive in suggesting Morneau’s investment decisions were motivated so as to avoid the impact of his first financial moves as minister in late 2015.

The Tory claims do not hold up. Morneau personally (and apparently his father, the founder of Morneau Shepell) sold some shares in the company days before announcing changes in Canadian income tax rates. The argument is that the shares were sold at a high price relative to where they traded in the days following the fiscal announcement.

The price changes are fractional, and the reasons the shares declined cannot possibly be related to Morneau’s tax policy move. It’s even possible the shares lost value because the Morneaus sold. Another factor is that stock prices were in general decline during the same days.

If the Tory/NDP allegations were true, the Morneaus would go down as the worst insider traders in the history of the market. Confounding matters is that by selling when they did in late November 2015, the Morneaus missed out on a big run-up in Morneau Shepell shares, a run-up that began at around $14.50 a share almost the day after the December 2015, fiscal statement and hasn’t stopped since, reaching almost $22 a share in trading this week.

As we say in the news business, there really is no story here. Scheer and the Tories are trying hard to bring down the minister of finance. But if he doesn’t fall — as seems possible if there is no ethical or insider-trading scandal — then it is the Tories who will suffer for having ethically overreached in a campaign that leaves Canadians scratching their heads.