Morneau rejects Tory insinuation, threatens legal action

OTTAWA — Finance Minister Bill Morneau is threatening to sue the Conservatives for suggesting he used his inside knowledge of a pending tax change announcement in 2015 to sell off stocks before their value dropped.

On Tuesday, a day after sidestepping more than a dozen questions on the issue, Morneau called the insinuations by Tory finance critic Pierre Poilievre “absurd.”

“If the Opposition want to continue with these absurd allegations, which have no basis in any sort of fact, they take them outside of the House and I will give them a sense of exactly how our legal system works,” said Morneau.

Anything said in the House of Commons is subject to parliamentary privilege, which gives MPs legal protection from libel and defamation laws. Poilievre first raised the allegations Monday during question period in the Commons.

He claimed Morneau’s December 2015 announcement that he would raise income taxes on the highest earners caused the entire stock market to drop, including the value of Morneau Shepell shares — 680,000 of which were sold off roughly a week earlier.

Poilievre alleged the early sale of the shares saved the owner half a million dollars.

He repeatedly asked Morneau if it was a coincidence that the 680,000 shares were sold off a week before the tax announcement. And he asked Morneau repeatedly to confirm he was the “someone” responsible for selling off those shares in the company founded by the minister’s father.

When the Speaker questioned the appropriateness of questioning the government on the matter, Poilievre retorted: “It is actually the responsibility of government to ensure that no minister ever uses inside knowledge to benefit from transactions on the stock market.”

While Morneau dodged those allegations of insider trading Monday, he had more to say at a hastily called news conference Tuesday.

“What we’re hearing now is in my mind (an) absolutely crazy idea that something that we campaigned on, that we talked to 36 million Canadians about which was a rise in taxes in the top one per cent was somehow knowledge that was only my knowledge,” he said.

Poilievre maintained he hasn’t “actually accused him of anything ” and has only asked Morneau whether he was the one who sold the shares a week before the tax announcement.

“I am absolutely confident that everything I’ve said out there and in here is true,” Poilievre said in the Commons, challenging Morneau to meet him outside the chamber to answer the question.

Morneau was not present during question period Tuesday because he said he had a speech to deliver in Toronto.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if he still had confidence in his finance minister, who has been at the centre of an ethics controversy for weeks.

“He continues to focus on the things that matter to Canadians and he has our full confidence,” Trudeau said, after crediting Morneau for helping make changes that have improved the economy.

The New Democrats have asked the ethics commissioner to look into Poilievre’s allegations about the 2015 sale of Morneau Shepell stock.

The ethics commissioner has already launched a formal examination to determine if Morneau was in a conflict of interest when he introduced pension-reform legislation, which critics have insisted would benefit Morneau Shepell — a company in which, until recently, Morneau owned about $21 million worth of shares.