Morneau in a mess that he created
There is nothing quite like the sight of opposition politicians circling when they smell political blood in the water.
Particularly when the fish is as big as the federal finance minister.
Tuesday, Bill Morneau swam away. It did nothing to slow the Commons feeding frenzy.
This is not the way the Liberals envisioned celebrating Small Business Week, also known as Liberal Climb Down Week, and we’re just getting to hump day.
But rarely, if ever, has a federal minister blindly — or in this case non-blindly — walked himself into such a morass because Morneau, operating in a majority government, has somehow taken a campaign pledge promising tax fairness and turned it into a career-threatening crisis.
And so it was that one of the Conservatives’ top sharks, finance critic Pierre Poilievre, rose in the Commons to invoke, “he who has the most control over the nation’s finances, should have the most transparency over his interests.’’
Then New Democrat Nathan Cullen pronounced the Morneau scandal “unprecedented,” and “jaw-dropping,’’ and asked how he could continue to do his job while enshrouded in such controversy of his own making.
By neglecting to put his substantial holdings into a blind trust, Cullen argued that Morneau was in conflict after introducing a bill that would make it easier for federally-regulated businesses to move from defined benefit pensions to riskier targeted benefit pensions.
Morneau’s family company, Morneau Shephell, would benefit from such a plan and the minister could personally benefit if he still has shares.
The finance minister was in Montreal, and not in Question Period, Tuesday, and that is only one of a series of serious missteps by the government on the fiscal reform file, which it must address or pay a steep price.
• Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been successfully painted by the opposition as elitist and out of touch, not the saviours of the middle class as they had marketed themselves. Trudeau has placed his “family fortune” in a blind trust and his finance minister’s failure to do so has allowed the focus to fall on his personal wealth.
They face legitimate charges they are out of touch with farmers and the fishing industry in this country and were tone deaf in protecting their own interests while initially making it harder for a farm to be passed on to the next generation.
• The Liberals are showing the same contempt for Parliament and the Parliamentary Press Gallery for which they vilified Stephen Harper.
They made their tax cut announcement at a Stouffville restaurant, at a symbolic Main Street address with partisan background plumage, a tried-and-true Tory tactic of getting out of Ottawa to locations where they can better stage manage their message.
Neither Trudeau nor Morneau bothered to show up for Question Period to answer opposition questions Monday or Tuesday.
And Trudeau, a self-styled admirer of parliamentary reporters, managed to look condescending and arrogant in telling reporters in Stouffville that questions directed at his finance minister would have to go through him because he was the prime minister.
It reduced the man who should be his most powerful minister to a piece of wallpaper.
• A government accused of too much consulting apparently consulted no one, not even its own caucus, before bringing in tax reforms.
Morneau touted a listening tour before the government unveiled a series of tweaks to their reform package and announced they would lower the small business tax rate, but that was a listening tour foisted on him. Union leaders say he also consulted with no one before introducing the pensions bill.
• A majority government should be able to get a tax fairness package, part of their election platform, through Parliament.
This could bode ill going forward. Trudeau could have pushed this package through with proper communications, so the government will have to look at this debacle and make sure it is not repeated on marijuana legislation, where substantial problems with provinces, municipalities and the police loom. • Morneau’s future. He is hurt in that he is neither a natural communicator nor a natural politician. He is willing to meet with Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson again and willing to put his assets in a blind trust if instructed. That would be two years after Dawson told him it wasn’t necessary. His instincts should have told him to do it regardless.
The old cliché holds that a week is a lifetime in politics.
Morneau has been stumbling around this minefield for a couple months. That could come with a cost.