LILLEY: Mark Carney avoids taxes but expects you to pay your 'fair share'

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Mark Carney says Canadians, including Canadian companies, should pay their fair share of taxes.

The problem is that the Liberal leader thinks that applies to you but not to him or the companies he helps run.

According to calculations done by the NDP, Mark Carney has helped Brookfield Asset Management – the company he was formerly chair of – avoid $5.3 billion in Canadian taxes since 2021.

It turns out that Carney setting up $25 billion worth of investment funds in Bermuda, a well-known tax haven, is just the tip of the iceberg. According to the NDP though, Brookfield only paid a third of that amount.

“Between 2021 and 2024, Brookfield’s annual reports show they made $23.3 billion USD in income. At Canada’s corporate tax rate of 26.4%, they should have paid $6.1 billion in taxes,” the NDP said in a statement. “But they only paid $2 billion – leaving a tax gap of $4.1 billion USD or $5.3 billion CAD.”

That’s a staggering tax gap for a progressive politician who portrays himself as someone who is looking out for Canadians.

When Carney was asked about the issue of avoiding taxes, he said that he and the company he worked for followed all the rules, but he didn’t answer whether his actions and those of his former company were ethical.

He also tried to claim that Canadian pensioners were the main beneficiaries of Carney setting up these funds in Bermuda to avoid paying taxes. Let’s be clear, the biggest beneficiaries of Carney setting these funds up in Bermuda to avoid paying Canadian taxes would be Brookfield and Carney himself, who will continue to be paid from this fund for years to come given that he is the founder and that is how the compensation system works.

And while Canadian pension funds were investors in the Brookfield fund, they were not the biggest investors, and claiming this was the reason for the tax dodge is more than a bit of a stretch.

Pressed again, he said that we need a fair tax system.

“In terms of having a fair tax system in Canada, including for corporate taxations, absolutely a priority of my government,” Carney said. “If we are reelected it will be a priority of our government to ensure that our companies are paying their fair share of taxes.”

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It’s interesting that now that he’s being pressed in the middle of an election campaign, Carney is saying he wants everyone to pay their fair share, but until recently he was willing to use tax havens.

There is nothing illegal about tax havens, and no evidence that Brookfield did anything wrong or against the law, but in the political world, this is a problem for Carney. The Liberal Leader used a tax shelter that most of us have cannot take advantage of in order to benefit his now former company, and himself, given that he still receiving carried interest payments as the founder of these two funds worth more than $25 billion USD and stored away in Bermuda.

As an international man of mystery with three passports, and someone who has used tax havens, it would be interesting to see Carney asked where he has filed income taxes since 2020 when he supposedly came back to Canada. Did he file in Canada or is he using personal tax shelters as a nom-dom to avoid Canada’s high taxes.

He’s unlikely to answer given that he hasn’t wanted to come clean on his assets and investments, but given that he’s telling the rest of us to pay our fair share, it’s worth trying to find out.

blilley@postmedia.com