Tories urge Carney to come clean on his role in Brookfield HQ move

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OTTAWA  — The Tories say it’s time for Mark Carney to come clean.

While the Carney campaign insists Conservative accusations against the Liberal leadership frontrunner concerning the timeline of his resignation from Brookfield Asset Management and the company’s subsequent move out of Canada to New York City was little more than a desperate distraction, the Tories doubled down on Friday.

“Mark Carney needs to come out of hiding and answer questions about the lies he’s told Canadians,” said Conservative Ethics Critic Michael Barrett during a press conference in the foyer of West Block.

Barrett then proceeded to read an excerpt from a Toronto Star article where the Carney campaign declined multiple inquires about if Carney supported Brookfield’s decision to move their headquarters from Toronto to the Big Apple.

“This wasn’t a question from Conservatives, this came from the Toronto Star.”

On Wednesday, Barrett accused Carney of being untruthful about his role in the company’s decision to move its headquarters south of the border.

While Carney insisted he had no say in the decision due to his resignation from the company’s board in mid-January, the company announced their HQ move in October — and Barrett presented a letter on Wednesday to Brookfield shareholders, signed by Carney himself and dated Dec. 1, urging them to support the move.

“The real question to sneaky Mark Carney is if he thinks that this was such a good idea, and such a good business decision for Brookfield, does he think that all Canadian companies should move their headquarters from Canada to New York City,” Barrett said.

“This isn’t something that can be dismissed as confusion or mindfulness or forgetfulness or something that happened a long time ago, this was mere months ago.”

Barrett also referenced claims made by Carney that in 1998 he helped former Finance Minister Paul Martin balance the federal budget — despite being out of Canada at the time studying economics at Oxford.

“He became a federal bureaucrat in 2004, several years later, so that timeline doesn’t add up,” Barrett said.

Carney himself has so far remained quiet about the accusations, and his campaign’s response to the Toronto Sun’s inquiries did little to clear the air.

“He was referring to his work in government while Paul Martin was Prime Minister and kept on balancing the books,” read a statement emailed to the Sun.

Further attempts to confirm what role Carney served in government in 1998 while he was supposedly studying in the UK went unacknowledged by the Mark Carney campaign.

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
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