EDITORIAL: Morneau's behaviour is beneath his office
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Canada’s embattled finance minister thinks he’s done nothing wrong, and it’s hard to blame him, since his Prime Minister seems to agree.
But for months now, Bill Morneau has been on the ropes over a variety of controversial issues.
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Some are about unpopular policies – like his proposed changes to corporate taxes that sparked a small business tax revolt.
Others are about his personal financial situation, involving his failure to adequately disclose information about his French villa and how he placed the shares of his family business in a numbered company, as opposed to putting them in a blind trust or selling them off.
These issues have caused spin off political damage, much political theatre, fines from the ethics commissioner, calls for Morneau’s resignation, trouble within Liberal ranks and frustration from the electorate.
Morneau has consistently denied wrongdoing. But his responses to these public relations crises have been amateurish.
It’s now clear just how bad an idea it was for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to appoint a rookie politician – regardless of his private sector C.V. – to the second most important political post in the land.
In recent months, Morneau has taken to blaming both the media and Opposition for making a big deal out of his handling of his shares in the family business. At no point did he ever just say sorry.
Rather than dispel concerns, this adversarial approach had the opposite effect. It’s caused more people to pay attention and more questions to be asked.
And in recent days his tone shifted from adversarial to aggressively defensive and disrespectful.
After Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre asked Morneau questions about the timing of the sale of shares of Morneau Shepell in 2015, the minister responded not by answering the question but by threatening to sue.
Morneau called Poilievre’s questions “absurd” and a “conspiracy theory”. Yet if he just answered legitimate questions plainly, he might have less to defend.
Transparency and civility were supposed to be hallmarks of this government. Instead, the Liberals are meeting legitimate inquiry with partisan stonewalling.
It’s particularly troubling that it’s the finance minister himself, who should be above reproach, who is the one getting knee deep in this war of words. And that Trudeau seems to think that’s acceptable.
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