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Michael Higgins: Of course the Liberal finance minister has a conflict of interest

The federal budget included $90 billion for a high speed rail contract for a company where Champagne's wife works

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Here’s a quick primer for members of the Carney government — if you see a potential conflict of interest, make it public, refer it to the ethics commissioner and then step back. It’s really quite easy. 

Michael Higgins: Of course the Liberal finance minister has a conflict of interest Back to video

And yet, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, a member of the government for more than ten years and in cabinet for eight, still doesn’t get it. 

We now learn that Champagne’s partner, Anne-Marie Gaudet, is vice-president of the environment for Alto, the company behind the Liberals $90 billion soon-to-be boondoggle to build a high-speed rail link from Toronto to Quebec City. 

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This information was disclosed in a letter released by Champagne on Monday. The finance minister said he wrote the letter in September and sent it to Prime Minister Mark Carney. In the letter, Champagne said he was “proactively” applying a conflict-of-interest filter about Alto because of his relationship with Gaudet. 

The letter said Champagne was recusing himself from any dealings with Alto. 

Two months after apparently writing that letter, Champagne presented a federal budget highlighting “Alto High-Speed Rail: Canada’s first high-speed railway,” which is estimated to cost upwards of $90 billion. 

Why is it that five months after that budget, Canadians are only now learning about a rather large potential conflict of interest concerning the minister and Alto? 

If the minister thought it right to tell the prime minister, surely he could have figured it out that it was also right to tell Canadians. 

But he didn’t figure it out and worse the prime minister hasn’t figured it out either. 

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On Tuesday, Carney was defending Champagne with the kind of blind arrogance that was also the habitual fallback position of his predecessor. 

In a press conference, Carney thought the most important thing to remind Canadians was that ministers have spouses and partners who are allowed their own careers. 

But that’s not the point. Of course they are allowed careers and no one is objecting to Gaudet working for Alto. 

What’s really important is to have a conflict-of-interest process in place that is transparent and timely. Champagne’s decision to write to his leader was not transparent and considering it has only just been made public, it was certainly not timely. 

Carney went on to say that Champagne had followed all the rules. 

“There are rules, there are regulations and the minister, the finance minister, has followed those rules and regulations in notification of the ethics commissioner in recusing himself from dealings with respect to Alto,” said Carney. 

Well, did he notify the commissioner’s office or just write the letter to the prime minister? It would be great to have come clarity on such an important issue and the fact we don’t reflects the Liberals’ casual relationship when dealing with ethical matters. 

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The letter is not on the website of the ethics commissioner and John Fragos, Champagne’s spokesman, said it was the ethics commissioner’s decision not to post the finance minister’s letter on the website. 

We are awaiting what the ethics commissioner says. 

But on such an extremely important matter why didn’t Champagne directly tell the ethics commissioner? And why did he not ensure that the letter was posted for all to see? Why didn’t he just announce it for all Canadians to know? 

Apparently, Champagne felt it important to let the ethics commissioner know that in 2016 he had received two tickets to the benefit performance of Céline Dion in Quebec. We know because it’s on the commissioner’s website. 

But Champagne didn’t think it important to make sure that a possible $90 billion conflict of interest was similarly posted. 

Maybe he thought that was not his job. But transparency is part of his job and in that he singularly failed. 

It’s not as if Champagne hasn’t been part of a government that has had its share of ethical problems despite entering office with a pledge for openness and transparency. 

In case he’s forgotten a few “ethical” highlights would include: giving WE Charity a sole-sourced $912-million contract despite having connections to the Trudeau family; ditching Attorney General Jodie Wilson-Raybould for refusing to cave to the prime minister’s demands; defying the Speaker of the House of Commons by refusing to hand over documents and Justin Trudeau taking a free vacation at the Aga Khan’s home in the Bahamas. 

The Ethics Commissioner also found breaches of the rules by former Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc (he handed a lucrative Arctic surf clam licence to a company linked to his wife’s cousin); former International Trade Minister Mary Ng (she helped in awarding two contracts to a company run by a close friend) and former Finance Minister Bill Morneau who was found to have broken ethics laws three times in the WE debacle. 

Only a few years ago, a clearly frustrated outgoing Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion told National Post that the Liberals needed to take ethics more seriously. Their constant ethical failings were undermining public trust, he said. 

Referring to the Conflict of Interest Code, Dion said, “The act has been there for 17 years for God’s sake, so maybe the time has come to do something different so that we don’t keep repeating the same errors. After 17 years, maybe we should realize that something is not working.” 

What’s not working is the Liberals who refuse to display any humility when it comes to how they should act. 

Champagne can claim: Well I wrote a letter to the prime minister. The prime minister can claim: Well, he’s following all the rules and regulations. 

So why is it that Canadians were kept in the dark for so long? Because the Liberals didn’t think it important enough to tell them, is why. 

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