Carney Must Tell Canadians If He’s Cashed Out
January 17, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ottawa, ON – Today, Common Sense Conservative MPs Michelle Rempel Garner and Michael Barrett called upon Mark Carney, Liberal leadership candidate and senior leader for many multi-billion dollar corporations, to fully disclose his compensation structure with these entities so that Canadians can determine whether he has profited or will profit from policy advice he’s given the federal Liberal government.
“As potential Leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister of Canada, the influence and additional power Mr. Carney seeks to gain requires complete transparency. It is in the Canadian public’s interest to learn whether he has, or will continue to, profit from advising and potentially leading the federal Liberal government,” said Barrett.
“Mr. Carney has held senior leadership positions in multi-billion dollar companies like Brookfield Asset Management while acting as a senior economic advisor to the federal Liberal government. He’s now seeking to become Prime Minister. As the compensation packages that he’s held may have included financial instruments which could increase in value if certain federal public policy decisions were made, the public needs to know if Mr. Carney’s compensation increased – or will continue to increase – as his policy ideas are implemented. This is particularly urgent since he didn’t answer questions about it from reports at yesterday’s campaign launch,” said Rempel Garner.
The full text of the letter of inquiry Barrett and Rempel Garner sent to Carney follows.
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Dear Mr. Carney,
We are writing to you concerning your corporate and global positions, and to seek transparency regarding the total compensation you received in the last three years.
When you were employed as Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, just a few days after your official appointment as Chair of the Leader’s Taskforce on Economic Growth, it was reported that Brookfield Asset Management was actively lobbying the same federal Liberal government you were advising for $10 billion from Canadian taxpayers.
As Chair of Brookfield Asset Management, you advocated for heat pump subsidies while serving as an advisor to the Prime Minister and the Liberal government. Brookfield owns HomeServe, a heat pump company that stood to benefit financially from these policy changes.
You were on the board of Stripe Inc., a $65 billion multinational payment processing and lending business that falls under federal regulations. Recently, Stripe came under scrutiny in Canada for failing to pass along savings in a voluntary reduction on interchange fees to small businesses from Visa and Mastercard. Unanswered questions remain about why the federal government didn’t take precautions to ensure these savings weren’t absorbed by companies like Stripe.
Your various global positions include serving on the Global Advisory Board of PIMCO, which manages $1.88 trillion in assets, and working with foreign sovereign wealth funds. You also served as Chairman of Bloomberg L.P., a major private corporation with what could be described as opaque corporate reporting.
During the last several years, you have been advising the Prime Minister and the Liberal government, yet yesterday at your campaign launch, you would not answer when asked by a journalist about your total corporate and international compensation in that same time period, or about managing any potential conflicts of interest.
In leaving your positions, any form of compensation that you have received or will receive due to your departure, broken down by organization over the past three years, including by cashing in on any stock options or other financial interests that you hold, should be disclosed to Canadians.
As potential Leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister of Canada, the influence and additional power you seek to gain requires complete transparency.
It is in the Canadian public interest to know whether you have, or continue to, profit from advising the federal Liberal government.
Only full disclosure on compensation by corporate and international entities can prove that you do not owe anyone favours and satisfy the concerns of Canadians.