Prime Minister Mark Carney’s top aide is brushing off concerns about the PM’s multimillion-dollar stock portfolio, telling MPs that Carney’s private-sector background is exactly why Canadians put him in office.Marc-André Blanchard, Carney’s chief of staff, told the Commons ethics committee that the Prime Minister “brings essential experience” from decades in global finance, even as opposition MPs pressed him on why Carney didn’t simply sell off the extensive list of shares he publicly disclosed last July after becoming Liberal leader and later winning the April 28 election.Blanchard said Canadians chose a leader who spent years navigating major financial institutions, framing the PM’s seven-figure holdings across 16 pages of blue-chip stocks — from Canadian Pacific to MasterCard and multiple Brookfield-managed funds — as part of the expertise voters expected.Blacklock's Reporter said Bloc Québécois MP Luc Thériault challenged the arrangement, asking whether Carney was restricted from talking to executives tied to his investments. Blanchard insisted the Prime Minister “knows his obligations” and “imposes the highest standards on himself,” offering little detail on how any communication boundaries are enforced..Conservative MP Michael Cooper was more blunt, pointing to public records showing Carney met repeatedly with Brookfield leaders and affiliated firms while holding shares linked to the global asset giant he once chaired. “Mr. Carney’s conflicts involving Brookfield are vast by any objective standard,” said Cooper, who described a pattern of “Brookfield, Brookfield, Brookfield.”Blanchard replied that Carney’s meetings posed no concern and that Canadians should want a Prime Minister who can sit down with “some of the greatest investors in the world,” arguing the firms weren’t directly tied to Brookfield in ways that would breach ethics rules.Carney’s office maintained he follows every ethical requirement set out for him. Blanchard said both he and the Prime Minister apply “the most stringent ethical rules,” dismissing suggestions from Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar that the PM’s investment world connections created unavoidable conflicts..Other Conservatives argued the fix is simple. MP Michael Barrett said federal law should force any prime minister or party leader to sell controlled assets upon taking office. Without that, he said, “Canadians are in the dark” about whether the PM’s private holdings could shape decisions that might affect his future compensation.The ethics committee’s scrutiny is ongoing.
