Morneau Failed to Reveal Private Company in France.

[Colpy]

Finance Minister Bill Morneau waited two years to disclose a private corporation that owns a villa in southern France that he shares with his wife to Canada's ethics watchdog, CBC News has learned.
In fact, Morneau only disclosed the corporation to conflict of interest and ethics commissioner Mary Dawson's office after CBC News discovered its existence and began asking questions.
While Morneau's office says the failure to disclose the company is the result of "early administrative confusion," opposition critics say they are troubled by the finance minister's failure to fully disclose all of the private companies he owns.
"I guess that he expects us to believe that he's so rich that he just forgot that he has a private corporation in France and a wonderful villa in Provence," said Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre. "It's a little hard to believe."

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• Analysis Liberal support holds despite tax change attacks

Morneau's disclosure came after a search by CBC News of corporate records in France revealed that Morneau is listed as a partner in the company SCI Mas des Morneau, which owns and manages a villa in the picturesque town of Oppède in France's Provence region.
Morneau's wife, Nancy McCain, a member of the wealthy family that owns McCain Foods, is named as a partner.
According to the Greffe du Tribunal de Commerce d'Avignon's registry, the company was incorporated on Aug. 17, 2007. Among the company's activities listed in the registry are real estate, rentals and leases.

The picturesque town of Oppède, France where Finance Minister Morneau owns a villa connected to a private corporation. (Shutterstock / Magdanatka)

Tax experts say there can be some advantages to holding real estate in France through a company such Mas des Morneau, including avoiding inheritance tax. It is a completely legal and commonly used method.
But while Morneau has owned the company for a decade and was named finance minister two years ago, the company was only added to Morneau's ethics filings on Sept. 22 — as CBC News was pressing his office repeatedly for information about the company and why it did not appear in his public ethics declaration.
Dawson's office says MPs are supposed to disclose any private companies they own anywhere in the world. Any private companies that are disclosed to the ethics commissioner's office are listed in the public registry of ethics filings maintained by the office.
Some assets must be disclosed to the commissioner's office but are not listed in the public registry, such as an MP's family home or properties used primarily for recreation.
Jocelyne Brisebois, spokesperson for Dawson's office, said the ethics commissioner can fine a public office holder if she believes they have contravened the law. Under the Conflict of Interest Act, fines can range up to $500.
Brisebois said there is currently no examination or inquiry underway.
Since 2009, Dawson has fined four cabinet ministers $100 each for not disclosing changes to their assets within 30 days as required. One cabinet minister, Conservative Peter MacKay, was fined $200 twice for failing to provide a description of his assets while Liberal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay was fined $200 in 2016 for failing to declare a gift he received within the deadline.

The town of Oppède is located in the southern French region of Provence (Shutterstock / Pack-Shot)

Morneau's director of communications, Dan Lauzon, described Morneau's failure to initially declare the company as "early administrative confusion" when contacted by CBC News on Thursday.
"The SCI is related to a family property in France and is of a non-commercial nature," he said. "It's simply a legal structure, or an administrative vehicle to own and maintain the house, according to French law. It is the mechanism through which the property is owned."
Morneau's own financial affairs have been in the spotlight in recent weeks as the opposition has increased its attacks over his proposed changes to the tax rules that apply to private corporations.
The Conservatives have been pointing out in question period that Morneau's proposed tax changes will hit small businesses, farms and professionals like doctors but not large companies traded on the stock exchange like Morneau Shepell, a human resources company formerly headed by Morneau.
The proposed tax changes also won't affect Morneau's company in France. Finance Department spokesperson Jack Aubry said the proposed changes will not affect private corporations owned by Canadians that are incorporated in other countries.
Morneau's previous ethics declaration included joint or sole ownership of six other private numbered companies, some of which are associated with property in Florida.

NDP MP Nathan Cullen says ethics commissioner Mary Dawson should make an example of Morneau for failing to declare his private corporation in France. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

New Democrat ethics critic Nathan Cullen says Dawson should "make an example" of Morneau's failure to disclose his company in Provence.
"The idea that the finance minister would have failed to disclose to the ethics commissioner and to all Canadians what businesses he actually had is incredibly worrisome," Cullen said.
"This is a big problem for me and I think it's going to be a problem for a lot of Canadians."
Cullen also contrasted Morneau's decision to hold the villa through a company, potentially saving his family money in the future on inheritance taxes, with the changes he is proposing to the tax rules governing private companies in Canada.
"Morneau seems to have set something up which makes it easier for him to pass on his wealth to his kids where they are proposing tax changes which make it harder for farmers to do the same thing."

Conservative Pierre Poilievre says it is important for cabinet ministers to disclose all of their assets. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Poilievre said the failure to report the corporation in France calls into question Morneau's personal credibility.
"Here he is storming across the country, lecturing our local businesses and family farmers, calling them tax cheats and saying they should pay more, and meanwhile,, he just forgot to mention that he has a private corporation in France that owns his villa."
Poilievre said it is important for cabinet ministers to fully disclose what they own.
"Ministers are supposed to report their assets so that Canadians can judge their interests and potential conflicts. These rules exist for a reason."




Finance Minister Bill Morneau waited 2 years to disclose company that owns French villa to ethics watchdog - Politics - CBC News

Three things;

1. Imagine if this were a Conservative.........especially considering the prosecution of Duffy for non-existent violations of ethics. (I mean no legal violation, obviously Duffy wouldn't know a principle if it bit him on the arse, same as Morneau)

2. Morneau has failed to institute a single tax that touches him or his idiot boss, yet cheats and makes life for the average Canadian harder by the month, all the time crying "We work for the Middle Class" (the Big Lie theory of governance)

3. Liberals in general are scum, Trudeau and Morneau are super-scum.

 

[Jinentonix]

Sounds like Paul Martin. Paul Martin closed several offshore loopholes, except the one he and his family business enjoyed.

 

[captain morgan]

This probably won't sit well with the masses that voted for tater tot and are now getting gutted by the libs new taxation policies looking to gouge minimum wage earners

 

[darkbeaver]

"early administrative confusion,"
"just forgot that he has a private corporation in France and a wonderful villa in Provence,"

Perfectly understandable result of over work on his portfolio and very late hours in his office in the unselfish pursuit of fair government for all French Villa owners everywhere. We are too often quilty of premature judgement. insert smiley

I was on the bus to the grocery store earlier today frantic because I had forgotten to water my French Villa.

 

[Mowich]

Joe Oliver: Trudeau and Morneau can 'income sprinkle' their wealth, but you can't

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his finance minister, Bill Morneau, may still think they can get away with the blatant double standard of hiking taxes on personal corporations, while at the same time shielding their personal family trusts. They preach endlessly about a concern for the middle class, yet the privileged few arrange for their progeny to clip coupons, untroubled by a looming burden on their fellow citizens in less favourable circumstances.

Spoiler alert: The Liberals will not be able to ignore much longer the widespread anger of self-employed Canadians who do not have the means to duplicate their betters’ tidy set-up. Particularly while pensioners, including former government employees, can split pension income with their spouses, while the self-employed without pensions cannot split corporate income.

The lucky Liberal duo, luxuriating roughly in the one-tenth of one per cent and one thousandth of one per cent respectively (“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”), sternly informed us that “fairness” demands new tax reforms that include a punitive tax on personal corporations. Why? Because the much maligned one per cent is allegedly gaming the system. It turns out that the objects of their guilt-signalling are hardworking middle-class Canadians who follow the rules: doctors, farmers, mom-and-pop shop owners and cash-strapped entrepreneurs.

What about people who were born or married into “comfortable,” even fabulously wealthy families? They can afford to hire expensive tax lawyers whose professional mission is to exploit loopholes in our arcane and exceedingly complex tax code. That explains the popularity of family trusts.


One of the basic principles of a western democracy is that no one is above the law, regardless of their wealth, power or position. Politicians amending the tax code so that it applies to others but not to themselves, their families or their country club buddies reeks of self-interest that breaches the social contract. As it sinks in that our political leaders are feathering their nests while making life more difficult for the rest of us, the political Teflon will rapidly wear off. Former prime minister Jean Chrétien used to say it is never too early to save a drowning man. Now that the deadline for consultations on the Liberals’ tax-reform proposals has expired, it is very late.

Joe Oliver: Trudeau and Morneau can ‘income sprinkle’ their wealth, but you can’t | Financial Post

 

[darkbeaver]

I,v been looking at capital gains tax regulations this past week trying of course to find one of those damn hidden loopholes, to no avail which led me to reluctantly engage my accounting firm and my legal crew,both of which may actually have French villas.

 

[petros]

I,v been looking at capital gains tax regulations this past week trying of course to find one of those damn hidden loopholes, to no avail which led me to reluctantly engage my accounting firm and my legal crew,both of which may actually have French villas.

They are on the same website as the oil subsidies.

 

[Mowich]

Throw another minister on the bonfire: the ballad of Bill Morneau

In retrospect, it will be seen as fitting that Finance Minister Bill Morneau started working on the second draft of his planned overhaul of corporate taxation during the 2017 Thanksgiving weekend.

First, because Thanksgiving is often used for cutting up turkeys. And it’s becoming clear that Morneau’s project, a bigger political gobbler than the Liberals ever imagined, is in for a close encounter with a carving board.

Already last week, and again in an interview broadcast over the weekend, the finance minister was spelling out five “principles” for fixing his reform—principles that convey marked overtones of contrition:
• Support small businesses.
• Keep small business taxes low while supporting owners who invest and create jobs.
• Avoid creating unnecessary red tape for small businesses.
• Recognize the importance of family farms, and ensure tax changes do not affect the transfer of family businesses to the next generation.
• Ensure any changes to the tax system promote gender equity.

Note that Morneau’s “principles” consist of three declarations of obeisance to small business; half of a fourth to family farms; the other half to family businesses; and that on the fifth principle, the Liberals find themselves playing defence on gender equity, an issue they must have thought they owned outright until they were accused by interest groups of lowering the glass ceiling over the heads of women entrepreneurs.

We’ll know for sure when Morneau announces the second draft of his tax reform, but I have a hard time reading this list as anything more than the beginning of a concerted effort to calm some deeply ticked-off segments of Canadian society. If you feel a need to offer belts, suspenders and velcro strips to “small business,” it’s because you have noticed that the gods of small business are not happy. Already, this tax reform has not gone the way the Liberals hoped.



Morneau and Justin Trudeau are learning the power of the endowment effect. It’s got to sting, because as Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre reminds them every chance he gets, those two should know something about endowments.

Supporters of the Morneau reform proposal have a few more days to defend them on their merits before the minister cuts his losses. Morneau will then join two other inexperienced Trudeau ministers who piloted major reforms right into the nearest hillside. This is becoming a pattern. The first was Maryam Monsef—remember her? I’m told she’s still in the cabinet—who spent a year and a half trying to find a method of electoral reform that both the Liberals’ opponents and their leader could stomach. She had round tables, a coast-to-coast consultation tour, a special parliamentary committee, a mail-out pamphlet thing, and a dozen other techniques for finding the pulse of the people on electoral reform. Only it turned out the people didn’t have a pulse, and to the extent it could be resuscitated, most people wanted proportional representation, which Trudeau didn’t. So that was the end of that.

Up next was Bardish Chagger, who produced a discussion paper on parliamentary reform, didn’t like most of what she heard in the discussion, and withdrew nearly the whole project two months later.

The similarities among these three reform attempts are striking. First, the government launches a major reform with a set of proposals that would, if implemented, certainly create winners and losers. This galvanizes the potential losers; potential winners are less excited, because the uncertainty in the Liberals’ project—it’s only a discussion paper! Nothing’s written in stone!—is more demobilizing to people facing hypothetical gains than to people facing hypothetical losses.

There follows an extended period during which the Liberals are astonished to find themselves swarmed by detractors. The detractors are organized, numerous, networked, agile and full of surprises. The Liberals are none of these things.

In fact, the Liberals are less agile today than they were in November of 2015. First, because the few Liberals with real-world experience and a contrarian bent (John McCallum, Stéphane Dion) have been whisked off to their reward outside Ottawa. Those who remain are rookie MPs thrust into fancy-sounding jobs before they’ve even learned how to project their voices in the House of Commons. They’re surrounded by legions of rookie staffers who are assigned to populate the rookie ministers’ social-media accounts with gigabytes of flattering photos and nonstop cheerleading about what a progressive, green, innovative bunch of things they’re doing for the middle class! and those working! hard! to join it.

Second, because these under-experienced, over-flattered rookies have been thrust into combat without even being permitted to do combat. These are consultations, after all, so heaven forbid the ministers defend their projects in detail while their opponents are swarming them. Monsef, Chagger and Morneau were instead restricted to bland scripted generalizations that left each, in turn, sounding either deaf or arrogant. Sorry, ministers, but the proper answer to “Why are you doing this specific thing?” isn’t “Our government believes in delivering results for the middle class! and those working! hard! to join it.”

It’s striking how consistently the Liberals absent themselves from national conversations they started. Most of Morneau’s tour on the tax changes was held at venues from which reporters were barred; when they were allowed in, they saw a minister who simply refused to address many of the specific questions that were put to him. This was familiar to anyone who saw Chagger pursue her doomed reform, which was familiar to anyone who saw Monsef pursue her doomed reform. It’s almost like there’s a design flaw.

This isn’t how conversations go. In a conversation, you say something, and then I respond with something that acknowledges what you just said, tries to incorporate part of it, takes issue with another part. In a Trudeau Liberal conversation, a minister spends months saying the same thing, and then a large machine behind the curtain spits up a new project that has very little to do with the project the minister just spent months defending. The good news is that the economy’s going well, because in most other ways this is a strange way to run a parliamentary democracy.

Throw another minister on the bonfire: the ballad of Bill Morneau - Macleans.ca

 

[pgs]

Throw another minister on the bonfire: the ballad of Bill Morneau

In retrospect, it will be seen as fitting that Finance Minister Bill Morneau started working on the second draft of his planned overhaul of corporate taxation during the 2017 Thanksgiving weekend.

First, because Thanksgiving is often used for cutting up turkeys. And it’s becoming clear that Morneau’s project, a bigger political gobbler than the Liberals ever imagined, is in for a close encounter with a carving board.

Already last week, and again in an interview broadcast over the weekend, the finance minister was spelling out five “principles” for fixing his reform—principles that convey marked overtones of contrition:
• Support small businesses.
• Keep small business taxes low while supporting owners who invest and create jobs.
• Avoid creating unnecessary red tape for small businesses.
• Recognize the importance of family farms, and ensure tax changes do not affect the transfer of family businesses to the next generation.
• Ensure any changes to the tax system promote gender equity.

Note that Morneau’s “principles” consist of three declarations of obeisance to small business; half of a fourth to family farms; the other half to family businesses; and that on the fifth principle, the Liberals find themselves playing defence on gender equity, an issue they must have thought they owned outright until they were accused by interest groups of lowering the glass ceiling over the heads of women entrepreneurs.

We’ll know for sure when Morneau announces the second draft of his tax reform, but I have a hard time reading this list as anything more than the beginning of a concerted effort to calm some deeply ticked-off segments of Canadian society. If you feel a need to offer belts, suspenders and velcro strips to “small business,” it’s because you have noticed that the gods of small business are not happy. Already, this tax reform has not gone the way the Liberals hoped.



Morneau and Justin Trudeau are learning the power of the endowment effect. It’s got to sting, because as Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre reminds them every chance he gets, those two should know something about endowments.

Supporters of the Morneau reform proposal have a few more days to defend them on their merits before the minister cuts his losses. Morneau will then join two other inexperienced Trudeau ministers who piloted major reforms right into the nearest hillside. This is becoming a pattern. The first was Maryam Monsef—remember her? I’m told she’s still in the cabinet—who spent a year and a half trying to find a method of electoral reform that both the Liberals’ opponents and their leader could stomach. She had round tables, a coast-to-coast consultation tour, a special parliamentary committee, a mail-out pamphlet thing, and a dozen other techniques for finding the pulse of the people on electoral reform. Only it turned out the people didn’t have a pulse, and to the extent it could be resuscitated, most people wanted proportional representation, which Trudeau didn’t. So that was the end of that.

Up next was Bardish Chagger, who produced a discussion paper on parliamentary reform, didn’t like most of what she heard in the discussion, and withdrew nearly the whole project two months later.

The similarities among these three reform attempts are striking. First, the government launches a major reform with a set of proposals that would, if implemented, certainly create winners and losers. This galvanizes the potential losers; potential winners are less excited, because the uncertainty in the Liberals’ project—it’s only a discussion paper! Nothing’s written in stone!—is more demobilizing to people facing hypothetical gains than to people facing hypothetical losses.

There follows an extended period during which the Liberals are astonished to find themselves swarmed by detractors. The detractors are organized, numerous, networked, agile and full of surprises. The Liberals are none of these things.

In fact, the Liberals are less agile today than they were in November of 2015. First, because the few Liberals with real-world experience and a contrarian bent (John McCallum, Stéphane Dion) have been whisked off to their reward outside Ottawa. Those who remain are rookie MPs thrust into fancy-sounding jobs before they’ve even learned how to project their voices in the House of Commons. They’re surrounded by legions of rookie staffers who are assigned to populate the rookie ministers’ social-media accounts with gigabytes of flattering photos and nonstop cheerleading about what a progressive, green, innovative bunch of things they’re doing for the middle class! and those working! hard! to join it.

Second, because these under-experienced, over-flattered rookies have been thrust into combat without even being permitted to do combat. These are consultations, after all, so heaven forbid the ministers defend their projects in detail while their opponents are swarming them. Monsef, Chagger and Morneau were instead restricted to bland scripted generalizations that left each, in turn, sounding either deaf or arrogant. Sorry, ministers, but the proper answer to “Why are you doing this specific thing?” isn’t “Our government believes in delivering results for the middle class! and those working! hard! to join it.”

It’s striking how consistently the Liberals absent themselves from national conversations they started. Most of Morneau’s tour on the tax changes was held at venues from which reporters were barred; when they were allowed in, they saw a minister who simply refused to address many of the specific questions that were put to him. This was familiar to anyone who saw Chagger pursue her doomed reform, which was familiar to anyone who saw Monsef pursue her doomed reform. It’s almost like there’s a design flaw.

This isn’t how conversations go. In a conversation, you say something, and then I respond with something that acknowledges what you just said, tries to incorporate part of it, takes issue with another part. In a Trudeau Liberal conversation, a minister spends months saying the same thing, and then a large machine behind the curtain spits up a new project that has very little to do with the project the minister just spent months defending. The good news is that the economy’s going well, because in most other ways this is a strange way to run a parliamentary democracy.

Throw another minister on the bonfire: the ballad of Bill Morneau - Macleans.ca

Wow Macleans published that . What is the world coming too ? Liberals losing both Macleans and CBC .

 

[darkbeaver]

They are on the same website as the oil subsidies.

I shall diversify into oil. How much to build a modest refinery?/villa, cannabis crime was far less complicated. Give me a link I'm very busy this evening with party arrangements, Are you following the Harvey Winestink story outta Holeywood? It 's a mad mad world,gonna splode sumday soon.

 

[Hoof Hearted]

So Morneau forgot about his holdings...

Who could blame him for forgetting about that million dollar Villa thingy.

Rich, white, hypocrite problems.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

So he is allowed to use loopholes in the tax code (the French one) but nobody in Canada is? Typical Lieberal Hypocrite.

 

[darkbeaver]

Wow Macleans published that . What is the world coming too ? Liberals losing both Macleans and CBC .

I stopped reading when I got to gender equity, no I'mm kidding. That they will push, the village entremanures will get fukked as usual. It will not for some reason be gender discriminatory. I blame women for not speaking out and crushing the multigenter 6th column. People who identify as cats or budgys are not elevated in cultures as a rule. There are two maybe three important genders the rest are statistically insignefigant (sp) fuk off, . ,Morneau is a symptom of the times. Up against the wall buddy.

 

[Durry]

You are supposed to disclose your foreign holding on your income tax if the holdings are over $100k.
Morneau obviously has cheated on his tax return.

But this is not uncommon, almost all immigrants who have cash or holdings outside of Canada, do not reveal it to CRA. Usually they will put their holding in a family name to keep it hidden from CRA and then they can do trades without facing capital gains.

The whole capital gains tax thingy is a farce.

 

[Curious Cdn]

"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" dit Guillaume Morneau.

 

[tay]

I've lost my freebie reads at the Globe for October but this is interesting........


Bill Morneau didn’t place assets in blind trust, raising conflict-of-interest risk


https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/ne...ng-conflict-of-interest-risk/article36596635/


Chantal Hebert discusses Bill Morneau's role at the centre of the Libs' broken progressive promises

On Friday, an Angus Reid poll on voting intentions confirmed the ongoing erosion of Liberal support. It is no accident that Justin Trudeau’s government mid-term slump comes at a time when Morneau is taking a prolonged public relations beating over his plan to tighten the rules that govern private corporations.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada...-the-heat-as-liberal-support-slips-hbert.html

 

[TenPenny]

I,v been looking at capital gains tax regulations this past week trying of course to find one of those damn hidden loopholes, to no avail which led me to reluctantly engage my accounting firm and my legal crew,both of which may actually have French villas.

The loopholes aren't hidden.

 

[tay]

Actually I've always considered these 'blind trusts' a scam the financial elite and connected pull on the rest of us......

 

[Hoid]

This guy has to go. If he knowingly hid this he's a crook if he he didn't know it was wrong he's inept. Either way he has to resign his cabinet post and let someone else kick this ridiculous tax reform can down the road.

 

[pgs]

This guy has to go. If he knowingly hid this he's a crook if he he didn't know it was wrong he's inept. Either way he has to resign his cabinet post and let someone else kick this ridiculous tax reform can down the road.

No they will just double down . I see he is now proposing to lower the small business tax rate to 9% .