ɫɫ��

But the other parties see something else: a litany of alleged corporate behaviour that they condemn and blame on Carney. 

Four days into the campaign, both the NDP and Tories have repeatedly charged that Carney is responsible for a host of alleged ills, from “predatory” real estate practices to the denial of medical insurance claims for American coal miners. On Wednesday, new questions were raised after Radio-Canada that Carney also directed two investment funds at Brookfield Asset Management that were registered in Bermuda, a country widely regarded as a tax haven. 

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pounced on the news, going so far as to claim — without supporting evidence — that Carney was personally stashing his own money in a tax haven.

Brookfield Corporation — the parent company of Brookfield Asset Management, which oversees a complex network of businesses — did not respond to questions and requests for comment from the Star this week. 

But on a political level, with his party leading in the polls, Carney’s corporate past is dogging him on the campaign trail.

Does the Liberal leader have a Brookfield problem?

After serving as central banker in Canada and the United Kingdom, Carney  in 2020 and was named the chair of Brookfield Asset Management in 2022, when the global investment firm that  spun off its asset management arm into a separate business overseen by Brookfield Corporation. He  as board chair of Brookfield Asset Management in January when he started his run to win the Liberal leadership and replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister. 

Facing pressure to disclose his personal assets after working at Brookfield, Carney said he has put his cash and personal real estate in a blind trust, and that he set up has two conflict of interest “screens” to prevent him from dealing with issues that might impact Brookfield and Stripe, a payment processing company where he also served on the board.

But the NDP and Conservatives argue Carney is responsible for decisions at separate companies owned by Brookfield Asset Management or affiliated with it, since he held a leadership position on the company’s board. 

“We’ve seen a pattern of decisions... that puts profits above people,” said Conservative MP Michael Barrett, who is running for re-election in eastern Ontario. “He (was) the chair of the board. He’s, of course, responsible for all of these decisions.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has made the same argument.

“To be the chair of the board in a corporate structure, that is a very powerful position,” he said on Tuesday. “CEOs have to go to the board for approval. They have to ask for approval on the direction the company is going.”

Asked to respond to the the parties’ criticism detailed in this story, Liberal campaign spokesperson Mohammad Hussain responded with a one-line email: ”Pierre Poilievre continually attacks Mark Carney’s expertise in business and finance because he has no experience of his own.”

Experts, meanwhile, cautioned that — in general — corporate board chairs rarely decide how the businesses they oversee actually operate. 

“Normally, a board is a governing body. It’s not an operating body,” said Richard Leblanc, a professor of governance, law and ethics at York University. 

“It’s somewhat unfair to hold a chair responsible for an action of a company that might have been operational in nature.” 

Ian Lee, a Sprott School of Business professor at Carleton University, also said corporate boards are charged with setting the general direction of a company and providing oversight. 

“They’re really dealing with the really big stuff,” Lee said. 

Here is a closer look at some of the recent criticism of Carney based on his role at Brookfield. 

Tax havens

Brookfield’s overall business has been accused of using tax havens before. In 2023, the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research published a report that said “there is an apparent pattern of aggressive tax avoidance consistent across (Brookfield’s) global operations.” A Star in 2017 — three years before Carney joined Brookfield Asset Management— concluded Brookfield’s overall business avoided more than $5 billion in taxes, with hundreds of subsidiaries registered in Bermuda.

The company responded at the time that the findings were “simplistic” and “misleading” and that Brookfield pays taxes in jurisdictions where it has “physical assets.” 

Reacting to Radio-Canada’s tax haven report about Carney on Wednesday, Singh called the allegations “disturbing,” and said “that’s less money” for health care, senior and investments in Canada.

At a campaign stop in Windsor, Ont., Carney defended the tax arrangement at Brookfield Asset Management and denied that it was meant to avoid paying taxes in Canada. He said entities that invest in the fund, like the pension plan for Ontario teachers, end up paying taxes in their home country when money returns to them as income.

“The flow through of the funds go to the Canadian entities who then pay the taxes appropriately,” Carney said. 

“It doesn’t avoid tax.” 

Vern Krishna, a professor who teaches taxation and business law at the University of Ottawa, said international taxation is “extremely complex,” but that Carney’s response on Wednesday was a “fairly spurious argument.” 

Of course, pensioners will pay taxes when they get their incomes from a fund based in Bermuda, but the real issue is taxes paid on running the business of the fund that is based and growing in a jurisdiction known for its “tax advantages,” Krishna said. The news that Brookfield Asset Management set up funds there is a “red flag,” since businesses around the world incorporate in Bermuda to pay lower taxes, he said. 

“Otherwise, why do you go to Bermuda?”

Poilievre, at a campaign stop in Québec, rejected Carney’s defence as “ridiculous” and alleged the tax haven shows the Liberal leader “needs to come clean about how much of his assets” are in tax havens. 

There has been no suggestion Carney personally used tax havens, only that funds he directed at Brookfield Asset Management were based in the known tax shelter of Bermuda.

“Mark Carney is out of touch. In his mind, taxes are for the little people, not the millionaires and billionaires like him,” Poilievre said. 

Making money off housing

Both the NDP and the Conservatives have repeatedly accused Carney and Brookfield Asset Management of profiting from Canada’s housing crisis, pointing to the investment firm’s massive real estate portfolio and alleged strategy of buying properties, improving them, and then jacking up prices.

Earlier this week, the NDP pointed to a report in which Brookfield Asset Management’s CEO was quoted telling shareholders in a letter that he sees the best investment opportunity for the group since 2009, after the financial crisis.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have raised a series of reports from 2022 from the office of the Federal Housing Advocate, a publicly-funded independent watchdog, which warned against the financialization of housing, arguing it drove social inequality and violated people’s right to housing. 

Brookfield Asset Management was mentioned in a summary report as an example of groups that are beginning to “consolidate ownership of American mobile home parks,” and was said to have acquired 135 communities in 13 American states as of 2016.

Leblanc, the York professor, warned that Carney was just one member of the board and that it’s not clear if he personally approved or played a role in Brookfield Asset Management’s real estate strategy. But he said that an overall real estate strategy is something that would reach a corporate board for approval.

“I think greater transparency in terms of decision-making of Brookfield, knowledge at the time of Mr. Carney, and transparency of assets is warranted,” Leblanc said.

Neither Brookfield Corporation nor the Liberal campaign addressed the housing-related criticism when asked this week. 

Conservatives blame Carney for Brookfield subsidiaries

The Conservatives recently produced a 13-minute online documentary that details allegations from American workers who say a company called Rockwood has denied their medical insurance coverage to treat black lung, an affliction that affects coal miners. 

Rockwood is part of a company called Argo, which one of Brookfield Corporation’s affiliate businesses — Brookfield Wealth Solutions — purchased in 2023. Brookfield Wealth Solutions has its own corporate board, with its own chair, though it is linked to Brookfield Asset Management — where Carney was chair — as they’re both overseen by Brookfield Corporation.

Neither Brookfield Corporation nor Argo responded to requests for comment from the Star about the Conservatives’ video. 

The Tories have also pointed to  that another company in the U.S., Westinghouse, tried to prevent nuclear plant workers in South Carolina from joining a union last year. Brookfield Asset Management was part of a consortium that Westinghouse in 2023. 

A spokesperson for Westinghouse declined to comment, and Brookfield Corporation didn’t respond to the Star this week. 

The Liberal campaign, meanwhile, did not respond directly to the Conservatives’ associating these allegations with Carney.

In an emailed statement, campaign spokesperson Isabella Orozco-Madison referred to how Poilievre has refused to get security clearance to receive direct briefings and recent comments from Alberta Premier Danielle Smith that the Conservatives’ perspective is “in sync” with the current direction of the United States. 

“This is a desperate attempt by Pierre Poilievre to distract from the fact that he refuses to get his security clearance at a time of crisis for Canada. Whether it’s not getting his security clearance, or his friend Danielle Smith confirming he’d follow Donald Trump’s playbook, Pierre Poilievre is the wrong choice at the wrong time,” Orozco-Madison said. 

A court case over Indigenous rights

The NDP has also accused Carney of “ignoring Indigenous rights” by “fighting First Nations in court.” The party cited a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Mississauga First Nation against Ontario government and Brookfield Renewable Partners, which according to a 2024 annual report is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management where Carney was board chair. 

At issue are four dams built between the 1950s and 1970s that were owned by Ontario Hydro but sold to Brookfield in 2002.

According to a copy of the statement of claim obtained by the Star, the First Nation is seeking $100 million in damages “for unreasonable and/or unlawful interference” in its Indigenous rights, along with “damage and destruction” to their “heritage, traditional, and cultural resources and traditional territory; and the infliction of stress, distress, anxiety and worry.”

None of the allegations have been proven in court. 

The dispute had been ongoing long before Carney was involved with Brookfield, but the lawsuit was launched in 2022, two years after he joined Brookfield. 

The NDP said Carney is responsible because he had a leadership role at Brookfield Asset Management, but there is no evidence Carney had any direct involvement in the case. 

CBC also reported last week that Brookfield denies the allegations and is fighting the case. 

Spokespeople for the Liberal campaign did not respond directly to a question about this legal battle. 

“We’re proceeding in court because they won’t come to the table,” said Kate Kempton, the lawyer representing the First Nation.

A Chinese loan and Brookfield assets

On Tuesday, Poilievre questioned Carney’s loyalty to Canada based on a Chinese media post on a website called Sohu and a news story about a Brookfield loan from a Chinese bank. 

The Chinese post discussed an alleged meeting Carney held last October as Brookfield Asset Management chair with the deputy governor of China’s central bank. Poilievre linked this post — which the Star was unable to confirm — to a Bloomberg news story from November 2024, which reported that Brookfield Asset Management secured a 15-year loan worth $276 million (U.S.) from the Bank of China, a state-owned financial institution. 

Conservative spokesperson Simon Jefferies later told the Star that it’s fair to suggest a link between the reported meeting and the reported loan, since both institutions are tied to the authoritarian Communist government in China. 

“Why would (Carney) be collaborating with a hostile foreign regime that we have since learned executed four Canadians and took numerous Canadians hostage for a lengthy period of time?” Poilievre said Tuesday, referring to recent news about Canadians killed for alleged crimes in China, and the saga of the “Two Michaels” who were imprisoned in China for almost three years, from 2018 to 2021. 

On Wednesday, Carney rejected the assertion that he is beholden to China, and called Poilievre a “conspiracy theorist” who “doesn’t understand how the world works” since he’s spent most of his adult life as a politician. 

“All he’s ever done is slogans, sound bites, slander,” Carney said.

Poilievre also claimed Carney — who says he has placed all his financial assets in a blind trust — still owns shares in Brookfield. The Star has reported that the most recent financial reports show Carney had more than $3 million worth of shares at the end of 2023, with millions more in stock options. 

“Given that Mr. Carney knows that he still owns massive financial interests in Brookfield, which owes a quarter-billion dollars to a Chinese state controlled bank, how do we know he’s not going to act against our interests in favour of his financial interests?” Poilievre said.

Carney said Wednesday that he doesn’t know about his prior assets, since he set up his blind trust.