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UPDATE 1-Canada finance minister says will adopt blind trust, divest assets

Published 2017-10-19, 03:40 p/m
Updated 2017-10-19, 03:50 p/m
© Reuters.  UPDATE 1-Canada finance minister says will adopt blind trust, divest assets

© Reuters. UPDATE 1-Canada finance minister says will adopt blind trust, divest assets

By Andrea Hopkins

OTTAWA, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Canada's Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Thursday he will place his assets in a blind trust and divest all his stock in a publicly-traded family business, amid opposition allegations that these holdings put him in a conflict of interest.

Questions about the assets of Morneau, the multimillionaire former chief executive officer of human resources management firm Morneau Shepell MSI.TO , have dogged the minister and led some to question whether he would be forced to resign. plan to adopt a blind trust follow weeks of backlash over a government attempt to reform small business taxes, which have become a major stumbling block for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's two-year-old Liberal government. said he had initially intended to put his assets in a blind trust - as Trudeau has - but had changed his mind after consultations with the ethics watchdog. He said he had "naively" believed that following the advice of the ethics commissioner was a high enough standard.

"What we've seen over the last week is that I need to do more. As minister of finance, in this role, it's important to make sure people have absolute confidence," he told a news conference, adding he has "about a million shares" in the company and would work with a trustee to divest his and his family's holdings.

Morneau Shepell shares, which fell as much as 2.1 percent, last traded down 1.7 percent at C$20.67, shedding about C$19.9 million in market value.

Morneau was elected in 2015 when the left-leaning Liberals were vaulted to a surprise majority under Trudeau, becoming one of the many rookie ministers in Trudeau's cabinet.

Morneau also said he had been pulled out of government meetings at least twice since becoming finance minister to guard against conflicts of interest between policy decisions and his company.

"I don't know the total number of times, but I can remember at least two times being taken out of meetings because of that conflict-of-interest screen, I believe. Of course I don't know what happened in those meetings," he said.

Separately, Morneau said the government's autumn fiscal update will be released on Oct. 24.

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