Michael Barrett raised a point in the House that should make every Canadian pause: the Clerk of the Privy Council — the top public servant in the country — looked at the potential conflict-of-interest surrounding Brookfield and divested his shares. He stepped into the job, saw the red flags, and said, “Yeah… I can’t hold this.”
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, who has the exact same conflict, kept his.
That’s the entire story in one sentence.
Barrett laid it out clearly: every time Brookfield makes money, the Prime Minister makes money. And the person who’s supposed to oversee the PM’s conflicts looked at the situation and immediately got out. That alone should tell you how flimsy the so-called “ethics screen” really is. It’s paperwork pretending to be a firewall.
Brookfield isn’t some tiny operation with a couple of mutual funds. It’s a global asset empire with investments in housing, energy, infrastructure, data centers — the same areas Ottawa affects with every policy announcement. When you’re shaping regulations, signing funding agreements, and directing national priorities, you don’t get to shrug off the fact that your personal wealth rises and falls with the decisions you make.
And the funniest part — and by funny, I mean infuriating — is that the government wants you to believe this is all perfectly fine. “Don’t worry, there’s a screen.” Sure. A screen that somehow didn’t catch the company’s own senior executives openly confirming the PM benefits from the firm’s performance.
Harry’s translation?
If the Clerk had to sell his shares to avoid a conflict, the PM keeping his isn’t an oversight — it’s a choice. A very profitable one.
This isn’t about conspiracy theories or partisan theatrics. It’s about the basic expectation that the person running the country shouldn’t be financially tied to a corporation whose fortunes he can directly influence.
When insiders have to divest just to sit in the same room, but the guy at the top doesn’t… that’s not ethics. That’s privilege.
And Canadians are the last people who should be paying for it.
Watch on YouTube:
Brookfield Conflict MP Michael Barrett Demands Answers
