Article content continued

Photo by Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

Was it, then, wrong of him to raise taxes on the wealthy? From a policy perspective, maybe, but ethically? Of course not. The Liberals ran and won on precisely that promise: it was perhaps the most prominent plank in their platform. Again, the knock on the Liberals until now has been about the promises they did not keep.

So the opposition complaint must be that, although there was nothing wrong with each on its own, there was Something Wrong with the two together: that it is the timing that is suspicious, the one following so closely after the other. The suspicion, though they do not quite say it, is that Morneau was trading on inside information.

Let’s unbundle this. The election was on Oct. 19, 2015; the cabinet was sworn in on Nov. 4. The “suspicious” sale of shares took place less than four weeks later. Perhaps it could have been done sooner, but it couldn’t have been done much sooner, and even if it had it would have been vulnerable to the same suspicion: that Morneau was selling the shares in anticipation of the ways and means motion.

Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

The motion was introduced in the first week the House sat after the election. It could not have been done sooner, and it could not have been done much later, since its purpose was to announce the tax increase would take effect on Jan. 1, 2016. So there isn’t a lot of wiggle room on either date: the sale of Morneau’s shares or the ways and means motion. They were almost bound to be close together.

Certainly no one could have been surprised by the announcement, either of the fact of the tax increase or its timing. Not only had the Liberals told the country for months of their plan to raise taxes on the wealthy, but they had been quite explicit, in advance, that they intended to bring it in by the new year. On the Liberals’ first day in office, then House Leader Dominic LeBlanc told reporters the tax pledge was the government’s highest priority. “The prime minister,” he said, “has made it very clear to us that it is his hope and his intention that the tax measures will be in place for Jan. 1.”