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While we are on the subject of conflicts of interest, you’ve defended your finance minister, Bill Morneau, in the matter of his ownership, through a numbered company, of shares in his family’s pension management firm, which stood to benefit from changes to pension rules he introduced. Your defence is that he worked with the ethics commissioner and followed her advice. Why didn’t you?

Photo by Adrian Wyld / Canadian Press

The revelation that Morneau, rather than divest the shares as required, kept them inside a private corporation, where he would pay less tax on them, came just as your government was proposing to crack down on people who set up private corporations to avoid tax — though not in ways that would affect him. Or you, for that matter, notwithstanding your own use of private corporations. Did it not occur to you this might look a bit, I don’t know, two-faced? Or did you think no one would notice?

The opposition is demanding Morneau disclose what else he holds inside his numbered companies. Will he? Will you?More broadly, how does your affinity for private fundraisers with Chinese billionaires and private island holidays with other billionaires, not to say your own wealth, square with your professed devotion to the interests and concerns of the middle class?

Talking of billionaires, you’ve set great stock in developing a warm personal relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, notwithstanding your many political differences. You went so far as to participate in a photo-op showcasing the president’s commitment to women in business, even as he was accused of having sexually assaulted a number of women. A senior adviser, meanwhile, claimed to be kindred spirits with Steve Bannon. Leaving aside questions of taste, what is the evidence this campaign has paid off?