OTTAWA—Bill Morneau threatened to sue political rivals Tuesday, only to have to his dare called by a Conservative MP who challenged the finance minister to meet face-to-face to answer questions about a controversial stock sale.

An angry Morneau lashed out at what he called “absurd allegations” by Opposition politicians who the previous day pressed him for details about his sell-off of shares in the company he once headed.

“I’m hearing that shares that I sold after I got into office, around the time I got into office, was somehow something inappropriate,” Morneau said in a brief statement to reporters.

“All I can say is you literally cannot make this up. It is absolutely absurd,’ he said.

“The opposition clearly has no idea how the stock market works. If they’d like a lesson on how the stock market works, of course I’m happy to give it to them,” Morneau said.

And he dared his political rivals to make the same statements outside the House of Commons, where they don’t enjoy the legal protections of parliamentary privilege.

“If the opposition members want to continue with these absurd allegations, which have no basis in any sort of fact, they take them outside of the House and I will give them a sense of exactly how our legal system works,” he said.

The Conservatives are questioning Bill Morneau over the timing of a 2015 sale of shares in the finance minister’s family-founded company. Morneau said the Tories were avoiding talking about the “positive” impacts of Liberal policies. (The Canadian Press)

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, who had peppered Morneau with questions about the stock sale on Monday, took up that challenge a short time later during question period.

“Would he commit that if I go out and repeat my question in the lobby at this moment the finance minister will meet me there and answer the question?” Poilievre said, before dramatically walking out of the Commons.

In the foyer, he repeated his question — “When did he sell his shares” — though Morneau, en route to Toronto, wasn’t there to answer.

The finance minister’s veiled threats did little to deter opposition MPs who continued to demand whether he was behind the sale of $10.2-million worth of shares in Morneau Sheppell, the company he once headed.

Morneau did sell some of his stock holdings during that time but has refused to say whether he was behind the Nov. 30 sale.

The Nov. 30, 2015 sale came a week before the Liberal government formally introduced changes to tax rates — dropping the income tax rate for middle-class Canadians while boosting it on high-income earners.

The 680,000 shares were sold for $15 apiece. By Dec. 14, a week after the tax rate announcement, they had dropped to $13.96.

“The definition of insider trading is ‘the use of undisclosed material information for profit,’ ” NDP MP Nathan Cullen said in the Commons.

But Morneau said Tuesday that the tax changes introduced in 2015 were widely known in advance.

“What we’re hearing now is the . . . absolutely crazy idea that something that we campaigned on, that we talked to 36 million Canadians about . . . was only my knowledge. It makes absolutely no sense,” the finance minister said.

Opposition MPs questioned whether the finance minister had sought the advice of ethics commissioner Mary Dawson on the timing of the share sales and the introduction of the tax legislation.

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Dan Lauzon, a spokesperson for Morneau, said the finance minister began arranging his affairs before he was elected and before his initial filing with the ethics commissioner.

“The minister triggered a sale of stocks as part of his transition to office back in 2015. The sale happened over a period of weeks, and was handled by a third party,” Lauzon said in an email Tuesday.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau whether he still had confidence in the finance minister.

“He has our full confidence,” Trudeau replied, accusing opposition MPs of launching personal attacks.

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