Morneau, who ran human resources services firm Morneau Shepell before going into politics in 2015 — subsequently resigning his seat and the finance portfolio in August 2020 — made the remarks in a lengthy prepared speech for an address at the C.D. Howe Institute’s annual directors’ dinner Wednesday evening in Toronto.
Indeed, when Morneau resigned amid the WE Charity scandal in the summer of 2020, Ian Russell, then chief executive of the Investment Industry Association of Canada, said Morneau’s tenure had been “disappointing” on issues including business taxes. He also cited competitiveness, and foreign investment.
“That might help you sell a few more memberships. It might even help you win an election. But when you put ‘exciting the base’ ahead of crafting good policy … when you cynically pander to conspiracy theorists … you are doing incalculable harm to the country you claim to love and to the people you seek to lead.”
Other targets of his speech included the “politicization” and divisiveness of debate, which he said isn’t inevitable despite a system that is partisan and adversarial by design to ensure government is held to account. At the time of his resignation from politics, Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were being probed by the federal ethics commissioner over family and personal ties to WE, which had been handed a lucrative student grants contract at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.