Fact-checking Poilievre’s claim on Carney’s taxes
Poilievre, going after tax evaders, is repeating a common claim that Carney placed his personal assets in Bermuda to avoid paying taxes in Canada.
Carney was the co-chair of two green funds while he worked at Brookfield Asset Management. Radio-Canada reported that the company attracted investors by registering the funds in Bermuda, a tax haven.
My colleague Stephen Hoff, with CBC’s fact-checking unit, explains that Brookfield, as well as many other large funds in Canada, do regularly register themselves in foreign jurisdictions to reduce the amount of money they pay in tax on investments.
In fact, according to the Paradise Papers leak, seven of Canada’s eight largest pension funds had foreign registrations — so what Brookfield did is common.
In this case, Brookfield says it complied with all tax rules. Carney says taxes are ultimately paid in Canada by the Canadians who belong to these pension funds. That is true.
But the taxes Brookfield owed as a company were significantly smaller than if the funds had been based in this country, Hoff writes. Bermuda’s corporate tax rate was zero per cent when the funds were set up. In Canada, it totals about 26 per cent.
However, Poilievre has not offered any substantive evidence to show that Carney registered his own personal assets in an offshore account.
