Blind trust

What it means

Under the federal Conflict of Interest Act, reporting public office holders — ministers, parliamentary secretaries and certain appointees — may not hold controlled assets. Controlled assets are broadly those whose value can be affected by government decisions, publicly traded securities being the obvious case. The holder must either divest them outright or place them in a trust that meets the Act's conditions and is approved by the Ethics Commissioner.

The Act sets out what such a trust must look like, including that the trustee must be at arm's length from the office holder and that the office holder must not have any control over, or knowledge of, how the assets are managed. The office holder may not give the trustee instructions, and the trustee may not tell the office holder what the trust now holds.

The mechanism reduces conflict-of-interest risk without eliminating it, and the residue is worth being precise about. The office holder knows what was placed in the trust on the day it was created, so for as long as those assets plausibly remain, the knowledge has not gone away. The trustee is not anonymous. And the arrangement does nothing about interests that are not controlled assets at all.

Blind trusts are also a minister-level instrument. Ordinary members of the House who are not public office holders are not required to divest or place assets in trust; their obligation under the Members' Code is disclosure, and declaration or recusal where a private interest arises.

Provincial regimes have their own equivalents with their own thresholds and their own approval processes. Do not assume the federal conditions apply to a provincial minister's arrangement.