Ottawa, ON – Michael Barrett, Conservative Candidate for Leeds–Grenville–Thousand Islands–Rideau Lakes, wrote the following letter to Canada’s Lobbying Commissioner:

Dear Commissioner,

I am writing to draw attention to remarks made by Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday, which raise serious concerns about conflicts of interest. 

On Tuesday, April 8, 2025, Mr. Carney announced his intention to spend $1 billion on heat pumps, a decision which would clearly benefit companies in the heat pump business. 

Brookfield Infrastructure “is the flagship listed infrastructure company of Brookfield Asset Management (BAM).” Brookfield Infrastructure in turn owns Ontario-based Enercare, which specifically advertises heat pump retrofits as one of its offered services – including taking advantage of government rebate programs. 

As you are well aware, Mr. Carney was previously Chair of the board at BAM. While Mr. Carney has repeatedly declined to publicly disclose his assets and conflicts of interest, he has also refused to rule out some sort of continued financial interest in Brookfield. 

As such, it is conceivable that Mr. Carney might well benefit financially from the Liberals’ announced $1 billion heat pump program. 

This is not the first time that Mr. Carney has been caught using his political influence to advance Brookfield’s heat pump interests. 

In October 2024, London’s Telegraph newspaper broke news that Mr. Carney used his political connections to personally lobby the British Cabinet for heat pump programs. At the time, the Chairman of BAM subsidiary HomeServe bluntly stated, “Mark is working on our behalf in Government.” 

Also, last October, at the Prime Quadrant Conference in Toronto on October 10, 2024, Mr. Carney discussed how he provides advice to governments around the world while simultaneously benefiting Brookfield’s business interests.

Here is what Mr. Carney had to say to a business audience:

Well, I do spend some time advising on what… you know, again, pro-bono…but advising on the types of policies that are going to have maximum impacts for investors. So I’ll give you an example. Which is one of the issues… it’s not the biggest issue, it’s like 2% of global emissions, you wouldn’t know it from the headlines, but 2% of global emissions is for air travel…emissions from air travel. 

Now, so the question is, are we going to have green sustainable aviation fuel? What’s happened in the UK, the EU, is they’ve said to major airlines, ‘look if you’re flying in and out of Heathrow or wherever, you have to have 10% of your load has to be sustainable aviation fuel by…’, I think it’s 2030. 

A consequence of that policy has been to convert some entrepreneurs in Texas, in this case a company called Infinian, to become economic. Because all of a sudden American Airlines, British Airways need to buy that fuel. They’ll pay a green premium. You’ve got an off-take, you know, that’s high credit quality. And in that case, we put, we Brookfield, put a billion dollars to work there and it’s a fantastic opportunity. 

The point being, without the policy … the policy has to drive it and drive things down.

Mr. Carney appears to admit to using his political influence to advocate for commercial policies for the benefit of himself and Brookfield. It is also notable that these comments were made after Mr. Carney was appointed to head then-Prime Minister Trudeau’s ‘Task Force on Economic Growth’ in September 2024, leading one to wonder whether Mr. Carney lobbied for similar policies within the Government of Canada. 

While Mr. Carney has said that he moved his assets into a ‘blind trust,’ Mr. Carney certainly knows what assets he moved into that trust, be it shares, stock options, or ‘carried interest’ bonus payments from Brookfield funds Mr. Carney personally set up. 

Mr. Carney should come clean with Canadians and immediately disclose his assets so Canadians can render judgment on Mr. Carney’s conflicts of interest before voting in the election. 

I am asking you to immediately begin an investigation into the matter.