Blind Trust
An interview with Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s blind trust, and why it's basically a ‘sham façade’
Back in January of this year, the former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Mark Carney announced that he had resigned as chair from Brookfield Asset Management, one of Canada’s largest publicly traded companies, as well as from a number of other business roles, to pursue the Liberal Party leadership.
According to the Globe and Mail, he also “stepped down as chair of the board of media and financial data company Bloomberg LP; the board of payments processor Stripe Inc.; an advisory board for investment giant PIMCO; and as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero.”
After winning the Liberal leadership race just over a week ago, Carney stated that he also put his financial assets in a blind trust, which is meant to guard against conflicts of interest. Once being sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister, Carney has 60 days to disclose his assets to the ethics commissioner and another 60 days before that information goes public.
But despite Carney’s assurances that he’s following the ethics rules, he’s been at the receiving end of criticism and questions about why he’s withholding the details about his financial interests. Answering questions from reporters this week he said:
These are decisions, of course, of the ethics commissioner. As you may recall, my assets have been put into a blind trust well in advance of the requirements, so they’ve been disposed. But what happens is that there’s a discussion with the ethics commissioner for certain screens around certain issues, and that’s a process that is underway. It’s a natural process, and of course, it’s part of the way our system works. And I very much respect the system.
Carney is currently in discussion with the ethics commissioner about putting “certain screens on certain issues,” and one screen will likely have to do with Brookfield Asset Management, as Carney still owns stock options in the company that he cannot "exercise" (i.e. sell) until 2033-2034. According to this report from the CBC, Carney explained that if a government decision were to impact Brookfield Asset Management, then it would be a conflict and “there would be a screen in place preventing him from weighing in.”
That sounds all well and good, but Duff Conacher isn’t buying it. He is co-founder of Democracy Watch, an Ottawa-based organization that has been advocating for “democratic reform, government accountability and corporate responsibility,” since 1993. Conacher strongly opposes the use of blind trusts by senior decision makers and in a recent piece in the Globe and Mail, was quoted saying, “A blind trust is a sham façade that hides and does not prevent financial conflicts of interest because the politician knows what investments and assets they put in the trust.”
To find out more about blind trusts, and the law that governs conflict of interest among Canada’s top policy makers, I contacted Conacher. We spoke on the phone and then followed up with more detail via email. What follows is a transcript of our telephone conversation. It has been slightly edited for length and clarity.
Prime Minister Mark Carney speaking recently on Arctic sovereignty—announcing a $6 billion investment in partnership with Australia to develop a new early warning radar system to respond to Arctic security threats—was grilled by reporters about his blind trust. He replied that there is a process underway with the ethics commissioner about putting “certain screens on certain issues.” One screen will likely have to do with Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. The National Post reported that Carney held nearly $7 million in Brookfield options before quitting for liberal leadership race, and he still owns stock options in the company that he cannot "exercise" (i.e. sell) until 2033-2034. (Screen grab from CPAC)
Linda Pannozzo (LP): First, can you tell us what a “blind trust” is, and then why, in your view, it is still an issue in Carney’s case?
Duff Conacher (DC): There is no such thing actually as a blind trust. It shouldn't be called that because you know what assets you put in the trust. You choose your own trustee and you're allowed to give them initial instructions, including, ‘don't sell anything.’ Which means you'll continue to know that you own whatever you put in the trust because you knew what you put into it. So, it's misnamed, it should just be called a ‘trust,’ because it's not blind. It’s a situation like so many in politics where there are crossroads with one arrow pointing to legal and the other pointing in the direction of ethical, and just because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical.
Politicians wrote these rules for themselves and so they created this sham, and I can't say it clearly enough: A blind trust is not blind, it's a sham facade, a charade, a ruse, a smokescreen, a shell game and a completely unethical scheme because it hides the investments that politicians and public officials have in private businesses and as a result hides and does nothing to prevent the financial conflicts of interest they have as a result of those investments. 1
LP: If Carney is just following the rules, that you say politicians created for themselves, then what should the rules actually be?
DC: Justice [William] Parker did a Commission of Inquiry into a cabinet minister named Sinclair Stevens back in the 80s. He was a minister in [Brian] Mulroney's government and Sinclair Stevens' spouse had a bunch of investments, and Sinclair Stevens said, ‘I'm being part of these decisions because it's allowed, and I have them in a trust. They're not my investments.’ Parker did this whole inquiry and a landmark report in 1987.
He said that blind trusts should be banned because they're a cover-up for financial conflicts of interest, and politicians and government officials should have to sell all their investments. The only exemption to that would be that if they own an interest in a family business—you can't require the family to sell the business just because you decided to enter politics, and in that case, you would have to recuse yourself from every decision that affects the business directly or indirectly. Like a family farm or something like that--you can't say to siblings and parents, you have to sell this because I've decided to become a cabinet minister.
But otherwise, sell the investments and buy government bonds or a guaranteed investment certificate, for the time you're in office, and you'll get paid a certain percentage of interest and there's no conflict of interest because it's a set amount that's paid. They're all insured. You can't lose your money on a government bond unless the whole country went under. But you're not going to make decisions that will make the whole country go under. So, there's just no financial conflict of interest. Serve the public and when you leave, reinvest in the stock market.
LP: I can already hear a reader asking the question, ‘but what if it's not a good time to sell in the stock market’?
DC: Likely, if they have significant investments, they're going to be making money anyway. I mean if they bought Tesla only, then they should have sold Tesla months ago. Anyone would have told them that when people started lighting Teslas on fire and Elon Musk went crazy. But he was probably crazy before, but he decided to express his craziness.
So, that's too bad, so sad. Everyone faces that. You want to serve the public, then serve the public. You cannot have a financial conflict of interest. It's the worst type of conflict of interest and blind trusts do nothing to prevent them. All they do is keep the public in the dark about what you own.
If you look at Justin Trudeau's disclosure, the media totally rolled over and allowed Trudeau to do this exact same thing when he became prime minister. He said, ‘I have a trust. It's worth about $2 million. My dad set it up for me.’ He claimed he didn't know what it was invested in. That's just a blatant lie. He would have been getting reports annually from the trustee that would show where the shares are. ‘I'm putting it in a blind trust.’ If you look at his disclosure statement, it says he owns an interest in a numbered company [7664699 Canada Incorporated] which is a shell corporation under which the investments are held, and that's all he had to disclose. No disclosure of what shares are actually owned in that shell corporation, even though he knew. I would bet, just before he had to set it all up, he said, ‘Buy all the stocks of the main Canadian pot companies because I'm going to legalize pot and all their values will go up and then sell them whenever they start to drop.’ And if he had done that, he would have made a 1,500% return, 15 times. If he put in, let's say, $200,000 of his $2 million into that, it would have turned into $30 million. And then sell when they start to drop -- he would have lost a little bit of that, ending up with $29 million. And that's entirely plausible and was all allowed to be done in secret.
And everyone rolled over. Probably only because the media is not objective, never should have claimed to be objective, never has been. It's impossible for a human to be objective. And you know, many in the media are small L or small C conservatives. But you know, people do have their preferences and Trudeau was coming along doing this miracle. Third in the polls in June 2015, wins a majority. Everyone's like, ‘Wow, amazing,’ he says a bunch of things, everyone reports them without any question, like he's going to run an open, honest, accountable government and says, ‘I have this trust and I've created a blind trust and I'm not the trustee,’ and everyone just rolled over. It was probably also because he didn't come from business into the prime minister-ship.
But it’s exactly the same position as Mark Carney. Trudeau had $2 million, Mark Carney has maybe $7 million—looks like that's what the current value is, maybe more.2 But he [Trudeau] had millions in investments and hid them, knew what they were, and probably made $30 million on pot stocks alone. No one will ever know, because it's all allowed to be secret.
Co-founder of Democracy Watch, Duff Conacher. (Image taken from Twitter/ X)
LP: Has there been an erosion of the federal ethics law over the years?
DC: The rules had fewer loopholes when Chrétien was PM and Martin was Finance Minister — it was called the Conflict of Interest Code back then — but the rules were enforced by Chrétien, with Howard Wilson as Ethics Counsellor completely under the control of Chrétien, and they let Martin violate the rules.3 When Martin became PM, he added the “general application” loophole to the Code as well as a loophole that allowed him to make and participate in decisions that affected the company he owned.
The Globe’s article today by Bob Fife [titled, “Carney promises conflict-of-interest screen to prevent him from making decisions for companies he served”] is completely inaccurate. Carney says, ‘I'm going to set it up like Paul Martin has or Dominic LeBlanc.’ Paul Martin was not prohibited from taking part in decisions that affected Canada Steamship Lines Company, which he owned. He was allowed to. He put it in a blind trust but he still knew he owned it.
Stephen Harper promised in the 2006 Conservative Party election platform to close the loophole Martin put into the rules, and so while Harper changed the Code into the Conflict-of-Interest Act, the loophole means that the Act does not apply to 99% of the decisions made by cabinet ministers. If you have a private interest, but you're making a decision that applies generally, the Act does not apply. Ninety-nine percent of the decisions the cabinet ministers and top government officials make apply generally. For example, there's not a Royal Bank Act, there's a Bank Act that applies generally to all the banks. Therefore, you can own a million-dollars-worth of shares in the Royal Bank and be the finance minister and change the Bank Act in a way that will make Royal Bank a ton more money and all the other banks, and profit from that, all in secret, and it’s allowed, under the Conflict-of-Interest Act because of this huge loophole. 4
There's only one percent of decisions that cabinet ministers make that are specific, that do not apply generally. One, they hire their staff. They're allowed to do that under an exemption because the general tradition has been they can have loyal staff, they can reward their campaign managers that helped them get elected and hire them as their staff. If they're using public money, furthering the interests of a friend—they can't hire their family members—but they can hire friends, and that's allowed. It's a relatively small amount of money. The only other one is if you hand out a contract to a specific company. But federally, and in some other jurisdictions like Ontario, handing out contracts is centralized in one ministry and that was done years ago because ministers were intervening and trying to get contracts to their friends, and so they centralized it in one ministry so that only one minister would have input into that and the other ministers would all be prohibited from intervening.
[Liberal trade minister] Mary Ng got in trouble because she handed out a contract to a friend. But that's 1% of the decisions she would make. Most of the decisions they're making are changing laws, programs, taxes, that all apply generally. They don't set up a grant program for one specific organization or a tax credit for one company. They set it up for an industry or a whole set of organizations and as a result they can have [financial] interests, make those decisions, and the Act does not apply at all.
Beyond that, lots of assets do not even have to be disclosed, but as I mentioned, when Carney says, ‘You’ll learn in 120 days, I don’t have to disclose this now,’ and some reporters have said, ‘Carney’s going to have to disclose the details about his investments in 120 days,’ no, he’s not. If he sets up a shell corporation, puts all the investments under the shell and says I own an interest in this shell corporation just like Trudeau did, that is all he’s required to disclose.
LP: So, just to clarify, he has 120 days to disclose his financial interests but in reality, he doesn’t have to disclose anything in detail because he put them in a shell corporation?
DC: First of all, Carney doesn’t have to disclose controlled assets because he’s required to divest from them under the law.5 The dictionary definition of divestment is sell, but he is actually not required to sell them, he can put them in a blind trust. It’s not actually a blind trust, as I’ve said, because he knows what assets and investments he’s putting in the trust, and when he puts them in a trust, all he then has to disclose is that he has assets in a blind trust. He doesn’t have to disclose the details of what those assets are or the details about what investments he has in businesses. That’s exactly what Trudeau did, and so there has been no public disclosure of what investments in businesses Trudeau has had in his trust since 2015.
It is a shell game, literally.
In addition, there are ‘exempt assets,’ including mutual funds. If you know anything about investing, mutual funds are where you buy a share in a mutual fund and the mutual fund invests in companies. You're allowed to have a secret investment in a mutual fund. You're allowed to have a secret RRSPs or RESPs, university, hospital and other public sector debt, annuities, and life insurance policies. It's true that some of these investments are not "controlled" by the public office holder, but if an office holder invests in a mutual fund that is focused on a specific industry (for example, Canadian financial industry), they know that the fund will own shares in companies in that industry, and so they have a direct financial conflict but are allowed to keep it secret from the public.6
The Conflict Interest Act is a sad joke and is so loophole-filled and Mark Carney knows this and is saying, ‘I'm happy with being unethical because all I'm going to do is follow the requirements of this sad joke of an Act.’
In this case what is legal is unethical, and he's saying, ‘I'm fine with that.’
LP: I'm curious, have you received any negative feedback for critiquing Carney's blind trust arrangement?
DC: Sure, people say, as he said, ‘I’m an honourable person. I'm here to serve the public.’ That’s not what this is about. What they are essentially saying is they’re fine with an unethical scheme. No one can know why anyone makes a decision because no one can actually do a Vulcan mind meld. Only Spock could do that, and that was on a fictional show called Star Trek. No one can read minds. So, he can say, ‘I'm making decisions in the public interest,’ but may actually be doing it to profit, and that's why conflict of interest laws are supposed to say you can't participate in this decision because you have an appearance of a conflict… It has to be this way, or you do not prevent financial conflicts of interest, and as a result, you do not prevent corruption.
LP: There are some Canadians who are concerned about the possible election of Pierre Pollievre as Canada’s next prime minister, and they're saying that since Carney is following the rules, we don't need to pander to the conservative approach of finding or inventing fault. Or they’re saying, why should we expect politicians to go above the legally required transparency requirements? What would you say to comments like these?
DC: You just cannot allow violations of democratic government rules. That's what produces corruption, waste, and boondoggles and decisions that protect private interests and violate the public interest. People should be writing to Mark Carney and saying, please don't do this. You're shooting yourself in the foot, and your answers are ridiculous. You have a financial conflict of interest, and you know about it. You're hiding it from the public. That's all bad. None of that is good and a person who has that attitude is not likely to make decisions that are in the public interest because they are saying, ‘I'm fine with being unethical,’ because it is unethical to hide a financial conflict of interest, pretend that you don't know about it, lie to the public about not knowing about it. That's an unethical person.
LP: Do you think part of the problem is that the average Canadian doesn't really know what a blind trust is, and what these loopholes are?
DC: That is part of the problem. Bob Fife in his [Globe and Mail] article today, unbelievably said that under Paul Martin's ‘screen,’ he was not allowed to make decisions affecting his shipping company [Canada Steamship Lines], and that Dominic LeBlanc [currently Minister of Finance] is required to recuse himself from any dealings with the wealthy Irving family of New Brunswick, of which he is a close friend. Those are two inaccurate sentences. Paul Martin was allowed to make decisions that affected Canada Steamship Lines and did make them. He changed taxes for foreign companies—it was a foreign situated company—and many other things, like waterways. He was there at the cabinet table for all sorts of decisions that affected Canada Steamship Lines as a federally regulated company. Dominic LeBlanc would have to recuse himself from so many cabinet meetings if he actually did not take part decisions that affect the Irving's because the Irving's own holdings in several federally regulated industries: anything to do with corporate tax, defense, national security, agriculture, retail trucking, real estate, labor, all of those. Changing any of those laws or regulations under them or tax credits or any kind of subsidy in any of those areas would affect Irving’s businesses directly or indirectly. There's just no way LeBlanc has not been at cabinet meetings discussing those proposals.
And what's so unbelievable about Bob Fife's article this morning is they wrote two articles in The Globe about LeBlanc because he updated his ethics screen with regard to the Irvings back in December when he became finance minister, and I wrote to them and said, you've written an inaccurate statement. He's not required to step aside from all of these decisions because his own statement says, ‘I will participate in decisions that affect the Irvings generally,’ or to a “broad class of persons or entities.” It says that right on his own screen. Why? Because the Conflict of Interest Act allows for that, because it does not apply to decisions that apply generally.7
I said [to Fife], “Why don't you call his [LeBlanc’s] office and ask him, has he actually recused himself from every discussion, decision-making process that could have an impact on Jim Irving's business dealings in a way that applies generally to the businesses? Or has he only recused himself from decisions that specifically and only impact Jim Irving's business?”8 And they haven't done that. And then Bob writes this article again today that repeats the inaccurate claim.
So yes, people misunderstand it [blind trust] because the media—despite the fact that the law is 20 years old and it applies to the most powerful politicians and government officials—no one in the media has taken the time to understand what the Act actually requires, even though it is the most important democracy law we have after the criminal code anti-bribery provisions.
LP: Can you say more about those?
DC: Yes, they actually prevents direct corruption. You can't take a bribe, you can't further your own interests in a corrupt way. Because that's a criminal law standard where you have to show a person did it intentionally and that they actually did it or were offered a bribe, we have this law [Conflict of Interest Act], which is that you don't have to show that they had intent and you don't have to prove it beyond any reasonable doubt, and it's to prevent them from violating the criminal code. It's the second most important democracy law we have, if you want to actually have a democratic government.
With one exception, no one in the media has even taken the time in 20 years to understand it—what it actually requires and prohibits—and repeatedly misleads readers, viewers and listeners with what they say it requires and prohibits, because it's wrong, completely inaccurate—100% inaccurate statements were included in the Globe and Mail article and have been in several past Globe and Mail articles.
LP: And do you think that's the fault of the reporter?
DC: Yes, it is, because I've emailed them every time I see it, and they keep on doing it. I've emailed Bob [Fife], he co-wrote the articles at the end of December that inaccurately stated what LeBlanc is prohibited from doing, and then he wrote it again yesterday… It violates the number one journalist's principle, don't mislead readers.
People also misunderstand conflict of interest. They think it means you're not in a conflict of interest until we catch you doing something to help somebody. The reporters say this to me all the time, ‘What have they done to help that private interest, or that lobbyist that they're friends with? It doesn't smell until they actually do it.’ No, conflict interest laws are there to prevent you from helping. They're not working if they allow you to do it, because then they've allowed corruption that they are there to prevent.
If you have the conflict of interest then you're in violation of the law if you go ahead and participate in the decision, and you can help a lot by not doing anything. This is something that the media and the public—as a result of the media—completely misunderstand and forget about. If a consumer group or a union or an environmental group or health and safety group is pushing for a regulation of some sort, and they want to regulate a business, and the politician doesn't regulate the business, that politician has helped the business by doing nothing. There's no trace of them doing nothing, because they did nothing, and you can do nothing in secret because you're doing nothing. So it never gets reported that, ‘Hey, you helped this business by doing nothing, because the media doesn't report on secrecy very well. They only report on what is disclosed.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre speaking on March 7, 2025 about negotiations with the US amid President Trump’s tariff threats, and that if elected as PM he would amend the Conflict of Interest Act to require all party leadership candidates to disclose their finances. (screen grab from CPAC)
LP: I wonder if you can comment on how polarized things have become and what that means for democracy: where journalists and others are lambasted for raising questions about Carney’s blind trust because it could potentially help his opponent, Pierre Poilievre? This went on in the U.S., before the 2020 U.S. election. You've got this same sort of dynamic happening in Canada right now.
DC: People vote for a lot of different reasons, and we [Democracy Watch] never tell anyone how to vote, we just say, here's what you're going to get and if you're fine with that, then go ahead and vote for that person. But if we ignore democratic government principles and allow violations of them, then expect them to be violated.
That's not going to result in democratic government and will result in decisions that are not in the public interest and you may be fine with that, but just realize that's what's going to happen, and it will get worse because every time you allow it, you’re saying, ‘It's fine.’ So, the next time it comes up and the person is able to say, ‘Well it was fine for this last person, so must be fine for me,’ and that just constantly expands until you have a person like Trump.
As we [Democracy Watch] pointed out, Pierre Poilievre was running around during the leadership race for the Conservatives saying, ‘I'm going to change regulations to help the crypto industry,’ and he has investments in the crypto industry. So, he's just as bad, and I've said that consistently since it was revealed. But it's allowed. It's an example of the loophole. Here he is, opposition party leader in the minority government, where he could introduce a bill that would have as much momentum as a government bill in terms of passing and he's allowed to have investments in that industry that will be helped by the bill that he would introduce.
And, in case you’ve seen Poilievre saying, ‘I would require people to sell investments that cause conflicts of interest,’ under the Conflict of Interest Act, 99% of investments do not cause conflicts of interest, because the Act does not apply to 99% of the decisions that ministers make. So, no one would have to sell an investment, even if he made the change that he's promised to make, unless he also closed the loopholes. But when he made that statement a few days ago, he didn't mention anything about the loopholes, of course. He also didn’t mention the changes he said he would make to the crypto laws, while also being invested in the crypto industry. He’s even worse than Carney, because Carney hasn't said, ‘I will make a change to the law that will help my former companies.’ Poilievre did that explicitly.
They're all just playing a shell game, trying to pretend to be ethical when everyone knows they’re allowed to be unethical and profit from their own decisions.
The Act applies to the PM, Cabinet ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, Cabinet staff and advisers, and all top government officials and almost all Cabinet appointees in the federal government, says Conacher.
The National Post reported that Carney owns stock options in Brookfield that he cannot "exercise" (i.e. sell) until 2033-2034. Conacher says Carney can hide whether he still owns those options simply by setting up a shell corporation.
Some history: Paul Martin was PM from 2003-2006 and before that, Finance Minister from 1993-2002. According to Conacher, the ethics rules in place would not have prevented Martin from making decisions that affected Canada Steamship Lines. The Conflict of Interest Act was brought in by Stephen Harper's Conservative government wrote in 2006.
Conacher says that the rules had fewer loopholes when Chrétien was PM and Martin was Finance Minister — it was called the Conflict of Interest Code back then — but the rules were enforced by Chrétien, with Howard Wilson as Ethics Counsellor completely under the control of Chrétien (i.e. he was an advisor lapdog not a watchdog who had independence or enforcement powers). For more see Democracy Watch news release here.
Conacher: “When Martin became PM, he added the ‘general application’ loophole to the Code as well as a loophole that allowed him to receive updates from his not blind trust, and he also changed the 10 key rules in the Code into unenforceable “principles” that no one was required to comply with.” Details on this can be found here.
Conacher explains that the Stephen Harper Conservative’s promised in their 2005-2006 election platform to change the Code into the Conflict of Interest Act, which they did, but the new Act did not include the 10 key rules/principles that were in the Code and they also broke their election promise to “Close the loopholes that allow ministers to vote on matters connected with their business interests.” Details on this can be found here and here.
According to Conacher, all provincial, territorial and municipal ethics laws have similar huge loopholes in them.
Under the Canadian Conflict of Interest Act, "controlled assets" are defined as assets whose value could be directly or indirectly affected by government decisions or policy, and reporting public office holders must divest themselves of these assets.
Also according to Conacher, liabilities that have a value of less than $10,000 are not required to be publicly disclosed. The general disclosure requirements are in subsections 25(2) and (3) of the Act:
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-36.65/section-25.html
and in section 26 of the Act:
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-36.65/section-26.html.
and the loophole that allows some investments to be hidden from the public is in the parts (g), (h), (j) and (k) of the definition of "exempt assets" in section 20 of the Act:
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-36.65/section-20.html.
The two questions Conacher suggested Fife ask Minister LeBlanc’s office: 1) "Has Minister LeBlanc actually recused himself from every discussion, decision-making process, debate and vote on every matter that could impact Jim Irving's business dealings in a way that applies generally to the Irving businesses along with other businesses, or has Minister LeBlanc only recused himself from discussions, decisions, debates and votes that could have an impact specifically and only on Jim Irving's business dealings?" and 2) "Can you please provide a list of every time Minister LeBlanc has recused himself from a discussion, decision-making process, debate or vote because of the screen?" Conacher says Bob Fife emailed back to say that they would ask LeBlanc's office those questions, but Conacher says, “If they did, no article has been published in the Globe re: the answers LeBlanc's office gave, or that LeBlanc's office refused to answer the questions.”
I don't know of a good solution. It seems like we have a hard enough time even finding quality people to run for government positions these days. Not long ago, I watched a CBC piece on how many threats there are against politicians. Those in charge of security for politicians say the problem is getting very serious. Then there is all of the online abuse -- which we're actually seeing happening right now with AI and slander, etc.. Hard to imagine why anyone would even want to be in politics anymore. Then take away their investment income as well. I'm not sure who will be left.
I would almost like to see politicians allowed to have investments, but that their investment positions be disclosed so that we can see where they are positioned on issues. It couldn't be that hard to do. For example, I would be interested in knowing which sitting MPs are invested in venture capital funds like Stephen Harper's Awz Ventures that is behind high tech surveillance, facial and behavioral recognition systems, drone communication technology, etc.., like Centaur, Octopus, Elsight, and others in use by Israel in Gaza. I think the public should be able to see who is putting up money for all of this crap - whether it is coming from politicians, from public or private pension funds, from investment funds run by banks and other financial institutions -- so let it not just stop with top officials, but with everyone who is investing in this kind of war stuff. We've already seen how these kinds of investments have infected and contaminated the U.S. with its MIC -- easily spotted as trading volume goes bananas on MIC stocks shortly before some new military misadventure begins.
I think that, if we are to have MIC stocks, then their insider trading information should be available as public knowledge for everyone. That should probably extend to plenty of other things as well -- such as for-profit prisons and hospitals. Chemical companies. Energy companies. Nothing should be obscured from the public.
Whew! That was a banger. Thanks for the clarity Linda!