Bill Morneau was the chair of the board at St Michael's Hospital, and Covenant House.
50 Facts About Bill Morneau
2.
Bill Morneau was elected to the House of Commons in the 2015 election and was immediately appointed finance minister by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
3.
Bill Morneau resigned as finance minister and MP in August 2020 in the wake of the WE Charity scandal and to run for secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
4.
Bill Morneau has since cited disagreements with Trudeau as the reason for his resignation.
5.
Bill Morneau currently serves on the Board of Directors for CIBC, and has authored a book on his time in office, Where To From Here: A Path to Canadian Prosperity.
6.
Bill Morneau was born in Toronto at St Joseph's Health Centre and attended Senator O'Connor College School.
7.
From 1981 to 1986, Bill Morneau attended the University of Western Ontario and completed an Honours BA as an undergraduate, he spent one year at the University of Grenoble in France.
8.
Bill Morneau eventually went on to earn an master of science in economics from the London School of Economics.
9.
Bill Morneau had demonstrated an interest in business and entrepreneurship from a young age.
10.
Bill Morneau ran the business for four years, helping him pay a good part of his university tuition.
11.
Bill Morneau joined the company in 1990, and two years later was given the role of president.
12.
Bill Morneau Shepell provides over 20,000 organizations representing millions of Canadians with pension, employee benefit, and employee assistance programs.
13.
Bill Morneau is the co-author of The Real Retirement, an analysis of the context and the factors involved in helping Canadians plan for a successful retirement originally published in 2012 with Frederick Vettese, as well a book on his time in officeWhere to From Here: A Path to Canadian Prosperity.
14.
Bill Morneau was chair of the board at St Michael's Hospital from 2009 to 2013, and as a board member from 2003 to 2013.
15.
Bill Morneau has served on the board of St Michael's Hospital Foundation.
16.
Bill Morneau has served as a board member for the Loran Scholars Foundation, the Art Gallery of Ontario Foundation, the Canadian Opera Company, Greenwood College, the Toronto Zoo Foundation, and several others.
17.
In 2010, Bill Morneau began leading an initiative with the UNHCR to open a secondary school for refugee girls in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya.
18.
Bill Morneau was appointed as pension investment advisor to the Ontario minister of finance, Dwight Duncan in 2012, providing counsel aimed at facilitating the pooling of public-sector pension fund assets.
19.
Bill Morneau's report led to the eventual establishment of Investment Management Corporation of Ontario, which now pools funds and offers public-sector pension plans lower costs with economies of scale.
20.
Bill Morneau was then named by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as minister of finance for Canada on November 4,2015, becoming the first rookie MP to hold the position.
21.
Bill Morneau represented Canada at international gatherings, including the G7 and G20 Summits, in addition to serving as governor of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
22.
On 22 March 2016, Bill Morneau released his first budget as minister of finance.
23.
On 22 March 2017, Bill Morneau released his second budget and Canada's first gender-based federal budget.
24.
On 21 November 2018 Morneau spoke to Parliament on a "fiscal update" with an increased expenditure of $17.6 billion over six years.
25.
On 19 March 2019, Bill Morneau tabled his fourth, and final, budget.
26.
Bill Morneau then committed to continuing to reduce the government net debt-to-GDP ratio, arguing it's a better measure of government fiscal health.
27.
Between April and November 2019, Bill Morneau was asked to take on the additional portfolio of intergovernmental affairs and internal trade in addition to the finance portfolio, filling in for Dominic LeBlanc who stepped down for health reasons.
28.
Bill Morneau tabled Canada's first gender-based budget and introduced a banknote featuring civil-rights activist Viola Desmond, making it Canada's first circulation banknote to feature a Canadian woman, and the first to feature a Black woman.
29.
In September 2017, Bill Morneau was fined for failing to disclose to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner a private non-commercial real estate holding company in Avignon, France owned by him and his wife, which owns a family villa in Provence, France.
30.
Bill Morneau said that this was a result of early administrative confusion which led to only the property, and not the legal structure, being disclosed.
31.
Bill Morneau was investigated in 2018, over false accusations of insider trading, and in 2020 for his family accepting $41,000 in luxury hospitality from WE Charity, which he paid back before publicly revealing the error.
32.
The commissioner determined that Bill Morneau did not breach ethics laws in either of these investigations.
33.
Bill Morneau responded to this criticism by selling the shares, donating a portion of the proceeds to charity, and setting up a blind trust for his remaining assets.
34.
Bill Morneau played a key role in implementing a number of signature Liberal government initiatives, including new benefits for parents, low-income workers and seniors, putting in place Carbon pricing in Canada, as well as expanding the Canada Pension Plan.
35.
Bill Morneau moved forward with the Liberal's commitment to lower income taxes on the middle class by raising taxes on the wealthiest Canadians.
36.
Bill Morneau established the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which called for a gradual increase in permanent immigration to Canada to 450,000 people a year.
37.
Bill Morneau reached an agreement in 2016 with provincial and territorial governments to expand the Canada Pension Plan.
38.
In 2017, Bill Morneau led negotiations on new health care funding agreements with the provinces and territories.
39.
Bill Morneau was responsible for the first five months of the federal government's economic response plan to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.
40.
Bill Morneau had been under pressure to resign due to his involvement in the WE Charity controversy, where he had failed to recuse himself from Cabinet discussions involving the charity after accepting, then repaying $41,000 in expenses covered by the charity, as well as the fact that two of his daughters worked or volunteered for the charity.
41.
Bill Morneau's resignation came amid reports of disagreements with Trudeau over the scandal, environmental initiatives, and COVID-19 relief spending.
42.
Bill Morneau dismissed the reports and said his relationship with Trudeau was marked by "vigorous discussion and debate" that led to better policy.
43.
In 2023, Bill Morneau cited disagreements with Trudeau over COVID-19 relief spending and overreach of the Prime Minister's office as the reason for his resignation.
44.
Bill Morneau was succeeded as finance minister by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
45.
Bill Morneau was succeeded as MP in the by-election by Marci Ien on a much reduced majority.
46.
On January 26,2021, Bill Morneau terminated his candidacy for the position of secretary-general of the OECD.
47.
In 2021, Bill Morneau was a Senior Fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where he taught a course on global economic policy making.
48.
In May 2021, Bill Morneau was found to have violated Canada's Conflict of Interest Act.
49.
Bill Morneau currently serves on the Board of CIBC and is Chairman of NovaSource Power Services.
50.
Bill Morneau is the author of a memoire from his time in politics Where to From Here: A Path to Canadian Prosperity.