BREAKING: Bill Morneau resigns as Canada’s Minister of Finance

REUTERS/Blair Gable

After a string of scandals during his tenure, and a reported rift with the Prime Minister, Bill Morneau is resigning as Canada’s Finance Minister. 

Morneau announced he his stepping down the announcement during a sudden news conference called Monday evening. He says he told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he will not be running in the next election.

Morneau, 57, has served as Finance Minister and the Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre since the Liberals took power in 2015. As Finance Minister he launched the Canada Child Benefit and incentives for first-time homebuyers. He has also helped guide the country’s fiscal programs through the COVID-19 pandemic with new supports like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS).

Morneau was caught up in the WE Charity scandal that has also brought criticism to the Prime Minister, and resulted in an ethics investigation.

He has four children with his wife Nancy McCain, a member of the New Brunswick family that owns McCain Foods. His daughter Grace, who is adopted and the family sponsored to Canada from Uganda when she was 14, worked at WE when the scandal emerged.

Before entering politics, Morneau served as head of Morneau Shepell, Canada’s largest human resources firm. Continuing ties to the company his father founded got him into hot water on more than one occasion. He sold his shares in the company after facing criticism for not placing the $20 million stake in a blind trust, and was later cleared of insider trading after accusations that he profited from his own tax policies when he sold shares in the company in 2015.

He was also the head of policy think-tank C.D. Howe Institute. He co-authored a book, The Real Retirement, with Fred Vettese.

More to come.

Jessy Bains is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jessysbains.

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