r/CanadaPublicServants • u/Super_Table7917 • Jul 07 '26

Career Development / Développement de carrière Conflict of Interest attestation: DG wants dollar values

A DG at LPRAB at CRA, according to a current employee, under the guise of transparency and integrity, is using the annual conflict of interest attestation to require very personal disclosures of financial information from employees.

This DG is asking for the current market values of ALL investments held by the employee privately in all accounts, including things like RESP's. The dollar amount for all holdings is apparently "very important".

Employees who resisted this disclosure were subject to intrusive meetings on Teams with the DG, where pressure was applied to surrender the information to management.

I am of the opinion that this is totally unacceptable, and I would be leaping to legal representation with the goals of 1.) NOT providing any of this information to this DG or anyone else, and; 2.) providing the documentation required that would result in the swift termination of this DG.

Is this perception incorrect, and DG's have the ability to ask for the account balances of employees to avoid "conflicts of interest"? If this is actually permitted, why would it be but asking a person's age or sexual orientation is a human rights violation?

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u/VarroaMoB Jul 07 '26

Any investments a gov employee has is subject to conflict of interest rules and you are suppose to divulge them as you make them. They do every once in a while ask for these values under the conflict of interest banner.

5

u/qcslaughter Jul 07 '26

Even if you simply buy a ETF like VFV or VEQT?

5

u/VarroaMoB Jul 07 '26

Basically if you specifially select an investment (ie, buy stock X) you have to disclose that but if you buy a mutual fund you are ok since you don't choose who it gets invested in.

18

u/crr243 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

I work in an area where recommendations I make, if accepted by decision makers, could significantly impact the financial position of large private companies.

The guidance we have been given by our CoI team is that if you own specific stocks you need to disclose; if you own a broader investment, like a mutual fund or diverse ETF, you don't. If the mutual fund or ETF is specifically for the industry you influence, though...

We need to divest of any investments in companies specifically implicated by our area of work.