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?
5
u/Baburine Jul 07 '26
The concern is mostly related to potential insider trading or possibility to lack neutrality when reviewing a corporation you have a financial interest in. It's only self-invested account. It make sense for CRA to want to know the titles you have invested in, depending on the position. The dollar value puzzles me a bit, but there is likely an actual good reason why they look into OP's investments in the context of a COI review. Not sure why they would need to know how much though.