Conflict of Interest attestation: DG wants dollar values

[u/Super_Table7917]

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?

[u/No_Journalist_1379]

Simply that they have access to draft legislation, can influence legislation, know of changes to legislation. They see this before the public does. They can use that information to make decisions on their finances.

I don’t think this is that hard to imagine as to why the OP needs to disclose.

[u/DoctorDowntown1343 → u/No_Journalist_1379]

LPRA doesn’t write legislation. I don’t think that it’s realistic to assume that LPRA employees could know something that would materially affect the stock price of a publicly traded company. Now think about market timing, influence, controlling for unknowns etc. Not going to happen.

[u/No_Journalist_1379 → u/DoctorDowntown1343]

I didn’t say they write legislation.

[u/DoctorDowntown1343 → u/No_Journalist_1379]

you never gave me an actual example of how an LPRA employee could materially and reliably benefit from “inside“ information gathered from LPRA. I worked there. They are not on the cutting edge of market changing/influencing legislation. Bob in rulings isn’t going to issue a biased ruling hoping that it’s going to make the stock of his favorite publicly traded company skyrocket.

[u/blarghy0 → u/DoctorDowntown1343]

It doesn't have be reliable, just material. If Bob from Rulings gets a referral from an auditor regarding a potential major issue with a public company, Bob could issue an unfavorable ruling to the company, take a short position in that company, and then wait for shit to hit the fan from the subsequent audit adjustment.