28-05-2025
Ethics complaint lodged against Manitoba politician over stock sold in wake of CTV article
An ethics complaint has been made against Mike Moroz, Minister of Innovation and New Technology, regarding Telus shares he sold earlier this month. Moroz said that the accusations are baseless. (Glenn Pismenny/CTV News Winnipeg)
An ethics complaint has been made against Mike Moroz, Minister of Innovation and New Technology, related to stock he sold in the wake of a CTV News report about a man who died during a Telus outage.
Konrad Narth, MLA for La Vérendrye, alleged on Tuesday that Moroz used 'insider information available to him as a minister of the crown to sell personal shares in a corporation before a report that reflects negatively on that corporation was made public.'
From March 22 to 24, a Telus outage prevented calls to 911 from going through. On March 23, Dean Switzer, 55, suffered a heart attack in his home outside Fisher Branch, Man.; however, his family and friends were unable to connect to 911 due to the outage. He died later that night.
Two months later, on May 16, Telus filed a three-page final report following an investigation on the outage.
Moroz stated during question period on Tuesday that he sold his shares in Telus on May 8, but added that the information was already public knowledge.
'On April 8, CTV published their story. This is important, because the outage and Telus' responsibility was public information,' he said.
'The next day, my office wrote a letter to Telus expressing outrage over the situation at the way it was handled and urging them to work with the CRTC, which regulates them, and all other levels of government, to provide the answers and assurance that this would not happen again.'
The minister explained he sold his shares in Telus as he wanted to go 'above and beyond the recommendations,' adding that he lost money on the transaction.
'The accusations are baseless,' Moroz said during question period.
'I acted based on publicly available information and media reporting. If the opposition had done their research properly, they also would've made this determination.'
During Tuesday's question period, Opposition Leader Obby Khan said there seems to be a 'direct conflict of interest and violation,' adding that Moroz was privy to insider information regarding a 'damaging' Telus report.
'The questions Manitobans have is something looks fishy here, something looks wrong,' Khan said. 'We ask questions, Manitobans deserve answers.'
