Jim Flaherty move shocks brokers – Ask a Vancouver Mortgage Broker

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has stepped down.

“Yesterday, I informed the prime minister that I am resigning from cabinet,” Flaherty said in a statement. “This was a decision I made with my family earlier this year, as I will be returning to the private sector.”

Flaherty – who has been unpopular among the mortgage broker community – has served as the Finance Minister since 2006. Still, a recent MortgageBrokerNews.ca poll revealed only 52 per cent of brokers believe the industry will benefit from Flaherty’s resignation.

“There aren’t too many changes they can make anyway; we’re pretty much at the point where they have stripped it down to where it was a decade ago or even farther back,” Len Lane of Verico Brokers for Life told MortgageBrokerNews.ca at the time. “I guess it’s better to keep somebody we know than to have someone else.”

For his part, Flaherty believes he has had a successful run and that he will turn his focus to the private sector.

“As a government, we achieved great things for Canada and I could never have accomplished what I have as finance minister without the full support of Prime Minister Harper,” Flaherty said in the statement. “I will focus on life beyond politics as I return to the private sector.

Still, some may view the move as the Flaherty’s first step toward his own run for the leader of the Conservative party.