Thursday, September 13, 2007

Game On



Ostensibly the 31.5% income trust tax and the double taxation of income trusts is all about “leveling the playing field” between two business models. Strange then, that so many other business models have been conveniently left out of this exercise: Capital Trust Securities, Private Family Trusts, Private Income Trusts and Private Limited Partnerships to name a few.

Income Trusts that play in the Large Pension Fund League are also excluded from this exercise for some unknown reason. They along with their team owners (governments and unions) are effectively immune from this tax. Be that as it may, it is quite revealing that a sports analogy has been used to describe the goal of this policy, as if to suggest fair play is the governing principle. To get insight into whether there is any fairness in this game of theirs, we need only evaluate the means that they have used to achieve their goal.

Everyone involved, from the “Players” on the ground to the media cheerleaders on the sidelines deserve game misconducts and league suspensions.

From the very outset, this game has been characterized by high sticking, elbowing and no end to tripping and checking from behind. Team Owner Stephen Harper and Captain Jim Flaherty should be the co-recipients of  the Todd Bertuzzi good sportsmanship award. Unfortunately this will even sully Todd’s fine reputation for good sportsmanlike conduct.

Now on to the highlights:

(1) Blind-sided checking from behind Promised never to tax income trusts. Opposing team members rushed to hospital, still suffering nine months later. No apology, No remorse. Still maintain it was the right thing to do. Wouldn’t change a thing.

(2) Tripping Provided 18 pages of blacked-out documents as "proof" of tax leakage. The referees saw this offense in plain daylight, but ruled it conforms to the new league rules of "transparency" and "accountability". Cheerleaders in total denial. Claim they want to remain neutral as they throw their pom-poms in the air. Neutral?

(3) High Sticking Stacked the Public Hearings and employed all of the dirty tricks contained in the team’s 200 page Dirty Sportsmanship Manual including being hostile to the witnesses, fawning over government witnesses and other attempts to pre-judge the outcome and control public perceptions through a compliant media, whose coverage was equally biased and orchestrated. (Note: this matter has been referred to Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council)

(4) Slashing Advanced false statements and theories such as the supposed non-existence of the US $480 billion Master Limited Partnership market, the tax leakage impact of BCE’s sale to Private Equity via a leveraged buyout ( costing the government $793 million PER YEAR, enough to build several new stadiums) and other falsehoods consistently promulgated by the Goon Squad, but never supported by any facts.

So there you have it sports fans. This is our government’s idea of Fair play, as they pursue any means to achieve their ultimate goal of making Canada a better place for Manulife, PowerCorp, their own private pension plan and of course US private equity. The final score?

Income trusts: Minus 31.5% (resulting in the loss of $35 billion and an essential investment choice in the future)

Corporations Minus 6.2% (average corporate tax on an apples to apples comparative basis)

Great, in less than four years we’ll be back to just one team on the field. The sluggish and coddled corporations of Canada who stifle competition by taking advantage of an ignorant or duplicitous government. With no competition they’ll always be sure to win..........that is, until the world comes knocking on our door. Sorry Jimbo, that’s the big league. That’s when we will wish we had allowed this new and highly competitive low cost form of capital to flourish and not die prematurely as the result of his totally false diagnosis. By the time most people come to this realization, the whole sector will have been carried off on a stretcher, and our teams moved south of the border.

Tim Hortons anyone?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is nothing short of BUSH league cronyism. Reward incompetence (BCE) and destroy true competition (income trusts), while concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands. (Power Corp, KKR etc).

This government has pillaged ordinary Canadians' retirement capital, to fill the coffers of their own private pensions.

Canada - wake up!

Anonymous said...

Three word response for Harper's clumsy crony gamesmanship:

Jerk

Loser

Idiot

It's time for Time out. The press are full time stooges. I actually think the sports editors would act have a better chance of covering this story accurately and honestly than those inept bozos who cover "business news" for their corporately controlled media conglomerates, who I dare say have with "slightly" different agendas than 99.9% of their readers.

Sheeple following shills.

Anonymous said...

This whole thing makes me want to "eat worms & die"!!

Of course, if I was to carry out this finely thought out plan I would be admitting all this mess was my fault.

Why is it that this government has been able to convinve many of the trust investors that this whole thing was indeed somehow their fault & now they seem to have abandoned the issue.

They were told they were not diversified enough.

They were told trusts are a ponzi scheme & only idiots would invest in them -- this despite the fact that trusts are now sought after additions to the gov`t pension funds--yes , the same gov`t that called them ponzi schemes.

These investors were told they had too much money & needed to return to work.

The only thing they could be faulted for was believing this gov`t when they said "we will not tax income trusts".

These same people that now seem to have left the table under the belief that this whole mess was their fault & that they should move on as a result , need to get back into the game before this whole issue becomes one that cannot be revived.

If the Liberal party starts to feel this issue is not worth the time , then trusts are truly dead.

It is time for all people affected to get off their collective arses & do something about it.

Town hall meetings are our one chance to get the point across--they are the one chance to talk directly to MPs that can carry our voice to Ottawa--if this opportunity is not seized , then this is our one chance lost & we then deserve everything we get.

Dr Mike.

Anonymous said...

Knock me over with a feather:

Flaherty's tax conundrum
BCE Privatization could cost him $800-million


Paul Vieira
Financial Post

Wednesday, April 18, 2007


Headline should read:

Flaherty's tax conundrum
BCE Privatization could cost Canadains $800-million a year


As I said in my earlier post:

Jerk

Loser

Idiot

Anonymous said...

This Harper dictator-led regime has to be the most surreptitious and serpentine neo-con CONServative government that Canada has, unfortunately, ever seen.

With George W. Bush as his idol, Harper has adopted the same secretive, deceptive, misleading and corrupt playbook of Bush's US Republican platoon.

Just as with Bush's fraudulent policies, by Harper's and Flaherty's connivance, the CONServatives attempt to fool and rob the masses in order to promote their self-serving narrow-minded ideology and enrich the elite.

One can only hope that the Canadian public, politicians, institutions, the media and indeed heretofore silent income trust investors wake up to this reality before it's too late.

Anonymous said...

I have a feeling we may have stirred the giant --all those letters to the media that have countered their recent articles may have hit a nerve.

Wait for it!!!!!!!!

mike.

Anonymous said...

That's the closest Harper will get to actually wearing a hockey sweater. He thinks he's a player but he is a lone wolf jerk.

Harper's Lies are catching up and his days are numbered.

And his Midget Finance Minister is going down with him.

Anonymous said...

Nice to see some fire in people .. we may be able to fix this disaster yet!

Anonymous said...

The Game is actually worse than what Brent describes. The referees and the linesmen are owned by the Harper team owners X, Y, Z. Harper is only the public face of the owners; he’s on their chain.

The linesmen are the press, of course. The refuse to see the off-side plays of the Harper Blues, and they whistle down on-side plays of Team Truth & Democracy.

The referees are the provincial Finance Ministers. The head referee, call him “Babe”, looked the other way when Flaherty did a Bobby Clobber imitation, and two-handed slash on energy trusts causing the malicious injury of a $400 million tax revenue slander.

Who are X, Y and Z? We can only guess.

Anonymous said...

WHEN CANUCKS ARE STUPID WHY NOT ...
The actual deal was transacted by Abu Dhabi's Canadian subsidiaries TAQA North and 1350849 Alberta.

“This acquisition makes TAQA North one of the top 14 producers in Canada,” said Peter Barker Homek, TAQA’s chief executive. "And an achievement of our strategy to grow to $20 billion in Canadian assets."

Once completed, the deal will provide TAQA with an additional reserve of 285 million barrels, current production of approximately 61,000 barrels of oil per day, an undeveloped land base of over 1.1 billion net acres, and a large tax pool position of approximately $2.7 billion.

This is the latest in a series of deals involving Middle Eastern groups, flush with high oil-prices, that have moved into western assets to diversify.

Anonymous said...

PrimeWest Picked Up By UAE
ALBERTA HAS NOW THE OPTION TO LEARN ARBIC AS A SECOND LANGUAGE THANKS TO FLAHRETY AND BABY FACE HARPER TRUST ARE BEEING SOLD
UNO ALA VOLTA PER CARITA