Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Proof of concept: Harper's fiscal incompetence


In today’s Ottawa Citizen we learn that the “Party faithful are set to pick economy as next hot-button election issue.”

It’s one thing to advance a concept. Quite another to prove it.

If the opposition parties are intent on making Canadians aware of the fiscal incompetence of the Harper government, the income trust tax affords the opposition parties with the perfect “proof of concept” example.

The concept being that Harper is fiscally incompetent and deceitful to boot

Virtually every Canadian voter is aware of the income trust issue and the loss of savings that many Canadian experienced from this election flip flop. Many Canadians harbour the belief that Stephen Harper was compelled to act in the manner that he did.

This widespread belief is only reflective of the success with which Stephen Harper and the CON party were able to advance the “big lie”, known as tax leakage.

The Big Lie can easily be laid to waste. And with it, the Harper government and any belief that they are competent managers of fiscal affairs or a party of integrity.

The first step is to acquaint Canadians with the fact that the only evidence of tax leakage is 18 pages of blacked out documents.

The next piece of evidence is that the government demand that these blacked out documents be returned, after they realized how much damaging information is contained.

The next step is to acquaint Canadian with the $65 billion in trust policy takeouts that have occurred, that have already induced $1.4 billion in tax leakage to solve an alleged $500 million tax leakage problem, that was never proven to exist on the first place.

Next is to acquaint Canadian with the knowledge that the Department of Finance knew this takeover outcome would occur.

The next step is to acquaint Canadians with who it is who benefits from this policy, namely Big Lifecos like Manulife and Power Corp’s Great West Life and London Life, foreign private equity firms like Brian Mulroney’s Blackstone Capital, foreign big oil firms like Abu Dhabi Energy and Hong Kong billionaires like Li Ka Shing.

Next in line is to acquaint Canadians with the role played by former Goldman Sachs investment banker, Mark Carney, who was catapulted into his present capacity of Governor of the Bank of Canada

The last step is to simply reveal tax leakage for the total fraud that it is. This matter is well underway, what with the Green Party’s call for an inquiry into alleged ax leakage. And answers to the following motion currently before the Finance Committee by Liberal MP Garth Turner:

"That this committee as soon as possible launch an inquiry into the unproven allegation by the Finance Minister that income trusts result in a loss of tax revenue to Ottawa, in light of reports that 70% of all recent trust purchasers are tax-exempt, while individual Canadian investors lost tens of billions of dollars, and therefore pay less tax, as a result of the government trust decision."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It`s a good thing that income trust investors are a hardy lot!!

We were originally promised that our income trusts were safe from Liberal mismanagement--all we could say was thank God for the Conservative Party of Canada--they saved us from those scum-dog Liberals who wanted to remove us from the capital markets.

Unfortunately , they had forgotten to tell us that that the Liberals were actually in the middle of something important when they were forced to back-track by the Conservative promise--they were in the midst of a consultation process which would have resulted in income trusts in all probability remaining a viable investment alternative.

With their promise , we voted like idiots for them since they appeared to be our only saviour.

Now what do we have.

We have a promise broken citing tax leakage that I guess they were too incompetent to know anything about prior to making their promise.

We have lost income trusts & their subsequent tax revenues & we have lost an important investment choice.

We have major lost personal income thanks to trust buy-outs & other trust needing to cut distributions to survive.

We have a country teetering on the brink of economic chaos thanks to a finance minister who whose only real vision in his former life was the back door of an ambulance.

We have a new Head of the Bank of Canada about to emerge that does not have this country or it`s investors in his best interest.

We are now pinning our economic hopes on a crew that relies on appointed panels to bamboozle the public into thinking that they are arriving at independent opinion.

Our only hope is to expose the Conservatives for what they are & to do that the opposition parties need to hammer at them with the folly of the Tax Fairness Plan--this is the one piece of legislation which has unrefutable evidence in place that denies it`s worth.

As the Tax fairness Plan goes , so do the Conservatives--debunk one & the other will fall.

Mike.

Tootrusting said...

The Income Trust debacle is the largest financial scandal in Canadian history.

In one giant misstep they blew more money for individual investors and more importantly for tax revenue than the Liberals managed in 13 years.

Think about it 1.4 billion in lost tax revenue in the first full year (2008) alone.

These guys can't manage anything!

Anonymous said...

As Brent states, to realize the utter economic incompetence of the Stultified Stevie CON Government, one need look no further than their ruinous income trust policy.

Unnecessarily and unconscionably wiping out $35 billion of Canadians' wealth and retirement savings, reducing their purchasing power, putting in jeopardy the future of the growing seniors population, putting into disrepute our capital markets, advancing wealthy foreign and private interests over those of average Canadians, all the while heaping shame on government decision making and accountability are just a few foregone consequences and examples of this measure.

Add to this Stevie's policy of reducing consumption taxes at the expense of (further) reductions in income taxes, a decision derided by every economist in the country, eliminating withholding taxes on certain payments to foreigners and Jumble Jimmy's ongoing inane attack on interest deductibility.

Not to mention the extreme loss of trust in a government that has broken more promises in little more than two years in office than probably any prior government or philandering spouse.

But then, I guess, such incompetence could be expected of Stevie's government, many members of which believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, that man and dinosaurs roamed the planet together and who probably subscribe to the Flat-Earth Society.