Hey Ian Brodie, is this EPIC BETRAYAL enough for you?

Obviously Ian Brodie is a smug, duplicitous, self-righteous person with no regard for the lives of average Canadians and the importance of integrity in high office or the fulfillment of promises made.

Evidently Ian Brodie also has no regard for the need to justify the breaking of solemn promises either. If that weren’t the case then Ian Brodie wouldn’t have felt that 18 pages of blacked out documents would have sufficed as the evidence for breakingStephen Harper’s widely touted 2006 election promise that he “would never tax income trusts”. After all, income trusts are fully taxable in the hands of their owners at anaverage rate of 35%. Why would they need to be double taxes at an additional 31.5%? Where’s the proof of tax leakage?

As Diane Francis so succinctly argued: “Prove the case or drop the tax.”

Instead, here was Ian Brodie’s smug, duplicitous and disingenuous reply to the loss of $35 billion in life savings by Canadian and the breaking of a promise that million made reliance on. Detrimental reliance that is:

"This would be a more compelling analysis if the government weren’t already in the midst of a steady program of cutting tax rates, including corporate taxes, across the board. The alternative to breaking the election promise and taxing trusts was to abandon all other tax cut plans as the corporate tax base quickly disappeared. Instead, Flaherty acted quickly, in the face of rapidly changing conditions, to break the trusts promise and save the rest of the government’s promises. Not a pretty choice, to be sure, but hardly an epic
betrayal either."

Ian Brodie
Chief of Staff / Chef de cabinet
Office of the Prime Minister / Cabinet du Premier ministre
Ottawa, Canada, K1A 0A2
Office / bureau : 613.992.4211
Email / courriel : ibrodie@pmo-cpm.gc.ca


So now we learn this same Ian Brodie, this same smug disingenuous back room operative is at the CENTRE of a massive BETRYAL of Canada’s relationship with the United States and deliberate efforts by the Harper government to undermine the campaign prospect of Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama. The question I have for Ian Brodie is a simple one.

Is this EPIC BETRAYAL enough for you?

PM's top aide set off storm with Obama NAFTA leak
Source of initial tip revealed after Harper vows to investigate 'unacceptable' act

CAMPBELL CLARK
Globe and Mail
March 6, 2008

OTTAWA — The leak of a confidential diplomatic discussion that rocked the U.S. presidential campaign began with an offhand remark to journalists from the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Ian Brodie.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed yesterday to use whatever investigative means necessary to find the source of leaks that, he said, were "unfair" to U.S. Democratic candidate Barack Obama and may have been illegal — although opposition leaders insisted the Conservatives cannot be trusted to investigate political players on their own team.

But the story that reverberated through the U.S. presidential campaign began as a terse, almost throwaway remark that Mr. Brodie made to journalists from CTV, according to people familiar with the events.

Mr. Brodie, during the media lockup for the Feb. 26 budget, stopped to chat with several journalists, and was surrounded by a group from CTV............more