Harper's desperate attempt to blunt the trauma of his income trust betrayal

Stephen Harper has proven himself to be completely untrustworthy, but that doesn't make him completely stupid. He realizes that 40% of the people who actually show up to vote on election date are over the age of 60.

He also realizes that his income trust promise of the last election will become a major liability for him in the upcoming election, since the income trust promise soon became the income trust lie and the betrayal of a generation for seniors and those saving for retirement across the nation.

The tactic that Stephen Harper is obviously employing is to extol the virtues of the things he professes his government has done for seniors. This is why fliers like the one above are being sent at taxpayers expense to mailboxes across the nation.

Let's evaluate these claims to determine whether these policy measures come anywhere close to compensating seniors for the loss of an essential investment choice, whose sole purpose was to make them more captive to the investment wares of other. The income trust decision was solely motivated by a group pf persons who were intent on closing the lemonade stand across the street, so they could sell more of their own brand of lemonade.

The income trusts issue takes away essential choice in a protracted low interest rate market, all Canadians lose through the $1.4 billion in foregone annual taxes, and the 2.5 million Canadians who had placed their confidence in Mr Harper have lost $35 billion of their life savings and many are faced with losing up to half of their former annual income. So how does this loss stack up against the measures noted above:

2% GST Cut:

This is not a targeted benefit for seniors whatsoever. Those who most benefit from a GST cut are those who are in the consumption phase of their lives, not seniors. Most of the daily necessities of life are GST exempt, and therefore a GST cut does nothing to compensate these seniors for their loss of income. How many of the following essentials cited by Stephen Harper are subject to GST?

“Many seniors feel the government is putting their retirement at risk and have let Ottawa know. In a letter to the Finance Minister, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons said, "Seniors are actually enraged, frightened and panicked about potentially losing retirement savings that they count on for the essentials of daily living." Income trusts are popular with seniors because they provide regular payments that are used by many to cover the costs of groceries, heating bills and medicine. They also provide tax relief from a government that is addicted to taking too much money from their pockets and spending it without care, and very often without meaningful results.So one must ask, why is the government clamping down on the retirement savings of seniors and investors?”


Age Credit of $2,000:

Puhlease! What's the incremental after tax value of this to the average senior? $140? $240? This is another case of Stepehen Harper being a misleader


Pension Income Splitting:

Stephen Harper the Misleader strikes again. The operative word here is "pension". This income splitting is only available if you have qualifies income from a pension and a spouse. As such you have to be one of the 25% of Canadians with an employer pension and you have to have a spouse, and you have to have a spouse whose income is less than yours. The net effect is that only 14% of seniors will benefit from this measure.

As to whether this measure gives relief to those aggrieved by the income trust tax, you can be assured that it does not, since the very people who owned income trusts are those without pensions and this benefit only accrues to those with pensions, including the corrupt instigators of the income trust tax: Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty, Mark Carney and every other of the 280,000 federal civil servants.

Bottom line is that these fliers are virtual junk mail, and will do nothing to blunt the trauma of Harper's income trust betrayal. Harper lost the Quadra riding because of his income trust betrayal. Just listen to what the Conservative candidate had to say in the days immediately prior to the election about whether the government had done anything to hurt her chances of election:

Watch and listen here (close to the end of this CPAC interview)

Watch and listen here (close to the end of this CPAC interview)