Harper's complete and utter economic hypocrisy

"Harper Vows to Loosen Foreign Investment Rules in Canada"

Well, this policy pronouncement is as hypocritical as they get.....and as politically inane as they come.

Harper and Flaherty argued that one of the reasons that they killed income trusts was because too many foreigners owned them and they only collected 15% withholding tax on the “distribution”. So Harper killed Canada’s best ever capital markets investment vehicle in order to do what? Have them acquired in LBOs with a mountain of debt. And to facilitate that outcome, they did what? Reduced the 15% withholding tax on “interest” to ZERO. Does the word hypocritical come to mind?

Now Harper is arguing that we must loosen foreign investment rules in Canada. The man is mad and reckless, or is he simply taking his instructions from the Boys at Teachers’ Providence Capital, Madison Dearborn and Merrill Lynch Capital Partners who simply want to punt BCE into a larger buying spare by eliminating foreign investment rules. So completes the entirety of my predictions of June 2007 as to what the ultimate sequence of events would be for BCE......and the rest of Canada.

Instead of flipping Canadian companies for profit, it’s time we flipped Harper out of office for a better tomorrow



Harper Vows to Loosen Foreign Investment Rules in Canada


By Theophilos Argitis and Alexandre Deslongchamps

Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) --