Toronto Star completely blows its own credibility

Where's the Star's proof of anything?

I met with the Toronto Star Editorial Board in April 2007

The Star’s editorial board was (to my complete and utter amazement) actually supporting the Harper government’s use of 18 pages of blacked out documents as "proof" of tax leakage....and these document's subsequent recall. Huh?

This is easily explained when you realize that the Toronto Star's editorial board is simply advancing the corporate interests of Torstar Inc. as in the case of this pathetic piece of editorial nonsense in today’s paper entitled “Credibility and trusts”

Unfortunately it is the Star’s credibility that is on the line here, not the Liberal Party’s.

The Toronto Star wants to save his own self interests known as the Atkinson Principles, which provide the Star’s editors with “editorial freedom”, that are only assured to him under the corporate abuse known as Voting/Non voting share structure of Torstar Inc.

Something that the Toronto Star would have to forego if their declining newspaper empire were to convert to a trust. Again, I ask the question: What price editorial freedom? The Toronto Star’s position on this issue is a disgrace and wholly unsupportable by the facts.....something that Toronto Star has no grasp of, or interest in.

Yesterday the Star was condemning Harper for his oppressive right wing agenda. .....today the Star is applauding them and condoning them by supporting Harper’s destruction of senior’s nest eggs and sovereignty over Canadian businesses..

Perhaps the Star's editorial board can explain how all the professed “evils” of trusts are corrected by the mere act of domestic pension plans and foreign private equity buying them......and not paying the 31.5% tax?.......and causing REAL Tax leakage of $2 billion a year to date....soon to become $7 billion a year.

Where’s the Star’s proof of anything? Where’s the Star’s proof of their alleged $1 billion leakage from trusts? Does the Star not know what actually ended up happening with BCE? Is the Star even a part of this galaxy of ours?

Toronto Star. You have proven nothing, except that you are totally and commercially compromised.......and devoid of facts and logic.


EDITORIAL
Credibility and trusts


Sep 26, 2008 04:30 AM
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Income trusts are all about trust.

So said the Liberals as they unveiled their election platform this week: they once again condemned the Conservatives for breaking their promise in the last campaign to leave this controversial tax loophole untouched.

Canada's nearly 250 income trusts had previously been spared any corporate tax, costing the treasury hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to the finance department. Because income trusts enjoyed an unfair advantage over conventional taxpaying companies, some of Canada's biggest corporations were planning to convert to trust status. A stampede of banks and conglomerates, notably BCE, could have pushed the tax leakage above $1 billion.

Mindful of the strong case made by the finance department, the governing Liberals were on the verge of closing that loophole before the last election, but stalled for time. It fell to the victorious Conservatives to follow through: They imposed a 31.5 per cent tax to take effect in 2011, effectively stopping the trusts in their tracks. So far, 60 trusts have converted back into corporations.

Now, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is promising to restore the tax advantage of trusts by replacing the Conservative tax with a much smaller 10 per cent levy that would be refundable to Canadian residents. It is a thinly disguised effort win favour among seniors, many of whom had invested in income trusts because of their high cash payouts and saw the value of their holdings decline in the aftermath of the Harper government's move.

Furthermore, the Liberals are implicitly acknowledging that income trusts are problematic by proposing a moratorium on the formation of any new ones.

With this promise, the Liberals are diluting their own credibility.