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Today’s news: FBI investigates mortgage fraud in US banking crisis.
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Flaherty's fraud: Click here
Posted by
Fillibluster
at
8:20 AM
As you well know, the ‘income trust thing’ has grown beyond the question of whether fair taxes are paid on income from trusts. It’s become a giant dirty snowball, and as it rolls forward it accumulates more and more bulk. There are so many unanswered questions. Let's list a few and invite our "Accountable" government and our free press to provide some much-needed answers.
It is said “Trusts are inefficient use of capital. Why?” Two related questions are ‘Whose money is it, anyway?’, and ‘Do Canadian investors have a free and efficient market?’
How can information that is already in the public domain at SEDAR make for a state secret? How could such information be used to harm the Canadian national interest? And who would cause the harm?
Why won’t the Canadian media investigate the falsehoods and misrepresentations told by the Minister of Finance to a committee of Parliament? Was the Minister in contempt of Parliament?
Why won’t the Canadian media report (a) government tax revenues gained from BCE in 2006 when BCE was a corporation to (b) government tax revenues that would be gained in 2007 from BCE, if BCE had been allowed to proceed to a trust, and (c) government tax revenues that will be gained in 2007 from BCE, when BCE ownership has been carved up as 45% foreign ownership and 55% large Canadian pension fund ownership?
3 comments:
Jimmy in cuffs---wouldn`t that be a sight.
People from Ontario might just assume he was homeless.
Dr Mike Popovich.
Doesn't someone have to make a request to the RCMP to investigate?
'Keep them out!' Mounties stop media from asking Tory questions
RCMP being used by Conservatives for political purposes
The Canadian Press
September 24, 2008 (EDIT)
OTTAWA — It's a blurry, democratically dangerous no-man's-land that the Conservative government and RCMP spokespeople do not like to publicly explore.
The line between legitimate RCMP security duties and the media management of a politically sensitive Prime Minister's Office appeared to be scuffed once again this week on the election trail.
Mounties protecting Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a campaign event in Surrey, B.C. were ordered Tuesday evening to stop reporters from approaching a high-profile Tory candidate.
"Keep them out," Harper aide Ray Novak shouted at the RCMP security detail as journalists approached Dona Cadman.
CTV's Rosemary Thompson was literally yanked aside by one Mountie as she approached the retreating group - which did not include the prime minister.
Cadman, a Conservative candidate, is famous for sparking bribery allegations against her party by telling a journalist last year that her dying husband, former Reform and Independent MP Chuck Cadman, claimed to have been offered a million-dollar insurance policy to change his vote in Parliament.
It's an unresolved storyline the Conservatives don't want pursued during an election campaign.
The incident followed an earlier episode in the campaign's first week when the RCMP was employed to thwart a CTV camera crew in St. Eustache, Que., on the day the Tories suspended campaign spokesman Ryan Sparrow.
"I want that camera out of there," Harper spokeswoman Carolyn Stewart Olsen told a Mountie, who somewhat apologetically obliged.
But is it within the RCMP's mandate to stop the media from doing its job?
In fact, PMO officials knew reporters wanted to speak to Cadman and immediately directed her toward an exit. They then ordered the RCMP detail to stop the trailing media.
Vancouver Conservative James Moore pleaded ignorance about the details of Tuesday evening's encounter.
Last year, the Prime Minister's Office ordered the RCMP to evict reporters from a hotel lobby in Charlottetown where they had gathered to interview Tory MPs as they emerged from a caucus retreat.
A comment by a Mountie to reporters made it crystal clear the issue was not security, but rather 'communications strategy.'
Several officers matter-of-factly said they were acting on orders from the PMO - although the official RCMP line, delivered after the incident became a major media story, was that hotel management sought the eviction.
Many on Parliament Hill believe the PMO's use of RCMP security to thwart reporters has steadily increased under a Harper government that is obsessed with communications control. Stories abound, for instance, of security officers stopping camera cut-away shots from non-PMO-approved positions.
Some have concluded that the Mounties have "succumbed to government influence and intrusion in an area where such influence and intrusion is inappropriate."
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