Joy. Paul Desmarais takes a $764 million hit.

Today the groupies at the Globe and Mail have a real heartbreaker of an article about all the losses sustained by Canada’s so called captains of business. Here we learn that Paul Desmarais has taken a $764 million hit to his net worth. Maybe Paul Desmarais can have some understanding now how it feels to be at the receiving end of such a loss, except in Pual Desmarais’ case, his loss wasn’t caused by the act of Stephen Harper who was acting on the self interested advice of Canada’s captains of business.

No doubt, Jim Flaherty would comfort Paul Desmarais with wise (?) words to the effect that “It is isn’t a loss unless you sell”. That was the same nonsense argument that Flaherty gave to income trust investors, except in the case of income trust investors they don’t have the luxury of deciding when they sell, as the 2011 deadline for “selling” looms large and losses will be forced on these people by Stephen Harper whether they like it or not.

As for Paul Desmarais, he was the one (or was it Junior?) who put Harper up to the fraud known as double taxing income trusts, in the false belief that taxing income trusts once, but not acknowledging those taxes, makes for honest government and good public policy, so then let’s tax income trusts twice. Let’s face it Paul Desmarais was solely thinking of Paul Desmarais and selling more life annuities through Great West Life and London Life and not having to contend with the competition for seniors savings known as income trusts. Paul Desmarais was also the one whose Investors Group had salesman canvassing door to door in Whitby-Oshawa on behalf of Jim Flaherty in the recent election

It was almost two years ago that we learned from the Globe and Mail groupies that:

“Paul Desmarais Jr., the well-connected chairman of Power Corp. of Canada, even railed against trusts in a conversation with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a trip to Mexico, and told him he should act quickly to stop the raft of conversions, according to sources.”