Jack Layton calls Diane Francis for her opinion

See Diane’s blog here.

In the link above Diane blogs about a phone call she received from Jack Layton who was seeking her thoughts on the economic challenges of the day. Here is my comment for Diane:

Diane:

Did you inform Jack Layton that his BLIND SUPPORT of Harper's income trust tax has caused immense damage:

(1) to Canada's tax base, from the over $108 billion of trust related takeovers causing $1.4 billion a year in lost taxes?

(2) resulted in creating a two tiered pension system in Canada where the 25% with pensions get to own income trusts free of the 31.5% tax and the other 75 do not?

(3) favoured foreign investors to Canadians investors, by allowing foreign investors to strip all the earnings of Canadians companies out of the country via interest payments and tax sheltered earnings?

(4) introduced purely unnecessary debt to be imposed on Canadian businesses like BCE for no reason other than to dodge taxes and implement games of financial engineering....causing BCE to fire 2500 workers, destroy their credit rating, rendering the whole industry less cost competitive and resulting in higher costs to the consumer?

(5) put the NDP in bed with the life insurance companies like Manulife, who lobbied the Harper government to kill income trusts so they could sell more synthetic junk food investments like variable rate annuities, whose issuance does nothing to invest in the real economy and whose issuance and lack of hedging has now brought the house of Manulife into its current precarious financial position?

(6) permitted major tax legislation to be introduced without a scintilla of evidence for its underlying policy assumption that income trusts cause tax leakage. If the government wants to hold forth quantitative arguments then it damn well better be willing to prove them, apart from issuing 18 pages of blacked out documents?

(7) resulted in Canadians losing $35 billion of their life savings?

(8) destroyed an essential investment vehicle?

(9) destroyed Canada's capital markets and the IPO market? Ruined our capital market’s reputation in the eyes of foreign investors?

(10) knee capped Canada's junior oil and gas industry and prompted a major downturn in drill rig activity?

(11) placed Canadian capital markets at a competitive disadvantage to the US, whose issuers and investors can issue/own income trust equivalents known as Master Limited Partnerships

Jack Layton needs to expose the lies coming out of the Department of Finance on which this policy was foisted onto Canadians by the likes of Mark Carney on behalf of his former clientele at Goldman Sachs. Its not too late for Jack Layton to look smart on this file and expose Stephen Harper's $35 billion fraud?

Did you ask Jack Layton to "prove the case or drop the tax"?