"Markets dim D'Alessandro legacy"

Today’s Globe has an article entitled:"Markets dim D'Alessandro legacy"

No, I think for anyone who was paying attention, the lights went out on the so called D'Alessandro legacy, when he testified before the Parliamentary Finance Committee on Income Trusts by claiming:

"The notion and the implication that somehow the government on this [income trust] file is responding to initiatives that originated with corporations is not based on reality."

What utter nonsense and a patent absurdity. What was D’Alessandro hoping to achieve with such a statement? No doubt he was seeking to establish a public record that provided those involved with impunity from the fallout of the intense lobbying by Corporate Canada to kill income trusts, that was designed to benefit life insurance companies, at a cost to average Canadians of $35 billion in their life savings. This was a simple exercise in denial. Denial based on an attempt to establish a different version of "reality" in the minds of Canada’s law makers, our elected representatives.

If the Harper government wasn't acting on initiatives that originated with corporations, then whose initiative were they acting on? Where did all the fear-mongering come from if not the corporations who feared the discipline that would be imposed on them by the income trust model? Whose version of "reality" are we to believe? The concoction put forward by D'Alessandro before Parliament or this contemporaneous account in the November 2, 2006 Globe and Mail article entitled: “Income-trust crackdown: The inside story”.

“High-profile directors and CEOs, meanwhile, had approached Mr. Flaherty personally to express their concerns: Many felt they were being pressed into trusts because of their duty to maximize shareholder value, despite their misgivings about the structure. 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.”

It’s kind of hard for Dominic D’Alessandro to argue that “High-profile directors and CEOs, meanwhile, had approached Mr. Flaherty” doesn’t constitute “the government responding to initiatives that originated with corporations”, wouldn’t you say?

Surely the supposed well plugged-in Dominic D’Alessandro had some inkling that corporations were engaged in the very activity that he was denying took place before Parliament? Dominic’s testimony before Parliament is not credible, after all, both he and Paul Desmarais Jr. sit on two organizations together. Both are one of Harper’s 10 hand picked members of North American Competitiveness Council. Both are Vice Chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. Both run insurance companies.

No, D'Alessandro’s true legacy was established on February 1, 2007 when he attempted to foster his own notion that:

“The notion and the implication that somehow the government on this [income trust] file is responding to initiatives that originated with corporations is not based on reality."



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