The NDP's coalition with the Conservatives to force feed Manulife's Income Plus to Canadians

The NDP’s blind support of Flaherty’s income trust tax and the visible swooning that took place when the NDP’s Finance Critic got to rub shoulders with Manulife’s CEO at the Public Hearings on Income Trusts, made it pretty clear who the NDP had made their bed with, namely the life insurance companies and not average Canadians.

At stake was billions in Canadians’ retirement assets that groups like Manulife wanted to impose an annual management fee of 3.5% a year on. Sweet business if you can swing it. Who better to swing it that those in government. All that was required was a Coalition between the CONs and the NDP, and competing investment products (read: income trusts) would be cleared from the deck.

So who actually benefited from this hyper- activity that ensued with the sales of Income Plus by Manulife? Certainly not Manulife,, since they were selling investors nothing more than naked bets that weren’t being properly hedged, in Manulife’s irrational desire to put profit ahead of risk mitigation.

I can think of no more poignant words to describe this Income Plus product, than those of Ron Forth that were printed in the Financial Post on October 3, 2007 in an article by Jonathan Chevreau and which were presented in a way that attempted to ridicule Ron Forth. Who looks more ridiculous today? Jonathan Chevreau? Ron Forth? Manulife? Or the NDP?......assuming being right counts for anything in this country called Canada?

That poignant comment, that was intended to malign, read:

“Ron Forth of Primewest Energy issued a mass e-mail denouncing Income Plus and its ilk as "financial junk food -- Manulife couldn't make any money if people just went off and invested in trusts," Forth raged. "So, the public must be fed an unhealthy diet of processed, synthetic, financial 'product' instead of the natural healthy diet of pure cashflow from vibrant business.

A critic of Manulife is the Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors, which issued a snarky analysis that speculated Manulife "hates" income trusts because they "out-compete" life annuities.”