The Toronto Star has itself to thank for putting " too many seniors' income security at stake"

With the exception of a handful of its practitioners, I disdain the Canadian press. Especially the hypocritical and sanctimonious Canadian press and their feigned concern about seniors. None more than the Toronto Star whose Editorial Board I met with on April 12, 2007 to discuss how seniors income security was being put at stake by the Star's blind support of Harper’s income trust tax. Now we have the sanctimonious and hypocritical Toronto Star maligning Harper for that very thing, putting senior’s income at stake.

Hello? What action of the Harper government has been most responsible for “too many seniors' income security being at stake.", if not Harper's income trust tax?

The worst part about my meeting with the Toronto Star editorial board was when they attempted to defend Harper’s use of 18 pages of blacked out documents as his “proof” (ahem) of tax leakage. Bob Hepburn demanded that I explain to them why it was that Harper would have implemented this tax. I told him that was his job to figure out as a reporter. At that point Hepburn said the meeting would end unless I gave my explanation, which I said I would only do so reluctantly. I was half way through explaining how the life insurance companies like Manulife and Power Financial were the ones who lobbied for this tax in order to sell more of their competing products. Bob Hepburn then interupted me with the declaration that this explanation was just some “conspiracy theory”, to which I retorted, “no the conspiracy theory is the one that is being aggressively advanced in your paper, namely the totally bogus conspiracy theory that income trusts cause tax leakage.”

The Toronto Star’s self centered commercial reasons for killing income trusts is obvious to anyone with knowledge of the Toronto Star. This motive has everything to do with the Star’s non voting share structure and preserving their Atkinson Principles, but has nothing to do with preserving Principle Principles or genuine concern over too many seniors income security being at stake.

Pox on the Toronto Star and its crocodile tears over an outcome it was instrumental in bringing about......impoverishing seniors with its support of Harper’s lies about income trusts

EDITORIAL
PM's `political games' 
Toronto Star

Mar 11, 2009 04:30 AM
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It is a little rich for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to accuse the opposition parties of playing "political games" while the nation struggles with an economic crisis, as he did yesterday.

After all, Harper is Ottawa's consummate political games player. He is the one who cooked up excuses to call an early election last October, who introduced a mini-budget last November that was more about damaging his political foes than fixing the economy, and who played the "separatist" card when the opposition parties tried to replace his government with their own coalition last December.

Yet in his speech in Brampton yesterday, he accused the opposition of obstructing the government's economic stimulus package. "These measures are simply too important to risk being delayed by an opposition determined to play politics," said Harper. "Too many jobs, too many families' mortgage payments, and too many seniors' income security are at stake."

That would be a compelling argument if it were true. But the opposition parties are not holding up the government's package. The budget has already been passed by the House of Commons and is now before the Senate, which intends to wrap up its hearings by the end of March.

As for the spending estimates, to which Harper specifically referred in his speech ("pass the estimates"), they have not been tabled yet. It is true that the Liberals have threatened to vote against the estimates unless the government provides some accounting of how infrastructure money will be distributed. But that does not seem an unreasonable request in a minority Parliament. So just who is playing political games?