Congratulations to Caldwell Securities, who are against “The Sellout of Corporate Canada”

Click on image to enlarge.

To: tcaldwell@caldwellsecurities.com
cc: Bay Street, Fleet Street, Ottawa

When it rains, it pours.

For all of you who may not have seen today’s ad by Caldwell Securities, I refer you to the back cover of today’s Globe and Mail’s main section, regarding “The Sellout of Corporate Canada”

I applaud Caldwell Securities for speaking on this issue in such a clear and public manner. As the President of CAITI (caiti.info) I share these same concerns as evidenced by our advocacy over the last 2.5 years and as evidenced by full page ads of our own such as the one attached that ran in the Toronto Star and Calgary Herald entitled Jim Flaherty’s Great Canadian Giveaway Sale as well as the ABC’s of BCE, to name but two such CAITI advocacy ads, both of which can be clicked on for your viewing pleasure, and total dismay in terms of public policy of the Stephen Harper government, by edict and concealment as opposed to by public consultation and empirical transparency and accountability.

I think the income trust giveaway sale was actually a phony “scratch and dent sale” in which the obvious parties were going to benefit from the “tax arbitrage” handed to them under the false arguments of “tax leakage” and “ponzi schemes”. Are Canadians really that gullible and passive to accept patent nonsense as the substitute for empirical evidence?

Surely those who manage other people’s life savings aren’t so passive and gullible. I am most pleased to see that Caldwell Securities is NOT passive on the obvious takeover of Canada by foreign interests and the role played by the obvious disparities in our tax code, many created by this government itself, such as the income trust tax, the restrictions on the growth of income trusts if publicly held by Canadians and the elimination of withholding tax on leveraged buyout loans, whose only purpose is to strip pretax earnings out of Canada. Stephen Harper has turnd Canada into a cleptocracy, from what previously was a democracy with, generally, the interests of all Canadians in mind, rather than the privileged few.

Interesting that Caldwell, like CAITI, is speaking from the perspective of INVESTORS and not CAPITAL USERS. Meanwhile the capital users are represented in Ottawa by whom? You got it.....self interested Corporate Managers with groovy titles like CEO and Director, the very people who got Ottawa to sabotage the only vehicle that gave Canadian companies a natural immunity from foreign takeover. Even Ottawa knew that to be the case, before they let Jim Flaherty and his Somali pirates have their way with Canada’s tax code that saw income trusts double taxed in RRSPs but not in the hands of others. This was premeditated piracy and has turned Canada into a cleptocracy if it is allowed to stand. See Steven Chase article entitled “ “Trust tax linked to private equity buyouts” on June 13, 2007.

Ottawa has to STOP taking advice from self serving corporate managers who profess to speak on behalf of the business owners who pay their salaries and lucrative bonuses and stock option and stop pretending to speak about what’s best for the country.
That reminds me of the expression of “What’s good for General Motors, is good for the United States”. Look where that mentality got the United States.....not to mention GM.

When I was the Executive Managing Director of Equity Capital Markets at BMO Capital a group of my colleagues made a huge pitch to Power Corporation to show them ways in which they could employ the trust model to their benefit. Usually after the monumental work that goes into such a pitche, you receive a lot of feedback. In that instance, the only feedback that was provided by the CEO of Power Financial was “Income trusts are bad for Canada”.

Well speak for yourself. What’s bad for Canada is Directors and CEOs who go to Ottawa to sabotage the very thing that they know their owners want, as reported by the Globe on November 2, 2006:

“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.”

That’s Stephen Harper’s idea of public consultation...squeaky wheels with special access.

These corporate managers are very narrowly focused and are generally driven by greed. Since when did a corporate manager not like a foreign takeover of the company he managed? Really? So of course the advice that corporate managers lay on Ottawa, such as the advice of Michael Sabia or Dominic D’Alessandro or Paul Desmarais Jr, or Rick George of Suncor, on income trusts will be TOTALLY SELF SERVING. Even failed takeovers get rewarded under this corporate regime as witnessed by the $21 million “consolation prize” handed to Michael Sabia. These people motives of greed and vaiity, and often failed attempts at “empire building” are obvious, but what’s not obvious is the answer to the question:

Why are politicians such Pollyanna pansies? Are they too naive and inexperienced in the ways of Bay Street or too vain not to realize they are being gamed? Please wake up and start listening to the CAPITAL PROVIDERS who are the VOTING TAXPAYERS after all, as a group we OWN these COMPANIES that these corporate managers, cum saboteurs of tax policy, profess to represent.

In the Caldwell ad, the point is made: “Current worldwide economic challenges now present great opportunities for Canada....Government policies and taxation regimes should also be re-examined with this goal in mind...The investment merits of thinking bigger are clear.”

I have no idea where Caldwell Securities is coming from on tax policy, however my point has BEEN CLEAR and CONSISTENT from the OUTSET and supported by EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE and FACTS....Prove the income trust case...or drop the tax, as thoughtfully REITERATED by Diane Francis on the weekend and as highlighted as a concern with yesterday’s takeover of Eveready by US Clean Harbors Inc. for all the reasons described in the Department of Finance memo reported on by Steve Chase (above) and enunciated here:

Income trust fiasco should be reversed

Why the income trust issue REFUSES to go away...

No income, no trust