Is Deborah Yedlin also now covering UFO sightings for the Calgary Herald?

Bruce:

That's a pretty pathetic and professionally remiss comment you got back from Deborah Yedlin in response to the email of mine you forwarded to her entitled: " Harper lies on tax leakage must be exposed NOW, otherwise this is not a democracy, but rather a cleptocracy".

What kind of response is: " PLEASE TAKE ME OFF YOUR DISTRIBUTION LIST. YOUR EMAILS ARE CLOGGING MY MAILBOX"

More insight can be gleaned from the response she gave to your fellow Calgarian, Clint, when she said:"Clearly you are all on a campaign - emailing the journalist community the same article over and over again and clogging our mailboxes. Please tell your group to stop..."

I have no idea what she means by "group" or "campaign" except to suggest that she obviously has little time for the readers of the Calgary Herald and has even less regard for reporting the falsehood that tax leakage represents.

I am sorry to say that Deborah Yedlin is not exhibiting the journalistic stature of a Diane Francis, who speaks the truth, reports the truth and lets the chips fall where they may. I thought Westerners viewed themselves as freedom loving champions of all things true and honest, and meanwhile Deborah Yedlin is allowing herself to be scooped by that "Easterner" Diane Francis on an issue that profoundly affects the oil patch, which presumably is Deborah Yedlin's beat.

Keep in mind, this trust tax divides the oil parch into the 20% that are in the form of trusts (and who pay the disproportionate bulk of all the Oil Patch’s taxes) and the 80% who are not. Obviously, Deborah Yedlin has allowed herself to be influenced by the 80%, and to the detriment of the 20%, and unlike Diane Francis has no interest in reporting the TRUTH, for fear that the chips WILL fall where they may. Or so Deborah’s brush off would certainly suggest?

The 80% who benefit are the ones who are positioned to exploit and act in a predatory manner to extract the economic gains that have been handed to them by Stephen Harper's tax arbitrage. Deborah Yedlin worked in corporate finance at Burns Fry, so she should know what a tax arbitrage is. This tax arbitrage is the thing that allowed Abu Dhabi to acquire Prime West Energy on the cheap, and allowed Li Ka Shing to buy TransAlta Power on the cheap. The lack of proof for tax leakage, that came to justify (?) this policy of tax arbitrage has served to corrupt our democracy and these buyers like Abu Dhabi and Li Ka Shing are simply picking up their winnings in Canada's new Cleptocracy under Stephen Harper. Joe blow investor is being raped and pillaged by middle eastern oild sheiks and Hong Kong billionaires, and ALL Canadians will pick up the tab, by losing $7.5 billion in annual tax revenue.

And to think, Deborah Yedlin has no time for such a story and you are clogging her email box. I think her synapses are clogged as well perhaps? Or maybe Deborah Yedln is in cahoots with this whole income trust tax that allows the big fish to acquire the little fish in the oil patch.....on the cheap. You might want to check and see if Deborah Yedlin has any affiliation, directly or through her husband, who I believe is a banker in the oil patch with the likes of majors such as Suncor, whose CEO Rick George had this insightful admission to make, when visiting with US investors in New York. Funny, that you never hear him saying this in Canada, at least outside of the Boardroom of Suncor or the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, whose various senior members put Harper up to his fraudulent trust tax that was “sold” to Canadians on the basis of the fraud known as tax leakage:

"We will be looking at acquisitions," George said, "Because of changes in the income trust model in Canada, finally after a decade of being unable to compete for assets ... we can look at purchases of natural gas properties." September 5, 2007

Or perhaps there are two Deborah Yedlins covering the oil patch in Calgary?

If so, what happened to this one who reported on the truth and wasn't prepared to accept the bogus and totally debunked conspiracy theory known as tax leakage for granted?

Maybe she moved to Roswell to cover UFO sightings for the Calgary Herald after her insights and pursuit of the truth about tax leakage was too hot to handle for the grossly conflicted Globe and Mail, now known as the facile and vapid Globe and Mail:

Taking the trust case to the Hill
Globe and Mail
January 24, 2007

DEBORAH YEDLIN

CALGARY -- There's no question that energy trusts have had an ugly time of it the past few months. The fourth quarter of 2006 was looking soft enough before Finance Minister Jim Flaherty gave it a roundhouse punch that sent the sector into the ropes.

Today, almost three months since he announced trusts would be taxed like corporations, virtually eliminating their appeal for investors, things have only gotten worse.

Since the beginning of the year, oil prices have fallen and the S&P/TSX energy trust index has lost almost 5 per cent, and last week, the inevitable happened: Energy trusts began slashing distributions. So far, the list of those trusts has six names, but as fourth-quarter numbers start to roll out, it's only going to get longer.

The only good news in the mess is that parliamentary hearings will be held, allowing trusts to present their case against the government's argument for making the changes.

As trusts began to prepare for their appearance before the finance committee, a few folks in Calgary recently requested the federal government's study on which the trust tax decision was based. It was hoped the document would shed some light on the numbers used and conclusions reached.

But when it arrived, the recipients were very disappointed to find the numbers blanked out. The seven pages that did contain information came from a statistical summary of income and business trusts supplied by CIBC World Markets.

Needless to say, this has provoked cries of foul through the trust sector.

"We have shown them everything and all we get is an incomplete document," said one industry player who is looking forward to getting the trusts' case, complete with numbers, in the public eye.

No matter the sector, says Gordon Tait, a managing director with BMO Nesbitt Burns, the issue is about ensuring a level playing field for all corporations.

He points out that the legislation is going to affect publicly traded trusts, but not those that are privately held. We could see a repeat of the late 1980s when leveraged buyouts taking companies private ruled the corporate world.

In the case of the oil patch, the combination of fat private equity funds, low interest rates, softened commodity prices and dropping market valuations is making the possibility of energy trusts becoming privately held very real.

If this is what happens, the small retail investor is unlikely to have the ability to participate directly.

Another issue that will be hotly debated during the hearings is the notion of tax leakage -- that because of the trust structure, companies aren't paying their fair share of taxes and the government is missing out on revenue.

One of the key problems in the government's analysis, says Brent Fullard, who is heading up the recently formed Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors, is that it does not account for the taxes paid when investors pull trust payouts out of their retirement investment accounts -- which is where about one-third of the units reside.

"When those numbers are factored in, there is no leakage," he says.

The reality is there isn't a company -- trust or not, in the energy sector or a manufacturing entity -- that pays the statutory corporate rate because there are lawyers and tax accountants to make sure a company takes advantage of every possible deduction.

An analysis completed by Mr. Tait shows clearly that energy companies that converted to trusts generated more in taxes than they did as corporations. In his example, five intermediate-sized energy companies paid $26-million in taxes before conversion; after becoming trusts, the unitholders paid out $135-million to the government.

While the holding of parliamentary hearings is encouraging because those affected will finally have an opportunity to be heard in a public forum and challenge the government's analysis, the question remains whether it will be enough for Ottawa to moderate its stance and consider not only a longer time horizon for the tax implementation but also a measure of differentiation among the various industries represented. Much depends, it seems, on the document with the missing numbers.

dyedlin@globeandmail.com