CBC has flushed income trust taxpayers down their toilet

I come from that part of society, that if you say that you are going to do something a certain way, then you stick to it.

But do not allow yourself or other taxpaying Canadians to be so easily gamed by those who seek to manipulate public opinion, by voting here

The CBC, Canada’s taxpayer funded national broadcaster, held forth on The National, that they were going to invite questions from the public to be put to politicians for some hard answers. Questions submitted would be put through a two stage filter, and two rounds of voting by viewers.

The first stage would set the basis on which questions would advance to the second stage, with both stages open to public voting.

There were over 200 questions submitted to the first round. After the voting had closed, 5 of the top 5 questions and 7 of the top 10 questions were on the question of income trusts, and specifically Stephen Harper’s lie about tax leakage,

It is at this point that the CBC decided that they were going to supress this news story about income trusts, YET AGAIN, and they chose to do so by, denying the outcome of the first round, by concocting a question of their own making, and advanced that question to the second stage. That question makes no reference to income trusts. That question makes no reference to tax leakage. That question makes no mention of the democracy issue that is implicit in Canadians’ concerns over this matter. Instead that question is was morphed into a question that, instead of dealing with the 75% of Canadians without pensions ( who are the people who desperately need to preserve income trusts) it is question that deals with the 25% of Canadians who have pensions.

It was selected as the top question in the second stage of voting referred to above. But that is not the point. Here’s the point. Having selected a surrogate type question that completely evades what it was that CBC’s viewers were seeking an answer to, the CBC has now flushed that entire round of voting down the sewers of the CBC. Gone are the 1350 votes for question number one, the 564 votes for question two, etc.

So let me guess, now that the CBC will have absolved itself of having already dealt (ha ha) with the pension issue in week one, it will be precluded from consideration in week two? Notwithstanding that possibility I have reposted my question from week one and will continue to do so in the weeks ahead until I get the CBC to do what it said it would do both explicitly, and implicitly. You can vote for my question here: here

Could someone please tell me how (1) below, is an even remotely reasonable facsimile of (2) below. I would like to know who at the CBC does.

(1) Mr. Prime Minister:

During the 2006 Election you promised that you would NEVER raid seniors nest eggs by taxing income trusts. Nine months later you did that exact thing arguing that "circumstances had changed" and that, suddenly, income trusts caused tax leakage. The only proof of tax leakage that you provided Canadians for your tax leakage argument was 18 pages of blacked out documents. How does the use of blacked out documents achieve the level of transparency and accountability that your government also promised to Canadians? Why did you subsequently demand these documents be returned to you, resulting in zero transparency? What is your government trying to hide? Meanwhile reputable private sector groups like BMO Capital Markets and PricewaterhouseCoopers are saying that there is no tax leakage from income trusts, and therefore, your policy actions are WITHOUT justification.

When will your government admit to Canadians that they were misled into believing that you would never tax income trusts in exactly the same way that you are attempting to mislead them on your current hoax about tax leakage?

When will your government take off its veil of blacked out documents and release the truth about tax leakage in order that Canadians can better understand why they lost $35 billion of their retirement savings and the loss of an essential investment vehicle for retirement income for the 75% of Canadians, unlike you, who are without pensions, at a time of pension crises?

Supplemental Question: Could the Prime Minister please comment on the rash of foreign takeovers of income trusts like the $4 billion takeover of Harvest Energy Trust by state-owned Korean National Oil Company or the $5 billion takeover of Prime West Energy Income Trust by state owned Abu Dhabi Energy, to name just 2 of the 51 takeovers to date caused solely by your policy and tell Canadians how much tax revenue is being lost by ALL Canadian taxpayers as a result? Are the estimates by Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors/Taxpayers of an annual tax loss of $1.2 billion a year, rising to as much as $7.5 billion if all the trusts succumb to takeover, accurate?

Brent FullardPresident and CEO
Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors/Taxpayers
www.caiti.info

647 505-2224 (cell)

(2) What will government do to protect the employees, pensioners and disabled workers who may be left without protection?