My Question for CBC's Question Period

In light of Stephen Harper’s prorogation of Parliament, CBC’s The National is asking Canadians to submit questions to them for a new segment of their show starting next week. Questions that you would ask the Prime Minister if you were an MP and Parliament were in session.

Here is my submission, If you agree with my submission please go to the link at the bottom of this page and vote for it. Thank you in advance. We all need to know the answer to this question, so we can all go about our normal lives, comfortable in the knowledge that Parliament works, in one guise (ie CBC), if not the another:

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 a year, valid or invalid? Please answer this question with hard evidence and analysis, rather than blacked out obfuscations.

Please vote HERE. for my question that was posted: 2010/01/07 at 10:06 PM ET