CBC caves to political pressure?

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CBC went through the pretense of allowing Canadians to pose a question of their own on new segment entitled “Question Period” that was announced just after Parliament had been prorogued.

In week one of that exercise, 7 of the top 10 questions as selected by viewers were questions about Harper’s false assertion about tax leakage. These questions garnered over 85% of the votes cast. My question below was the number one question of the over 200 questions submitted and received over 2400 votes for and 20 against

Despite the overwhelming viewer response, the CBC arbitrarily went with a question about Nortel pensions.

In week two of this exercise, 39 of the top 40 questions were about Harper’s tax leakage lie and/or why did the CBC suppress the question about tax leakage and income trusts in week one. These questions garnered over 95% of the viewers voting support

The CBC finally relented and put up a watered down question about income trusts as one of 5 questions to be selected for week 2. Voting was to have been open until midnight on February 1, 2010. Instead the CBC left the voting open for another 8 days hoping (perhaps) that the income trust questions would get less votes than the 75% of support it had received at that point in time I have screen shots of the CBC website to prove this 75% vote support. One such shot is attached.

Now the question and the entire site has disappeared from CBC’s website. The URL that links to the CBC site to vote now reads:

“Sorry, we can't find the page you requested.”

That URL is: http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/2010/01/your-question-period-week-2-what-should-cbc-news-ask-our-politicians.html

This has been the case for over 24 hours now.

Here was the winning question that had garnered 75% of viewers support at the last time that the poll was available on-line on the morning of February 10, 2010 “What was the economic analysis used by the government to justify the taxation of income trusts”.

This was derived from this top rated question that had attracted over 2200 “for” votes and 23 “against” votes:

Question: Brent Fullard wrote:

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 Fullard
(Volunteer) President and CEO
Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors/Taxpayers
www.caiti.info
647 505-2224 (cell)