Today we have competing views on the RRSP from Jack Mintz, formerly head of the CD Howe institute and the CD Howe institute itself.
In the National Post we have Jack Mintz (infamous for the role he played in destroying $35 billion of Canadians savings with his support for the income trust tax, on the false grounds of tax leakage) saying that RRSPs are completely fine and that there is nothing to worry about the 75% of Canadians without pensions preparedness for retirement, while the Toronto Star has an article about the prescriptions that the CD Howe institute has for fixing the RRSP that Jack Mintz says doesn’t need fixing.
The truth of the matter is that both of these views are wrong, and since when does the CD Howe institute speak for Canadians saving for retirement when the CD Howe institute is simple a vessel of corporate Canada who fund its existence?
We don’t need the CD Howe institute speaking for people it does not represent. The obvious fact is that the CD Howe Institute is trying to deflect the conversation away from the Marshall Savings Plan, that gives the financial backers of the CD Howe Institute great discomfort, since it makes such infinite good sense and is so right for the times as evidenced by the 79.6% of Canadians who favour the inclusion of the Marshall Savings Plan in Budget 2010 and deflect it with some sillt tinkering that the CD Howe would rather see occur with the RRSP.
The CD Howe’s proposal, unlike the Marshall Savings Plan, does nothing to address:
The unlevel playing field between RRSPs and pension funds
Is not tax revenue positive
Does nothing to avert continued foreign takeover of income trusts
Changes nothing in terms of contributors reasons for not availing themselves of the full contribution levels of RRSPs
These suggestions from the CD Howe institute should be viewed in the context in which they are occurring, as they are merely smokescreen arguments to deflect the debate away from the Marshall Savings Plan and are merely the comment from a groups of corporate funded lobbyists who caused the income trusts fiasco in the first place. Go home CD Howe Institute. You do not speak for investors and you do not speak for Canadians saving for retirement. If you did, you would have returned any number of phone calls and emails from people like me, who do.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
CD Howe at odds with Jack Mintz on RRSPs, both are shooting blanks
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2 comments:
The one big flaw in any RRSP system is the double taxation of dividend producing entities if held within the retirement vehicle.
Of course the gov`t is in no hurry to correct this as it is a cash cow just waiting to be milked.
If I put together a scheme like this , I would find myself banging a tin cup on the wrong side of a set of grey bars.
The marshall Plan is a good framework for the end to this inequity.
The big question becomes , does the gov`t have the resolve to implement it or will the pressure from the big CEOs be too much to withstand.
Dr Mike Popovich
DH:
Would it make you feel any better to know that Jack Mintz is being paid by taxpayers to shovel that shxx to Flaherty....on demand, as it were?
Brent
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