Mr. Ignatieff: Tear down this wall!

Stephen Harper’s double tax on retirement income totaling 62% is nothing less than an Iron Curtain of oppression that descended on the 2.5 million Canadians who had $35 billion of their life savings and an essential investment choice expropriated from them under completely false pretenses by the dictatorial Harper regime, on that fateful Halloween evening in 2006.

These 2.5 million Canadians, as well as all Canadian taxpayers who have lost $1.5 billion in annual tax revenue to solve a non-existent $500 tax leakage hoax, are now calling on Michael Ignatieff, just as Ronald Reagan called upon Mikhail Gorbachev, to usher in an era of openness known as glasnost to reveal Harper’s absolute blatant lie about tax leakage. The fact that Michael Ignatieff is of Russian descent and a world scholar on human rights only makes the analogy a more rich and powerful one to draw, and the events of that seminal moment in history known as glasnost, are seared in the minds of this generation.

This call for openness is not one that Michael Ignatieff can take lightly. It is a true test of his character as a person and as a leader in the making. Will he see the crystal clear choice that is delineated before him? The one in which facts should dictate policies rather than dogma and 18 pages of blacked out documents that serve only to obscure the truth in order that special interests can have their way and bring about outcomes that could never be justified if the truth were known.

Blacked out documents are corrupting our democracy and the practice must be stopped. For Stephen Harper to argue that the tax leakage documents are a matter of National Security is a farce only exceeded by the farce known as tax leakage, since we know that argument in completely contrived and blatantly false.

How difficult could it really be for Michael Ignatieff to usher in an era of glasnost into Canada?. It would be like falling off a log. Why would any party back a 2010 Budget when budgets of the past have contained blatant lies? Without first establishing the rigor on which past Stephen Harper budgets were based, why would anyone be so gullible to pass new budgets? Who is to say what patent lies may reside in Budget 2010?

Who would not benefit from such an era of openness apart from the corporate back room lobbyists who have taken a strangle hold of Canada and completely corrupted Canada’s democracy in which patent lies like tax leakage get enshrined in sweeping tax legislation that results in a litany of unintended consequences that not even these self centered and purely profit motivated lobbyists even imagined as they were only focused on falsely and arbitrarily reorienting the world to favour their narrow interests. Interests so narrow that they are oblivious to the ancillary outcomes that arise alongside the selfish outcomes they were seeking. Meanwhile who is guarding he hen house? Certainly neither Stephen Harper or Jim Flaherty as they are merely interested in selling the farm.

I refuse to be lied to by my government about something as infinitely provable or disprovable as tax leakage. I refuse to take seriously someone who vies to become the Prime Minister of Canada, who is willing to be lied to about something as concrete as tax leakage or no tax leakage and to allow the issue to conveniently slip while millions upon millions of Canadians are being adversely affected, in many cases without even knowing it, which only makes the matter more urgent. Be it the proof of tax leakage or the evidence of possible torture of Afghan detainees, blacked out documents don’t cut it for me. This is not the Canada that my father fought the Second World War for and won an MBE for bravery, in the same way that Michael’s father was awarded an OC for his diplomatic work during WWII.

My father and Michael’s father fought for freedom and democracy. I am fighting for freedom and democracy. I, and those I advocate on behalf of, have handed this issue to the Liberals on a silver platter. I refuse to be lied to by my government be it a Conservative government or a Liberal government. Michael Ignatieff should refuse to be lied to by his government, as well I demand an era of accountability and transparency. Not just in facile words and rhetoric, but in action and hard substance. My call for glasnost needs to be enjoined by Michael Ignatieff’s call for Openness. Openness across the board and not just selective calls for openness here (Afghan detainees) an not openness there (income trusts).

Mikhail Gorbachev’s call for glasnost wasn’t selective, it was across the board. The consequences be damned. There was nothing but upside, given the hell hole that Russia had become. Canada is sinking into a similar hell hole. Just ask the millions of income trust investors and the oppressive regime they have suffered under, by going to: http://marshallplan.ca/comments.html

Now is Michael Ignatieff’s moment to be that leader he seeks to be and to fulfill the work that his father and father’s like mine fought for. Canada needs Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and we need glasnost now!

In the words of that other paragon of virtue and a true Canadian leader, Diane Francis: “Prove the case, or drop the tax”.

Michael Ignatieff: This is your Gorbachev moment. They only come once in life. Prove to me you are your father’s son, in the same way that I have more than amply proven that I am my father’s son.

At the very least, force Harper to accept the Marshall Savings Plan solution to this income trusts mess of his. Action is required NOW. The so called “Liberal Plan” for income trusts is nothing more than a non-operative hypothetical solution that is of zero value in the absence of an election or a Liberal victory, neither of which are before us at this crucial point in time. Meanwhile , a Liberal victory in the next election, indeed a Liberal majority government can be secured by calling for the implementation of the Marshall Plan today and exposing the utter incompetence and deceit of the Harper government in the process. Believe me when I say this, as when have I been wrong any time before in the last three years?