An absolute rebuttal of (but one) of the falsehoods advanced by the CBC on Harper’s behalf

The CBC was recently charged with the responsibility of revealing Stephen Harper’s lie about tax leakage in a segment in which viewers (in this case, myself and Don Francis on behalf of thousands of others) were given the chance to “Ask a politician a question.”

Instead the CBC turned this into a propaganda exercise of repeating every patent falsehood and misperception that exists on this highly researched topic and in so doing broke every one of the CBC’s guidelines on Accuracy, Fairness and Integrity, which holds:

“The information conforms with reality and is not in any way misleading or false. This demands not only careful and thorough research but a disciplined use of language and production techniques, including visuals. The information is truthful, not distorted to justify a conclusion.”

The CBC’s handling of this assignment was clearly motivated by a desire to distort the news in a way that justified a conclusion, in exactly the same way that the government distorted the truth to justify a conclusion and resorted to lying to all Canadians about tax leakage in order to “justify” killing income trusts along with $35 billion of Canadians’ life savings and taking choice away from them on invalid grounds.”

The CBC was charged with exposing this KNOWN LIE, but instead engaged in a cover-up. The CBC did this by, for example, repeating the false argument that the conversion of BCE and Telus would have caused the loss of tax revenue to the government. Such a statement is patently false and with any degree of “careful and thorough research” as CBC’s guidelines requires its reporters to do, this would have been obvious lie being told by the government.

The CBC reporter would have had to have known NOTHING about finance to come to such a conclusion, since in order for what the CBC reporter told Canadians, ie that the government was going to lose future tax revenue from the conversion of these corporations to trusts would have required that these companies were expected to pay taxes as corporations. No other knowledge or understanding of this situation would have been required apart from something as plain and simple as knowing whether these two companies were expected to be paying taxes in the future.

With a modicum research, the CBC would have learned the following from the forward looking statements of BCE and Telus issued in November 2006 in which both indicated that they would not be paying taxes in the near future as corporations:

Bell announces 2007 business outlook

(iv) no significant escalation in cash taxes in 2007 (Read: no cash taxes) as we have assumed that the simplification of our organizational structure should permit the accelerated use of Bell Canada's R&D tax credits, and ( The forward-looking statement concerning Bell's cash taxes for 2008 to 2010 assumes no significant escalation in cash taxes as we expect that the simplification of our organizational structure will permit the accelerated use of Bell Canada's R&D tax credits…..

TELUS sets 2007 financial and operating targets

"Based on a an updated review of the company's tax loss position, TELUS now expects minimal cash tax payments in 2007, a preliminary estimate of approximately $100 million in 2008 with the payment of significant cash taxes largely deferred to 2009, rather than 2008 as previously anticipated."

With only a modicum of research, the CBC would have learned that BILLIONS more in taxes would have been collected by Ottawa from the conversion of BCE and Telus into income trusts and laid out for all to see here:

http://caiti.info/resources_it_mythbusters.php#myth3

Instead the CBC went with a repetition of the government;’s patent falsehoods about tax leakage from these conversions and the threat of lost taxes from other conversions and simply regurgitated the government total BS as if it were October 31, 2006, when in fact it was February 26, 2010 and the CBC had been told by the very people whose question they were charged with asking (but never did) that these argument are all FALSE and we know the basis on which they are FALSE.

The CBC opted to repeat the government’s falsehoods rather than revealing the government’s lies and by every objective test (including the above) broke every one of the CBC Journalistic Guidelines in doing so in particular, but not limited to, those contained here:

http://cbc-radio-canada.ca/docs/policies/journalistic/journoprincipals.shtml