Jim Duplicity

Jim Flaherty’s duplicity is without equal. Yesterday when pressed to explain why he has done nothing to deal with the pension issues of the day, his reply was:

“There will be no back-of-the-envelope quick changes to this,” Mr. Flaherty said. “The first rule is to do no harm.”

Need I remind you how duplicitous a statement this is? To think that Flaherty has learned from his past mistakes of destroying $35 billion of Canadians life savings along with leaving 220 Canadian companies susceptible to foreign takeover as result of his rash and mindless income trust tax is to not understand Jim Flaherty. Had Flaherty had any remorse or misgivings about that complete rape of Canadians’ saving for retirement he would have adopted the “brilliant” Marshall Savings Plan in Budget 2010, but he did not, did he?

With duplicitous persons like Jim Flaherty, I have learned that the higher the principle that he invokes, the more of an an excuse he is actually engaged in making. To invoke principles like “fairness” and “do no harm” are for Jim Flaherty nothing more than excuses. In this instance, the argument (excuse) of “do no harm” is merely his excuse for doing nothing whatsoever to date on the pressing matter of pension reform.

It is worth observing that I employed the principled argument of “do no harm” during the first 24 hours following Flaherty’s reckless income trust policy announcement of Halloween 2006, and framed the argument in the legal concept of “duty of care” which is one of the principal foundations on which civilized societies are based, thinking that Flaherty as a lawyer might have some understanding of such a concept, which clearly he does not. Diane Francis subsequently made the same point in a column of hers on December 6, 2006, when she posed the operative question:

“Where was the prime minister's morality? Where was the Finance Minister's duty of care?”

To accept Flaherty’s argument that the principle of “do no harm” is what is preventing him from implementing some obvious fixes to the Canadians system of pensions and retirement savings is to be deluded once again by the duplicitous Jim Flaherty. If “do no harm” was Flaherty’s guiding principle, rather than simply a convenient and lofty sounding excuse, where was that philosophy in play on October 31, 2006, and if this philosophy only recently took hold in the 60 year old Jim Flaherty, then why did he not implement the Marshall Savings Plan in Budget 2010, since doing so only had benefits to all Canadians and detriments to none?

The real question to confront the duplicitous Jim Flaherty with is not the concept of “do no harm”, but rather, to turn that concept on its head and ask Jim Flaherty just exactly what “good” was achieved by his absurd, and duplicitous income trust tax?

The answer to that is very simple to answer, as no good was accomplished by his income trust tax, and instead a litany of harm.

My only other request would be that for anyone in the press who might deign to ask the Jim Flaherty this most revealing question, that they ask him for proof this time, as the only group to do as much harm as Jim Flaherty on the income trust matter, was the press itself who dutifully reported his lies as if they were the truth, with Diane Francis being the singular exception. She is the only journalist in Canada who followed the rule of “do no harm” and the only journalsit to seek out the truth.

The others in Canadians media were all engaged in some propaganda exercise that continues to this day, as witnessed by that pathetic piece of propaganda aired on The National on February 26, 2010. The irony of that piece of propaganda was that it was broadcast at the very time that while CBC was also broadcasting a six part documentary entitled “Love Hate Propaganda” about Hitler’s use of propaganda in the Second World War. It seems duplicity is becoming contagious in Canada? First Flaherty, followed by the dutiful and brain dead media.