Russian bombers a make-believe threat - thestar.com

This make believe threat about Russian bombers is no different than the conversion announcement of BCE on the heels of the Telus announcement, both of whose conversions would have meant BILLIONS more in tax revenue for the government, but those who opposed the superior trust model and who control the press, spun it into a make believe threat. The Toronto Star included, the source of this article of today about “Russian bombers a make-believe threat” Commercial interests are behind most if not all make believe threats. Just ask the folks who control the Toronto Star who control the paper through the abuse known as multi-voting shares (like Frank Stronach of Magna), which was being threatened had Torstar acceded to its public shareholder wishes that it convert to an income trust.



Russian bombers a make-believe threat

Michael Byers
Toronto Star
August 30, 2010

Don Quixote is famous for attacking windmills that he imagines are giants. Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay have been tilting at make-believe enemies too, in the form of Russian planes in international airspace.

Last Wednesday, Harper’s communications director sent an email to journalists informing them that a pair of Tupolev TU-95 bombers had been intercepted by Canadian CF-18s some 30 nautical miles (56 kilometres) from our Arctic coastline.

“Thanks to the rapid response of the Canadian Forces,” Dimitri Soudas wrote, “at no time did the Russian aircraft enter sovereign Canadian airspace.”

Soudas was right about Canada’s airspace, which extends just 12 nautical miles (22 kilometres) from shore. But he was wrong to suggest that the Russian bombers were headed there.

His efforts at sensationalism were quickly short-circuited by a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command. “Both Russia and NORAD routinely exercise their capability to operate in the North,” Lt. Desmond James explained. “These exercises are important to both NORAD and Russia and are not cause for alarm.”

Indeed, earlier this month Russian, American and Canadian military personnel partnered in an exercise designed to coordinate their responses to possible hijackings of international flights.

Arctic foreign relations have never been better. Two years ago, ministers from all five Arctic Ocean countries publicly accepted the application of the law of the sea to their few remaining boundary disputes. Russian, American and Canadian diplomats are currently negotiating a multilateral treaty on search-and-rescue. And just last week, Russian Embassy spokesman Sergey Khudyakov reaffirmed that his country respects Canada’s “territorial integrity, including the vast Arctic territories under Canadian sovereignty.”

Yet the Harper government continues to mislead Canadians about the threat from Russian planes.

In February 2009, Peter MacKay waited nine days before revealing that two TU-95s had come within about 192 kilometres of Canada’s Arctic coastline. He carefully pointed out that the incident had occurred just one day before U.S. President Barack Obama visited Ottawa, and said: “I am not going to stand here and accuse the Russians of having deliberately done this during the presidential visit, but it was a strong coincidence.”

Later, when the Prime Minister was asked about the matter, he suggested that the Russian planes had actually entered Canadian airspace. “This is a real concern to us,” he said. “I have expressed at various times the deep concern our government has with increasingly aggressive Russian actions around the globe and Russian intrusions into our airspace.”

Then, as now, the inaccurate accusations were clearly not appreciated by the United States. NORAD commander Gene Renuart took the unusual step of publicly correcting the Canadian ministers. The four-star U.S. general told journalists: “The Russians have conducted themselves professionally; they have maintained compliance with the international rules of airspace sovereignty and have not entered the internal airspace of either of the countries.”

The public slaps on the Canadian wrist are indicative of the importance placed on improved U.S.-Russian relations by the Obama administration.

Obama has taken risks to promote that relationship, unilaterally revoking plans for U.S. missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic and becoming the first American president to chair a meeting of the UN Security Council. The gamble paid off, with a unanimous resolution recommitting all five “declared nuclear weapon states” to negotiate toward the elimination of their nuclear arsenals.

In April, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a treaty committing their countries to massive reductions in nuclear weapon stockpiles as well as new verification measures. The U.S. president then hosted 37 heads of government — including Stephen Harper — at a summit meeting on nuclear proliferation, securing commitments to safeguard nuclear material used in bombs, civilian nuclear reactors and power plants, and to strengthen international efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear arms.

Seen in this light, NORAD’s public corrections of Canadian statements take on much greater importance. By pretending that Russian planes pose a threat, Harper and MacKay are running interference against the United States — our largest trade and defence partner — in a major geopolitical game. Which raises the question, whose side are they on?

If anything, they would seem to be partnering with the Russian military, which is not above trying to stir things up — against the wishes of the Russian foreign ministry — by sending bombers over the Arctic Ocean at politically sensitive moments. Just as the Canadian Forces desire expensive new stealth strike-fighters, the Russian military seeks increased budgetary allocations for new ships and planes.

In Soudas’s email about the Russian bombers, he touted the “new, highly capable and technologically advanced” F-35s as “the best plane our government could provide our forces, and when you are a pilot staring down Russian long-range bombers, that’s an important fact to remember.”

Of course, the PM’s spokesman forgot to mention that Russia’s TU-95s are twice the age of Canada’s existing fleet of CF-18s.

The same ploy was used last month when, just after the announcement of the untendered F-35 purchase, the Conservatives first linked the new planes to a threat from Russian bombers. MacKay rejected accusations that the connection was made for political purposes. “I find it astounding there could be any suggestion that we would manufacture Russians approaching our airspace,” he said. “That’s bordering on ludicrous.”

But Don Quixote, instead of seeing windmills where there were none, chose to perceive their presence as threatening. Harper and MacKay have made a similarly choice — as they desperately seek to justify spending $16 billion we don’t have, on planes we don’t need.

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Who Owns the Arctic?

Harper's photo-op stunt broke Canadian Air Regulations.

For those who may have missed it, Stephen Harper recently went for an unscheduled joy ride on the tarmac of the Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T. airport for no apparent reason, other than to amuse himself and/or to show his macho side and to impress those on hand.

Too bad for Steve that this type of random act isn't permitted under the Canadian Air Regulations.

What was Harper's response: "I make the rules".

OKAY, well then here are the rules that you so recklessly disregarded. the rules that we (apparently not You) are governed by:


302.10 No person shall

(a) operate an aerodrome referred to in subsection 302.01(1) unless an airport certificate is issued in respect of that aerodrome;

(b) knowingly use an airport in a manner contrary to a condition set out in the airport certificate;

(c) walk, stand, drive a vehicle, park a vehicle or aircraft or cause an obstruction on the movement area of an airport, except in accordance with permission given

(i) by the operator of the airport, and

(ii) where applicable, by the appropriate air traffic control unit or flight service station;

http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/regserv/cars/part3-302-1010.htm

Is the Globe able to back up its claim?

Today’s Globe has an article about Jim Flaherty, entitled “One day, we’ll look back and thank Jim Flaherty”, in which they gloss over his income trust policy fiasco with the statement:

“Then, in 2006, Flaherty’s killing of income trusts wiped out more than $20 billion in stock market value overnight. Although the move was probably necessary to preserve tax revenues, it released a tsunami of vituperation from a business community that was none too happy to have the punch bowl taken away just as the party was getting started.”

Was probably necessary to preserves tax revenues? What kind of justification is that? Probably? Would the Globe and Mail like to share with its readers how it makes the claim that income trusts probably adversely affect tax revenues? Did the Globe flip a coin or use a roulette wheel to determine this probable outcome? Meanwhile, since when is “probable” the standard of certainty to apply when engaging in far reaching public policy making, when the matter at hand can be ascertained with absolute certainty as HLB Decision Economics was able to do in their study of November 2005 entitled The Tax Revenue Implications of Income Trusts that was available to all (including Jim Flaherty and the Globe and Mail) and which concluded that income trust s DO NOT cause the loss of tax revenue.

Furthermore, if income trusts “probably” cause the loss of tax revenue, then why is Flaherty hiding his tax leakage analysis behind 18 pages of blacked out documents? Could it be that he is lying? Dare the Globe and Mail have the journalistic integrity challenge Jim Flaherty to prove his case, as Diane Francis of the Financial Post did in her article entitled Prove the case or drop the tax?

Perhaps the Globe and Mail would like to take a more disciplined approach to this matter and let its readers know with greater certainty about whether Flaherty’s policy actions were just and whether his (and their) assertions about tax leakage are true or not, rather than adopting Flaherty’s reckless and cavalier attitude to policy matters of great import, since even the Globe admits that $20 billion (actually $35 billion) of Canadians’ life savings were lost, while failing to acknowledge that Flaherty’s actions actually CAUSED the loss of tax revenues amounting to over $1 billion per annum from the wave of foreign takeover of income trusts than ensued. All to fix a non-existent tax leakage problem. Could the man be more incompetent if he tried and the Globe more intent on covering this story up?

Mark Carney / Terry Corcoran cat fight.

Did you see the letter (below) that appeared in the Financial Post that was ghost written by Mark Carney, in which he laces into Terry Corcoran’s incompetence as a journalist?

It’s interesting to observe that Terry Corcoran, who was one of the biggest supporters of Mark Carney’s fraudulent claims about tax leakage from income trusts, when all the evidence and reports pointed to the opposite conclusion (ie the work of HLB Decision Economics, BMO Capital Markets. RBC Capital Markets. PricewaterhouseCoopers etc.), is now being reamed out by the very same Mark Carney for his “factual errors and misrepresentations” and his “error-laden column” and inability to “ensure accuracy” regarding the Bank of Canada's report?

Mark Carney can’t have it both ways. First he wants the whole world to ignore the hard evidence and studies when the topic is income trusts and then he wants the world to hang on his every utterance when he becomes the Governor of the Bank of Canada when the topic is bank capital adequacy.

Maybe these two losers, Terry Corcoran and Mark Carney should switch jobs, as Mark Carney appears to be an expert on what it takes to be a good journalist (is there such a thing in Canada?), while Terry Corcoran, despite not knowing something as basic and fundamental as the difference between deferred taxes and exempt taxes, claims to be an expert on what it tales to be a good central banker.


Financial Post · Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010

Re: Terence Corcoran's column, The High Cost of Bank Regulation, Aug. 10

Terence Corcoran's column in Thursday's newspaper contained factual errors and misrepresentations regarding the Bank of Canada's report on the macroeconomic impact on Canada of strengthened bank capital and liquidity standards.

It is surprising that the Financial Post chose to publish such an error-laden column. Financial Post reporters were among many journalists who attended a Bank of Canada briefing to ensure that they understood the report.

The fact that Mr. Corcoran chose not to attend that briefing, nor to contact the Bank with questions, does not absolve him of the responsibility to ensure accuracy.

The two Financial Post reporters who co-wrote a separate news story got it right.

It is a shame that their editor did not.

Brigid Janssen,
Chief of Communications,
Bank of Canada

Penn West's CEO predicted its foreign takeover following Flaherty's trust tax

THEN: Canada's Trust Tax May Spark Oil Industry Takeovers

By Reg Curren - November 2, 2006
Bloomberg

A surge in foreign takeovers of income trusts would mean the government's attempt to stem a decline in tax revenue by taxing trusts may have the opposite affect, said Lee Goldman, a money manager at First Asset Funds Inc. in Toronto.

``Where you've seen a Canadianization of the energy industry, it will go the other way, there will be a lot of purchases,'' William Andrew, chief executive officer of Penn West, said in a telephone interview from Calgary.

The decline in Canadian energy income trusts will make them more attractive to foreign companies interested in acquiring natural gas and crude oil assets, BMO Capital Markets analyst Gordon Tait said. The new tax structure also removes a disadvantage foreigners faced when buying a Canadian trust. Under the current rules, a trust would lose its tax exemption if it were controlled by non-Canadians, meaning buyers would be paying for a benefit they couldn't use.

``As some of these assets get sold off and some of these good companies get sold down, you could see more foreign takeovers, in which case you could see a lot of income stripping coming out of Canada,'' Tait said.

NOW: Penn West, Mitsubishi sign gas venture

By: Nathan VanderKlippe
Calgary — The Canadian Press

Photo: Penn West CEO Bill Andrew


Calgary — The Canadian Press Published on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010 7:07AM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010 7:41PM EDT

Penn West Energy Trust PWT.UN-T signed an $850-million natural-gas joint venture with Japan's Mitsubishi Corp., cashing in on a surge of foreign interest in Canada's most promising energy plays.

The deal is the latest in a string of partnerships that has Asian buyers spending billions on natural-gas properties, which are now attracting nearly as much attention as the oil sands from overseas companies with deep pockets.

South Korean and Chinese investors have also made substantial bets on the prolific Horn River and Montney shale gas plays in northeastern British Columbia. In its deal with Mitsubishi, Penn West is selling a stake in its Wildboy and Cordova Embayment plays, which contain a mix of conventional gas and shale, where gas is trapped in dense rock that makes it more difficult to extract.

Mitsubishi, a Japanese conglomerate with interests in energy, metals, machinery and chemicals, agreed to pay $250-million upfront, and a further $600-million to develop the two properties and take a 50-per-cent share in the properties, which are located in the northeastern corner of B.C. near the Northwest Territories border.

The Mitsubishi deal comes after Penn West signed a similar partnership earlier this year with China Investment Corp., which will pay $1.25-billion for a 45-per-cent stake in northern Alberta heavy oil property.

“A lot of the historic sources of capital have been either the U.S. or Europe, but because of the recession in both those places, there’s just not as much risk capital available,” said Penn West chief executive officer Bill Andrew. “The Japanese and the Chinese – and the Indians and the Koreans to some extent – want to diversify and take on some risk. So they’ve been actively pursuing plays in Canada and elsewhere.”

Those investments have proven a critical source of funds, particularly as companies look to unlock assets that may otherwise not have been developed for years.

The Mitusbishi deal will allow Penn West “to move ahead with very little capital exposure on our part,” said Mr. Andrew.

Natural gas prices have sunk to their lowest levels of the year, hovering just above $3 per thousand cubic feet in Alberta. But low prices have done little to dissuade investors who believe that gas has a bright future in North America, particularly as a relatively clean source of energy compared with coal and oil.

The deal works out to roughly $50,000 per flowing barrel equivalent, a solid valuation despite current gas prices, according to Alan Tambosso, president of Sayer Energy Advisors.

“These are strong prices, and I think they're reflective of a long-term view toward natural gas, and a long-term commitment to this play,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s not a bad idea to start these things in a down part of the cycle and hopefully you’re there if the cycle improves and gas prices recover,” said Gordon Tait, an analyst with BMO Nesbitt Burns.

Mitsubishi joins China National Petroleum Corp. and Korea Gas Corp., which have both partnered with Encana Corp. to speed production of British Columbia’s enormous gas fields. Foreign firms began scouring the country for acquisitions nearly three years ago, Mr. Andrew said, and interest has grown since then. In the U.S., French and Indian companies have also partnered on huge new natural gas plays.

B.C. is attractive in part for the size of its resource. Mitsubishi believes its joint venture gives it access to land that can produce up to 500-million cubic feet a day, just under 10 per cent of Canada’s daily consumption and far more than Japan’s own output. Mitsubishi is buying into lands that currently produce just 30-million cubic feet a day, but the “potential of this enormous resource could greatly exceed Japan’s natural gas annual demand,” the company said in a release Tuesday.

The mounting Asian interest in northeastern B.C. comes as EOG Resources Inc. and Apache Corp. work to build a $3-billion port that would export liquefied natural gas from the West Coast. Those plans have raised the possibility of overseas firms being able to physically take possession of the gas they buy in Canada.

Japan currently relies on natural gas for about 14 per cent of its energy needs, a number it is seeking to boost. Much of its supply currently comes from Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Qatar and Brunei. Canada could prove a valuable additional gas source.

Penn West's CEO predicted its foreign takeover following Flaherty's trust tax

THEN: Canada's Trust Tax May Spark Oil Industry Takeovers

By Reg Curren - November 2, 2006
Bloomberg

A surge in foreign takeovers of income trusts would mean the government's attempt to stem a decline in tax revenue by taxing trusts may have the opposite affect, said Lee Goldman, a money manager at First Asset Funds Inc. in Toronto.

``Where you've seen a Canadianization of the energy industry, it will go the other way, there will be a lot of purchases,'' William Andrew, chief executive officer of Penn West, said in a telephone interview from Calgary.

The decline in Canadian energy income trusts will make them more attractive to foreign companies interested in acquiring natural gas and crude oil assets, BMO Capital Markets analyst Gordon Tait said. The new tax structure also removes a disadvantage foreigners faced when buying a Canadian trust. Under the current rules, a trust would lose its tax exemption if it were controlled by non-Canadians, meaning buyers would be paying for a benefit they couldn't use.


``As some of these assets get sold off and some of these good companies get sold down, you could see more foreign takeovers, in which case you could see a lot of income stripping coming out of Canada,'' Tait said.

NOW: Penn West, Mitsubishi sign gas venture

By: Nathan VanderKlippe
Calgary — The Canadian Press

Photo: Penn West CEO Bill Andrew


Calgary — The Canadian Press Published on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010 7:07AM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010 7:41PM EDT

Penn West Energy Trust PWT.UN-T signed an $850-million natural-gas joint venture with Japan's Mitsubishi Corp., cashing in on a surge of foreign interest in Canada's most promising energy plays.

The deal is the latest in a string of partnerships that has Asian buyers spending billions on natural-gas properties, which are now attracting nearly as much attention as the oil sands from overseas companies with deep pockets.

South Korean and Chinese investors have also made substantial bets on the prolific Horn River and Montney shale gas plays in northeastern British Columbia. In its deal with Mitsubishi, Penn West is selling a stake in its Wildboy and Cordova Embayment plays, which contain a mix of conventional gas and shale, where gas is trapped in dense rock that makes it more difficult to extract.

Mitsubishi, a Japanese conglomerate with interests in energy, metals, machinery and chemicals, agreed to pay $250-million upfront, and a further $600-million to develop the two properties and take a 50-per-cent share in the properties, which are located in the northeastern corner of B.C. near the Northwest Territories border.

The Mitsubishi deal comes after Penn West signed a similar partnership earlier this year with China Investment Corp., which will pay $1.25-billion for a 45-per-cent stake in northern Alberta heavy oil property.

“A lot of the historic sources of capital have been either the U.S. or Europe, but because of the recession in both those places, there’s just not as much risk capital available,” said Penn West chief executive officer Bill Andrew. “The Japanese and the Chinese – and the Indians and the Koreans to some extent – want to diversify and take on some risk. So they’ve been actively pursuing plays in Canada and elsewhere.”

Those investments have proven a critical source of funds, particularly as companies look to unlock assets that may otherwise not have been developed for years.

The Mitusbishi deal will allow Penn West “to move ahead with very little capital exposure on our part,” said Mr. Andrew.

Natural gas prices have sunk to their lowest levels of the year, hovering just above $3 per thousand cubic feet in Alberta. But low prices have done little to dissuade investors who believe that gas has a bright future in North America, particularly as a relatively clean source of energy compared with coal and oil.

The deal works out to roughly $50,000 per flowing barrel equivalent, a solid valuation despite current gas prices, according to Alan Tambosso, president of Sayer Energy Advisors.

“These are strong prices, and I think they're reflective of a long-term view toward natural gas, and a long-term commitment to this play,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s not a bad idea to start these things in a down part of the cycle and hopefully you’re there if the cycle improves and gas prices recover,” said Gordon Tait, an analyst with BMO Nesbitt Burns.

Mitsubishi joins China National Petroleum Corp. and Korea Gas Corp., which have both partnered with Encana Corp. to speed production of British Columbia’s enormous gas fields. Foreign firms began scouring the country for acquisitions nearly three years ago, Mr. Andrew said, and interest has grown since then. In the U.S., French and Indian companies have also partnered on huge new natural gas plays.

B.C. is attractive in part for the size of its resource. Mitsubishi believes its joint venture gives it access to land that can produce up to 500-million cubic feet a day, just under 10 per cent of Canada’s daily consumption and far more than Japan’s own output. Mitsubishi is buying into lands that currently produce just 30-million cubic feet a day, but the “potential of this enormous resource could greatly exceed Japan’s natural gas annual demand,” the company said in a release Tuesday.

The mounting Asian interest in northeastern B.C. comes as EOG Resources Inc. and Apache Corp. work to build a $3-billion port that would export liquefied natural gas from the West Coast. Those plans have raised the possibility of overseas firms being able to physically take possession of the gas they buy in Canada.

Japan currently relies on natural gas for about 14 per cent of its energy needs, a number it is seeking to boost. Much of its supply currently comes from Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Qatar and Brunei. Canada could prove a valuable additional gas source.

The Economist: The eclipse of the public company

It was staunch defenders of the (inferior) public corporation model that lobbied the Harper government to shut down the vastly superior form of investment known as income trusts. This article below from The Economist explains how shutting down income trusts is contrary to the direction the world is moving in. Investing in common shares of a public corporation is pure speculation, whereas owning a fractional interest in that business’ earnings stream is anything but speculation, but rather true ownership.


The eclipse of the public company
Traditional listed firms are facing competition

The Economist
Aug 19th 2010


FOR most of the past 150 years public companies have swept all before them. Wall Streeters have dissolved their cosy partnerships to go public. Communists have abandoned their five-year plans in favour of stockmarket listings. And Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have bowed before the god of the IPO—the initial public offering that takes a start-up public and makes its founders rich.

But is the sun finally setting on the public company? Its rise came at the expense of two older kinds of organisation that had dominated business until the middle of the 19th century—private partnerships and chartered companies. Private partnerships were wonderfully flexible but lacked the vital ingredient of limited liability: partners could lose everything they owned if the business failed. Chartered companies offered limited liability but were controlled by governments. Liberal reformers combined the best of both models: they gave managers freedom from government control and investors the shield of limited liability. Their invention conquered the world.

Yet now both the private partnership and the state-controlled company are making a comeback. Two of the world’s three largest banks by market capitalisation are state-directed Chinese ones. The world’s biggest telecoms company, China Mobile, is state-run. State-owned energy firms such as Russia’s Gazprom and Saudi Aramco now account for more than three-quarters of the world’s oil production. Many of these state-run giants resemble old-style chartered companies. They have the trappings of the private sector, such as boards of directors and listings on a stockmarket. But they are essentially instruments of state power. The Chinese government deems minerals vital to national security. So, like the East India Company of old, Chinese state-owned companies roam the world in search of raw materials and then build the roads and rails to ship them out.


Private partnerships are also on the march. A succession of legal changes in the United States—starting with a law in Wyoming in the 1970s and culminating in an Internal Revenue Service ruling in 1996—made life easier for them. Partnerships can now offer limited liability and issue tradable shares. They are more durable than before, since they are no longer destroyed when one partner leaves. They also escape from the double taxation that plagues the corporate sector: corporations have to pay corporate taxes and then their shareholders have to pay taxes on their dividends.

The result has been a revolution among small and mid-sized businesses in America. Larry Ribstein, a professor of law at the University of Illinois, calculates that about a third of American businesses large enough to file tax returns are now organised as partnerships or what he calls “uncorporations”. Plenty of big businesses, too, are shunning the stockmarket, with its costly reporting requirements and impatient investors. Publicly traded partnerships and real-estate investment trusts mix and match features from corporations and uncorporations. Many big firms, such as Alliance Boots (a health-and-beauty group) have abandoned public stockmarkets and embraced private equity.

The most fashionable investment vehicles—leveraged buy-out firms, hedge funds and venture-capital funds—are spearheading the “uncorporate” revolution. These firms are usually organised as partnerships, though some, such as the Blackstone Group, are also listed. Corporate raiders often raise money by creating funds in the form of partnerships. Their targets are often restructured as partnerships. This makes managers behave like owners rather than hired hands: they can lose money as well as making it and they have years to turn their companies around rather than answering to the stockmarket every quarter. Hedge funds can make money by buying companies and selling underperforming assets. Venture capitalists make money in the long term by lending their names and expertise to start-ups. Hedge funds and venture-capital firms also make money in their different ways by getting fund managers to behave more like partners, with “skin in the game”, as the modish phrase puts it.

So where does this leave the public company? State ownership comes with too many handicaps to pose a long-term threat. Politicians may lean on the board to hire their idiot nephews, chase visions of national greatness or mop up the jobless masses. The biggest state-owned firms are often big only because they are shielded from competition. It is hard to avoid making money if you have a monopoly over Saudi oil, for example.

Unlisted private firms pose a challenge of a different order. They have undoubtedly established themselves as an alternative corporate form. And that is no bad thing. Just as an ecosystem benefits from diversity, so the world is better off with a multitude of corporate forms. Many big companies periodically need to undergo the sort of patient restructuring that they can only get when they leave public markets. That said, private companies have disadvantages that will hamper their growth. They lack public firms’ rigorous systems of corporate governance and financial reporting. They depend too heavily on borrowing: many drank themselves silly during the credit boom and now have throbbing heads.


The qualified bliss of being listed

In fact, the public and private models of ownership have a symbiotic relationship. The reward for those who take a company private often comes when, having revived it, they take it public again. Venture capitalists would not put so much money and effort into nurturing start-ups if they did not dream of a lucrative IPO. Public companies may have had their confidence shaken in the past few years and their territory shrunken a little. But the organisations that were launched on an unsuspecting world in the mid-19th century still have a healthy spark of life in them.

The lobbying industry is the true fourth branch of government

In the current issue of Vanity Fair, in an article entitled "Washington, We Have a Problem"Todd Purdum writes: “The press claims the title of fourth estate, but the lobbying industry is the true fourth branch of government”.

This poignant observation is as true in Canada as it is in the US.

Furthermore, in Canada we don’t simply have the press being displaced by the new fourth estate of lobbyists, we have the press being subsumed by it, in which the press (owned by the same interests that employ lobbyists) are the sycophant cheerleaders for policies that often have no basis in facts. Facts don’t matter to the press, nor does research. Spin is what today’s Canadian press is all about, on behalf of those who employ them. Just look how many of the Canadians press who repeated Harper’s lies about tax leakage and how very few had the professionalism and journalistic integrity to do some research on the matter. I can only think of one such member of the Canadian press who can hold their head high on the matter of Harper’s income trust fraud: Diane Francis.

The rest of the Canadian press are hacks that have been subsumed by the lobbyists that now occupy the fourth branch of government.

Don Martin clues into Harper's Lie. Conceal. Fabricate

Don Martin of the Calgary Herald writes in today's paper about Harper's firing of RCMP Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak (head of the Canadian Firearms Program) as:

"There are poor excuses, bad rationalizations, feeble fabrications or, when all else fails to justify inexplicable behaviour, pathetic lies."

This is what we have been saying now about Harper since that fateful Halloween of 2006, when Harper reneged on his income trust promise, using his lie about tax leakage and a host of other fabrications as his rationale.

It has taken the press about four years to catch up with us, and catch up with reality.

We had billboards and bus shelter ads across the country with pictures of Harper and the statement Lie Conceal Fabricate, long before the press jumped on our band wagon.

Good to see they are catching up. Any chance they will uncover Harper's utter falsehoods about income trusts that caused Canadians to lose $35 billion of their life savings and ushered in a wave of foreign takeovers that created REAL TAX LEAKAGE of over $1 billion a year that never existed before?

Over to you Don Martin as you work for the Calgary Herald and the oil patch was one of the hardest hit from Harper's insane income trust tax.

CFRA’s John Budden interviews Brent Fullard on foreign takeover of Potash

Click here to listen to broadcast of August 17, 2010.

Canada's Finance Minister Jim Flaherty

The similarities are astonishing!

Liberals look on as Conservatives Vandalize Canada

Jim Travers of the Toronto Star has an article today entitled “Liberals look on as Conservatives Vandalize Canada”. I couldn’t agree more. Interesting that Jim Travers would select the word “vandalism” to describe the conduct of Stephen Harper, as that the exact word that Michael Ignatieff used in a speech in Toronto on September 18, 2008 during the last election when he stated:


“We're here to talk about the Liberal plan to invest in infrastructure and rebuild the ties that bind our country together.

We're here to talk about leadership in tough economic times.

Nous sommes ici pour parler du leadership quand le climat économique s'annonce orageux.

We cannot allow Stephen Harper to define what strong leadership is in this country.

Look at his record.

Harper is the man who broke his promise to millions of Canadian investors when he wiped out income trust.

This isn't leadership – it's vandalism.”

So what has Michael Ignatieff done about Stephen Harper’s income trust vandalism, apart from talk about it when it suits his purposes? In the last two years has Michael Ignatieff done ANYTHING to reveal Harper’s lie about tax leakage, or to expose the fraud about tax leakage that leaves out 38% of the taxes that Canadians actually pay on income trusts? No.

Has Ignatieff informed Canadians about the fact that Harper’s proof of tax leakage tool the form of 18 pages of blacked out documents? No. Has Ignatieff told Canadians that Harper’s income trust tax has seen over $80 billion of Canadian companies acquired by foreigners like Abu Dhabi Energy and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing who will pay NO TAXES on these companies’ earning, whereas Canadians were happily paying those taxes, and as a result over $1.2 billion in annual taxes in being lost per annum to solve a problem that was falsely alleged by Harper to be costing Canadians only half that amount? No.

Has Ignatieff done anything to reveal who the lobbyists were behind the income trust tax and what their nefarious end purposes were? No.

Has Ignatieff lifted a finger to support and give voice and visibility to a solution to the income trust mess, known as the Marshall Savings Plan solution, that knowledgeable people like Diane Francis of the Financial Post call “brilliant”? No.

And why do you suppose that is? Why is Ignatieff allowing Harper to get away with the vandalism involving income trusts, while feigning concern about the issue when its suits his purposes? Why has Ignatieff chosen to do none of the thousands of things he could have done about the income trust vandalism? Is it because Ignatieff is in bed with the very same pack of vandals that put Harper up to this shameful and fraudulent act? Hard to conclude otherwise

Second piece of evidence.....Jim Travers of the Toronto Star writes


Liberals look on as Conservatives Vandalize Canada

Jim Travers
Toronto Star
August 14, 2010


OTTAWA—This country has a problem. It has a ruling party that twists the truth and an Official Opposition that can’t, or won’t, straighten it out.

This summer’s oddly hot topic is one example. Gutting the census is nothing less than another Conservative act of public vandalism. Wagging an angry finger is nothing more than another empty Liberal gesture.

Opinion polls reflect that repeating pattern. For more than four years now Canadians have consistently told pollsters they don’t support Conservatives and don’t trust Liberals.

One unlikely way to end that impasse is for Stephen Harper to come clean about what he doesn’t like about Canada and how Conservatives are changing it by stealth and increment. Another is for Michael Ignatieff to screw Liberal courage to the sticking point and declare enough is enough.

Harper owes that explanation. Since taking control of a universally admired country in 2006, the Prime Minister has been altering Canada without a majority mandate or clear statement of ultimate purpose.

Ignatieff has a duty to oppose that strategy. Since replacing Stephane Dion, the Liberal leader has threatened elections and fumed at Conservatives while drawing flexible lines in this capital’s blowing sand.

Harper’s determination and Ignatieff’s vacillation are connected by opportunities seized by Conservatives and missed by Liberals. Without significant resistance or the debate democracy demands, the Prime Minister has consistently advanced policies that are at best controversial and at worst corrosive.

Too often Harper manages to tip-toe dubious schemes past a dozing electorate. While the nation slept, Conservatives grossly abused the budget process with an omnibus bill bulging with unrelated plans to sell the public stake in the atomic energy sector and, even more remarkably, to relax environmental regulations just when the world is reeling from the BP oil spill.

As always, there’s more. There was little discussion of military priorities and less outcry over public safeguards in the sole-sourced contract committing Canada to spend some $16 billion replacing CF-18 fighters. Much was muttered and nothing done to stop Conservatives silencing diverse civil society voices by attacking Montreal’s non-partisan Rights and Democracy and stripping core funding from the umbrella agency has advised federal governments on overseas development for more than forty years.

To Conservative credit, Harper routinely gets the best of a fissured Parliament and an Official Opposition in disarray. The result is a country being forced marched to an unknown destination.

To Liberal shame, serial leaders, with the notable exception of Stephane Dion’s quixotic defence of a carbon tax, have failed to find principled places to stand. In trying every which way to regain power they continue to fall far short of convincing Canadians that a once great party would now gladly risk its hegemony to protect the national interest.

No party or leader willingly commits political suicide. Instead, they lurk in the shadows, weighing odds and waiting for a promising moment to strike. Still, parties risk everything when what’s good for them is seen to be more important than what’s good for the country.

Ignatieff knows that Liberals have taken too long to discard the tattered cloak of Canada’s natural governing party. Liberals are proving equally slow in grasping that an opposition afraid to oppose is an empty vessel voters will fill with blame when the ruling party goes too far.

Conservatives go too far when they trample widely shared Canadian values by twisting truth to fit narrow ideology. Liberals will go nowhere until they are willing to risk something straightening it out.

James Travers' column appears Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Lies, Harper lies, and statistics

Tories twisted census findings: memos
Aug 10 2010

Les Whittington Ottawa Bureau
Toronto Star



OTTAWA—Industry Minister Tony Clement was well aware that Statistics Canada had little use for a voluntary census when he was telling Canadians that StatsCan was onside with his decision to scrap the mandatory, long-form survey, internal government documents show.

In an email to the minister’s advisers in March, a StatsCan official says a self-administered voluntary survey “provides a response rate of 50 per cent.” The email goes on to say that, with follow-up and interviewer support, the response rate can be increased to 65-70 per cent, “which is still not an acceptable outcome for a census.”

Yet Clement publicly gave the impression that the respected federal data collecting agency supported the Conservatives’ move to scrap the mandatory nature of the 40-page, long-form survey that has traditionally gone out to one-in-five households at census time.

“We’ve come up with a way that is statistically valid, that StatsCan feels can work,” Clement said during an appearance at McGill University last month.

The new information comes from confidential government documents that detail the Harper government’s fierce effort to manage the messaging and political fallout arising from the census decision, which prompted former StatsCan head Munir Sheikh to resign and spawned a national controversy.

Previously secret emails, memos and communications plans were compiled by the government at the request of the House of Commons industry committee, which has been holding hearings on Clement’s decision to rearrange StatsCan’s census-taking.

Much of the government documents were redacted, but they shed new light on Sheikh’s stunning decision to quit his prestigious job. As the controversy over the census was reaching a fever pitch last month, Clement’s office and the Privy Council Office, the federal department that serves Prime Minister Stephen Harper, were trying to tell Sheikh what to say to his own employees about the Conservatives’ census strategy.

Sheikh intended to tell StatsCan’s worried employees that the data produced by the voluntary National Household Survey proposed by the Conservatives would not be as valuable to traditional users of census information as past surveys, the emails indicate.

In a flurry of memos in mid-July, Clement’s office and the PCO tried to convince Munir to cast his remarks in a more positive light. Instead of saying users will not find the data from the new voluntary survey useful, the government wanted him to say StatsCan “is confident” it will meet “the needs of a broad range of users.”

But Sheikh, a 38-year public servant, never delivered the address to his employees. He resigned a few days later. At a subsequent appearance at a Commons committee, he said he stepped down because Clement’s suggestion that StatsCan was onside with the voluntary census was compromising the integrity of the globally-respected agency.

Sheikh said Tuesday that, without the compulsory census, much of Statistics Canada work will be undermined. Without “the benchmark” of the census, it’s not clear that information such as StatsCan’s employment surveys will be “something that we can trust,” he told the CBC.

The newly released documents also show the media messaging prepared by the government to handle questions on the new voluntary survey entirely skirted the issue of the quality of the data. The “media lines” for government officials include statements such as “this is the first time Statistics Canada will conduct this survey” and “We are counting on Canadians who receive this survey to recognize the importance of this information and to respond to the survey.”

Details on the projected cost of the new voluntary 40-page survey were blacked out, but the documents suggest it will cost Ottawa more than $75 million. The cost in 2006 was $45 million, the documents say. And Clement has said Ottawa will spend $30 million extra for advertising and other promotions to convince Canadians to complete voluntary questionnaire. On top of that, the government will print more of the voluntary 40-page questionnaires to compensate for the expected decline in responses from the public.

Large sections of the documents were blacked out. Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who requested the documents, said he has never seen such censorship of material for a Commons committee except on security issues. “This is a serious affront to democracy,” he remarked Tuesday.

Flaherty offers apology for income trust hurt

Save the apology Flaherty, since it’s as worthless as your word and as empty as your integrity. What Canadians are demanding of, is justification for your actions. Where is your proof of tax leakage, on which your reckless actions were ostensibly based? When will the paid elected members of the Official Opposition (Liberals) ever get off their collective asses and nail Flaherty for his lies and incompetence about the income trust fraud/fiasco?

Flaherty offers apology for income trust hurt
John Ivison,
National Post ·
Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010

I apologize that a lot of Canadians were affected, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said yesterday.

Jim Flaherty may have faced down the financial crisis, but he was forced on the defensive by a feisty senior yesterday at a policy conference, where he issued a public apology for the hardship inflicted by his decision to tax income trusts nearly four years ago.

"I apologize for the fact that it did affect a lot of Canadians, including you," the Finance Minister said in response to a question at the 79th annual Couchiching Conference from Sheila Whitzman, who called his Oct. 31, 2006, decision "a Halloween massacre."

Activists who have long opposed Mr. Flaherty's decision say it is the first time he has apologized in a public forum. Mr. Flaherty said he had been finance minister for only six months, "so it was probably a politically unwise thing to do -- certainly for me personally."

But he was unrepentent about the substance of the move that caused unit prices for all publicly listed income trusts to drop in the weeks after the sudden announcement. "It needed to be done, it wasn't going to get better....

"If you're in politics to be popular, you'll get a lot of bad government and the income trust rule was ruining our economy."

Critics point out that the Conservatives had campaigned during the 2006 election to leave the favourable tax structure for income trusts alone, and dispute the Department of Finance's calculation that the conversion to trust status was costing the country hundreds of millions of dollars in "tax leakage."

Ms. Whitzman said she saw her retirement savings sink 20% within days of the decision. "They assume people have forgotten and don't bear them a grudge. I choose not to forget. Still, he [Mr. Flaherty] spoke better than I expected and he was quite charming," she said.

Mr. Flaherty was at Couchiching to deliver the keynote address on the state of Canada's economy. While cautioning that Canada is "not out of the woods," he offered an upbeat assessment of the country's prospects. "The future is more hopeful than the treacherous past we have just lived through," he said, pointing out that Canada has recouped almost all the jobs it lost during the recession.

He categorized himself as a fiscal conservative but said he is also a pragmatist and defended the government's intervention in the economy over the past two years. "The role of government when the private sector fails is to intercede on behalf of the people of Canada.... It creates some difficulties with people insistent on ideological purity," he said.

New jobs numbers out yesterday ticked upward marginally by 0.1%, taking the unemployment rate back to 8% in July, after a particularly strong performance in June. The rate is still nearly 2% higher than October, 2008, largely because of an increase in the number of people in the labour force. When asked whether he was concerned about the possible adverse impact on employment of stimulus spending ending next spring, Mr. Flaherty said he was starting to see some signs of growing private-sector investment.

"Canada's economic action plan is a two-year plan and there has to be an exit strategy. It's time for the private sector to step up to the plate to resume strong investment and replace public-sector demand," he said.

The Couchiching Conference on public affairs at Geneva Park, on Lake Couchiching, is an annual event marking its 79th anniversary. This year's conference, entitled Watershed Moment or Wasted Opportunity, explores the global financial crisis and its consequences.

jivison@nationalpost.com