The Facebook Group that wasn’t ;-(

Re: “Tories scramble to recover from prorogation hit, show they're working hard”

Do you suppose there will be 223,243 Canadians joining a Facebook group called “Canadians who think Proroguing doesn’t matter now that Harper is willing to work during March?

Tories scramble to recover from prorogation hit, show they're working hard

(CP) – 1 hour ago

OTTAWA — The Harper government is scrambling to take back the political agenda after suffering a beating in the polls over its decision to suspend Parliament.
The Conservatives trotted out a pair of cabinet ministers Thursday to assure Canadians they're hard at work - and that a new proposal to cancel parliamentary spring breaks is not just a cynical political ploy.
"The two break weeks need to be cancelled so we can work hard," Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis said. "We want to sit as much as possible in order to get the measures passed that we think Canadians want to see passed."
He didn't explain why Parliament couldn't be doing that work now.
Conservative whip Gordon O'Connor sent a memo to Tory MPs and senators on Wednesday, telling them to cancel their traditional spring breaks - a change that would need unanimous approval by all parties.
The move came after successive polls suggesting Tory popularity has taken a nose-dive since Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Dec. 30 that he was proroguing Parliament until March to recalibrate the government's agenda.
Last month, Harper and other top Tories said ordinary Canadians didn't consider prorogation to be a big issue.
"I know it's a big issue with the Ottawa media elite and some of the elites in our country," Industry Minister Tony Clement said Jan. 11. "It may not be what the chattering classes want, but we're not here to govern on behalf of the chattering classes."
Clement was singing a different tune Thursday as he emerged with Paradis from cabinet meetings to insist the government is working hard.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said he has no problem with the government's plan to cancel the parliamentary breaks, but suggested it would be better if the Tories simply came back to work now.
He said Harper's excuses for the shutdown have disappeared and now the PM is "in a scrambling act to ... catch up to the Liberal party."
Ignatieff has been getting daily headlines since returning to Ottawa with his MPs on Jan. 25 - the day Parliament was to resume.
"We've been at work for two weeks and we've had some great results," he said during a break from party roundtables on community safety and energy and the environment.
"Parliament should not have been shut down. Canadians are prepared to get Parliament back to work. Why is the prime minister not prepared to do that? And now, he wants us to work during the break weeks in March and April.
"We're perfectly prepared to do that but we're wondering why we couldn't have started working on the 25th of January."
The usual procedure after a prorogation is to follow the established calendar which would mean the MPs would have had a break week after March 15, just days after returning to the Commons. After nine days of sitting they would have had another two weeks off in April, including the week of Easter.
Opposition parties suggested Harper's move to suspend Parliament was an attempt to muzzle parliamentarians and avoid controversy sparked by hearings into Canada's role in Afghanistan and the treatment of prisoners transferred to Afghan authorities by Canadian soldiers.
Copyright © 2010 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

The Facebook Group that wasn’t ;-(

Re: “Tories scramble to recover from prorogation hit, show they're working hard”

Do you suppose there will be 223,243 Canadians joining a Facebook group called “Canadians who think Proroguing doesn’t matter now that Harper is willing to work during March?

Tories scramble to recover from prorogation hit, show they're working hard
(CP) – 1 hour ago
OTTAWA — The Harper government is scrambling to take back the political agenda after suffering a beating in the polls over its decision to suspend Parliament.
The Conservatives trotted out a pair of cabinet ministers Thursday to assure Canadians they're hard at work - and that a new proposal to cancel parliamentary spring breaks is not just a cynical political ploy.
"The two break weeks need to be cancelled so we can work hard," Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis said. "We want to sit as much as possible in order to get the measures passed that we think Canadians want to see passed."
He didn't explain why Parliament couldn't be doing that work now.
Conservative whip Gordon O'Connor sent a memo to Tory MPs and senators on Wednesday, telling them to cancel their traditional spring breaks - a change that would need unanimous approval by all parties.
The move came after successive polls suggesting Tory popularity has taken a nose-dive since Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Dec. 30 that he was proroguing Parliament until March to recalibrate the government's agenda.
Last month, Harper and other top Tories said ordinary Canadians didn't consider prorogation to be a big issue.
"I know it's a big issue with the Ottawa media elite and some of the elites in our country," Industry Minister Tony Clement said Jan. 11. "It may not be what the chattering classes want, but we're not here to govern on behalf of the chattering classes."
Clement was singing a different tune Thursday as he emerged with Paradis from cabinet meetings to insist the government is working hard.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said he has no problem with the government's plan to cancel the parliamentary breaks, but suggested it would be better if the Tories simply came back to work now.
He said Harper's excuses for the shutdown have disappeared and now the PM is "in a scrambling act to ... catch up to the Liberal party."
Ignatieff has been getting daily headlines since returning to Ottawa with his MPs on Jan. 25 - the day Parliament was to resume.
"We've been at work for two weeks and we've had some great results," he said during a break from party roundtables on community safety and energy and the environment.
"Parliament should not have been shut down. Canadians are prepared to get Parliament back to work. Why is the prime minister not prepared to do that? And now, he wants us to work during the break weeks in March and April.
"We're perfectly prepared to do that but we're wondering why we couldn't have started working on the 25th of January."
The usual procedure after a prorogation is to follow the established calendar which would mean the MPs would have had a break week after March 15, just days after returning to the Commons. After nine days of sitting they would have had another two weeks off in April, including the week of Easter.
Opposition parties suggested Harper's move to suspend Parliament was an attempt to muzzle parliamentarians and avoid controversy sparked by hearings into Canada's role in Afghanistan and the treatment of prisoners transferred to Afghan authorities by Canadian soldiers.
Copyright © 2010 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

New anti-Harper Facebook group reaches 16,000+ fans

Name of Facebook Group: Can this Onion Ring get more fans than Stephen Harper?

My posting upon joining:

Brent Fullard posts: Who makes for the better "trained economist":

(1) Stephen Harper?

(2) An onion ring?

(3) neither of the above?

(4) all of the above?

(5) LOL!

John Turner: Obviously - an onion ring!!

Michael Ploog: #2, all the way!

Jeremy Shields: #2 imo

Join Here!

Marshall Plan for trusts, by Barry Critchley

Marshall Plan for trusts

Barry Critchley,
Financial Post
Thursday, February 04, 2010

It's ironic but Brent Fullard, who officially retired from the world of investment banking a number of years back, is still doing investment banking. But there's one key difference: He now operates in a broader arena of public policy. "And the reward is not monetary but the satisfaction of doing the public good," said Fullard, whose latest example of public policy is the aptly named Marshall Savings Plan.

That plan emerged recently as a way around the mess and real income-tax leakage created by the federal government's October 2006 decision to impose taxes on income trusts starting in 2011. Fullard, who was the driving force behind CAITI, the Canadian Association for Income Trust Investors, has championed the Marshall Plan idea, created a website (http://marshallplan.ca/marshall_plan. html) that explains the elements of the plan and is urging citizens to get behind the idea that has made its way to the mandarins in Ottawa in the hope that it will form part of the March 4 federal budget. "The MSP is a savings vehicle that serves the needs of the 75% of Canadians without pensions, while restoring a more level playing field between pension funds and individuals," said a note on the website. If an MSP was implemented, individual Canadians could transfer their income trust holdings to an MSP, receive the distributions from the trusts and pay the associated tax. But capital gains inside an MSP would be sheltered -- just like an RRSP.

"The base Marshall Savings Plan will be revenue positive [$6-billion by its estimate] to the government by fully capturing the value of what was previously alleged to be tax leakage, as well as protecting the tax revenue that is at risk from the continued takeover of the remaining 169 income trusts, that (will be) averted if the base Marshall Plan is implemented in Budget 2010," added the note.

Before the Marshall Plan, Fullard formed Catalyst Asset Management. In early 2007, Catalyst offered a solution to the takeover of BCE. That solution was an exchange offer whereby BCE's common shareholders would receive a high-paying stapled security. Catalyst pressed its case though the offer and was given short shrift by BCE, which favoured an offer led by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. As events materialized, BCE was not taken private.

-------------------------------------------------------

"Short shrift" is putting it mildly. More like BCE broke one of the most fundamental security rules by NOT DISCLOSING to its shareholders in BCE's own Bid Circular, the existence of a formal offer that achieved ALL of BCE's stated goals AND optimizing the result for ALL stakeholders and, in the end, was the only deal that would have got done, because it maximized the value of BCE ($42.50 - $52.00 versus Teachers' $42.50 that never materialized), and did so without oppressing BCE's bondholders, without requiring CRTC approval since there was no change of ownership, didn't involve going to the Supreme Court of Canada (although I did intervene against the Teachers' junk bond deal before the SCC), didn't entail firing 2,500 BCE employees, didn't involve reneging on BCE's dividend by cutting it to zero but instead increasing the dividend by 40% to $2.55 and didn't involve turning BCE into a junk bond basket case, since my proposal was self-funding and therefore did not require financing, which was the ultimate reason why the vastly inferior Teachers' deal blew up in the end.

Canada is a funny place? It's the only country I know of that goes out of its way to do the wrong thing, in the face of a clear alternative to do the right thing.

The Catalyst proposal for BCE is one such case in point. Could it have anything to do with the obvious explanation that Canada is run by the corporations for the CEOs, rather than Canada being run by the politicians for the people?

Now we have a second chance to observe who runs Canada, CEOs or Canadians, as afforded by the equally "brilliant" Marshall Savings Plan solution.

The Marshall Plan solution provides the perfect litmus teat example. Surely the Marshall Plan solution is not an IQ test, because the proposal is so easy to understand it's not funny as Barry so succinctly did in his article above. So too, is tt easy to understand the immense good that the Marshall Plan does for all Canadian taxpayers, the 75$ of Canadians who do not have pensions and the 2.5 million Canadians who were lied to by Stephen Harper and Jack Layton about that nonsense called tax leakage, something which the Marshall Plan renders into a completely irrelevant and MOOT point, as the Marshall Plan delivers to Ottawa cold hard cash in the place of whatever fanciful number that Flaherty or Jack Mintz or Eric Reguly of the Globe and Mail or Bob Hepburn or Carol Goar of the Toronto Star might want to come up today, as being their stalking horse tax leakage number?

The mere existence of the Marshall Plan on the scene, puts everybody in Ottawa into a corner in which they have to face the difficult decision concerning who did they get elected to represent? CEOs or Canadians at large?

Speaking of CEOs it is instructive to note that the only thing that was "deficient" about the Catalyst proposal was that it didn't accelerate the stock options for BCE's CEO and management and this windfall profit motive is the reason why these very people, when placed in the same intellectual corner by the Catalyst bid, decided to resort to the illegal act of not disclosing the vastly superior Catalyst proposal to BCE's unsuspectingg shareholders.

In the case of the Marshall Savings Plan, my expectation of Michael Ignatieff, as a Canadian taxpayer and voter as well as someone looking for true leadership in this country gone adrift, is that Michael Ignatieff (or maybe Gilles Duceppe?) act in the honest and ethical way that Michael Sabia did not, and who instead resorted to the crude and unethical practice of hiding the real truth about a real alternative that is good for all, namely the Catalyst Proposal. In the context however of the Marshall Plan solution the absence of such leadership and action by Ignatieff or Duceppe or whomever will, by default, simply mean acceding to the self serving sabotaging agenda of this crowd of jackals and hyenas, who don't seem to know the true meaning of FIDUCIARY DUTY to maximize value for shareholders, but rather resort to what works best for them, and the country and democratic due process be damned:

"High-profile directors and CEOs, meanwhile, had approached Mr. Flaherty personally to express their concerns: Many felt they were being pressed into trusts because of their duty to maximize shareholder value, despite their misgivings about the structure. Paul Desmarais Jr., the well-connected chairman of Power Corp. of Canada, even railed against trusts in a conversation with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a trip to Mexico."

Only someone who is not a trained economist?

Image: Stephen Harper of the imfamous
18 pages of blacked out document tax leakage gang

I just got off the phone with the editor of the Collingwood Enterprise Bulletin and submitted to him this letter:

Re: Your Opinion Editorial of today entitled: "Harper needs to meet promises with action"

Which reads:

"Promise: Prior to the 2006 election, the Conservative election platform said: "A Conservative government will the Liberal attack on saving and preserve income trusts by not imposing any new taxes on them. Once in office, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced Income trusts would be taxed like corporations starting in 2011.

Thousands of seniors lost their savings as a result."

Stephen Harper should count his lucky stars, as Canadian taxpayers who have lost $1.5 billion in annual tax revenue as result of the foreign takeovers of 51 income trusts over the last 3 years, have come up with a solution that Diane Francis of the Financial Post calls "brilliant" that prevents the remaining 169 trusts from experiencing a similar fate. This Marshall Savings Plan solution creates a win win outcome for the government by preserving $6 billion in tax revenue to deal with Canada's deficit crisis, while at the same time preserving this essential investment choice, thereby dealing with the pension crisis for the 75% of Canadians without pensions.

Only somebody who is not a trained economist would turn down this deal!

See the win win Marshall Plan solution to Harper’s broken promise income trust mess at http://marshallplan.ca/index.html

Brent Fullard

Harper needs to meet promises with action - Marshall Plan?

click on image to enlarge

Harper needs to meet promises with action
Collingwood Enterprise Bulletin
February 3, 2010

So Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper wants the G8 to honour past promises instead of making new ones. That's what our country's leader is telling other countries leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

This sounds like a great idea. Why go running off at the mouth making promises that then disappear into the cold thin air.

Talk is cheap. Actions, speak louder than words. Ah, these sayings, so much wisdom in two sentences.

It's so short and sweet and to the point. Anyone can understand these things.

So let's back the prime minister and hey, let's make it a part of our creed that this day forward, anyone who wants to make a promise to you has to have had backed up their previous promises with action to make the old promises come true.

And while we're on the subject...

Promise: Harper campaigned for an elected senate. His first act as Prime minister, he appointed his campaign cochair Michael Fortier as a senator.

Promise: As leader of the Opposition watching some high profile members of parliament flee his benches for the Liberals, Harper led the fight to ban floor-crossing without a byelection.

Once he won the election and his party was installed as the government, Harper overlooked the hard work of fellow candidates and stole David Emerson from the Liberals, rewarding him with a cabinet post. Neat note: Simcoe-Grey MP Helena Guergis, a very vocal opponent of floor crossing worked closely with Emerson when he was made minister by Harper.

Promise: Harper pledged prior to the 2004 election to abolish the GST on gas as the price went above 85 cents a litre. As Prime Minister, he told us we just had to get used to higher fuel prices.

Promise: Legislation would be brought in to regulate when Canadians would vote and prevent governments from calling elections before they had lost the confidence of the House of Commons.

The legislation was passed, but the prime minister ignored it and went to the Governor General in 2008 and asked her to dissolve parliament so he could have an election. She did and he did.

Promise: Prior to the 2006 election, the Conservative election platform said: "A Conservative government will stopthe Liberal attack on saving and preserve income trusts by not imposing any new taxes on them. Once in office, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced Income trusts would be taxed like corporations starting in 2011.

Thousands of seniors lost their savings as a result.

Promise: Harper as part of the 2006 election campaign, promised to clean up government polling. He had regularly beat up the Liberal government for its spending $18 million on polls.

In the first year as the governing party, the Conservatives spent $31.2 million on polls.

We could go on, but we have limited space. Let's just say if Harper could just meet these promises with some action that would make them come true, he can consider his feet firmly planted on level moral ground and then he can start telling other people how they should behave.

Until then, he really needs to stop lecturing. He needs to stop promising.

Talk is cheap.

Actions speak louder than words.
----------
See the win win Marshall Plan solution to Harper’s broken promise income trust mess at: http://marshallplan.ca/index.html

Has Flaherty become the poster child for elder abuse?

Comment From: http://marshallplan.ca/

Surrey, BC

Subject - Elder Abuse.

I recently saw a commercial on television from the Federal Government about elder abuse. If you click on this link it will take you to the commercial -

You Tube

The part where the young fellow reaches into his grandma's purse and steals the rest of her money was intriguing. What would you do if someone reached in and stole $35 Billion dollars from seniors in 1 night? The face on that young man should be that of Stephen Harper, and Jim Flaherty when they changed the rules on income trusts, and in one night wiped out $35 Billion in seniors hard earned assets after they PROMISED that they wouldn’t prior to the 2006 election. Here is the video where Harper Adamantly states he would not raid senior’s nest eggs, and put any new taxes on income trusts.

You Tube

In a few more months, the end of 2010, those new taxes will be imposed and the incomes that have been received through income trusts will be non-existent. What a tragedy for seniors, and this when Stephen Harper promised prior to the 2006 election that he would NOT touch income trusts, "never to raid seniors hard earned assets". I personally don't know what I am going to do. I personally lost $30,000 when Harvest Energy was purchased by the Korean National Oil Company, never to see that money again. Here is an additional video clip from youtube.


You Tube


Bernie Madoff stole $35 Billion from investors, and he is going to jail for 150 years. Harper and Flaherty are getting away with this just so they can keep donations coming in from the large insurance companies, as they were behind this scheme. Who would put money into insurance companies and get a 5% return if you could get 10 to 15% from directly investing into income trusts. I am happy to pay my taxes on income trust earnings, at least I have some earnings.

We aren’t talking a few dollars here, we are talking Billions, and the ruination of many seniors retirement plans. Add to it the income trusts that have been purchased at bargain basement prices by foreigners, never to see a tax dollar from them again, or the one that was just recently purchased by CPP. Talk about tax leakage.

If you start watching the youtube videos, you will see Ralph Klein interviewed, and his opinion on Harper’s Blunder -

You Tube

You will also see Mr. Schulich, a learned business instructor on this blunder -

You Tube

This entire thing can still be corrected. The Marshall Plan is a perfect compromise. The government gets more income, and we get to KEEP an income.

Please Help.

Thanks.