News Flash: Canadian media was already Fox News North, spouting Harper's lies about income trusts

The examples are legion. Lawrence Martin himself. The Globe and Mail. The entire CTVGlobeMedia empire. National Post. The Toronto Star. etc, etc.

Most disheartening was the there was also CBC falling in lock step on Harper's lies about tax leakage and all the other patent BS about income trusts, even when armed with irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

The only thing worse than Harper, is the gawd awful Canadian media.
Harper tightens his grip on media message control

National Report by Lawrence Martin
METRO CANADA
June 22, 2010 10:00 a.m.


Anyone who has worked with Stephen Harper will tell you his top priority is message control. Control the message and you control outcomes.

That’s why, upon becoming prime minister in 2006, he put in place the most all-encompassing vetting system Ottawa had ever seen. Nothing could go out, not even the most minor of communications, without approval from head office.

But to control the message, you have to have influence in the media. So how’s this for a coup? Harper now has one of his former directors of communications, Kory Teynecke, as de facto boss of Sun Media coverage. The same Teynecke is also leading the bid from the same organization to create a new conservative television network.

On the newspaper side, Teynecke has already overhauled Sun Media’s Ottawa bureau. Several good reporters have been moved out. The replacements are good reporters as well. But anyone who doesn’t think they will be under pressure to provide a lot of Conservative spin is deluding themselves. The changes were made for a purpose, and the purpose was hardly to have the new hires rushing out to hold the government’s feet to the fire.

On the TV side, the new network needs regulatory approval to get up and running. The CRTC will be under tremendous pressure to provide it. As has been demonstrated, Harper does not take kindly to tribunals or commissions that go against his wishes. Those who sit on them can be replaced or have their decisions overturned. Chances of the PM standly idly by and watching this network proposal get shelved are next to nil.

The new network won’t be as biased as Fox News in the United States, its promoters claim. But in attacking the work of the CBC’s Don Newman, they showed their true colours. If they had one-half the experience, the depth and the erudition of Newman, they should consider themselves lucky.

Having one of his former promoters running Sun Media is just one of two great media turns for the prime minister. The other was the recent auction of the Canwest newspapers. Just when it looked like the conservative flagship, The National Post, and the chain’s other big-city newspapers were about to be taken over by liberally inclined buyers, Canwest’s Paul Godfrey came to the rescue with an 11th-hour bid that will keep the papers in the conservative stable.

The prime minister stood on the verge of losing the media balance of power in the country. Not only has he maintained it, he has now increased it.

Lawrence Martin is a journalist and author of 10 books who writes about national affairs from Ottawa.

BP gets OK to dump mercury into Lake Michigan

BP gets OK to dump mercury into Lake Michigan

By Bobby Carmichael, USA TODAY
Posted 7/30/2007

A BP (BP) refinery in Indiana will be allowed to continue to dump mercury into Lake Michigan under a permit issued by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

The permit exempts the BP plant at Whiting, Ind., 3 miles southeast of Chicago, from a 1995 federal regulation limiting mercury discharges into the Great Lakes to 1.3 ounces per year.

The BP plant reported releasing 3 pounds of mercury through surface water discharges each year from 2002 to 2005, according to the Toxics Release Inventory, a database on pollution emissions kept by the Environmental Protection Agency that is based on information reported by companies.

The permit was issued July 21 in connection with the plant's $3.8 billion expansion, but only late last week began to generate public controversy. It gives the company until at least 2012 to meet the federal standard.

The action was denounced by environmental groups and members of Congress.

"With one permit, this company and this state are undoing years of work to keep pollution out of our Great Lakes," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., co-sponsor of a resolution overwhelmingly approved by the House last week that condemned BP's plans.

Studies have shown that mercury, a neurotoxin, is absorbed by fish and can be harmful if eaten in significant quantities, particularly by pregnant women and children. Each of the eight Great Lakes states warns residents to avoid certain kinds of fish or limit consumption.

The permit comes as the states, working with the federal government, are trying to implement the $20 billion Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy, an umbrella plan to restore the health of the lakes signed in late 2005.

Indiana officials said the amount of mercury released by BP was minor.

"The permitted levels will not affect drinking water, recreation or aquatic life," Indiana Department of Environmental Management Commissioner Thomas Easterly told the Chicago Tribune.

BP said it doubted that any municipal sewage treatment plant or industrial plant could meet the stringent federal standards.

"BP will work with (Indiana regulators) to minimize mercury in its discharge, including implementation of source controls," the company said, according to the Tribune.

Part of the concern is that the Great Lakes have only one outlet — the St. Lawrence River.

"Lake Michigan is like a giant bathtub with a really, really slow drain and a dripping faucet, so the toxics build up over time," said Emily Green, director of the Great Lakes program for the Sierra Club.

Gee, we could have had a G8!

My neighbour here in Muskoka was in Huntsville the other day and told me that they have clear cut a 30’ wide swath through the forest that surrounds Deerhurst (the site of the G8 black fly summit) in order to erect a 10’ high perimeter security fence. All for the sake of one lousy day, which is what the G8 has been reduced to, now that Harper agreed to having the event morph into a G20, at the additional cost of some $1billion ++.

Should have stuck with the original plan at a fraction of the cost. To think, we could have had a G8......and we still would have been “world class”.

Alberta’s Finance Minister cites income trusts as Exhibit A in Flaherty’s incompetence

In yesterday’s Calgary Herald. Ted Morton writes:

“That [Flaherty] would be the same finance minister and same federal bureaucrats who decided without warning in 2006 to fully tax energy income trusts, wiping out an estimated $35 billion of market equity in mostly Alberta based energy companies.That experience is Exhibit A in the case against a single federal regulator."

Ted Morton: Messing with a very good thing Alberta's security regulator has served us well

By Ted Morton, For The Calgary Herald June 1, 2010



Re: "No more carrot," Letter, May 31, "Out of touch," Letter, May 29, "Alberta reveals parochial ways with challenge to watchdog," Deborah Yedlin, Opinion, May 27.

In their rush to support the federal government's scheme to take over securities regulation, commentators have so far failed to consider the one key question: exactly what is Ottawa trying to fix that hasn't already been addressed by, or couldn't be fixed within, the current passport system?

Proponents of the move continue to parrot the federal government's line that the current system is a patchwork of 13 regulators and 13 sets of rules and fees. These criticisms and others have been resolved through 10 years of harmonization efforts to create the passport system.

It is a system that works well both on a local and a national level. Internationally, Canada's passport system is recognized as among the best in the world, with the OECD and the World Bank Group rating it ahead of both the United States and the United Kingdom. And two years in a row the Milken Institute ranked Canada first as having the "best access to capital."

As good as the passport system is, Alberta is not opposed to improving it. This is not a mindless defence of the status quo, but rather a request to Ottawa to be specific about what needs fixing, and then work with provinces to do it. The federal government has yet to identify any needed improvement that could not be accommodated within the existing system.

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has suggested that a single national regulator might have prevented the Earl Jones Ponzi fraud. Perhaps. But a single national regulator in the U.S. -- the Securities and Exchange Commission -- certainly didn't stop Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, which was many times larger in dollars and victims. Nor did the SEC prevent the meltdowns at Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers in 2008, not to mention Enron or WorldCom earlier in the same decade. Indeed, Flaherty's endorsement of the SEC model for Canada is hardly self-evident.

But for the strongest supporters of Flaherty's project -- the Ontario government and Bay Street -- this dubious track record doesn't really matter. For them, the appeal of a national regulator is that it will be located -- where else? -- in Toronto. The proposed federal legislation is vague about the location issue, talking instead about "regional offices"-- as if those would last longer than the current government.

But even this suggestion is too much for Ontario. Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has said more than once that if the head office is not in Toronto, then Ontario is not interested. Of course, this explains why Ontario is the only province that has refused to participate in the passport system.

The Toronto-centric vision of this project is not its only problem. Regulation of securities has been a matter of provincial jurisdiction for more than 100 years. In the 1990s, when the Jean Chretien Liberals pursued this same idea, they conceded from the start that they lacked the constitutional authority to proceed unilaterally. They understood that any change would require provincial co-operation and consent.

Canada's Constitution does not change with the change of governments. What has changed is a new finance minister, who evidently is more interested in listening to his own federal bureaucrats (who have long lusted for SECtype power) than his constitutional lawyers. That would be the same finance minister and same federal bureaucrats who decided without warning in 2006 to fully tax energy income trusts, wiping out an estimated $35 billion of market equity in mostly Albertabased energy companies.

That experience is Exhibit A in the case against a single federal regulator. Notwithstanding all the pious assurances that the proposed new regulator would respect regional differences and provincial interests, when political push comes to shove in Ottawa -- when money and votes are on the table -- Alberta tends to get marginalized. And it doesn't much matter which political party is in power. It's the electoral math.

Since 1968 the Liberals neither won nor needed any of Alberta's 28 seats to form a government, while Conservative governments (both the Mulroney and Harper varieties) can and do take them all for granted. To advance our economic interests, Alberta needs a constitutionally guaranteed seat at the table. That's what the Constitution gives us, and that's what Flaherty proposes to take away.

Alberta will not cede this power to Ottawa. This is not just about securities, but all financial services that have been regulated by the provinces under their Section 92 jurisdiction over "property and civil rights"-- including pensions, credit unions and insurance.

When it comes to diversification of the Alberta economy, financial services is one of the fastest growing sectors -- with the potential for much greater growth. The job-multiplying effect of having a provincial-based securities commission has been well documented by Quebec. As Canada and the rest of the world emerges from the recession, Alberta will lead the way. If we let the Alberta Securities Commission get scooped up and transferred to Toronto, we can also say goodbye to thousands of spinoff jobs in investment banking, law, accounting and financial analysts.

Why would Albertans want to do this, especially when it is not even necessary?

Ted Morton is Alberta 's minister of finance and enterprise
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/opinion/Morton+Messing+with+very+good+thing/3096290/story.html#Comments#ixzz0pdr7LEL9

The damage is already done

The damage is already done

Published 20 minutes ago
Toronto Star

Re: Flaherty right to worry about burden on young, May 11

When I read your article’s opening line — “Jim Flaherty has stated the first principle for any national initiative to help Canadians increase their retirement income should be: Do no harm” — I couldn’t help but wretch in disgust. This is the same Jim Flaherty who broke the Conservative “promise” never to touch trust units, thus wiping out nearly $35 billion from investors and retirees alike.Do no harm? No government in Canadian history has done more harm to retirement incomes than the Conservatives, led by the dictatorial duo of Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper.Income trusts were an ideal vehicle that provided retirees a dependable and steady stream of income, while at the same time allowing Canadian-owned corporations the ability to raise capital for further growth and expansion.And what has happened since the Halloween Day massacre? Retirees have seen their life savings vanish and many once-prosperous Canadian-owned companies are now in the hands of foreign owners.Do no harm? It’s way too late for that, Mr. Flaherty.

Alan Rogers,
Mississauga

McCallum doesn't shoot blanks. Those are real bullets he fires into good ideas

Pollster Bruce Anderson has an article in today’s Globe entitled “John McCallum shoots economic blanks for Liberals”, which argues that the Liberals are unable to exploit the bad economic times to their political advantage because John McCallum shoots blanks. While I agree with the symptoms. I don’t agree with the diagnosis, as those are real bullets that John McCallum fires into every good populist idea that crosses his path. Two examples are noteworthy. The Liberals support for HST and the Liberals pathetic handling of the income trust file. Handled properly, these two issues alone could have propelled the Liberals into a 10 point advantage over the Conservatives, but the Liberal think they can propel themselves into victory by kow towing to a handful of Canadians like Ed Clark (he of the HST) and the Life Co CEOs who were intent on killing income trusts for their narrow self interests. Sheesh. Good luck with that strategy.

My most recent encounter with John McCallum was in Peterborough a few months ago during the time that Parliament was prorogued and the Liberals were engage in a faux exercise of pre budget consultations. William Barrowclough (pictured above) of Peterborough and I formally presented John McCallum with the concept of the Liberals getting behind the win win win proposal known as the Marshall Savings Plan that had nothing but upside for Canadians and was hailed by Diane Francis of the Financial Post and others as “brilliant”. What was John McCallum’s argument for not embracing the Marshall Savings Plan? He argued it was “complicated”, and promptly fired a bullet into a great idea.

My response to John McCallum at that meeting was to say that the Marshall Savings Plan (MSP) is no more complicated than an RRSP, as the Marshall Savings Plan is simply an RRSP with one change and a change that accelerates tax collection for Ottawa at a time when budget deficits scream for the $6 billion in annual tax revenue that the MSP would have provided for. In so doing, John McCallum fired a bullet into an idea that would have addressed Canada’s deficit crisis AND Canada’s pension crisis. How dare Bruce Anderson argue that John McCallum shoots economic blanks for the Liberals.

Meanwhile what became of that petition that was handed to John McCallum in Peterborough by William Barrowclough that was signed by over 3,000 Canadians that called for inclusion of the Marshall Savings Plan in Budget 2010, a measure that also was supported by 79.3% of Canadians in a Environics Research Poll? Did John McCallum think we were just shooting blanks when we went to the immense effort to gather 3,000 signatures, only to have it completely ignored?

John McCallum shoots economic blanks for Liberals
May 11, 2010

Bruce Anderson
Globe and Mail

Liberals looking to understand why their party has made no headway in the last year could do worse than to focus on why they seem to have a tiny "share of voice" on economic issues.

Some ask what it will take for Michael Ignatieff to hit 35 per cent in the polls, if a recession, two prorogations and a massive deficit aren't enough. Solid, clear ideas, in-the-moment agility and a penetrating communications style are all important. As is assembling the right talent on his front bench and making their efforts count.

Last week was another one where people around the world felt rising anxiety about the economy, as concerns about a debt crisis and global contagion spiked.

Yet, the day after stunning stock-market gyrations threatened yet again the retirement savings of many middle class Canadians, in the House of Commons the only questions asked about the economy were asked by Conservative back-benchers, and answered by the Finance Minister's parliamentary secretary. The Liberals used their time to grind on a handful of issues that, given the context, were not likely to generate column inches or TV and radio clips.

Over the weekend, the political news in Canada was about Mr. Harper's approach to the G20 meeting, his conversations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and his determination that nation-state indebtedness must be a focal point of the upcoming meeting in Canada. The coverage was straight up, there was no opposition point of view on offer, and the impression left is of a Prime Minister as a bigger-picture kind of guy, developing constructive relationships with the most important leaders in the world.

Mr.Ignatieff, for his part, was in the news for being sworn in as a Privy Councillor, and for touting the virtues of high speed broadband in rural Canada.

John McCallum, his finance critic, is rarely in the news. To be fair (I don't know him) I wanted to be sure this wasn't owing to media filters, so I took a quick tour of his website. Listed there are a handful of news releases, speeches, and questions he has asked (including a number of non-functioning links), but nothing more recent than March of 2008. I'm sure that the realitiy is he hasn't been silent for two years, but at the very least, this is not the level of promotion you might expect from someone with such a key responsibility.

It seems to me there's a fair bit of talent in the Liberal caucus, and given the importance of economic issues, Mr. McCallum is the most baffling choice Mr.Ignatieff continues to make. The economy is likely to remain at the top of the public agenda for some time, but the team of Ignatieff-McCallum seems unable or unwilling to muster an argument or a point of differentiation about it. The conclusion one might draw is that they either don't know how they would improve upon Harper economic policy, or can't articulate the difference they would make if elected.

I'd wager there are at least 10 Liberal caucus members who could do a more energetic and effective job with the finance critic role. As Mr. Ignatieff works to build the skills to be a potent opposition leader (few are perfectly cut for that role), he can't afford to ignore underperformance on his front bench. Having overhauled his office in recent months, he might usefully apply the same diligence with his shadow cabinet.

Mark Carney exempted Goldman Sachs from Flaherty’s income trust tax

Flaherty’s income trust tax was structured by Mark Carney in such a way that only the little investor was taxed and the big guys were given a free ride. Not only were the big guys given a free ride, this tax was imposed in such a way that the big guys were able to prey upon the small investor and expropriate wealth from the small investor in the amount of some $35 billion. What else might you expect from the architect of Flaherty’s income trust tax, Mark Carney, given he spent his entire career at Goldman Sachs,  prior to his seeking an unelected role in government?

Mark Carney wouldn’t have dealt with a single Canadian retail investor in his entire career and evidently doesn’t care a wit about them and probably perceives them as ripe for the picking. 

Thanks to Goldman Sachs alumni Mark Carney, the mere act of taking an income trust private that was previously publicly held by Canadian retail investors is the means by which large institutional investors liker Goldman Sachs Capital Partners are able to do an end run around the Canadian government and all Canadian taxpayers and avoid paying the 31.5% tax created by Mark Carney, and the person at Finance responsible for the income trust file.

This is nothing more than creating a UNLEVEL playing field, which is the exact opposite outcome of what Flaherty professed his policy was going to accomplish.

Meanwhile these very takeovers of public income trusts by foreigners like Goldman Sachs Capital Partners has diverted the profits of these businesses from the hands of taxable Canadians and into the hands of non-taxable foreigners, with the result that Flaherty has (to date) created $1.2 billion in annual tax revenue loss (ie tax leakage) to solve an alleged tax leakage problem of $500 million. A problem that never existed in the first place, as Flaherty’s bogus tax leakage numbers ignores ALL the taxes that are collected from the 38% of income trusts held by average Canadians in their RRSPs. 

The policy rationale for the tax is a blatant falsehood, as income trusts do not cause tax leakage. It is Mark Carney's contrived tax leakage analysis that causes tax leakage. Mark Carney's tax leakage argument is a false construct whose only purpose was to make it easier for Mark Carney and his political masters to "sell" this policy to the public and dupe the public into acceptance, in order to achieve its real ends that only serve narrow interests.

Goldman Sachs Capital Partners have been investors in a number of publicly traded income trusts that were taken private, like CCS Income Trust. 

The rip off goes this way. Flaherty announces a tax that wipes off $35 billion of the value of Canada’s 220 income trusts including CCS Income Trust, since all the existing investors of these public trust are faced with a permanent 31.5% tax. Mark Carney has seen to it that this adversity can be exploited by others by the mere act of taking these trusts like CCS private and out of the public market, something that is beyond the reach of retail investors. Why would the same business be taxable at 31.5% as a public income trust, but taxable at 0% as a private income trust, unless the goal was to deprive public investors from alternatives that Mark Carney wants to be the exclusive domain of large private investors like Goldman Sachs? Plus it was done in a way that wealth was transferred from private investors to private investors. $35 billion of wealth to be precise. 

Mark Carney's scheme allows investors like Goldman Sachs Private Capital to scoop up these artificially devalued income trusts from unsuspecting Canadian retail investors and by the mere act of taking them private, the new investors like Goldman Sachs Private Capital are able to evade the payment of Flaherty and Carney’s 31.5% tax.  

Generically  speaking, this type of investing that exploits one time exogenous events is called " Event -driven  Investing". I am sure Mark Carney would be happy to give a speech to his local Boy Scouts troupe about all the riches to be derived from Event -driven Investing. 

This is the same kind of rip off of taxpayers as occurred in Russia during the time of the privatization of Russian industry by a new group of favoured investors who came to be known as oligarchs, This is exactly where Mark Carney spent his formative years at Goldman Sachs, advising Russian oligarchs in how they can rip off the Russian people (via a so called "privatization", in which state owned assets were transferred at below market value to a group of hand picked cronies of the Russian political elite). At least that is what I was told by senior representatives of the Ontario Government were his "privatization" qualifications  at Goldman Sachs when he formed part of the team (along with myself) that had been assembled by the Ontario Government to privatize Hydro One, back in 1999, since Mark had no IPO or public equity markets experience that would have justified him playing any role, in such a large IPO privatization.

Mark Carney took those skills and applied them to Canada in order to deprive Canadians of $35 billion of their life savings and transfer that wealth to groups like his buddies at Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. 

The people at Goldman Sachs aren't successful because they are necessarily any smarter than the rest of us, just a lot more cunning and crooked in many cases and have the audacity to pull off tricks like Mark Carney’s income trust tax, that steals from the poor to line the pockets of the wealthy. 

Where is Canada’s Official Opposition in exposing these corrupt schemes like Flaherty’s income trust tax? Who in Ottawa is defending taxpaying Canadians from the rapacious schemes of groups like Goldman Sachs Private Capital and people like Mark Carney?