Playing field now officially leveled: First quarter IPO activity, lowest in a decade

Just some of the havoc wreaked by Jim Flaherty's rudimentary understanding of finance:

PricewaterhouseCoopers - Lowest in a decade, first quarter IPO market off more than 50%

TORONTO, April 3 /CNW/ - The value of initial public offerings (IPOs) on Canadian equity markets fell to $148 million in the first quarter of 2008, just half of the value of new issues in the same period of 2007 and the lowest quarterly total in more than a decade, the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey of Canadian equity markets has shown.

The 20 new issues in the period from January 1 to March 31, 2008, was just less than the 21 IPOs in the same period of 2007 but the value of new offerings was 49.3% of the $300 million recorded in the first quarter of 2007,a period when the IPO market had already started its downward slide, the survey revealed.

Only three new issues were introduced on the TSX during the first quarter, for a value of $113 million. By comparison, five IPOs with a combined value of $191 million made it to the TSX in the same period of 2007, and 18 new issues worth $1.9 billion appeared on Canada's senior exchange in the first quarter of 2006.

Activity on the TSX Venture exchange was up slightly in the first quarter of 2008, when 14 new issues reached the market vs 13 IPOs in the same period of 2007. The value of new offerings on the TSX Venture fell to $31 million in the first three months of the year from the $89 million in the first quarter of 2007.

The value of IPOs in the first quarter is the lowest result in more than a decade, according to Ross Sinclair, national leader of PwC's IPO and income trust services.
"The same confluence of events that weighed down the market in 2007 continues to be a factor in 2008," Sinclair said.

A lack of investment alternatives to replace the popular income trusts, equity market volatility, credit market turmoil and gloomy economic outlook in the U.S. all appeared to conspire against the market for new issues, Sinclair said. "It is disappointing but I can't say these results are shocking," he added. "It will take the return of solid, established companies with premium issues to show the way out of this phase of the IPO market."

The first quarter results also trailed the final quarter of 2007, when 37 new issues were marketed on Canadian exchanges, including 19 IPOs on the TSX. The total value of fourth quarter offerings was $2.2 billion ($2.1 billion on
the TSX).

The largest new issue on the TSX in the first quarter was the $50 million IPO of Pristine Power Inc. Mining companies accounted for 16 of the 20 new offerings on all exchanges in the first quarter.

Today’s St. Catharines Standard Letter to the Editor

Harper, Flaherty are the ones lacking integrity and accountability
Posted 1 hour ago
April 3, 2008

Re: Political attack ad is nothing more than graffiti, The Standard, March 27.

In this letter to the editor, David Lewis says, "the authors lack integrity and credibility."

Actually, it is the Stephen Harper government that lacks integrity and credibility. Harper clearly stated before the last election that a Conservative government would not change the way income trust businesses were taxed.

Based on this solemn pledge, when Harper was elected many Canadians felt it was safe to invest some or more of their hard-earned dollars into income trust businesses. Also, based on Harper's word, several businesses adopted the income trust structure.

Shortly after being elected, Harper sabotaged these investors and businesses when he did a complete 180 by imposing a draconian new tax on income trust businesses. The announcement of this new tax immediately saw the share value of income trust businesses fall by some 30 per cent causing the loss of $35 billion to those who invested in these businesses. The share prices of most of these income trust businesses have not recovered.

This was the most heinous act ever taken by the Government of Canada directly against a particular type of investment - and it mostly affected senior and retired investors.

The Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors is doing yeoman work fighting to right a wrong. It's the Conservative government that lacks credibility and integrity in the eyes of up to four million Canadians who felt it was safe to invest in income trusts once Harper was elected, only to be stabbed in the back.

Terry Martinson

First Street East

Fort Frances, Ont.

A most revealing visitor to CAITI blog

Obviously someone in the Department of Finance is concerned with the prospect that Jim Flaherty may become politically associated with his devious and underhanded moves to double tax RRSPs.

This is a gold mine for the opposition parties to exploit, which they have not. Flaherty’s idea of "leveling the playing field” is to double tax RRSPs, while giving pension plans like Teachers’ a special break.

I say this because the CAITI blog had a visitor today (3:13 pm) from “Finance Canada and Treasury Board’ who was directed to our blog by way of a Google search, after entering the key words "Flaherty double taxing RRSPs".

It’s about time that people wake up to the reality that Flaherty has begun double taxing RRSPs. What do you think the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) is all about? It’s a rear guard attempt to substitute a less attractive vehicle (TFSA) in exchange for a more attractive saving vehicle (RRSP).

The article that this visitor was directed to on our blog were two fold:

(1) The origin of species: RRSPs

(2) The Self Benevolent Tax Policies of Jim Flaherty




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Pat Martin: Penny wise, pound foolish

How's this for priorities? The NDP’s Pat Martin is more fixated on the penny, than he is in investigating $1 million life insurance bribes made by parties in office,

In paralyzed fear that it may benefit the Liberals more than the NDP, Pat Martin, as a member of the Ethics Committee, voted against an Ethics Committee hearing into the allegation that Stephen Harper had prior knowledge that his party attempted to influence Chuck Cadman's vote with a $1 million life insurance policy bribe.

Turns out Pat Martin is more keen to eliminate the penny than he is keen to eliminate corruption. Which do you suppose costs Canadians more? The penny? Endless corruption?

Why am I reminded of ATM fees? The NDP have a perverse sense of priorities, always starting with the least important and never working up from the bottom of the barrel.


NDP bill would kill penny by next year

April 02, 2008
Richard Brennan
in Ottawa
Robert Benzie
in Toronto
OTTAWA — An NDP MP says the penny is an "expensive nuisance" and should be scrapped this year on its 100th anniversary.
"The penny is of no commercial value, it does not circulate and costs more to produce that its actually worth," said Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre), who introduced a private members' bill today calling for the penny's demise before year's end.
"There is no business case for continuing to produce the penny. Making cents, in fact, make no sense at all," he told a news conference, adding his bill includes a formula to round off to the near nickel.
Getting rid of the penny has been talked about before, but Martin said recent studies confirm that the "copper" has outlived its usefulness and is actually costing taxpayers money.
He says it costs 4.5 cents to produce each penny.
Each year, Martin said, the government spends $130 million to produce 1.2 billion pennies that end up, for the most part, under beds, in jars and tins and even the gutter.
Other countries have already moved to eliminate the penny, including Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain and the Netherlands "and life as we know it did not come to and end in those countries," Martin said.
"They managed to cope quite well and, in fact, they have introduced a rounding formula," he said. "My bill will also recommend to take care of what we do with the odd number pricing," he said.
Premier Dalton McGuinty added his voice to Martin's call for elimination of the 1-cent coin.
McGuinty said Canadians want change by getting less change in their pockets.
"I just think ... a penny ain't what it used to be," the premier told reporters this morning.
There are 20 billion pennies circulating in Canada.
Martin said this year marks that 100th anniversaryof the pennyin Canada. "We believe at the same time we have a birthday party for the penny, we should have a funeral."

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/409136

Today's Letter to the Editor, St. Catharines Standard

Billboards let voters know of broken promises .....

Re: Political attack ad is nothing more than graffiti, The Standard, March 27.

The real "graffiti" in this issue is the lies the Conservatives have stated regarding income trusts. They lied when they promised not to tax income trusts and they lied when they tried to justify the reasons for breaking this promise.

The unwarranted taxing of income trusts has caused billions of dollars in losses to Canadian and international investors, and especially those senior citizens that Prime Minister Harper and his gang so resolutely promised to protect.

The Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors is only stating the truth and the facts of the matter and is clearly forthright and honest on its advertised website.

I'm sure that if the billboard referred to in this letter had falsely accused our prime minister and his finance minister of lying, actions would have been initiated to have this billboard taken down some time ago.

This is especially true as we seem to have a prime minister who has a tendency to threaten and/or sue when challenged.

Why has he not taken any legal action in over a year? May it be he cannot contest the inferred charge?

Gerry Harley
Carruthers Avenue
Ottawa

Given his penchant for vote rigging, was Stephen Harper behind the Zaccardelli scheme?

In my opinion, there is little doubt from his self incriminating taped confession about Stephen Harper's prior knowledge of the "financial considerations" that were being offered by his party in order to influence Chuck Cadman's vote on a crucial confidence motion that would have brought the Paul Martin government down in 2005.

Which leads one to speculate about what involvement Stpehen Harper may have had in Giuliano Zaccardelli's blatant political interference in the 2006 election that did indeed bring the Martin government down, by announcing a criminal investigation had been launched into the income trust leak.

This blatant political interference took the form of Zaccardelli faxing a personally signed letter to NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis dated December 23, 2005. At 3:00 pm on a Friday, no less. At which point Judy Wasylycia-Leis felt compelled to release it to the media.

To what extent was Judy Wasylycia-Leis simply a pawn and foil for the Conservatives at large? To what extent did Harper conspire and scheme with Zaccardelli, who no doubt would benefit from a "tough in crime" Conservative government being in office?

These are matters that go to the heart of our democratic system and need answers. This is a matter deserving of a full public inquiry. Right after the full public inquiry of the Cadman matter.

CRIMINAL PROBE
Top Mountie ordered trusts alert to include Goodale
Zaccardelli's change deviated from rules, RCMP watchdog says

Globe and Mail
April 1, 2008

OTTAWA, TORONTO -- Former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli approved the release of information about a criminal probe into the income trust leak in the middle of the 2006 federal election campaign and directed that a news release name Ralph Goodale, then Liberal finance minister, an RCMP watchdog report revealed yesterday.

The move to include Mr. Goodale's name - a decision even the police force now says was not in keeping with past practice - was made in the absence of any policies or guidelines on handling such sensitive situations, said the chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP.

Continued here

Harper's desperate attempt to blunt the trauma of his income trust betrayal

Stephen Harper has proven himself to be completely untrustworthy, but that doesn't make him completely stupid. He realizes that 40% of the people who actually show up to vote on election date are over the age of 60.

He also realizes that his income trust promise of the last election will become a major liability for him in the upcoming election, since the income trust promise soon became the income trust lie and the betrayal of a generation for seniors and those saving for retirement across the nation.

The tactic that Stephen Harper is obviously employing is to extol the virtues of the things he professes his government has done for seniors. This is why fliers like the one above are being sent at taxpayers expense to mailboxes across the nation.

Let's evaluate these claims to determine whether these policy measures come anywhere close to compensating seniors for the loss of an essential investment choice, whose sole purpose was to make them more captive to the investment wares of other. The income trust decision was solely motivated by a group pf persons who were intent on closing the lemonade stand across the street, so they could sell more of their own brand of lemonade.

The income trusts issue takes away essential choice in a protracted low interest rate market, all Canadians lose through the $1.4 billion in foregone annual taxes, and the 2.5 million Canadians who had placed their confidence in Mr Harper have lost $35 billion of their life savings and many are faced with losing up to half of their former annual income. So how does this loss stack up against the measures noted above:

2% GST Cut:

This is not a targeted benefit for seniors whatsoever. Those who most benefit from a GST cut are those who are in the consumption phase of their lives, not seniors. Most of the daily necessities of life are GST exempt, and therefore a GST cut does nothing to compensate these seniors for their loss of income. How many of the following essentials cited by Stephen Harper are subject to GST?

“Many seniors feel the government is putting their retirement at risk and have let Ottawa know. In a letter to the Finance Minister, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons said, "Seniors are actually enraged, frightened and panicked about potentially losing retirement savings that they count on for the essentials of daily living." Income trusts are popular with seniors because they provide regular payments that are used by many to cover the costs of groceries, heating bills and medicine. They also provide tax relief from a government that is addicted to taking too much money from their pockets and spending it without care, and very often without meaningful results.So one must ask, why is the government clamping down on the retirement savings of seniors and investors?”


Age Credit of $2,000:

Puhlease! What's the incremental after tax value of this to the average senior? $140? $240? This is another case of Stepehen Harper being a misleader


Pension Income Splitting:

Stephen Harper the Misleader strikes again. The operative word here is "pension". This income splitting is only available if you have qualifies income from a pension and a spouse. As such you have to be one of the 25% of Canadians with an employer pension and you have to have a spouse, and you have to have a spouse whose income is less than yours. The net effect is that only 14% of seniors will benefit from this measure.

As to whether this measure gives relief to those aggrieved by the income trust tax, you can be assured that it does not, since the very people who owned income trusts are those without pensions and this benefit only accrues to those with pensions, including the corrupt instigators of the income trust tax: Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty, Mark Carney and every other of the 280,000 federal civil servants.

Bottom line is that these fliers are virtual junk mail, and will do nothing to blunt the trauma of Harper's income trust betrayal. Harper lost the Quadra riding because of his income trust betrayal. Just listen to what the Conservative candidate had to say in the days immediately prior to the election about whether the government had done anything to hurt her chances of election:

Watch and listen here (close to the end of this CPAC interview)

Watch and listen here (close to the end of this CPAC interview)