TWENTY QUESTIONS -- FOR CANADA'S ALLEGED CHAMPIONS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

Here's a number of salient questions about social and economic justice in Canada, worth pondering by Jack Layton and his NDP caucus:

What's happened lately to Canada's alleged political champions of social justice -- the left-wing NDP? Why do they continue to support Canada's most far right conservative political party in the Conservative's war on dispossessed seniors and struggling income-trust investors?

Why are these allegedly left-wing politicians still stubbornly supporting a Conservative legislative initiative that is designed to squelch the only viable competition left to Bay Street's banking and mutual-fund interests, and thus pour even more obscene profits into the financial establishment's corrupt coffers?

What about all the ordinary Canadians whose lives have already been destroyed by this clumsy Conservative initiative? Don't they count as much, to the NDP, as increased profits for Canada's greedy financial institutions?

Why has the social conscience of the Left conveniently fled the scene of the crime? And why has Canada's self-described ultimate Machiavelli (with his cold heart of industrial steel), Stephen Harper, become the NDP's best political friend?

Doesn't Jack Layton, the NDP Leader, realize that you are judged by the company you keep, as well as the misdeeds you sanction, as much as by empty political rhetoric about saving the world?

Isn't time for the Hon. Jack Layton to finally signal that he no longer will play the repugnant role the obedient lackey of Stephen Harper and his minions, enabling so much destructive mischief in Parliament?

And by the way, who's running the NDP, these days? Mr. Layton, or his finance critic?

Isn't it time for the NDP to demand, from the Conservatives, a moderate, reasonable compromise/solution to the current Tory income-trust screwup -- e.g., full-pledged consultations and/or a permanent or ten year tax moratorium for existing trusts (particularly energy trusts)?

And if the Conservatives won't consider a moderate solution to the mess they have created, then shouldn't the NDP let Mr. Harper know that they will join with the Liberals (and possibly the Bloc) and vote against Mr. Harper rigid foolishness in the House of Commons?

Reminders To Jack Layton & His Fumbling Finance Critic

(1) Any compromise trust solution (as advocated by the Bloc and Liberal opposition) -- such as a ten-year or permanent moratorium on existing trusts -- will more benefit individual investors than it will benefit Bay Street itself.

In past, the way that Bay Street's rapacious financial institutions and corporate lawyers made their biggest profits from income trusts was in stage-managing corporate conversions into trusts. But as long as the final "adjusted" trust legislation puts a stop to the further conversion of publicly-traded corporations into income trusts, then this Bay Street cash cow will be ended.

(2) Under this same compromise trust legislation, proposed by the Bloc and Liberal parties and opposed by the Harper/Layton alliance, the kind of cataclysmic tax leakage prophesied by the current Finance Minister -- allegedly the result of too many corporate conversions into trusts -- will not happen. Federal tax revenues will be safe.

However, if existing trusts -- especially energy trusts -- are spared from destruction by adjustments to the original legislation, then some equilibrium can be re-introduced into the income trust market -- meaning ordinary investors will see some of their lost equity restored.

Not only that, but retired seniors will again have the opportunity to invest in the alternative source of extra income provided by income trusts, beyond the usual low-interest savings vehicles offered by the financial establishment (with huge profit margins and management fees built into these limited saving vehicles offered by greedy financial institutions).

Not only that, but the economic threat now hanging over rural Western towns and small cities -- where most of Canada's energy trusts are exploring and drilling -- will be lifted by a compromise initiative that recognizes their pivotal role of these trusts in the economy of Western Canada.

For example, restoring the viability of Canada's energy trusts will avoid the potential loss of local jobs, investment, infrastructure spending, and tax revenues that the current rigid Conservative/NDP trust tax legislation threatens to unleash on rural areas of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

(3) If the NDP or any other political party is worried about misleading or inaccurate financial reporting by income trusts -- a problem that is much more serious in regard to small-cap common stocks on the Canadian Venture exchange -- then they can push for more rigorous accounting standards for both income trusts and common stocks.

(4) Based on his political beliefs and past political record, why would Stephen Harper be so anxious to destroy the income-trust market unless there was a hidden benefit to the Bay Street financial special interests that have long supported the Conservative Party. Even though a popular financial investment option (trusts) will go the way of the dinosaur (if Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton currently have their ways), surely there must be a big financial payoff for the monopolistic Bay Street financial interests who secretly have been cheerleading the Harper administration's extreme war on income trusts. Read on.

(5) To enable the Tory trust legislation to pass is to reward the many big-business interests who secretly pushed Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty to take such extreme action in the first place -- such as (1) the Power Corporation mutual fund empire which lost significant business to competition from income trusts, and (2) the many CEOs of common stocks who feared losing their huge salaries, bonuses, stock options and other luxury perks if their companies were forced to turn into income trusts.

In other words, rather than being an initiative to save the nation's finances, is this just another Conservative measure to further boost the already obscene profits of Canada's monopolistic financial establishment -- and eliminate any competition to the traditional financial instruments offered by Canada's banks and mutual funds?

Is the war on income trusts really about "tax leakage" from Canada's treasury, or protection of the excessive profit margins and management fees so loved by Bay Street's financial institutions?

Is this Tory initiative really about saving Canada's seniors from themselves, or about saving the over-generous salaries, bonuses, stock options and severance settlements of Bay Street CEOs?

(6) This is a legislative proposal created in haste, without prior consultation with the parties affected. As a result, it will have many unanticipated consequences -- such as ravaging the Western oil patch and leaving many energy trusts open to takeovers by foreign private-equity firms (vulture capitalists) who intend to never pay a cent in taxes to the Canadian government.

In addition, the formal announcement of this legislation has already lopped billions of dollars off the retirement savings of millions of Canadians. And it threatens to deprive retirees of an important high-income savings instrument required in today's high-cost-of-living economic environment.

What other disastrous unintended economic consequences of this trust legislation will negatively affect Canadians, because an impulsive and badly-brief Finance Minister refused to carry out the due diligence required before initiating legislation of this magnitude?

(7) With its potential negative impact on Western-based energy trusts, and its hidden rewards for Toronto's financial establishment, this legislation recklessly threatens to pit Western Canadian interests against those of the Central Canadian establishment (as in the case of the NEP)-- and again with Central Canada designed to be the winner.

In sum, where is the alleged political conscience of Canada hiding? Come out, come out, true NDPers, wherever you are!