Selling Out Canada & Canada's Seniors -- The Butler Did It!

"TAX LEAKAGE" TURNS INTO A CALAMATIOUS FLOOD
- THANKS TO CANADA'S BUNGLING BUDGET BUFFOON!

Guest editorial by Brent Fullard, CAITI

"Trust buyouts not my fault!" -- Jim "What Me Worry?" Flaherty, Canada's Finance Minister

Not familiar with the Walkerton Water Disaster? (Check out: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/walkerton/)

Well, Jim Flaherty is truly giving Walkerton's Stan Koebel a run for his money as Canada’s most inept and remiss custodian of the public good. No doubt Stan Koebel began his self defense with the words “it’s not my fault”. That’s usually the first indication that someone doesn’t understand the essence of accountability.

Unlike perhaps Stan Koebel, Jim Flaherty had plenty of warning about the inevitable “unintended” consequences of his taxation of income trusts including the foreign private equity takeovers. But then, Jim Flaherty’s actions were not singular in nature. His actions that led to this inevitable outcome had to have been deliberate because they were three fold in nature:

(1) impose a tax on public trusts, but no other trusts including private trusts held by pension plans

(2) impose restrictive growth constraints on the trusts’ businesses, but no other businesses and

(3) make foreign leveraged buyouts more economically attractive and achievable on much grander scales (read: BCE) by eliminating the withholding tax paid by foreigners on interest. BCE’s takeout will be predominantly funded by debt as will be the case with all the income trust takeouts, thereby INDUCING THE VERY outcome that Flaherty’s policy was OSTENSIBLY designed to avert: namely so called tax leakage.
How much more ill-conceived can one policy be if it simply induces the very outcome it professes to avert?

Here’s what others have to say about Flaherty’s performance in office on this and other matters:

On income trusts:

“Canadian Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty (he of the idiotic “trust” taxation decision rendered last October 31st, which we still believe ranks as one of the worst decisions ever rendered by a person in a position of monetary authority” Dennis Gartman who publishes The Gartman Letter from London.

“It's obvious that Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the civil service simply did not do their homework before wreaking $30-billion worth of havoc on the income trust sector. Even worse than the immorality of breaking a promise people made financial bets on, the Prime Minister et al are absolutely incorrect in assuming their proposal will enhance tax fairness, eliminate tax leakage and increase productivity. It will do the opposite.” Diane Francis, National Post

“Thinks it is the most ill conceived legislative move he has ever seen, from a tax perspective, in his 25 years as a tax lawyer.” Comments attributed to prominent tax lawyer John Brussa

“This is a disaster for Jim Flaherty, Canada’s Finance Minister” Eric Reguly, Globe and Mail

On interest deductibility:

“I've been practising tax for 35 years – this is the single most misguided proposal I've seen out of Ottawa in 35 years”, Allan Lanthier, a retired senior partner of Ernst & Young and immediate past chairman of the Canadian Tax Foundation

"This is unbelievable,I don't know who in Finance looked at this. I can't believe any sensible person would do this." Claude Lamoureux, chief executive of Canada's second-largest pension fund, the $106-billion Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan

On Accountability:

“Trust buyouts are not my fault” Jim Flaherty