BC Journalist Jennifer Moreau talks to Conservative HQ (Humour)
September 19, 2015
The most feathers for the least amount of squawking*
September 15, 2015
When I retired from a career in education I knew very little about taxes: the provincial and federal governments helped themselves to my salary, followed by the pension plans. Whatever remained, most years about 54%, went toward the costs of running a family.
The only part which really offended me was the paltry tax deduction for a kid at university. For all Jean Chretien’s rhetoric about helping Canadian students through post-secondary schooling, the only fund available was the personal line of credit at the local bank.
The largest tax deduction I managed in a year during our son’s university career was 16% of $1500, or $240.
Thus imagine my surprise when, in the reaction to Justin Trudeau’s comment about small business tax rates in the Peter Mansbridge interview, journalists postulated that a doctor or a lawyer who is incorporated can easily pass along a tax-free $40,000 dividend to a family member at university!
I googled small business taxes in Canada and quickly ran across the work of Dr. Jack Mintz at the University of Calgary and Dr. Michael Wolfson at Ottawa U.
Mintz doesn’t seem to agree with Harper’s fervent declarations that the small businessman is the life and soul of the Canadian economy. He points out in various articles that while small businesses create many jobs, they also destroy almost as many when the businesses close.
According to Mintz, small business jobs are inherently precarious, and usually without benefits or pension plans. He suggests that the net employment of larger corporations is of vastly more importance to the Canadian economy.
He suggests as well that a low small business tax rate may well keep businesses from growing to avoid higher corporate tax rates.
I found in a May 25, 2015 Globe and Mail article by Janet McFarland an interview with Dr. Michael Wolfson of the University of Ottawa. Wolfson commented that most people don’t realize income splitting has long existed for thousands of professionals such as doctors and lawyers who have been able to funnel their incomes through private companies (small businesses) they create to hold their income.
“Over in this dark corner of the tax system that most people don’t know exists and most people don’t understand how it works, income splitting has been going on for decades,” Prof. Wolfson said in an interview. “But nobody shines a light on it, nobody asks what’s going on here.
“A mid-range estimate of the cost is about $500-million based on 2011 tax data. Here we have quite a substantial reduction – for round figures, I’d say in the half billion dollar range – and a bunch of money going out that Parliament never looks at it, and it never gets evaluated,” he said.
A majority of private companies – known as Canadian-controlled private corporations (CCPCs) – are created by people in top income brackets to hold a private business. CCPCs can be created by owners of stores, restaurants, farms or other typical small businesses, but they can also be used by doctors, lawyers and some other professionals as a way to incorporate their business activities.
Even when salaries and dividend payments are legitimate, Prof. Wolfson said his research suggests the costs to the tax system have never been calculated and the impact should be understood and analyzed.
He said both the Conservatives and NDP are proposing to lower the tax for small-business owners in the future, but said they should understand that this would benefit many well-paid professionals who use small private companies to incorporate their operations, which may not be the intent of their tax proposals (Globe and Mail, 2015).
Stephen Harper and Charlie Angus have both attacked Justin Trudeau in the last week for his comment on examining small business tax rates before lowering them, Harper saying that he is calling the owners of small businesses “tax cheats.”
While I was the class dunce in Economics 110 at Queen’s in 1969, it certainly seems to me that if the evidence shows that a tax reduction to a certain sector of the economy does more harm than good, a sensible leader takes that fact into account in preparing a budget.
Fellow English major Justin Trudeau has much better economic advisors than I have had, and he apparently listens to them. His team approach seems to be at the heart of a Liberal platform which is becoming increasingly realistic and responsible.
*Professor Brian Sharples taught me The Economic Context of Education in the Queen’s M.Ed. Program. Sharples maintained that this is the only valid principle of taxation:
That tax is best which gets the most feathers for the least amount of squawking.
UPDATE: 15 September, 2015
I guess I’m not the only one with this idea: http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2015/09/15/tax-expert-says-canada-needs-to-change-corporate-tax-system-to-prod-investment/#.Vfi932RVikp
The plight of the Conservative campaign volunteer
September 7, 2015
At the beginning of the campaign the big problem in Eastern Ontario was the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. It was common knowledge that milk quota would be on the block if Canada were to make any headway. Everyone wanted to wait until after the election, but Obama threw his weight around and here we were, no longer trusted by our staunchest and wealthiest supporters, the dairy farmers. Fortunately the deal fell apart over auto parts, or we would have been in big trouble.
And then the trial started. I mean, what’s a guy to do? Knock on a door two weeks ago and all I’d hear was Duffy this and Duffy that. Then this week that poor little Syrian kid’s picture hit the front pages and nobody could think about anything else.
To make matters worse, CBC’s Rosie Barton bit a huge chunk out of Immigration Minister Chris Alexander when he tried to fudge his way through a panel discussion on refugees. Who would have thought that a harmless looking lady who can’t keep order in a panel discussion would have such sharp teeth and a killer instinct? Harper and Alexander both went into hiding for a bit after that one.
It didn’t help when a newsreel showed a protest sign claiming that Syrian dictator Assad had killed 220,000 Syrians and ISS had only killed 200. It looked as though Harper’s been bombing the wrong side.
And now Justin Trudeau’s calling for an all party, non-political meeting to plan a coordinated strategy on the Syrian refugee crisis. Yeah, right. So he can look like the statesman. Fat chance that meeting will happen.
Even worse, word’s out that our Conservative candidates aren’t giving interviews. Michelle Rempel seems to have the TV screens to herself these days.
Gord Brown managed to get his picture taken with Mr. Harper in a Tim Horton’s in Gananoque, but all that made the news was Harper’s gaffe: “Don’t let me near the cash.” Not a lot of help there.
At least Gord’s newsletters aren’t getting him into trouble the way Lanark MP Scott Reid’s are, thankfully. Back in 2012 Scott sent out an anti-refugee questionnaire on a ten per-center, and in the context of the pro-refugee sentiment after the toddler’s picture on the beach, it looks pretty racist.
Reid’s newsletter concluded with a survey, as usual.
Should refugees get gold-plated dental, vision, and drug benefits?
__ No! It isn’t fair to give better benefits to refugees than Canadians.
__ Yes! Give refugees better government benefits than Canadian citizens.
It was dumb, but apparently the PMO believes that this sort of thing plays well to their base.
But then the survey made it into a news article by Ryan Maloney in Huffington Post Canada on September 4th. Maloney had also found a 2012 newsletter from Saskatchewan MP and Parliamentary Secretary Kelly Block which went even further:
The end of unfair benefits for refugee claimants.
Working hard for you. Kelly Block, M.P. Ending unfair benefits for refugee claimants.
New arrivals to Canada have received dental and vision care paid by your tax dollars. They’ve had free prescriptions. Not anymore.
What do you think?
__ I agree with Kelly Block! Newcomers don’t deserve more benefits than Canadians.
__ I disagree! Refugee claimants should get dental, vision and pharmacare even if I don’t.
And then this spring that idiot Paul Calandra from Markham weighed in again, making all refugees out to be liars:
Personal Survey
What level of health care benefits do you believe the government should provide to failed and fraudulent refugee claimants?
__ The same coverage as average Canadians receive through provincial health insurance.
__ Extended coverage such as dental, eye care, and prescription medication that many Canadians do not have access to.
__ FAILED refugee claimants should receive no publicly-funded health care benefits.
Then someone at CBC found Maloney’s article and ran it unsigned on 6 September as their own work. Talk about bottom-feeders.
But that wasn’t a patch on the bomb they let off on The National Sunday night.
One war room or the other found an old CBC Marketplace surveillance film about an appliance repairman urinating into a coffee mug in a client’s kitchen, then rinsing it out and putting it back on the rack. Turns out the guy, Jerry Bance, had run for the Tories in two elections, and was a candidate in this one until the film came out at 9:00. He was off the slate at 9:05, I’ll tell you.
What I wonder is how long those guys have been sitting on that film, and why they brought it out right now? Yeah, our team wheeled out those tweets that young Liberal candidate in Calgary wrote when she was in her teens. She apologized and resigned, and that was it. But she was a teenaged girl at the time. Jerry Bance is a three times-nominated Conservative federal candidate. And he’s taken down in a crooked-appliance-repair sting. That’s just dirty. How am I supposed to talk that away at the door?
Maybe all we can do is keep quiet and put in more road signs. We’re getting really good at mounting the larger ones now, with an extra-long picket way down in the ditch and the other one up on the shoulder of the road.
Later.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/04/refugee-mailouts-tories-syria_n_8090126.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservatives-flyers-survey-refugees-1.3217603
Harper and Mulcair as partners: someone else has the same idea
September 3, 2015
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of everything in the article linked below, but I believe it is definitely worth a look.
http://pushedleft.blogspot.ca/2015/08/thomas-mulcair-and-stephen-harper-dance.html
Harperman, the protest song
August 28, 2015
It’s a clever and catchy protest song and it cost an Ottawa scientist his job. Expect to hear it a lot over the next two months.
Scout’s Honour or Sons of Anarchy?
August 24, 2015
So far in the Duffy Trial and the federal election campaign we have learned that there are lots of principled people in the inner circle of the Conservative Party, but theirs is a private code of ethics which bears little resemblance to that of the rest of us, so last week when Stephen Harper tried to borrow a bit of scout’s honour for a photo-op, Scouts Canada protested loudly at the intrusion.
For me the narrative which best makes sense of the Conservatives this year is the final season of Sons of Anarchy, the unexpectedly brilliant TV show about a California motorcycle gang which ran for seven years on US cable.
Its protagonist is an intelligent man on an oblique, personal task, required by circumstance to navigate an ethical maze while torn between a desire to free his family from this violent, fetid world, and the irresistible appeal of extreme conflict.
Seen in the context of this tragic drama there was much to admire in Nigel Wright’s testimony this week during the Duffy trial, as was there in Donald Bayne’s defence of the accused Duffy. We watched as Bernard Perrin’s testimony worked its way to the forefront of our consciousness and we realized that the hand of fate now rests upon the shoulder of trusted Harper aide Ray Novak.
Who will be next? We wait for the action to move to the next scene which must deal with the cornered Harper, confronted by the evidence of his monomania, forced to realize his wrong and to bow before our judgement, frightful in his suffering.
That’s the tragic view.
But Shakespeare liked to throw in a steady diet of comedy to keep us on our toes. Who better to play the Chorus than the increasingly put-out National Post correspondent Christie Blatchford, who in daily standups from a hotel lobby heaps ridicule upon the whole charade because she is bored?
And then last Tuesday Earl Cowan strode upon the stage. Shakespeare’s grave-digger had nothing on this guy for comedic chops. Of course the grave-digger’s faulty logic and very limited understanding caused Hamlet and the audience to laugh. Well, Earl played the Angry Conservative to perfection when he told off reporters Hannah Thibedeau and Laurie Graham for asking the wrong questions of Stephen Harper. According to Earl, Duffy had fudged his tax returns a little bit, but no less than the reporters. “Harper doesn’t read tax forms, you idiot! It’s done by people in the tax department. You cheat more on your taxes than Duffy ever did. You’re a lying piece of shit!”
But from this low comedy we quickly moved to a higher concept with the regal Margaret Atwood penning a few reflections on Hair for the National Post, only to react in pique when someone censored her lines. Years ago Brian Mulroney learned his lesson when Atwood famously addressed the Free Trade Debate (back in the pre-Harper era when there was public discourse on such things). She explained to her audience that the official Canadian animal is the beaver. Then she read from a medieval bestiary that the beaver is a rodent which, when threatened, bites off its own testes and presents them as a gift to prevent further harm. She likened this to Canada’s position in the free trade talks.
Anyway, it seems that the Conservative directors of the National Post got wind of the Hair column and ordered it taken down from their website. Atwood tweeted, “I think the National Post has censored me.” Perturbation on Twitter. The Google version of the column quickly went viral. National Post put up a revised version which removed Atwood’s allegations about two million dollars of undisclosed funding in Harper’s leadership campaign. This spawned a series of articles explaining what happened to cause a puff piece about Trudeau and Harper’s hairdos to turn into a frontal attack on the credibility of the National Post.
The four lessons of the week from this ongoing drama? You can’t borrow Scout’s honour for a photo op, the first lesson of crisis management is that you never lie, don’t let Canadians put a face to the Conservative Base, and under no circumstances do you mess with Margaret Atwood.
Angry Conservative Earl Cowan’s Facebook postings (link)
August 20, 2015
In the last week Etobicoke farmer Earl Cowan has emerged as this election’s “Joe-the-Plumber.” I thought you might enjoy these pearls of wisdom collected by fellow blogger Dennis Earl:
Ala Buzreba and the Art of the Insult
August 19, 2015
Years ago a very bright Asian physician joined our social group and seemed to fit in well, except for occasional looks of horror at our frequent use of obscenity in humour. On the other hand his casual racist comments discomfited us until we finally accepted his adage that “Brown people are the most racist.”
An European colleague at the same time shocked us with his cheerful blasts of profanity. He claimed to be a good Catholic, but verbal attacks upon the symbols of the faith were a big part of the way he put his thoughts together.
After several summers of work on construction crews and driving trucks, I had adopted a pattern of speech hinging on my outbursts while trying to shift a 20-speed White Mustang’s transmission. The truck boasted two gear shift levers which had to be operated simultaneously while double-clutching. I could hit four of the gears, total, in downtown Ottawa traffic.
As I entered the teaching profession I discovered that my creative use of the lunchbox vernacular was exceeded only by the verbal swagger of the administators who hired me.
Conversations in the staff room of a school in the ‘70’s took on a very salty tone, though I have been led to believe that they were no match for those of a women’s locker room when alcohol was involved.
One morning in my grade nine class I spotted a series of notes passed back and forth between a girl and a boy at one side of the room. I moved down and intercepted the note, to the extreme embarrassment of the kids. I could see why: these polite, diligent fourteen-year-old students interacted on paper with insults which left me gaping in awe. This sweet little girl’s comment to the guy behind her suggested that she had on good authority that he frequently joined his uncle in intercourse with a dead camel, warming in the sun. I still won’t repeat his comment to her.
When after class I confronted the kids with this exchange, they were at pains to make clear that extreme insults like this were part of the way they joked with each other. They didn’t mean anything by them, they were sorry, and they wouldn’t do it again when I was around.
Still, I was struck by the vivid imagery and ingenuity of their insults. Clearly this style of derision was as much of an art form to them as the casual obscenity which in larger Western society still passes for wit.
All of this brings me to the case of Ala Buzreba and the series of tweets from her teenage years whose publication caused her to resign as a Liberal candidate in Calgary. If examined from the perspective of my former students, Ala Buzreba’s Twitter invective showed a little imagination but no great creativity. Her comments should have ended up in a wastebasket where they belonged, but instead they remain archived on Twitter to be found by those of mischievous intent.
The lesson here is obvious: mainstream readers take offence to styles of humour or insult to which they are not accustomed, anything posted on the Internet is forever, and opponents will use any weapon they can find in a tight political race.
Would Canadians support an NDP-Conservative coalition?
August 14, 2015
Almost all polls indicate the likelihood of a narrow margin separating the three contending parties in the upcoming election. Most writers speculate that the two progressive parties, the NDP and the Liberals, would be under pressure from their members to form a coalition to prevent another Harper Conservative government. But what if we take Justin Trudeau at his word when he refuses to work with the NDP because of the Sherbrooke Declaration which supports the premise that a 50% vote plus one would be enough to begin the breakup of Canada?
Has anyone given any thought to Stephen Harper as a coalition partner for Thomas Mulcair after the vote on October 19th? After all, in 2005 Harper signed a coalition letter to the Governor General with then-NDP leader Jack Layton and Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe in an attempt to overturn Paul Martin’s Liberal government. While Harper condemned his opponents as “traitors” when they tried the same thing on December 1st, 2008, and prorogued the House of Commons to prevent defeat, no doubt he mentally justified the flip-flop with his catch phrase, “Canadians don’t care about that kind of thing.”
Stephen Harper has already demonstrated his willingness to compromise Conservative principles to maintain a grip on power.
About a year later the Conservatives brought out three attack ads against Stephane Dion in the campaign. Then came the famous attack ad against Michael Ignatieff. Apparently any Liberal leader is a common enemy of the NDP and the Conservatives, or maybe Layton and later Mulcair were just happy to go along if the Conservatives paid.
The ad campaign of the last two years against Justin Trudeau has also seemed designed to benefit the Conservatives and the NDP alike by reducing Trudeau’s standing in the minds of Canadians.
Harper and Mulcair alike have made some questionable moves to woo the separatist vote in Quebec, with Harper declaring “The Quebec Nation within Canada” in a motion in the House of Commons on November 22, 2006, and Mulcair reaffirming his support for the Sherbrooke Declaration on June 23, 2015.
If it came to a hung Parliament, I would suggest that Thomas Mulcair would find more in common with Stephen Harper than either would find with Justin Trudeau. Trudeau seems unwilling to compromise his Federalist, pro-constitution, pro-charter of rights position. This may leave him in a strong position as leader of the opposition against the strange bedfellows across the aisle in the next parliament.
But would 63% of Canadians still support a coalition if it involved Stephen Harper’s Conservatives?
Perhaps more to the point at this juncture of the campaign: will Mulcair’s cooperation in Harper’s boycott of the national debates cause him trouble with his supporters?
According to the August 14th Ekos poll, 81% of NDP supporters stand firmly in favour of more large-scale debates, televised nationally with all four national leaders in attendance.
Thomas Mulcair may have to decide whether it’s better to forsake Stephen Harper and face Liz May, Justin Trudeau, and an empty chair in debate rather than to risk the loss of the university graduates, that critical 14% of his support which this spring parachuted in from the Trudeau camp during the height of the attack ad campaign. If he slips up, these activist voters can just as easily return to the Red Tent and carry election victory with them.
What’s the deal with Mulcair’s suit coat?
August 3, 2015
Like every other political junkie in the country, Sunday I remained glued to my laptop as the various party leaders responded to the dropped writ on a fine morning in August.
Justin Trudeau made me wait for hours. My son’s working on Burnaby North–Seymour Liberal candidate Terry Beech’s campaign so he kept me posted as to the start time. I was a bit annoyed that Justin couldn’t have gotten up earlier the way Elizabeth May of the Green Party did with her group, but the random camera shots of the podium overlooking the Vancouver shoreline in the lead-up to the speech proved quite interesting in their own right. The guy in charge of arranging the group behind the podium was a study in unobtrusive activity.
At length the candidates drifted in and climbed onto the raised stage behind the podium. Where’s Terry Beech? At last he arrived, moving to his assigned place between two slightly disgruntled ladies in red. Justin Trudeau followed immediately, shaking the hands of the front row as far as Terry, then moving to the podium.
Then JT turned on the charm and I gradually grew less disgruntled for the two-hour wait. He appeared to feed off the enthusiasm of the seventy-odd members of the entourage assembled so carefully behind him, delivered a well-balanced speech with gravitas, and exhausted the supply of questions from the press before leaving the podium.
“Liberals understand this: when the middle class does well, so does the entire country.” JT likely thinks it’s simple-minded to repeat his entire speech in both languages, but I wish he had made his comments about Mulcair’s plan for the $15 minimum wage (for federally-regulated employees) in English, as my hearing is questionable at any time, and even worse in French. I think the point is that only a small percentage of low-wage workers are in federally-regulated jobs. The rest will be left out of the NDP’s promised pay increase.
Another jab to the ribs of Thomas Mulcair came when he suggested that the NDP leader promises to carry on with Harper’s current universal child benefit package, thereby rewarding the rich. Trudeau looked directly at the camera: “I don’t know why Mr. Mulcair made the choices he did. Maybe he’s afraid of attacks. But I’ll tell you something, my friends, I’m not.”
Here’s the film Charlie shot:
Speaking of Mulcair’s ribs, the overwhelming impression I formed from the NDP leader’s solo performance on the lawn of the Museum of History this morning was to wonder why on earth Tom chose that dreadful suit coat for such an important event? The misplaced pad in the left shoulder made him look like a hunchback and the stitching around the collar was so uneven on my high definition screen that it looked like something a caricaturist would draw.
After first blaming Mrs. Mulcair for not dressing her husband better, I thought about the wardrobe choice a bit: Trudeau wore an expensive, elegant suit. Liz May looked as though she had been called away from an early session in her garden. Harper dressed like a mid-range funeral director. Tom Mulcair looked like some poor slob who had had to pack into an old suit to attend that same funeral, unfamiliar with collars and ties and tailored clothes.
Tom had dressed like a member of the Conservative base.
He even did his I-was-the-second-oldest-of-ten-children bit. Moreover, I suspect his handlers had adopted the famous Jack Layton trick of smiling whenever his cell phone vibrated, a signal from his corner to lighten up a bit. Mulcair beamed forth grins at random intervals during the speech. He further emphasized the awkward-on-a-podium impression by appearing to forget to take questions from assembled journalists. (In fairness, it turns out that Tom was late for Flora MacDonald’s funeral — the funeral that Stephen Harper refused to attend.)
If he was looking to poach votes from Harper’s turf, Mulcair may have succeeded. We’ll see if that ratty suit coat becomes the equivalent of Jack Layton’s cane. Not mentioning Flora’s funeral showed some class.
the Walnut Diary 