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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (11138)	11/29/2006 8:25:19 AM
From: Ichy Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 38178

Amazing how much harper runs things like Chretien..... Looks like anyone with principles or who disagrees with the Emperor Harper is toast in this Government...... If Mr Chong's career is over with the Conservatives, we can only hope he is smart enough to join either the Independents or at the Conservative party's suggestion, the Liberals. thestar.com Fellow Conservative MP Jim Abbott said Chong's departure was not a significant blow to the government because he handled it in "a respectful" manner and "didn't go over to the dark side." "There was a principle he was not prepared to walk away from and I think quite frankly that politics needs an awful lot more people of high principle. I don't agree with him, but I fully respect him." But the reaction among those close to Harper was exactly the opposite. "I think a classy way to do it is when the subject comes up to be clear with the Prime Minister about what your point of principle is and not to take the Prime Minister by surprise on a Monday afternoon." Inside the Harper government, the view is that Chong, first elected in 2004, has made a career-ending move.

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (11138)	11/29/2006 7:33:22 PM
From: Gulo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 38178

"A simple NO MORE was all that was needed. No more no less. " That is where we disagree. If he had done that (i.e., give existing trusts special status), the grandfathered trusts could then end up acquiring all the companies that wanted to become trusts. Bell could simply have been absorbed by some tiny grandfathered trust in a reverse takeover. How do you resolve that? You would have seen a spike in current trusts instead of a drop, because the existing trusts would now have an unfair advantage over competitors. All in all, it would have been a regulatory nightmare, and the market as a whole would have been just as distorted as before. How is that progress? In the end, the best compromise was to exempt existing trusts for some time, but not indefinitely. You ask "Is that too much to ask?" and my answer is that "it would be the wrong thing to ask". In hindsight, we can probably agree that the Conservatives shouldn't have made the promise not to tax trusts. We were both surprised, and even shocked at the reversal, but I accept the explanation, you don't. We will just have to carry on as independent thinkers, I guess. ;) BTW, You may be center leftish, but I've known you long enough (7 years?) to say that you are well on the free side of the authoritarian/libertarian axis, so we don't disagree about much. In the long run, the trust taxation issue will seem trivial in comparison to the challenges around Afghanistan, equalization co-dependency or native land claims. Cheers! g