Thursday, February 11, 2010

CBC caves to political pressure?



click on image to enlarge

CBC went through the pretense of allowing Canadians to pose a question of their own on new segment entitled “Question Period” that was announced just after Parliament had been prorogued.

In week one of that exercise, 7 of the top 10 questions as selected by viewers were questions about Harper’s false assertion about tax leakage. These questions garnered over 85% of the votes cast. My question below was the number one question of the over 200 questions submitted and received over 2400 votes for and 20 against

Despite the overwhelming viewer response, the CBC arbitrarily went with a question about Nortel pensions.

In week two of this exercise, 39 of the top 40 questions were about Harper’s tax leakage lie and/or why did the CBC suppress the question about tax leakage and income trusts in week one. These questions garnered over 95% of the viewers voting support

The CBC finally relented and put up a watered down question about income trusts as one of 5 questions to be selected for week 2. Voting was to have been open until midnight on February 1, 2010. Instead the CBC left the voting open for another 8 days hoping (perhaps) that the income trust questions would get less votes than the 75% of support it had received at that point in time I have screen shots of the CBC website to prove this 75% vote support. One such shot is attached.

Now the question and the entire site has disappeared from CBC’s website. The URL that links to the CBC site to vote now reads:

“Sorry, we can't find the page you requested.”

That URL is: http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/2010/01/your-question-period-week-2-what-should-cbc-news-ask-our-politicians.html

This has been the case for over 24 hours now.

Here was the winning question that had garnered 75% of viewers support at the last time that the poll was available on-line on the morning of February 10, 2010 “What was the economic analysis used by the government to justify the taxation of income trusts”.

This was derived from this top rated question that had attracted over 2200 “for” votes and 23 “against” votes:

Question: Brent Fullard wrote:

Mr. Prime Minister:

During the 2006 Election you promised that you would NEVER raid seniors nest eggs by taxing income trusts. Nine months later you did that exact thing arguing that "circumstances had changed" and that, suddenly, income trusts caused tax leakage. The only proof of tax leakage that you provided Canadians for your tax leakage argument was 18 pages of blacked out documents. How does the use of blacked out documents achieve the level of transparency and accountability that your government also promised to Canadians? Why did you subsequently demand these documents be returned to you, resulting in zero transparency? What is your government trying to hide? Meanwhile reputable private sector groups like BMO Capital Markets and PricewaterhouseCoopers are saying that there is no tax leakage from income trusts, and therefore, your policy actions are WITHOUT justification.

When will your government admit to Canadians that they were misled into believing that you would never tax income trusts in exactly the same way that you are attempting to mislead them on your current hoax about tax leakage?

When will your government take off its veil of blacked out documents and release the truth about tax leakage in order that Canadians can better understand why they lost $35 billion of their retirement savings and the loss of an essential investment vehicle for retirement income for the 75% of Canadians, unlike you, who are without pensions, at a time of pension crises?

Supplemental Question: Could the Prime Minister please comment on the rash of foreign takeovers of income trusts like the $4 billion takeover of Harvest Energy Trust by state-owned Korean National Oil Company or the $5 billion takeover of Prime West Energy Income Trust by state owned Abu Dhabi Energy, to name just 2 of the 51 takeovers to date caused solely by your policy and tell Canadians how much tax revenue is being lost by ALL Canadian taxpayers as a result? Are the estimates by Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors/Taxpayers of an annual tax loss of $1.2 billion a year, rising to as much as $7.5 billion if all the trusts succumb to takeover, accurate?

Brent Fullard
(Volunteer) President and CEO
Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors/Taxpayers
www.caiti.info
647 505-2224 (cell)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Herr Goebbels would be proud.

m.

Daniel Miller said...

No one in the mainstream media takes you seriously, Mr. Fullard. You lost all crediability a long time ago.

Anonymous said...

Nothing like that journalistic integrity!

Neville

Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry device on the Bell network.

Anonymous said...

Sad day at the CBC kitchen

JIC

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Fillibluster said...

Daniel:

It is not my credibility that is called into question here.....merely the CBC's, and perhaps yours as well?

Brent Fullard

Anonymous said...

Vince Carlin
CBC Ombusdman
ombudsman@cbc.ca

Mr. Carlin;

I am writing to you today with grave concerns regarding the use of the descriptor 'Integrity' by the CBC in self-description.

How my query is answered will determine whether the use is valid or merely subterfuge and disingenuous on the part of the CBC.

Integrity must not be considered selective when used to describe our national broadcaster.

In an recent online poll requesting public input for your 'Question
Period', I participated, voting for my choices of the questions
pertaining to Incomes Trusts. Satisfied that the Canadian public would finally have a voice to ask about the fraud that was perpetrated on them by the government, as the overwhelming choice was voted as a question
thereon, I thought no more of it, looking forward to the announcement of the schedule when the query would be posed.

Today, I find that all references to this event have been purged, the
original link renders a "Sorry. page not found" message.

Here is the link:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/2010/01/your-question-period-week-2-what-should-cbc-news-ask-our-politicians.html%3Cbr%20/%3E

Kindly advise what has transpired and when the democratically voted on question will be presented.

Regards,

M.P.

Bruce Benson said...

Herr Hitler has put the BOOTS to us, next stop is the FIRING SQUAD.

Dr Mike said...

I called the CBC this am & got a person in management--their response to me was this site has been lost for an unknown reason----they did not know if the data was lost as well.

I was told that it was only a possibility , but there may be new questions once parliament resumes , but not until then.

I questioned this further & was told there was no guarantee this would happen--there was also no guarantee our question would even show again.

They also said there was no guarantee there would ever be any question again.

I was essentially given no guarantee of anything.

It sounded to me like the royal Conservative run-around.

I have since called the Ombudsman who assured me he will be involved.

Dr Mike Popovich

PS--he is in possession of the above voting screen shot.

Bruce Benson said...

My letter to Mr. Carlin.

Dear Mr. Vince Carlin

I am writing today to express my concern about the CBC and its role in what I see as a conspiracy and the deliberate cover-up of anything dealing with the Income Trust issue. After the Conservatives under Harper prorogued the government, the CBC decided to allow citizens to air their concerns and questions and present them directly to the politicians.

Well on week one, many questions were asked and most of the questions dealt with Income Trusts. CBC decided to play the role of censor and decided that not one Income Trust Question of the 5 allowable would be presented to the populace to be voted upon. The following week and CBC asked the public for a new round of questions. This time the response was even more pronounced regarding the Income Trust question. My question was the number 3 rated and garnered over 1,600 votes. It basically asked what happened to the first weeks questions and why no Income Trust question was picked in the first round of voting. After week two question period had expired, CBC picked a watered down version of the trust question as one of the 5 questions to be voted upon. The vote was unanimously in favour of the Income question (as watered down as it was). Please see attached screen capture. Additionally, here is the URL where the questions were. http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourview/2010/01/your-question-period-week-2-what-should-cbc-news-ask-our-politicians.html


Now here is the real eye opener. The CBC being the benevolent soul that it is, decided we needed no more of this democratic bull, it was time to pull the results right off the internet. The 5 question voting results together with the independent questions (and votes) were POOF gone. Discussion over! Thousands of votes and many hundreds of questions had to be obliterated. Now that’s democracy and all this coming from our Public Broadcaster.

So here we are. We have our Public Broadcaster participating in a Cover-UP. I also think the CBC is part and parcel to a massive conspiracy along with other media together with the Conservative Government to destroy the Income Market through lies and deceit. The CBC must come clean and you must not become part of the Biased News Network aka bringing in the likes of Amanda Lang who has proven her bias in the past. Hopefully, the CBC will not carry on with these practices into the future. You must tell the truth and not hide the story and you must do some investigative reporting. Who are you trying to protect? Harper and his merry little band of liars and crooks? I know the truth so why won’t you (our Public Broadcaster) tell the truth so Canadians can make up their own minds using all the available information? Not lies. What has Harper said or done to corrupt our National News organization? Are you afraid of being another Nuclear Linda Keen?

Bruce Benson said...

Esther said ...

You are despicable. You know nothing about living under the Nazis.

Well Esther, I may not have experienced living under the Nazies but I do know a bit about history. I know that Hitler gained absolute power buy repressing the truth, any and all oposition was lined up against the wall and shot. What is this dispicable stuff, do you figure Harper is our little Angel hiding in the wings to lead us to a better place? The only ones he is helping is himself, the leaders of the Big Life Co's or Canada's Controlling Corporate Elite. Us low lifes need not apply. You got the picture yet? Harper is just in the beginning phases of total and absolute control through lies and deception and I hope he never gets a majority because all hell will break loose.

Anonymous said...

Vince Carlin

cc. Amanda Pyle Bob Campbell Esther Erkin Gino Apponi


CBC ran a Question Period public vote and Income Trusts won hands down twice. Yet it now has disappeared. This is dishonest.

They the CBC even tried to run a very watered down version of the issue but now have scrapped it. This smells of political pressure to me.

This income trust issue is still number one with millions of Canadians many of us seniors trying to live on small fixed incomes. 75% of us do not have defined benefit pensions. We just had our income from our trusts.

The fraud was massive. Never any tax leakage at all, in fact there now is huge tax leakage due to the unfair double taxation of trusts held inside RRSP's yet private equity and pensions are exempt of the double taxation, talk about unfair a double standard of taxing those without pensions verses those privileged to have pensions like they really need the tax break.

The CBC has lowered itself to the likes of the Globe & Mail and National Post. They are just propaganda machines of the CONS.

Disgusting.

Peter