I'm Sure It's All Just A Big Misunderstanding

The Keilbergers probably just really like Bill Morneau. But you be the judge:

Your Neo-liberal Government At Work

Included in the Trudeau sellout is the following:

- Prepared to indemnify the project from any financial loss;

-Is willing to offer this financial security to any company who wants to build the pipeline, should Kinder Morgan back out;

-and, the financial backing must be fair, and beneficial to Canadians.

"If Kinder Morgan isn’t interested in building the project we think plenty of investors would be interested in taking on this project, especially knowing that the federal government believes it is in the best interest of Canadians and is willing to provide indemnity to make sure that it gets done," Morneau said, noting that he is “confident” an agreement will be made.

If you aren't outraged yet, I suggest you check your vital signs.

The Grand Plan of Obfuscation: A Guest Post

In response to Saturday's post about the increasing momentum of the neoliberal creep evident in the Trudeau government, frequent commentator BM offered his detailed take on this sorry situation:

It's all part of the Grand Plan of Obfuscation.

Put in a haphazard system of Pharmacare, so that no citizen knows what is covered and by whom. Allow the private sector like Morneau Sheppell to set up systems to track every citizen to make sure they're covered by the eclectic mix of public and private schemes for pills, because it's so complicated, and thus skim off management fees for their "services".

Big Pharma rejoices. Not having a national scheme means nobody is going to bargain for cheap pill prices on a national scale. So drug prices stay high, and the financial corporatists skim off the cream for services rendered tracking all the mush with ZERO value-added for anyone but themselves. All the public has to do is pay over the odds for all the shenanigans, while the politicians issue glib statements as to how they've helped everyone. It'll all cost more overall than what we have now, you can be sure.

Then, at Bay Street banquets, the corporatists will toast each other as to how well they sold the citizenry that piece of goods. The talking will of course be in business code and jargon, the obfuscation of our age. Financial mags will feature glowing articles on how some "genius" spotted a service "missing" from the "market", and worked out a scheme to profit from it. All hail a new "business" Titan! And if you believe all that guff, you'll believe the BS from corporate media on war reporting too.

These business people strike me as the lowest of human life forms, sucking and siphoning money into their pockets from the masses, while maintaining what they have helped society out, but in reality being parasites on the body politic. There is no shame left for those people. They believe their own lies, and act all patrician like Morneau, a man so apparently ill-informed and dim-witted, he'd never heard of business divestiture for holding public office, or if he had, regarded himself as so honest, ethics policies simply didn't apply to him.

Does anyone trust Bell and their ripoff cell phone and cable/internet plans? How about the banks? - Nah, they don't try and flog useless services to little old ladies over the phone, do they? Upstanding corporate citizens, the lot of 'em. The execs claim the moral high ground - "That's not our company policy!" Meanwhile, they incentivize middle management with bonuses to get more and more business, and leave that rapacious class to work out the details on the QT, while issuing highly moral company "policy", and tut-tutting their lowest-ranked employees' behaviour. Then doing bugger all to change things. It's all utter and complete bollocks from beginning to end.

Is anyone honest these days? I find precious little evidence of it. Everyone is trying to rip off everyone else just to make a living. It didn't use to be so obviously bent. But big business with the federal government in their pockets seem intent on ruining the ethics of the average citizen by lying, innuendo and complex ripoff schemes like National Pharma, and allowing it to be just obvious enough that we all turn into scheming thieves ourselves because it's the norm. You can't trust anyone these days - we're all stealthily trained to be greedy. Everyone is out for their own advantage.

A population ruined like this has no empathy, couldn't care less about anyone else, and if you expect them to really care about the environment, well good luck. Thus the brain dead cheer lower "taxes" as if it were some sort of universal truism, and society gradually turns into sh*t, with no hope of altruism whatsoever.

Star Readers Are Not Impressed

Star readers can spot a corrupt policy process when they see one, an acuity they make known as they opine on Bill Morneau's pharmacare plans:

Morneau’s unwise decision to backtrack pharmacare, Walkom, March 2

Every parent knows this: If you aren’t really going to take your kids to the zoo, don’t mention it at all.

When we heard details included in the Liberal’s budget this week, we were delighted. That evening’s conversation around our dining-room table with our adult children was animated and optimistic. One of the most exciting elements in the budget was the announcement of the government’s commitment to pharmacare.

Then, came Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s near-immediate dialing back: not a “plan” exactly, more of a “strategy,” and other weasely sounding words. What a colossal disappointment.

I reluctantly excused the Liberal’s backtrack from their promise to reform our electoral system. Please don’t let the pharmacare “promise” go the same way. We need to hear their clarification and recommitment — and soon. Just be straight with us. Are we going to the zoo or aren’t we?

Jeannie Mackintosh, St. Catherines, Ont.

I was even encouraged by the enlistment of former Ontario health minister Eric Hoskins, whose provincial government recently implemented a long-overdue pharmacare program, albeit one only covering residents under age 25. It was a start and I hoped that coverage would increase eventually to provide coverage for all.

My feelings of elation and hope were soon dashed when Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced it wouldn’t be universal but would amount to a patchwork of coverage, with some people included in the government plan and others not.

This is unacceptable. We don’t need some mish-mash of a program. Let’s do it right and make a universal plan and, as the research indicated, the overall cost to health care should see a reduction. Perhaps Australia’s government could advise how best to meet this goal.

Norah Downey, Midland, Ont.

Drug-policy experts were stunned. Canada is the only advanced country with a medicare system that lacks pharmacare. Canadians spend so much on drugs because we don’t have a pharmacare program: drug prices are too high and too many intermediaries like insurance companies and benefit consultants drain money from the system.

Morneau’s approach would leave all that waste in place. The obstacle is that every dollar wasted is somebody’s income and the affected industries — drug manufacturers, drug insurers and drug benefits managers — fight back.

The minister effectively pointed to a potential conflict of interest and then restricted the mandate of the advisory council. I hope the minister will step back and let the council do its work.

Kim Jarvi, Toronto

The Neoliberal Creep - An Update

I'm not sure what I find more offensive. Is it the fact that Bill Morneau, despite all that he has said about his limited vision regarding pharmacare, is apparently lying when he now says he is open to all ideas regarding a national drug-coverage program? Or is it that he holds the Canadian people in such contempt that he thinks we are either too stupid or too inattentive to see through his dissembling?

Finance Minister Bill Morneau now says he’s “agnostic” on proposals for a pharmacare plan after criticism that he was trying to dial back ambitions for a new program to ensure Canadians get the prescription drugs they need.

Morneau said Friday that he’s not seeking to prejudge the outcome of a newly created advisory council that will be looking at the idea or dampen the scope of their recommendations.

“What’s really clear to us is we need to get expert advice on how to do this best,” Morneau said during a visit to Montreal to discuss the budget measures.

What might account for his faux 'come to Jesus' reversal? Could it be that he has outraged influential groups?

... the Canadian Federation of Nurses, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Labour Congress [have written] an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Morneau be removed from the file.

They said Morneau has already decided it will not be a universal “plan” that covers all workers — to the detriment of Canadians, and the benefit of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and, they suggested, Morneau Shepell.

They said it contradicts “overwhelming evidence” on the need for a universal program and undermines the work of Hoskins’ council before it begins.

“It is our hope that insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry interests will not play a role in the implementation of universal public pharmacare,” the letter to Trudeau stated.

Some will say we should not prejudge the process, and that we must give Morneau and his team a chance to get things right. To take such a position, in my view, would be to harbor a political naivete that I am incapable of.

More realistic, to me, is to see the truth of this entire charade, the truth made known when Mr. Morneau, in a moment of carelessness, let his mask slip, revealing what lies beneath - a living, breathing, neoliberal creep.

The Neoliberal Creep

The above title epitomizes both the direction of the entire Trudeau government and the character of specific high-profile individuals within it, most notably Finance Minister Bill Morneau and International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. The latter two are using their offices, not to promote the public good, but to do the bidding of their corporate masters.



Let's start with Morneau and what has to be one of the most rapid turnarounds/reversals I have ever witnessed in politics. On Monday, I was delighted to learn that Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins had resigned his post to head an Ottawa study into pharmacare, a universal program covering drug costs for all, a feature of all countries with universal health care save Canada. Then, less than two days later, Morneau 'clarified' his intention (doubtless after hearing from the pharmaceutical and private insurance companies) that

a new national pharmacare program will be "fiscally responsible" and designed to fill in gaps, not provide prescription drugs for Canadians already covered by existing plans.

Why the walkback/misdirection? Well, part of the allure of real pharmacare is the fact that bulk-buying of drugs means massive savings. This, however, does not sit well with the powerful pharmaceutical industry.

Traditionally, they have threatened to stop manufacturing drugs in jurisdictions that engage aggressively in bulk buying.

Consequently, Morneau is now facing conflict of interest accusations on the pharmacare file.

The Canadian Federation of Nurses, Canadian Doctors for Medicare and the Canadian Labour Congress wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Morneau be removed from the file.

They said he has already decided it will not be a universal “plan” that covers all workers, merely a “strategy” to fill in the gaps for those who currently don’t have coverage — to the detriment of Canadians, and the benefit of insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and, they suggested, Morneau Shepell.

They said it contradicts “overwhelming evidence” on the need for a universal program and undermines the work of Hoskins’ council before it begins.


“It is our hope that insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry interests will not play a role in the implementation of universal public pharmacare,” the letter to Trudeau states.

Moneau's cowardice has earned the scorn of The Toronto Star:

...the projected savings that have made comprehensive drug coverage such a popular proposal in policy circles depend in large part upon the program’s universality. Most of the savings created by a pharmacare program would be achieved through the bulk-buying of drugs and the elimination of bureaucracies – potential benefits at least partly forgone by the sort of means-tested approach that Morneau is hinting at.

Morneau doesn’t really mean “fiscally responsible.” He means politically palatable. With no plan to return to a balanced budget, the finance minister wants nothing to do with the inevitable initial costs of such a project, even if avoiding these means forgoing enormous long-term savings.

Increasingly, the Trudeau government is proving itself to be a massive disappointment to progressives in Canada who, unlike some, demand substance, not just the vapid photo-ops that are coming to define this government.

In Part 2, I will look at International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau's plans to cut the private sector in for a piece of the foreign aid action.

C'mon Bill. Just Answer The Question

The beleaguered Bill Morneau continues in his refusal to answer questions about whether he sold a whack of shares in his company, Morneau Shappell, before the government introduced changes to tax rates dropping the income tax rate for middle-class Canadians while boosting it on high-income earners. Those rates were to take effect on Jan. 1, 2016, prompting financial advisers to advise high-income earners to realize capital gains in the last weeks of 2015 to avoid the coming higher tax rates.

The 680,000 shares were sold for $15 apiece. By Dec. 14, a week after the tax rate announcement, they had dropped to $13.96.

Employing a time-worn technique practised by scoundrels far and wide, Morneau is embracing moral outrage, threatening to take the Opposition to court over the impertinence of their questions:

Morneau said if the Opposition wants to make its claims outside the Commons, where MPs enjoy the legal protection afforded by parliamentary privilege, they will “absolutely be hearing how the legal system works.”

His strategy did not work:

Shortly after Question Period began, he [Pierre Poillievre] challenged the now-absent finance minister to take things outside.

“Would he commit that if I go out and repeat my question in the lobby at this moment, that the finance minister will meet me out there and answer the question?”

Poilievre then walked out, and did just that. But he was greeted by an empty lobby, as Morneau had already left to deliver a scheduled speech in Toronto.

It would seem that old Bill needs some lessons in basic poker strategy.

Lest one think this is just a nasty partisan fight between the Conservatives and the Liberals, the third party also smells some rot:

The NDP is also taking aim at Morneau over the share sale. The party's ethics critic, Nathan Cullen, has written a letter to Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson, requesting she investigate.

"If the finance minister used his inside knowledge to sell his shares at an advantageous time to financially profit, it would be in direct violation of the rules that prevent someone from profiting directly from their work in government," Cullen wrote in a letter that was sent Monday afternoon.

"I respectfully ask that you look into this matter as urgently as possible," the letter says.

As a political neophyte, Mr. Morneau has much to learn. He might start his lessons by checking with average Canadians about how they feel when privilege once more apparently games the system and leaves the rest of us holding the proverbial bag.

UPDATED: A Sad Day In The House

It is indeed a sad day in public life when a worm like Pierre Poilievre can stand up in the House of Commons and seem to occupy the high moral ground as he renders ethical judgement on a minister of the Crown. Yet the government of Justin Trudeau has brought this odium on itself by harbouring Bill Morneau from the kind of standards all Canadians should expect from their politicians:



The Star reports that the sale of $10.5 million worth of shares in Morneau's company, Morneau Sheppell, occurred on Nov. 30, 2015,

a week before the Liberal government formally introduced changes to tax rates — dropping the income tax rate for middle-class Canadians while boosting it on high-income earners.

Those rates were to take effect on Jan. 1, 2016, prompting financial advisers to advise high-income earners to realize capital gains in the last weeks of 2015 to avoid the coming higher tax rates.

The 680,000 shares were sold for $15 apiece. By Dec. 14, a week after the tax rate announcement, they had dropped to $13.96.

Morneau held two million shares in Morneau Sheppell and sold half of those in the fall of 2015, a source has told the Star. Profits from those sales were donated to charity. The National Post has reported that the shares sold on Nov. 30 were held by Morneau.

Liberal loyalists and apologists will no doubt assert that the fact the profits from the sale were donated to charity means this is a non-issue. To argue thus, however, is to miss two key points:

The donation itself would have afforded Morneau a very handsome tax benefit.

That insider trading was committed by the Minister of Finance (that he refused to exonerate himself by answering the question suggests his guilt) renders him unfit for public office. How can Canadians believe the government has its best interests at heart if it shields such egregiously unethical behaviour?

Morneau should be compelled to answer the question. If the answer is what I think it is, he should finally do something honourable and resign.

UPDATE: Democracy Watch has a Government Ethics Campaign you may want to check out. It has already sent out over 170,000 letters about this issue.

Seeing With Clear Vision

H/t Toronto Star

Those who believe analysis must trump hyper-partisanship will enjoy this backgrounder provided in today's Star as part of its transparency series. The piece makes the point that The Star is guided by the progressive Atkinson principles and has endorsed in the 12 federal elections between 1968 and 2008 ... the Liberals nine times, the Progressive Conservatives twice, and the NDP once.

Those endorsements, however, do not give free reign to winning governments of the day:

Andrew Phillips is the Star’s editorial page editor. He and his team of writers and editors craft endorsements at election time.

“(While) it’s more likely that a Liberal or NDP government will be closer to the Star’s values than a Conservative one, all governments fall short,” he said. “We don’t let Liberal governments off the hook when they don’t live up to what we believe they should be doing.”

Speaking truth to power is the guiding ethos at the newspaper:

...a review of 180 editorials dealing with political matters written in the first half of 2017 shows that the Star’s editorial board is usually critical of the current provincial and federal governments.

While not exhaustive, the review found that 37 of 60 editorials dealing with Kathleen Wynne’s provincial Liberal government — 62 per cent — were overtly critical. Of 120 editorials concerning Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberals, 70 — or 58 per cent — were overtly critical.

To ignore the wrongdoing of a government with whom one is ideologically akin would be an abdication of its responsibilities:

“Most of the editorials we write about the Liberal governments in Ottawa and Queen’s Park are critical, even though we endorsed the party in both cases,” said Phillips. “But governments have to earn the trust of voters every day, not just on voting day, and we reserved the right to call them out when they fall short. They have plenty of PR folks and spokespeople to defend them every day. That isn’t our job.”

The editorial board has come down hard on the federal Liberals on a range of issues, from the government’s retreat from an election promise to end the first-past-the-post system of voting, to its handling of “cash-for-access” fundraisers. The board wrote that the government’s “fumblings and reversals” on the electoral reform will likely do “democratic damage,” and called on the Liberals to end cash-for-access events entirely.

The board has also been critical of the federal government’s handling of First Nations issues, including calling out the Liberals for taking too long to fund mental health supports on reserves.

Now more than ever, having a newspaper of record present its views in logical and coherent analysis is crucial. Otherwise, we are left only with the strident ideologues who know only one truth: their own.

The Blindness Of Some

Were Bill Morneau the Conservative Minister of Finance, you can rest assured that 'progressives' would be howling for his political blood. However, because he is part of Team Trudeau, some choose to entirely ignore his massive conflict of interest and instead distort my views for their own twisted purposes. One such misrepresentation is the claim that I have said Trudeau is worse than Harper, a complete fabrication.

Were I another sort of person, the offending blogger's many libelous comments about me would result in legal action. But I am a self-assured person who can take criticism; what I steadfastly reject, however, are outright lies about me, the only reason I am making any reference at all to his overwrought posts.

I also realize now that there is likely something quite pathological in his rants and attempts at online bullying, and he is more to be pitied than rebuked. I will speak no more of him or his screeds; he is not worth more than the two minutes it took to write these opening paragraphs.

Those who are willing to examine the facts of Bill Morneau's ethical mess clearly see the damage he has done to his and his government's credibility. Tim Harper writes:

One is left with the unmistakable sense that he got caught by some enterprising reporting. What if the Globe and Mail had not found that Morneau’s substantial holdings were not in a blind trust?

One could easily believe that Morneau would have continued on his path, using a loophole in the conflict-of-interest legislation that allowed him to hold shares in the family company through an arm’s-length holding company.

When Morneau introduced Bill C-27, legislation to make it easier for federal employees to move to a targeted benefit pension, a move that would benefit Morneau Shepell, the company’s stock went up 4.8 per cent within days, Cullen says. Morneau, he said, would have made $2 million in five days from that jump. But it’s not known if Morneau was holding or selling stock at that time.

And Justin Trudeau's 'defence' of Morneau was to attack those with legitimate questions.

A day earlier, Trudeau seemed to wilt while taking 30 questions on Morneau, falling back on familiar tropes — referring to opposition questions as “mud-slinging,” accusing Conservatives of trying to sully Morneau’s good name, of “shrieking,” and playing “petty politics.”

Accusing opponents of getting down in the mud doesn’t work here. The charges against Morneau were sufficiently serious that they deserved more substantive answers.

This entire fiasco makes the Liberal government look very bad and has seriously undermined whatever agenda it has, as pointed out in today's Star editorial:

Over the last week, Morneau has retreated from the small-business tax-reform fiasco that no doubt ruined his summer. In an effort to quiet the uproar over the initiative, the government will drop or scale-back several of the proposed measures and significantly cut the small-business tax rate.

The result is that the push for reform will have had the opposite of its intended effect. The government started out with at least two important aims: reduce incentives for professionals to incorporate as a way to pay less tax on income; and increase government revenue at a time of rising debt. But in the end, Morneau will have, on balance, increased the incentives to incorporate and cost the government significant revenues.

Finally, last night's At Issue panel discussed both Morneau and the larger record of the Trudeau government thus far. It starts just after the one-minute mark:


Engagement with the political process is crucial for a healthy democracy. Willful blindness to its shortcomings is in no one's best interests.

The Foundering Ship Of State: A Followup

Following up on last evening's post, I am adding the comments of Gyor, who listed several more failures of the Trudeau government thus far:

You forgot Trudeau's attempt to increasingly centralize power in Parliament.

Many parliamentary posts still go unfilled 2 years in, the filling of which Chantal Herbert called the governmental equivant of tying ones shoe laces.

His questionable trip with the Aga Khan.

Minister Joly's Netflix boondoogle pissing off Quebec and the RoCs TV and Movie industry.

His MMWI is a mess, and should have included FN men, who are murdered and missing more often then FN women and who cases go unsolved more often.

Morneau's Villa in France in the name of a Corporation.

Trudeau's idea of boosting Foreign Aid was to take it from a general pool for all in need to give to only women, leaving men in need to die.

Lying about the combat role in Iraq, remember the Sniper shot that set a record.

Boosting military spending massively to appease Trump, while mismanaging the C-18 procurement.

NAFTA negiotations, period. Disaster.

The infrastructure bank he never promised, that will transfer wealth to the rich.

Oh and recently ambushing the Premiers recently with the idea for a special weed tax that they were not prepared for especially when the stated goal was to underprice criminal organizations.

Meanwhile, both the optics and the 'ethics' of Finance Minister Bill Morneau's situation continue to reverberate. Martin Patriquin offers this withering assessment:

Morneau, a multimillionaire banker married to a multimillionaire heiress, owns a villa in southern France. He also owns millions of shares in Morneau Shepell, the pension services behemoth founded by his father. Let us peruse how our finance minister has handled these particular assets.

Morneau’s French villa is owned by a holding company in which Morneau and his wife Nancy McCain are partners. Morneau neglected to mention the existence of this corporation to Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson until after the CBC’s Elizabeth Thompson started asking questions about it. Such corporations are particularly useful in France, where the inheritance tax is an expensive burden for the country’s wealthy landowners. Using a corporation to avoid said taxes is entirely legal — much like the loopholes Morneau wishes to close for a certain class of Canadian tax-avoiders.

Next, there is the matter of those shares. Morneau’s shares, which earn upwards of $2 million in yearly dividends, are owned by a corporation controlled by Morneau and his family. This set of circumstances, unearthed by CTV News, allows Morneau to deke the federal conflict-of-interest ethics laws. Because they are owned by a corporation, not a human being named Bill Morneau, the finance minister didn’t have to get rid of them when he took office. Again, it’s perfectly legal. It’s also a loophole to hold onto extremely valuable assets he otherwise would need to sell.

Finally, Global National gives us some insight into Morneau's conflicts of interest/hypocrisy:



In today's Star, Chantal Hebert blames much of the Liberals' misfortune on rookie ministers like Morneau. I would say that the problem with the Trudeau government runs much, much deeper. Platitudinous rhetoric, arrogance and ethical blindness do not make for government people can trust and respect.

The Foundering Ship Of State

Were you to examine my blog posts prior to the last election, you would see that I had grave reservations about the fitness of Justin Trudeau for Canada's top office. He seemed wedded to platitudes, and there was little to indicate anything substantive in his thinking.

After he and his merry men and women were elected, I was cautiously optimistic, so glad was I to see the end of the Harper era. Indeed, to that end, I voted for the Liberals. Now it seems, my earlier reservations are being realized. The Trudeau government has little to show for its two years in office.

Granted, they made the right move by admitting so many Syrian refugees, a moment that made me proud as a Canadian. And their desire to achieve reconciliation with aboriginals is commendable; however, their efforts at achieving it have been ill-executed and unlikely to bear fruit in the foreseeable future.

Of the environmental file I will not even speak. Trudeau's insistence that pipelines and climate-change mitigation are compatible is simply contemptible.

Then there was the cruel charade of promised electoral reform, something I now believe was doomed the moment the Liberals achieved a majority government. Moreover, it may ultimately prove to be a Pyrrhic victory, given the widespread disillusionment and cynicism their betrayal has engendered.

Add to that the latest information about Bill Morneau and the fact that his shares in the family company, Morneau Shepell, are not even being held in a blind trust, thanks to a loophole in the ethics law that Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson says she flagged long ago.

Compounding the Finance Minister's woes is his ineptitude in bringing in tax reform that was to net a paltry $250 million. As of today, it appears it will be much less:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced changes to his proposed tax reforms for private corporations on Wednesday, saying they will now target only the "unfair" tax advantages used by the wealthiest Canadians.

The vast majority of private corporations — about 97 per cent — will not be affected by the changes, Morneau said during an event in Hampton, N.B.

And as far as I can determine, this is to be the extent of reform, meaning the large corporations and those with shell companies will be able to continue evading their fair of taxes. All in all, pretty pathetic for a majority government whose rhetoric promised soaring improvements to so many files. You can bet that the ever-increasing deficit will haunt us in the future, likely necessitating substantial cuts in spending; this neoliberal government lacks the will to raise taxes or close loopholes on corporations.

Perhaps Janice Kennedy best sums up the sad situation we see today:

Campaign promises broken or unfulfilled, bungling, displays of ineptitude, fiscal recklessness – all defiantly wrapped in a banner of staggeringly misguided self-congratulation, as if the sun were still shining – have left countless 2015 Liberal voters disillusioned with a government that has a genius for optics and rhetoric.

There will always be those so-called progressives ready to reflexively defend Team Trudeau because they are not Stephen Harper and his foul apostles. To do so, however, is to suggest that the present government is the best Canada can expect. That is to sell woefully short both our democracy and our citizens, and it is a position I shall never, ever accept.

Bill Morneau's Tax Reforms

I have been following with interest the current discussion, sometimes waxing into hysteria, over Finance Minister Bill Morneau's plan to close small-business loopholes that allow such 'mom and pop' operators as lawyers, doctors and dentists to evade paying their full share by "sprinkling income" to family members who do not actually work for these incorporated entities.

If this is just one of many reforms being planned, it is a good start. If it is to be the only reform, it is a paltry effort, as it will yield only $250 million annually, and perhaps only intended as a form of 'bread and circuses' for the masses.

While the usual suspects are calling it a tax grab and predicting dire consequences, I am happy to report that many others see it as simple justice and have a more mature view of taxation in general.

The following two letters from The Toronto Star illustrate views that are anything but reflexive denunciations.

Re: Morneau not swayed by tax-plan backlash, Sept. 6

I am writing in regard to the well-funded backlash against amendments to our tax laws that will finally close a fraction of the loopholes that unduly benefit Canada’s wealthiest citizens.

I am a middle-aged, median-income wage earner who pays his full tax bill every second Thursday. I come from a family of business people and I possess no particular bias against productive entrepreneurs or the genuine spirit of entrepreneurship.

In my experience, business owners are primarily motivated by a desire to be their own boss. As proud and independent operators, they would be the last people to come looking for a crutch from government. But that is exactly what successive Liberal and Conservative governments have provided.

Our tax system has become the ultimate insider deal, in which the well-connected consistently rewrite the rules to escape the rational and just responsibilities that should be placed upon them by a progressive income-tax system in a democratic nation.

It is beyond any doubt that we have a two-tier income-tax system, in which wage and salary earners are routinely expected to pay their full share. Meanwhile, far too many entrepreneurs play by a set of rules concocted for their own benefit, with the exclusive goal of shifting the tax burden to others who can afford it less.

The Liberal Party ran on a platform of respecting the middle class and I cannot imagine a better opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to that platform than by tackling the egregious and entirely undemocratic imbalance in our tax system.

I am not underestimating the amount of guts it will take to tackle the monstrously dysfunctional and distorted tax laws of this country but a refusal by the Liberals to do so will leave the door open for others to champion the cause.

We need a tax system that puts the needs of the country ahead of the needs of the country club. Will you actually take on that challenge?

If middle-class Canadians had the same attitude toward paying taxes that the people at the top did, our country would be just another bankrupt, basket-case banana republic.

Democracy is not free, nor is it particularly cheap. Please share that information with those who are panicking at the prospect of finally paying their fair share.

Mike Vorobej, Ottawa

Canada has finally got economics right. I am seeing more and more Mercedes, BMWs, Lexus, Audis, Range Rovers, Maseratis and Teslas, along with the increasingly frequent Bentleys, Ferraris and Lamborghinis. According to BMO, luxury car sales have increased 37 per cent since 2013.

Just think, years ago, all that money would have been redistributed — wasted! — through a progressive tax system to provide resources for kids with disabilities in school, to reduce health-care wait times, to fight poverty, to support the elderly and so on.

If this is what a free society looks like, then our fiscal policies are right on track. Tax cuts since 2006 redirect $43 billion per year from social programs to individuals, and the top 20 per cent of income earners take 36 per cent of that.

Canada has been lowering the corporate tax rate for years, arguing it stimulates growth. Meanwhile, corporate divestment increases as taxes get lower.

The upside is that those billions of dollars go to wealthy shareholders who pay a fraction of the tax rate on that income than those who actually work for a living.

Which brings us back to the increased number of luxury cars on the road. Well, that and borrowing against home equity, but let’s not burst that bubble.

Mark Davidson, Toronto

On Today's Menu

Even though I will be riveted to the television tonight watching the U.S. election results, I have had more than enough American political coverage, having just returned from Cleveland, where politics seemed pretty much to be the only topic being covered by the media. So a return to Canadian politics is in order.

Saturday's Star had some strong opinions from its readers on Finance Minister Bill Morneau and his "let them eat cake" attitude toward those mired in precarious work. I think it is safe to say that his attitude is not shared 'by the masses'.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau thinks the precarious work situation is OK and he sees nothing wrong with a situation where worker protection has been so eroded that people are having difficulty supporting families, affording housing and food, to say nothing about saving up for retirement.

The Liberal government has shown itself only to be concerned with the middle class.

Almost nothing has been done for the homeless, seniors and those on the extreme margins.

Obviously the Liberals will do nothing for the working poor in precarious work ... the ones accessing food banks to stay alive.

I am severely disappointed in this party and its misguided focus. Its child-care program will only be affordable to a select group and not the working poor who will need it most.

I did not vote for Justin Trudeau and nothing about his performance so far has changed my mind.

M. Schooff, Orangeville, Ont.

Get used to multiple careers, our finance minister says. Instead of trying to fix the symptoms, perhaps the government should focus on fixing the cause.

The standard of living has been falling for about three decades, going back to the days of Reaganomics, where tax cuts for the wealthy were supposed to trickle down to everyone else.

Well, history has always proven that idea to be total nonsense. Instead of giving tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, the government should be focusing on social responsibility and ensuring that those with money are sharing it with the country as a whole, instead of hoarding it.

Otherwise, we’ll see more and more precarious employment, job loss and poverty, which will cause more precarious employment, job loss and poverty. It’s a downward spiral that hurts the bulk of the population, while making more and more for the wealthy.

James Knott, Mississauga

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when the finance minister says, this is as good as it’s going to get, get used to it. He even has a term for it: job churn.

I worry about our grand- and great-grandchildren and their future. They are told to get a good education in order to get good jobs.

All this does is make them over educated and over qualified for entry-level jobs with minimum wage and minimum hours.

Big multi-national companies have no loyalties to their employees, but want their employees to be loyal to the company. At the first sign of trouble, it’s fire or lay off hundreds.

How is the next generation going to cope when they don’t know if they’ll have a job next week, month or year? No job security, no benefits, no pension. Can they afford to buy a house or a car? Can they give their children the things they need, like a university education.

I don’t know what the government can do to bring good-paying jobs with benefits and job security back to Canada, but when the finance minister says get used to it, there is something wrong.

Allan Mantel, Victoria Harbour, Ont.