Our Timid Canadian Revenue Agency

Over a year ago I posted about the sad record of the CRA in pursuing offshore tax cheats as revealed by the Panama Papers. It seems that little has changed since then.

In a Policy Options article, Senator Percy Down asks, Why can’t the Canada Revenue Agency catch tax cheats?

Recently, on the third anniversary of the release of the Panama Papers, we learned that other countries have recovered more than $1.2 billion in fines and back taxes:

Australia has recouped $92 million.
-Spain is counting $164 million in its coffers.
-The United Kingdom has recovered $252 million.
-Even Iceland, with a population of roughly 350,000 people, was able to recover $25.5 million.

Of the 894 Canadians (individuals, corporations and trusts) revealed by the Panama Papers to have accounts, the Canada Revenue Agency hasn’t recovered a dollar.

While the CRA talks a good game, its results tell a different story:

The agency talks tough every time there is a public leak of information from some bank or law firm operating in a tax haven. Nevertheless, not one person has been charged with overseas tax evasion, much less convicted, fined or sentenced since the 2006 information leak we know the most about, from a bank in Liechtenstein, where 106 Canadian-held accounts were found to contain more than $100 million.

In fact, as reported by the Auditor General, the CRA “waived referrals for potential criminal investigation to gather information.” In other words, the agency promised not to charge the people involved in that tax scheme in exchange for them explaining to the CRA how it actually worked and agreeing to pay what they owed.

This strange acquiescence to tax evasion is contrasted by other jurisdictions that have worked hard to discourage such criminality:

Compare this to Australia, for example, where not only are back taxes and penalties paid, but individuals are charged with committing a crime and in many cases convicted, fined and jailed, and the country uses those convictions to warn citizens that it is serious about tax evasion.

“As a result of Project Wickenby’s focus on preventing the abusive use of secrecy havens,” a 2012 audit of an Aussie anti-tax evasion task force noted, “Australia is presently less attractive for international tax fraud and evasion than it otherwise would have been. After a slow start, the project has achieved substantial results from its activities, which contribute to protecting Australia’s revenue base.”

And make no mistake. We are all paying for the Canada Revenue Agency's laxity:

Because Canada has not recovered any money, three things have happened. One, we don’t have that money to fund our priorities without incurring a deficit; two, the rest of us have to make up the shortfall by paying more taxes; and three, Canadians are wondering why we have a two-tier justice system for tax evasion. Try to cheat on your domestic taxes, and the CRA will likely find you, charge you, convict you and force your repayment. Hide your money overseas, and you likely will never be charged or convicted. The odds are good you will get away with it, and your federal government allows this double standard to continue.

Like the Harper government before it, the Trudeau administration seems to be using the CRA for its own purposes. Is it too much of a leap to conclude that one of those purposes is to protect its friends in high places?

To The Obsequious Go The Spoils

And no one is more obsequious than Lord Tubby Black.



H/t Michael De Adder

A Crazed Autocrat

Bleed, bleed, poor country!
Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
For goodness dare not check thee.
- Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 3


H/t Patrick Corrigan

The above quote from Macbeth, along with Patrick Corrigan's editorial cartoon, serve as pungent reminders of the carnage taking place in Ontario under the 'leadership' of Premier Doug Ford. Like Macbeth, Ford's vision can be described only in the bleakest of terms, with destruction at its very core.

Aided and abetted by an assembly of sycophants elected on Ford's coattails and slavishly devoted to him in the hopes, no doubt, of securing the leader's favour, they preside over the wholesale destruction of programs with nary a peep beyond the rousing standing ovations they give his every word in the legislature.

One ardently hopes for a day of reckoning.

Until that day comes, however, perhaps there is some measure of comfort to be derived from knowing that increasingly large numbers of people recognize Ford for the ruthless, vengeful, crazed autocrat that he is, aided and abetted by a feckless Conservative caucus:

From yesterday's print edition of The Star come these missives:

MPPs show lack of vision

Re Local Tory MPPs back Ford over city cuts, May 13

It is depressing to read the comments (or refusal to comment) from the 10 Toronto Progressive Conservative MPPs on how the Ford government’s funding cuts will affect the city.

We deserve better from our elected representatives than blind obedience to the party line and rote repetition of Ford’s major talking points.

What is most striking in the joint statement from the PC MPPs is the total lack of vision of the kind of city and province we are building for the future. We need our representatives to focus equally on long-range core values as on short term “efficiencies.”

That vision is sadly lacking, at least as demonstrated by the constipated views expressed by the Toronto PC MPPs.

Howard Gladstone, Toronto

Congratulations to your reporters for helping expose the hypocrisy that is rife in the government ranks.

Seemingly, the 10 Toronto MPPs think that a surprise $178-million (city manager’s estimate) reduction in funds from the province is no big deal.

They ran on a campaign of finding efficiencies in the provincial government. I don’t think that the 40 per cent of voters who backed them assumed they would just pass the buck to cities and municipalities.

Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP Christine Hogarth thinks the problem can be solved by charging the well-off for yoga classes. Is that the best idea she can come up with?

Don Valley North MPP Vincent Ke says it’s not cuts. Really!

Scarborough-Agincourt MPP Aris Babikian blames the labour unions for stirring up protest against the cuts. I didn’t know senior citizens were unionized. York Centre MPP Roman Baber thinks that cuts to social services and child care services of $101 million is not a problem. Considering he thought that 64 and 37 added up to less than 100, remedial arithmetic should be on his agenda.

Of course, their leader is no better. Premier Doug Ford insults Mayor John Tory with a gibe about wasting time over a sign instead of finding efficiencies, as the premier obsesses over bucka-beer and stickers on gas pumps while giving large tax breaks to the rich.

I guess you don’t need a backbone just to stand up, hoot and clap in the legislature. I’m sure their constituents expect more.

Robin Bunner, Utopia, Ont.

“Ford’s office quickly let the Star know the MPPs would respond with a joint statement.” That response sums up the entire Ford party strategy and the fundamental failing of our major parties. The instant the polls close, each delegate becomes a mere repeater of party sound bites, incapable of independent thought or speech and too timid to convey any message from the voters to the government.

Paul Collier, Toronto

It is not surprising that these MPPs follow the party line and that the response to the Star resulted in not one MPP replying directly, or that Premier Doug Ford’s office replied with a joint statement.

If they all stand up in unison to applaud everything Ford says, then it is not surprising at all. I am sure they fear for their jobs.
The Star perhaps should have dealt more directly with the constituents in their ridings and perhaps received more honest feedback.
It is a sad state of affairs when the people most affected by these so-called efficiencies do not have more support from their MPP.

Alison Herrington, Oshawa

I find Scarborough-Agincourt MPP Aris Babikian’s dismissal of protests at constituency offices as union-led to be not only untrue but amusing.

The weekly protests at my MPP’s office are organized by an ad hoc, diverse group that is calling itself Common Ground. And the seniors who protested library cuts at Niagara West MPP Sam Oosterhof’s office weren’t union led.

On the other hand, there is a group being led by their boss. The Tory caucus issuing joint statements and joining in obligatory standing ovations look like a group dancing to the tune of the premier’s office bosses.

Peggy Stevens, Newmarket

Ultimately, Macbeth is overthrown by a coalition of brave people willing to confront the tyrant. Sadly, until the vox populi grows to a roar, the day of deliverance for Ontario seems far-off indeed.

Your Climate, Your Choice

That's the name of a new series which, in the coming weeks, will look at and evaluate the climate-change platforms of each of our political parties. Last night's segment was on the Green Party, and since it is first in the series, I cannot tell whether the tone will be the same in succeeding segments. I did think Donna Friesen seemed to be looking for practical and financial weaknesses in the Greens' approach, but that may indeed be the template for this series.

Start at the 12-minute mark to begin the report:

UPDATED: A Masterful Revision

An antidote to the Ford regime's propaganda, thanks to Braeson Holland:

Fixed a few things in @FordNation's climate change attack ad 👇🌎👇#cdnpoli #onpoli pic.twitter.com/Lzwjkdr3AH

— Braeson Holland (@braesonholland) May 15, 2019

UPDATE: Meanwhile, another redoubtable Star letter-writer offers this assessment of Doug the Thug's duplicity and mendacity:

Cartoon about Doug Ford’s missing facts was right on the money

Missing facts cartoon, Moudakis, May 15

Your editorial cartoon decrying Premier Doug Ford’s missing facts is right on the money. The only way to fight lies and half truths is with facts.

This is exactly the reason that bullies and truth benders such as Donald Ford (should be his new name) depict the media as the enemy: it provides contrary opinions and perspective using facts instead of rhetoric.

And the media has the ability to be a conduit of information, our only means of educating the masses. Unless they don’t read. And it is costly to buy commercial time on television unless one uses our own tax money to spread lies and half truths. Evil genius. Our wonderful province is in crisis and clearly in the hands of the wrong people.

David Ottenbrite, Cambridge

A Day Of Reckoning

H/t Theo Moudakis

Here in propaganda central (a.k.a., Doug Ford's Ontario), it would appear that few are being fooled by the outrageous campaign the Ford regime is conducting against the carbon tax imposed by the feds after Doug the Thug axed our cap-and-trade program. I believe the following letter-writer speaks for the majority of thinking people who must be singularly unimpressed by what the last provincial election wrought:

Half-truths and dishonest nonsense at my expense! That’s the latest from the Ford government and his trained seals. They say in their ads that Conservatives have another way to handle the problem of global warming. But that’s partisan nonsense and ignorant.

True, people dislike paying more for gasoline and home heating. But if the Ford government told the truth and completed the story, including the offsetting rebates they will earn, many people – even died-in-the-wool Tories – will agree that the only way we will reduce carbon emissions is if it hurts a bit to use carbon fuels. Best way to do that is to make us pay. Oh my god! That’s a tax isn’t it? Yes. But if we don’t do that, carbon emissions will continue to destroy our environment. Like the frog warming in the skillet, shall we happily refuse to move until it’s too late?

Please, Premier Ford, stop using my tax dollars to fill the airwaves with BS!

Bruce Rogers, Lindsay, Ont.

And a recent Star editorial adds further clarity:

The federal carbon pricing plan, which started in April, will cost the average Ontario household $258 this year but the $307 rebate they’ll get will offset those costs and then some. It’ll be the same thing in 2022 — the year the ad chooses — when the annual cost is forecast to rise to $648 and will come with a $718 rebate. So it’s a net gain for most families, not a cost.

And the very reason the federal levy is being applied in Ontario is because the province does not have a better way. Last year, the Ford government killed the existing cap-and-trade program and lowered the province’s greenhouse gas reduction targets.

That the Ford regime never listens to the people it claims to be for is exemplified by this fact:

The latest Nanos Research poll finds that nearly two-thirds of Canadians think it’s unacceptable for a province to opt out of the federal plan. Not surprisingly, the same number also oppose provincial governments using taxpayer dollars to fight it.

One need not be Nostradamus to see that a day of reckoning is coming. The world's heedless plunge into climate disaster and the governments that aid and abet that plunge guarantee it.

UPDATED: No-Holds-Barred Bill Nye

Clearly, Bill Nye is mad as hell and won't take it anymore. This piece would certainly make for a nice truth-in-advertising moment juxtaposed against the Doug Ford propaganda ads being paid for by the Ontario taxpayer.

Bill Nye has fucking had it. pic.twitter.com/3KFnEymBaR

— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) May 13, 2019

UPDATE: You can read about the background to this video here as well as here.