The View From Olympus

 

As I tried to suggest in my post the other day, rich people really are different from us, and people like Justin Trudeau, part of that rarified group, have no desire to really disrupt their status quo. 

While it might seem reductionist, in my view that fact goes a long way toward explaining the inability of the Canada Revenue Agency to recoup taxes that have been sheltered in off-shore havens. If you believe that the CRA acts without political interference, you need only remember how Harper sicced them on non-profits that were active on environmental issues, often embarrassing the prime minister in the process. The same thing is happening under the Liberal administration; it is just taking a different form.

And people are noticing the CRA's apparent impotence:

Five years, 200 audits, zero charges, Oct. 5

Aside from hearing how the wealthy continue to evade paying taxes in this country, what is even more infuriating is reading about how the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) does very little to recoup this money or charge these people for this kind of criminal activity … all the while charging hundreds, even thousands of dollars in penalties and fees to small businesses or average citizens for filing our taxes late or not making our payments on time.

Heidi Bigl, Toronto

Heidi Bigl is not the only one. Writes Terry Glavin:

As for Canada’s diligence in capturing tax revenue — it’s not much to boast about. It was only after the ICIJ’s Panama Papers bombshell in 2016 that the CRA dropped a court fight intended to prevent the Parliamentary Budget Officer from releasing estimates on how much the treasury was being effectively bilked out of revenue by individuals and corporations resorting to secret offshore accounts. That was just one minor impact the Panama Papers had on government policies worldwide, but Canada remains a laggard in corporate transparency.

And the same laxity seems to apply to money-laundering:

For years, Transparency International Canada has been campaigning against what it calls “snow-washing,” a kind of money-laundering that allows foreign investors to hide dubiously sourced capital in Canadian assets, notably real estate. It was only earlier this year that the federal government promised to introduce a searchable “beneficial ownership” registry in the House of Commons.

The adverse impacts of snow-washing in real estate is most noticeable in British Columbia, where a provincial expert panel reckoned in 2018 that in that year alone, money-launderers had sunk $5.3 billion into real estate investments, mostly in Metro Vancouver. It’s a racket that’s been going on for years, causing dramatic distortions in the city’s house prices, and it has spurred B.C. to introduce a beneficial ownership registry of its own.

The promise of a federal registry to identify the real owners of corporations investing in Canada was made in the Liberal budget that was introduced in the House of Commons last April. The registry is supposed to come into effect within five years. But a federal election has since come and gone. So will Ottawa finally act to clean up Canada’s reputation and start collecting taxes on the super-rich with the same rigour the CRA applies to the rest of us?

We’ll see.

The view from Olympus can be dizzying, and it is a great height to fall from. Hubris and nemesis, anyone?

Just A Quick Note

 If you saw yesterday's post, you might want to go back to it for some updates. The tale is not quite as straightforward as originally reported, but, I think, still quite indicative of the fraught society known as America.

You Can't Keep A Good Man Down - UPDATED

…especially a man like restauranteur Jody Pendleton, who so loves his freedom that he exercised it by firing all of the staff from his four eateries who have been vaccinated against Covid-19.

God bless Amerika.

UPDATE:

Well, the story now gets a tad murky. According to Jody, this was all a joke, an attempt at satire. But is that all there is to this tale?

Then there is this:

One thing emerging from this imbroglio is certain: in the corrupted currents of American society, all things are possible.

They Really Are Different From The Rest Of Us

 

H/t de Adder Canada

Justin Trudeau has rightly earned severe criticism for his holiday in Tofino on National Truth and Reconciliation Day. However, in my view there is another very important story here as well, one that imparts a lesson we would all do well to bear in mind, especially in light of the new revelations made in the Pandora Papers.

My contention is a simple one. When you have friends in high places, when you associate and identify with them, you are likely to handle them with especially soft kid gloves and certainly be wary of offending them by tax measures that may capture a scintilla of their wealth.

What does any of this have to do with our prime minister? Justin Trudeau is of the financial elite, and those he considers friends breathe the same rarified air as he does. One remembers his ill-fated holiday on the private island of close family friend, the Agha Khan. Then there was his impassioned defence of his good friend and major fundraiser Edgar Bronfman over his unsavoury involvement in an offshore scheme. As well, although perhaps a minor example, consider where he stayed during his B.C. sojourn, an abode called Surfer's Paradise, which is currently on the market with an asking price of  $18,750,000. While I do not know what rental he paid for the house, it would likely be beyond the budget of most.

Does the fact that Trudeau can afford such an indulgence impugn his leadership? Of course not. But it is yet another reminder that the truly wealthy are different from the rest of  us, and that the filter of wealth is often an impediment to being in touch with the rest of us or seeing us on the same level of humanity as they are. In other words, empathy is compromised, one of the subjects Chelsea Fagan addresses in her video, 6 Secrets I Learned Working For Rich People, which I recommend you view as time permits. 

Accompanying the video are some very useful links to articles she cites in the video:

Articles on rich people and empathy can be accessed here, here, and here.

An article on rich people and philanthropy can be accessed here.

Now, it would clearly be an offence to the ideal of critical thinking to suggest that any of this directly indicts the sensibilities of Mr. Trudeau. But, as they say, actions (or in this case inactions) speak louder than words, something I shall return to in a moment.

I am thinking anew of the financial elites in light of the release of The Pandora Papers, a kind of successor to the Panama and Paradise Papers, all of which reveal the off-shore dodges the rich use to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Those using these tax avoidance measures range from world leaders to prominent Canadians, and it is estimated that there is more than $14 trillion squirrelled away by the entitled.

Now, I am not suggesting for a moment that Mr. Trudeau or any of his family makes use of such havens. However, as I expressed in a series of posts in 2017, I am concerned that his identification and affiliation with the truly wealthy has prevented any meaningful reforms that would close the loopholes that allow for such selfish behaviour. Particularly damning is the fact that since the 2016 release of the Panama Papers, which showed the magnitude of off-shore tax-avoidance havens, not one Canadian has been charged, and it appears no money has been recovered.  This stands in sharp contrast to his campaign avowals in 2015 to close such loopholes. And in the 2021 campaign, he made similar promises which, even if some were to be enacted, would result in mere tinkering around the edges and would do nothing to advance lofty goals such as pharmacare and $10 a day childcare.

Mr. Trudeau is very well-known for talking a good game. His rhetoric even soars at times. But it is absolutely essential that Canadians demand more than words if we are ever to become the country that history shows us we are capable of becoming.

Some Sunday Wisdom From A Social Seer

To borrow from Ben Jonson's accolade about Shakespeare, George Carlin was "not of an age, but for all time." A man not afraid to shake the tree of complacency, he saw things that so many of us either don't see or are afraid to acknowledge.

Yesterday, he was trending on Twitter. Here are but a few of his cogent and acerbic observations.

And perhaps most pointedly relevant for the times we are currently living in:

Defiance Comes With A Cost

One of the things that riles me more than most is the absolute zeal with which the anti-vaxxers embrace their cause. Call it truculence, call it misplaced zeal, call it whatever you will, their willfully ignorant stance ignores the facts of Covid-19 and its very effective Kryptonite, the vaccines themselves. Unfortunately, the collateral damage caused by their desperate and pitiable effort to define themselves by their defiance is the rest of us.

Public health and any sense of community beyond their own benighted cadre seems non-existent.

Now added to the fray are restaurants and other businesses that are openly advertising that they do not 'discriminate' and will not be asking for proof of status as a condition of entry.

Propelled by a mixture of vaccine skepticism, business decisions and fear of government overreach, these proprietors — ranging from burger joints in Toronto to a Brazilian jiu-jitsu class in Thornhill — have formed an extensive and well-documented network of restaurants, gyms, cafes and more where clientele can enter regardless of jab status.

 In a Facebook group called “Ontario Businesses Against Health Pass,” which boasts more than 139,000 members, small business owners and entrepreneurs across the province have been promoting their products and decrying the Reopening Ontario Act.

“At King Jiu Jitsu, we do NOT discriminate,” wrote Gregg King, operator of a martial arts class in Thornhill, in the Facebook group. “Vaxxed or not vaxxed you are all welcome to train in a safe and friendly environment ... No BS. No politics. No Drama!”

 The posts receive scores of supportive messages from like-minded people. The businesses are added to an online directory, called Ontario BAD (Businesses Against Discrimination), where they can advertise their work and submit job postings to fill vacancies.

Apparently there are close to 700 enterprises listed on the site. If you are curious,  you can check out some of them on this Google Maps compilation.

Arguments for their stance are disingenuous at best. Jenna Barnes, owner of a very small restaurant in Hamilton called The Harbour Diner, 

thinks the province is disadvantaging small businesses by implementing rules that don’t apply to big corporations.

“You can walk into a Canadian Tire, or a Walmart, or a Costco and nobody will ask you a damn question about your medical history. Why is it all on us?”

The obvious answer, of course, is that those enterprises require masks at all times, something that is impossible when one is eating.

The Star's Emma Teitel has a solution to the problems posed by these scofflaws. 

What if, you, a fully vaccinated person, dine at a restaurant you assumed to be safe, only to discover later on that not only did you contract COVID-19 from an outbreak at the restaurant, but its owner failed to check diners’ vaccination statuses and boasted about this failure online?

According to Alex Colangelo, a lawyer and professor of paralegal studies at Humber College, you might have recourse to sue the restaurant for negligence.

 Consider this passage from Ontario’s Occupiers’ Liability Act, the “occupier” for our purposes being a business owner: “An occupier of premises owes a duty to take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that persons entering on the premises, and the property brought on the premises by those persons are reasonably safe while on the premises.”

Consider this passage from Ontario’s Occupiers’ Liability Act, the “occupier” for our purposes being a business owner: “An occupier of premises owes a duty to take such care as in all the circumstances of the case is reasonable to see that persons entering on the premises, and the property brought on the premises by those persons are reasonably safe while on the premises.”

It is time that those who proudly trumpet their truculence accept responsibility for their irresponsibility. Lawsuits, fines for non-compliance and even closure of businesses seem a good place to start imparting a much-needed lesson. 

Thought For The Day

 

Amen.