Christian Conservative Christian "Independent"

I'm an evangelical Christian, member of the CPC, but presently & unjustly exiled to wander the political wilderness.
All opinions expressed here are solely my own.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Anger over Income Trusts

Things got a little heated at a Town Hall meeting in Jason Kenney's Calgary riding last night, with a dozen or so angry CPC members venting about the issue. One guy I heard on CBC made the statement, "How can I vote for them anymore? They owe me $100,000."

Honestly, I've only heard a couple people vent about this. In all, I think this might cost us a couple dozen votes in most ridings... not really enough to hurt us, except in places like Tony "28 votes" Clement's riding.

Not that I fault anyone who's angry about it, since some people did lose some serious coin over it. But I still support the reasoning behind the decision, since Telus and BCE jumped on the IT bandwagon.

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posted by Christian Conservative @ 9:14 a.m.  

7 Comments:

  • At Sun Apr 15, 10:05:00 a.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    The old Reform-PC split is very much alive in Calgary politics, and that, imho, has more to do with Mr. Kenney's troubles than income trust.

     

  • At Sun Apr 15, 10:05:00 a.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Does anyone bother to ask to see their account statements from the past and where they are at now?

    Make these people prove that the value on statements is still down.

    Even if they did sell their ITs, what did they reinvest in? The stock market is hitting record highs and these people are still bitching.

    When will someone ask them if they had ALL of their money in ITs. If so, WHY?

     

  • At Sun Apr 15, 10:30:00 a.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    As an investor in natural resource stocks I can easily see where some people could have lost $100,000. At the time of the announcement the trusts were overvalued, as they were one of the few ways people with savings could actually generate an income. On the news most income trusts fell like a stone. I for one avoided the trusts because I saw the writing on the wall that the government could not let the entire TSX turn into income trusts. The promise not to do this was the Conservatives’ biggest sin. The actual problem is the result of the Liberals inaction on the issue for years. The result is that many of the trusts are still in limbo and are more difficult to place a value on. The Conservatives in the last budget could have somewhat make up for their indiscretions by reducing corporate taxes across the board. Instead they decided to play uncle liberal angering the same people again.

     

  • At Sun Apr 15, 11:13:00 a.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    As many people who will not vote conservative because of the IT reversal more will vote for the conservatives because of the IT reversal. Letting the major corporations avoid tax so the little guy can pay more does not good politics make.

     

  • At Sun Apr 15, 11:23:00 a.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Whatever happened to the well know and prudent policies that anyone who invests their money is told whenever they go to see an investment advisor?

    Don't put all of your eggs in one basket

    Always diversify your portfolio

    I had some money in income trusts, but I diversified my portfolio, so even though the value of some of the income trusts initially went down, my portfolio retained most of its value and has since increased.

    So while some blame can be assigned to the government for taxing Income trusts, some blame should also be assigned to some of these invertors and their advisors for not following prudent investment policy.

     

  • At Sun Apr 15, 03:48:00 p.m. EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    "How can I vote for them anymore? They owe me $100,000."

    Boo. Hoo. At least this bonehead had a hundred grand. If he had to live off what I make an hour, he'd probably implode.

    ANYbody that thought the ITs would be untouched by whatever party won was only fooling themselves.

    And a fool and his money are some party...

     

  • At Sun Apr 15, 05:00:00 p.m. EDT, Blogger Dirk said…

    I have two big problems with the CPC, and CPC supporters that discuss this issue:
    - I'm tired of hearing about Liberal inaction on income trusts. When Ralph Goodale made his series of income trust announcements (yes, this was done in a far from perfect manner) there was massive pressure from the CPC who said taxing income trust would amount to screwing over Canadian seniors and the Canadian economy. BT folks eagerly nodded in agreement. If the Liberals had announced a plan to tax income trusts back when they were in power, we'd be hearing about this from the CPC and BT ppl to this day.

    - For the CPC to reverse its stand on income trusts was a good thing. But what really sucks here is that it renders everything they said while in opposition as meaningless. Regardless of what they say about being clean, this shows the CPC is no different than any other major political party: They'll say pretty much anything in order to make their opponents look bad and themselves look electable.
    Nothing really changed in the income trusts market since the CPC was elected as the ruling party. The only thing that is different is the fact that they hold the purse strings, and now they're accountable for things they say. I'm glad they went back on their word -- that does say something. But really, they didn't have much of a choice if they're interested in governing long-term. Money has to come from somewhere to keep budgets balanced.

     

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