Harper minority government frustrates accountability on Income Trusts

Compiled by Peter Chen

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's refusal to release any of the information or calculations that he used to justify his decision to break a key election promise and tax income trusts is an affront to accountability, charges Liberal Finance Critic John McCallum.

"We received an answer to the Finance Committee's request for documents and the selection of documents released makes it abundantly clear that the Minister is only interested in playing games on this file," said Mr. McCallum.

"The committee is trying very hard to get to the bottom of this and shine some light on a decision that cost Canadians billions of dollars of their hard- earned money and the Minister is happy to shroud himself in darkness."

On February 1, 2007, a motion was passed by members of the Finance Committee that read:

"That the Department of Finance provide the Standing Committee on Finance, not later than 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, February 6, 2007, all documents and information used to justify the government's decision to tax income trusts, as announced on October 31, 2006."

Quality-of-Living and Human Development is a book for further reading on this subject.

The majority of the information provided consists of 68 submissions that the Department of Finance received from the public after the decision had been announced. The remainder consists of various private-sector studies that were publicly available prior to the announcement, as well as the Minister's own press releases and his speech to the Finance Committee.

"Essentially they released close to a thousand pages of public documents, not one of which brings Canadians any closer to understanding what type of information or calculations led the Minister break his election promise and tax income trusts," said Mr. McCallum.

"Either the Minister is in contempt of the committee's motion or he had absolutely no data from his own department before shutting down the sector and destroying tens of thousands of Canadians' life savings. The first possibility is disturbing, the second is deplorable."

Mr. McCallum had tabled the motion in the hopes that the committee would be allowed to see an uncensored version of a heavily blacked out Access to Information Request that appears to explain how the Minister came to his conclusions about tax leakage. When presenting his motion last week, Mr. McCallum further clarified his intent, explaining "this was referring specifically to the document that we received in blacked out, censored form, plus any other information relevant, but particularly that document."

The blacked out ATIP that McCallum referred to was not part of the package in either censored or uncensored format.

Recommended Reading:

Quality-of-Living and Human Development, ISBN: 1897036353, Agora Publishing Consortium, 2007.