Finance committee  Thank you. I support the income trust tax plan, with no increase in grandfathering beyond four years. I strongly urge that the income trust tax plan be enhanced by the addition of prescribed conditions to the Income Tax Act to stop income trusts from reporting deceptive, non-gap

Finance committee  My research has me conclude that I support the income trust tax plan and I do not support an extension of the grandfathering period. I believe there are permanent government tax losses as a result of permanent loss within tax-deferred accounts, both RRSPs and pension funds. I bel

Finance committee  The point I would make is that the income trust product was to the substantial benefit of the vendors and promoters of income trusts. Basically, they converted into income trusts businesses for which they were selling out of the market, taking the cash up front. In addition, the

Finance committee  We do not have a transparent market.

Finance committee  Yes. When you borrow money to pay an investment return above earnings, that's commonly referred to a Ponzi scheme. That's why Prudential took a $2 billion settlement for communicating in their marketing materials to seniors that these were extremely attractive cash distributions,

Finance committee  I would say that the RCMP and provincial and municipal police forces have the tools within section 380 of the Criminal Code today to call the deceptive cash yields...as has been said by the chairman of the Canadian Accounting Standards Board and by Paul Hayward, OSC senior legal

Finance committee  Yes, there is still $200 billion of current income trusts in the market, and 288 of the trusts are, I believe, in non-bifurcated markets--full transparency. I don't want those who know that their income trusts are overvalued having the opportunity to sell them to unsophisticated

Finance committee  I think it's roughly 20% a year. I don't think we should take comfort in that. In the prior four years we had a tripling of the energy price, and we had something like a 40% reduction in long-term interest rates. So there was very strong performance.

Finance committee  I'd like to make three points with respect to that question.

Finance committee  Okay. You can't give credit for capital gains that are forced by conversions. You can't make a policy decision for the perpetual future on the basis of the realization of accrued gains that are from the past. When the full conversion occurs, we're not going to have those benefit

Finance committee  I just want to make the point that unless I'm not completely up to date, the CAITI members comprise the coalition of energy income trusts; Borden Ladner Gervais; PricewaterhouseCoopers; approximately six structured product investment managers; and, the last time I looked at it, f

Finance committee  Thank you. The income trust tax plan removes tax advantages, and where there are tax advantages there is by definition government revenue leakage. If there were no tax advantages, there would not be this aggressive income trust lobby to reverse the income trust tax plan. If cor

Finance committee  I think I meant Ponzi. If I said “plansi”—maybe that's an interpretation problem.

Finance committee  A Ponzi scheme, as we traditionally know it, is usually conducted by a rogue person who goes to the public and says he can pay you 12%, so you'll invest your $50,000, and then he'll go out and find other investors. He doesn't have the means to produce the 12% himself. Perhaps he

Finance committee  The proposed tax credit attempts to pay back the corporate business taxes to the people who own the corporations in their RRSPs. It's attempting to have both corporations and business tax, not withholding taxes in the form of business taxes. In my opinion, we're essentially rever