For Your Information
Linking
Mulroney’s Agenda With the Harper Government’s Agenda
An
e-mail from the Canadian Association of Income Trust Investor’s President and
CEO began making the rounds shortly after the Harper government declared former
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney persona non grata. Faced with the growing controversies around
Karlheinz Schriber’s testimony about handing over hundreds of thousands of
dollars in unmarked bills to Mulroney, the Harper government, which defeated
the previous Liberal administration for engaging in the same kind of
corruption, has been desperate to suggest there have been no official links
between Mulroney and the current Conservatives.
The
Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors has something of a stake in
discrediting the Harper government, which broke an election promise by clamping
down on income trust activity. That
being said, the e-mail is interesting in its bald description of the kind of
facts usually not spoken about in official circles, namely, the number of
corporate boards Mulroney sits as a director and how these interests he
represents intersect with the Harper government’s agenda.
These
include:
1.
Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM), which intersects with Harper’s personal
vendetta against the Canadian Wheat Board.
(ADM, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors of soybeans,
corn, wheat and cocoa, also has a substantial share in Viterra,
the grain company formed through the merger of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and
Agricore United. ADM would make hundreds
of millions of dollars a year in additional revenues if the CWB’s
marketing monopoly is eliminated).
2. Barrick Gold Corporation, which intersects with Harper’s
recent visit to
3. The
Blackstone Group L.P. intersects with the Harper government’s policy to
eliminate the 15 per cent withholding tax on interest paid by private equity
firms on leveraged buyout debt. “Plus,”
the e-mail notes, “Stephen Harper’s policy to tax income trusts (and restrict
their growth) in the hands of Canadian Investors and not in the hands foreign
private equity, which has resulted in the perfect event driven arbitrage
situation for foreign private equity firms like Blackstone to pick of these
sitting ducks. To date their has been $65 billion in takeover
activity caused by this policy. Over half of it by private
equity via leveraged buyout loans.”
4. Quebecor Inc. intersects with recent revelations that
Mulroney lobbied Harper government ministers on deregulating the wireless
industry, through which Quebecor is poised to make hundreds of millions of
dollars.