The (Right) News Rundown
- In the spring session of the legislature a private member’s bill was introduced to abandon daylight savings time by NDP rookie backbencher Thomas Dang. An all party committee was reviewing the bill and this past Tuesday made the recommendation to government that the bill should be abandoned.
- The bill would have had Alberta create a new timezone, Alberta Standard Time. This new timezone would effectively put Alberta on Central Standard Time all year round. We would be one hour ahead of BC in the summer and two hours ahead of BC in the winter.
- A survey run over the summer gained 13,000 responses, about 75% were in favour of the time change. In person hearings had the opposite response, 69 of 113 submissions at the in-person hearings were against the time change.
- There are many reasons why people are for or against this Bill. One of them is that the sun would not rise until one hour later in the winter as we’re currently accustomed to. The Oilers and Flames both opposed the change since that meant that Saturday night games could start as late as 9:30pm. WestJet also expressed concern that their Calgary operation would suffer as a result of the change.
- So while the NDP likely thought this would be a simple change to change the timezone for Alberta, it has proven to be anything but. The sentiment expressed by MLA Dang in the spring was that he was hearing from Albertans that they were in favour of the change thus the sense given to the media at the time is that it would be a simple change to make. This past week, Premier Notley said, the issue is still on the table” and could be addressed in the fall session. It’s unclear at this point if this is her intention or if she’s just using this language to avoid the issue and not render a decision that would be unfavourable to those in favour of the time change.
- She later expanded her thoughts on this by saying, “There were some good points that were raised and I think there’s more research and work that has to be done around it. There were some good comments, good considerations that were raised about economic impact, and so … it’s important to dig into that a little more.” At the end of the day this issue can be seen as a microcosm of the entire NDP government. The government is still new and inexperienced and often acts without fully understanding the ramifications of their policy.
- The path forward for this policy looks to be one where Alberta will advocate across Canada and North America to modify or do away with Daylight Savings Time.
- It looks like the NDP are finally rolling along with one of their major platform promises, and one of the most contentious issues of the May election: the banning of corporate and union donations. It's what the NDP were calling "getting big money out of politics", and they were able to successfully portray the BC Liberals as the party of the rich and bought and paid by corporations. It's one of the reasons why the NDP ended up in the position they were after the election, that is being able to former a minority government with an agreement from the Green Party.
- What that agreement entails and what the NDP will pass in the legislature because of the agreement, well, we just don't know. With the bill, union and corporation donations will be banned, and individual contributions will be capped at $1200. However, it's clear with how the NDP are getting big money out of politics that the Green Party will benefit the most. Why? Because instead of donations, political parties are going to be partially funded directly from taxpayer's money.
- Yes, every BC taxpayer is now going to be paying the government and the opposition parties to bombard us with attack ads during hockey games, ruin lawns with ugly wooden signs and travel around the province for photo ops.
- In what's being called in the media as a way to "help wean the province's main political parties off of corporate and union donations" as if these donations are some sort of addiction, the NDP government announced that the taxpayers' contribution to the political parties will be in excess of $27M over the next 4 years.
- Each party will get $2.50 for each vote it garnered in the last provincial election, dropping to $1.75 in 2022. Which works out to almost $20 million over the five years. Plus there’s a second set of payments, totalling another $11 million, framed as a set of “reimbursements” for money spent in the 2021 election. At least $2.82M of the total will be going to the Greens, a number they wouldn't normally be able to achieve through conventional fundraising, while the NDP and Liberals would stand to get around $6.75M each.
- At a news conference where questions weren't allowed, Premier Horgan gushed about his party's new way to spend money: "Today, we are getting big money out of politics in British Columbia – the Wild West of the past will come to an end. This bill is what we campaigned on." However, it's actually not the bill they campaigned on, as before the election, Horgan said that he would not include taxpayer subsidies in any bill about campaign finance reform, and that it would be individuals that would be contributing.
- Opposition critic Andrew Wilkinson announced Monday he and his colleagues would vote against the parts of the bill that provide the taxpayer subsidies. But he didn't say that if the NDP-Green majority approves the funding anyway, the Liberals would refuse to take it on a matter of principle.
- However, surrounding this whole story, the media is focusing more on previous attempts by the then opposition NDP to change the bill and the Liberal refusal to do so. The Liberals were greedy in soaking up huge corporation donations yes, but the NDP were not blameless as well. They were holding huge fundraisers at the same time as well, just instead of corporations it was powerful trade unions. The reason why it's taken so much time for the campaign finance bill to be introduced is because the NDP were busy holding a few last $500 a head cash for access fundraisers this month to squeeze out as many dollars as they could before their own changes made that illegal.
- Essentially, this seems like a way for the NDP to appease the Green Party to keep their agreement alive, whilst giving them free taxpayer money. It's a slap in the face to all British Columbians, especially the middle class and working class who will have higher taxes to subsidize the NDP's high spending practices.
- Back in July finance minister Bill Morneau announced plan to close three “loopholes” in the tax system that they say have allowed high income earning business owners to avoid higher tax rates. These loopholes focus on so called “income sprinkling”, methods of converting income into dividends and capital gains, and limit passive business income taxation.
- Income sprinkling allows a business owner to divert some of their income to lower earning family members by paying them salaries, wages, or dividends. A corporation can convert income to capital gains by selling securities, stocks, or properties that were received above the purchase price, this tax rate is normally low. Passive investment income refers to income earned from an investment portfolio rather than day to day operations because the money just sits within the corporation.
- On Right Side episode 33 we talked about the magnitude of small business and what they provide to Canada. 70% of families in Canada receive dividends (salaries, funds, benefits) from a small business and have an income below $200,000. This of course means that these changes will indeed be affecting the middle class which are the very people these tax loopholes are supposedly being closed to protect.
- According to the Financial Post, “Under the new rules, passive income could now be taxed at an almost-confiscatory tax rate of over 70 per cent”
- With Parliament back in session this has been the oppositions focus this entire week highlighting the above points to the government and to the national media. But still, even as mentioned on episode 33 of The Right Side, the media is not talking about the sheer magnitude of potential impact.
- Jack Mintz from the Financial Post was back again with an article entitled, “Ottawa’s tax reforms are about feeding the spending beast, not fairness.” The article nicely outlines the nature of our tax system where the government takes away from the success stories in our economies but doesn’t share any burden of the risk of being an entrepreneur. The first example of this is our income tax system that affects higher tax rate for those who are successful. The second example is stated in the premise, the government gains heavily when a business is successful as illustrated in point one but the government shares no burden of running the business (paying wages, other expenses, and even family housing for some small businesses).
- The Financial Post piece outlines how given these structures of government that already exist, businesses are already placed at a higher burden than an individual who is just paying income tax. Essentially a small business has more people to look out for than just someone who earns an income from a business. It ends with the conclusion that the new tax proposals provide no relief from unfair taxation that would ultimately lower tax revenue, there’s no provisions for loss relief, and no provisions for better income averaging, and no plans to reduce tax rates risky businesses. And rightly highlights that taxes will just increase across the board and these new revenues will be going directly to the government.
- What’s more is that Jean Chretien’s former finance minister John Manley, has said, “Tax changes, anti-rich rhetoric have already inspired big fish to leave”. Manley also that through these proposals higher income Canadians have been “vilified.” He also brings up the pledge that Trudeau would be “the unifier, [and] he was bringing people together.” Manley highlighted one example in his Business Council of Canada who has decided to leave Canada with billions of dollars largely citing estate planning and said, “Keeping the business in the family would result in a big tax hit.” Manley’s group echoes the piece from the Financial Post that that wants to see the unintended consequences of this plan that’s currently being debated.
- The current consultation phase for these new tax policies continues until October 2. The media has ultimately done a poor job of highlighting the magnitude of these changes both in terms of monetary sense on a per business basis but also on the amount of money that could be discouraged from being invested in Canada.
The Firing Line
- Let's paint a picture. You're an aspiring filmmaker from Victoria BC, and you're creating a documentary about what's called "a group of comedians being pushed to their limits in the hopes of mounting a unique, underground comedy show." You're going to be screening the film at the 7th, or possibly the 8th best film theater in town, and not many people know or care about it. How do you make a living by getting people to hear about you? There's basically 2 options. You can either market the hell out of it in local circles, maybe talk to some media outlets and try to get some radio or newspaper coverage, and tell all your friends to get the word of mouth out there so that people are excited about your film.
- Or there's option two, which is to create an outrageous fake publicity stunt, in this particular case an illegal and discriminatory publicity stunt, to get people enraged and the media to blow up about it, but to get people still talking about your film.
- Option two is what Shiraz Higgins, a film director of a web-series documentary called "Building the Room", decided upon. He created what he called "Justice Pricing", and was going to charge what he referred to as "Cisgender White Males" $20 while everyone else was being charged $10, because he wanted to base it on the purchasing power of individual groups and “price discrimination.”
- “This is not a publicity stunt,” Higgins said, adding organizers are “pushing forward because we believe it is an important piece of overall conversation that is happening in society right now.” Higgins said that the justice-pricing was not a stunt but a way to "spark a conversation about income inequality."
- "It was never intended to be a national conversation," Higgins said. "It's a local screening, featuring an unknown cast of comedians, from an unknown director, in an little known city. For some reason, the national media thought it was a story that needed to be run far and wide."
- He referred all press inquiries and questions to a GMail address and fake PR pseudonym called "Sid Mohammed" which Higgins decided upon because using an Islamic sounding name would create more controversy, and he later mentioned that he "received death threats".
- According to the Times Colonist, Higgins has been involved in this type of thing before. A few years ago, he invited reporters to meet a Salvation Army youth pastor who was allegedly endorsing gay marriage. It turned out the pastor was an actor, and the ensuing coverage appeared in Higgins’ film.
- The initial story about the "Justice Pricing" blew up on local social media, Victoria community message boards, on Twitter and Facebook, and the mainstream media also picked it up as well, with outlets like CBC, The Globe and Mail, and various Canadian Press papers like the Vancouver Province and the Victoria Times Colonist. Most had an earlier version, then when the pseudonym was revealed, some rushed to issue corrections, called Higgins a "fake".
- "It was never intended to be a national conversation," Higgins said. "It's a local screening, featuring an unknown cast of comedians, from an unknown director, in an little known city. For some reason, the national media thought it was a story that needed to be run far and wide."
- Here's the thing. There's multiple issues at play here. First is obviously Shiraz Higgins, who used a discriminatory tactic prohibited under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the tried to escape blowback by using a fake Islamic name to generate further controversy. It's hard to get publicity about local arts productions, so I get why he resulted to using a publicity stunt to get people talking, but he went about it the completely wrong way, and he then went to the media to try to get sympathy for his "death threats". He's trying to laugh off the whole issue as a joke, but it's actually a really serious issue.
- The second major issue is that the media being concentrated in few sources means that if there's something wrong with a story, such as the fake "Sid Mohammed", it's going to get republished all over the country. Also, if there's no actual fact checking, then the whole story can end up being wrong. It leads to an actual problem with "fake news" and lessens the reputation and credibility of journalism as a whole.
- Third, when the guy who you're writing about turns out to have bamboozled you and your readerbase so fully, don't write articles sympathizing and promoting him. Instead, it's better to issue corrections and then not give him more air time.
- Lastly, news outlets need to stop sensationalizing headlines, especially when it's a nothing story such as this. It's a tactic that's used to garner an emotional response to get you to keep reading and get personally involved in the story, and it's not worth it in this day and age.
- Of course, we at The Right Side will continue to deconstruct the media's sensationalism as always and give you the listeners nothing but the news.
Word of the Week
Taxation - refers to the practice of a government collecting money from its citizens to pay for public services.
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Show Data
Episode Title: Keeping Time, Taxation, and The Media In Line
Teaser: An Alberta NDP bill creating a new timezone is defeated, the BC NDP replace big money donations with taxpayer money, the feds’ small business tax changes affect millions of Canadians, and a fake story from Victoria garners international media outrage.
Recorded Date: September 23, 2017
Release Date: September 24, 2017
Duration: 40:47
Edit Notes: John Manley window