Albeit at a very low level.
A few years after my own candidacies, our NDP riding association held a nomination meeting. A well-known associate of a neighbouring stupid and corrupt Liberal MP declared his intention to seek the nomination. We were dumbfounded. I mean, it wasn't even as if we had the proverbial snowball's chance of winning the riding. I guess it just looked like easy pickings and a way of making sure we had one fewer credible candidate in the region.
I appealed to a high-ranking Liberal Party official whom I knew personally: "um, <insert his name here>, off the record, can you tell me whether so-and-so is a member of your party?" (Party membership is confidential info.) He wasn't. But damn, he'd sure learned electioneering techniques from his MP bosom buddy. He arrived at the nomination meeting with a couple of hundred new party members from a couple of "ethnic" communities in tow, from whom my friend (and interpreter) learned that they had been advised by the candidate to illegally transfer their driver registrations into our riding, where they did not live (and accordingly could not have voted at the meeting). Shades of BC's Basi's Boys for Paul Martin. Our Liberal would-be NDP candidate lost anyhow.
A year later, another election. Guess who shows up wanting the
Liberal nomination in yet another neighbouring riding. My Liberal acquaintance then called me: "um, <insert my name here>, off the record, can you tell me whether so-and-so is still a member of your party?" He wasn't.
There apparently wasn't any corporate or high-level Liberal involvement in that instance; it was just the lowest-level variety of crime and corruption.
Martin operates at a much higher level. You've visited that CBC site (or watched the program), right?
http://www.cbc.ca/disclosure/archives/030401_csl/introduction.htmlhttp://www.cbc.ca/disclosure/archives/030401_csl/tax.htmlPaul Martin’s dual role as Finance Minister and owner of Canada Steamships Lines has raised concerns of a potential for conflict of interest. Martin has always suggested he could keep his public duties separate from his private interests.
But when it came time to set corporate tax policy, it would inevitably have a direct effect on his company.
In 1992, a year before he became Finance Minister, CSL set up five companies in Liberia, Africa, a tax haven of choice in the offshore shipping business.
... In 1994, the new Finance Minister, Paul Martin, took action: “Certain Canadian corporations are not paying an appropriate level of tax,” Martin said in his budge<t> speech. “Accordingly, we are taking measures to prevent companies from using foreign affiliates to avoid paying Canadian taxes which are otherwise due.”
But Martin didn’t shut down all the tax havens. Across the Atlantic, he kept Barbados open, and that’s exactly where CSL went next.
... Canada Steamship Lines now has nine shell companies in Barbados, eight of them at a lawyer’s office near Bridgetown. They share the same mailbox and the same tax rate: about 2.5 percent.
... And just like Liberia, the companies can bring their profits back into Canada without paying Canadian tax. In the year 2000, the companies brought $1.5 billion dollars back into our country.
Oddly enough, Paul wouldn't give the CBC an interview "to discuss taxes and CSL". Let's hope they keep trying.
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