It's Just Money

The money raised for Vice-Admiral Mark Norman to fight the government that railroaded him will be returned a la government (Read: taxpayers whose money keeps this g-d- national engine going):

Members of the public who contributed to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman’s defence through a GoFundMe page will receive refunds once the federal government comes through with its offer to cover the naval officer legal costs.

Norman has asked Lee Hammond, a retired army officer who started the fundraising initiative, to refund as much of the $442,800 as possible and give any donations that can’t be refunded to charity.

“Admiral Norman has always been clear that he saw the purpose of the GoFundMe account as a way to help pay for his legal fees,” said Hammond, who started the fund in January 2018. “He never really had access to the funds personally as it was set up for his lawyers.”

Norman, the former second-in-command of the Canadian Forces, was suspended from his job in January 2017 by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance after the RCMP presented Vance with allegations Norman was responsible for the leak of confidential information about the Liberal government’s plans to pause a project that would see Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding convert a commercial ship into a refuelling vessel for the Royal Canadian Navy.

Norman was later charged with one count of breach of trust, but on May 8 the charge was stayed after Norman’s defence team brought new evidence to prosecutors’ attention. Prosecutors told the court that based on the new evidence there was no likelihood of a conviction. It is not known what that evidence was, but sources have told Postmedia at least some of it was related to the former Conservative government’s push to keep the Davie deal on track, and suggested the communication Norman had with Davie that formed the basis for the charge simply showed Norman following orders. Norman, who had entered a plea of not guilty, always maintained he had done nothing wrong.

On Wednesday Norman and the Department of National Defence released a joint statement that the naval officer will retire from the Canadian Forces after reaching a “mutually acceptable agreement, the details of which will remain confidential.”

(Sidebar: I can't stress how much that is total pig crap.)


Also - eating the rich doesn't work and here's why:

Making the rich pay higher taxes is, according to politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, a tried, true and easy way of making life better for average Canadians.

Trudeau, for example, hiked the top federal income tax rate in 2016 for those earning more than $210,000 annually by four percentage points, raising it to 33%, from 29%.

That, we were told, would help pay for his signature 2015 election promise of a “middle-class tax cut” of 1.5 percentage points — dropping it from 22% to 20.5% — for those earning $45,000 to $90,000 annually.

In his 2019 election platform, Singh said he’d raise the top federal income tax rate two more percentage points to 35%, plus impose an additional 1% tax on the “super rich” — those earning $20 million a year or more — to help pay for a national pharmacare program.

This because taxing the rich, as he put it, “makes a lot of sense.”

Except in many cases it doesn’t, because governments chronically overestimate the amount of revenue they will generate from increasing taxes on the rich.

One reason is that imposing higher taxes on high-income earners decreases their productivity.

Why work harder if the government is going to take away most of their increased earnings in combined federal and provincial income tax hikes?

Indeed, in many provinces today, the highest federal/provincial marginal income tax rate is now over 50%.

In addition, high-income earners use more aggressive tax planning measures in the face of tax hikes to lower their taxable income and thus avoid paying higher taxes.

That’s what happened in 2016 when Trudeau’s income tax hike for high-income earners generated billions of dollars less in government revenues than predicted.

If one is rather troubled by, one could insist that MPs, particularly Justin, don't get pensions. Haven't they wasted enough of our money?