Saturday, December 31, 2005
The Goodale Affair - Chump Change
New Years' Eve polls show the Canadian Conservatives and the Liberals in a dead-heat, due, apparently, to the effects of the RCMP investigation into Ralph Goodale's Ministry of Finance. The unproven Goodale affair is one-off chump-change compared with the sustained and proven criminal activities associated with Adscam. It's a bit distressing to think that Goodalegate could have a bigger effect on voters than Adscam.
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Seniors were robbed at the time by the announcement by Mr. Goodale that no further opinions would be offered by the tax department on income trusts.
It looks like they were robbed again if the allegations prove to be true that insider knowledge allowed some select individuals to scoop up discounted shares.
The mystery to me is why the RCMP made the announcement that it was investigating the allegations. I presume that most of the time they go about their work with no fanfare.
Perhaps some of them have become tired of being pictured as Liberal lapdogs. Maybe they are tired of the repeated budget cuts which are reducing a once fine force to impotence.
It was beginning to look as if all the force could do is issue traffic tickets except when they were invading the homes of Liberal enemies such as reporters and bank presidents. It seemed that soft targets were always the subject of investigations. Hard targets like the Chinese spy rings and the hotels in Shawinigan were left alone. The Air India bombing was a major failure. More and more they were looking like the keystone cops.
We shall have to see how this investigation develops. If the Liberals win we can be sure it will be terminated. If the Conservatives win it will probably go forward to its conclusion, which may, in fact, show nothing amiss.
I can, however, offer some valuable insider knowledge at this time. If it looks like a Liberal loss go long on shredders.
We will be facing a serious problem of confidence in our shares exchange markets if malfeasance is discovered.
Thousands of shareholders will have been cheated.
Will they be able to claim compensation? Who will they target when they sue? The Liberal government? The people who benefited? The exchange itself for not picking up on the strange trading patterns?
It was because of the work of Bloggers (especially MK Braaten) busily pouring over the trading records that picked up on the peculiar patterns. The TSX (which presumably has the facilities) was ignoring the whole thing.
It makes one wonder what other quirky things are going on.
Apparently the Ontario Securities Commission is a notoriously weak body. Once again, a government fails us in what should be its "primary business".
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