ReeferMadness

Ever wish you could make $47,888 tax free? Well, you can - assuming that you are wealthy enough to earn it all in dividends.

Harper has been slamming Justin Trudeau for claiming that wealthy individuals are using small businesses as a way of dodging their share of taxes. For anyone who hasn't been paying attention over the past few years, small businesses are sacred cows in politics. They are considered the economic engines that create most of the jobs. Everyone wants to lower their taxes and give them other benefits. So, what's the truth? According to the Financial Post, Trudeau is correct.

Today, it was revealed that the CRA is investigating an offshore tax scam that resulted in at least one family paying no taxes despite having income on $26 million in assets. So far the Green Party has announced a policy on tax havens:

There have been a number of issues that have come up lately related to tax fairness and how people with similar incomes can pay dramatically different tax amounts. Some people are living lives of relative luxury while paying little or no income taxes. Note this thread isn't intended to debate whether we're paying too much or too little - you can open a separate thread if you want to discuss that.

This kind of rhetoric just eliminates your credibility. No response required.

A new nightmare for Harper? It turns out that while the CRA was aggressively chasing charities and environmental groups, rich people were stuffing millions into offshore companies and paying no tax. This won't play well for Harper.

Will you PLEASE stop making up sh*t?

I want to fight for good policy. Putting drug dealers out of business is much smarter than wasting time and money dragging them through the criminal system.

220,000 is just the number for simple possession. Another 91,000+ have been charged for other marijuana offenses. None of them would be charged if people had a legal, safe supplier.

Wow, you really have trouble admitting you're wrong. While all of this stuff is technically correct, it's also irrelevant. What is relevant is the number of people that are getting dragged through the system. Look at the chart below. In 2014, there were 57,314 incidents involving possession of pot. Of those 22,223 were "cleared by charge", meaning charges were laid. In 2014, 24,542 people were criminally charged with possession of marijuana (ie some incidents resulted in more than one person being charged. Now, do you get it? I'm not sure I can make it much simpler. If you sum the rows, you will find that over 220,000 people have been criminally charged with marijuana possession since 2006 and almost 92,000 more were charged with more serious offenses. That's over 310,000 people who have been dragged through the criminal system (please don't call it a justice system) for a substance that is less dangerous than either tobacco or alcohol. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of money. It's a waste of peoples lives.

Yeah. And with the momentum they have, fourth isn't out of the question. Don't give up!

Yeah - who can know? Maybe he was in a hurry and wanted to save the couple of minutes it would have taken to run to the bathroom (and wash his hands). Sometimes people just have urges to do things they know are wrong just to get away with something. Honestly, I think I'd rather not know.

That's a fair point. Hopefully, Prime Minister Trudeau will have some better advisers than Liberal Leader Trudeau. Still. Anybody but Harper. Trudeau may have cynically supported C-51 because he thought it would hurt him to be seen as soft on terror; but I don't see him tabling a bill like C-51.

That is awesome - where did you find that picture?

Thank you. HAL was subtracting the "total cleared" from the "total incidents" and assuming that was the number of people that were charged; then multiplying that by a percentage to get convictions. In fact, the number he thought was the total people charged is actually the number of incidents that didn't get cleared. That figure is actually available and labeled as such from CANSIM; you just didn't select it.

Are you playing dumb? Well, now you're wrong twice. Maybe since you can't understand the numbers you're trying to interpret, you'll be a bit more understanding towards trudeau. Although you didn't bother to post the link, I see where you got the verbiage from. Maybe you didn't bother to read the part that says this: Cleared means solved, not that someone was let off. So the police can clear an incident by laying a charge or by exercising discretion. In fact, if you sum up the number of people charged with marijuana offences, the total is over 310,000. Of those over 220,000 were for simple possession. Trudeau was off but you are even further off.

Trudeau was wrong but so were you I see you still haven't bothered to look at the definition of cleared. Trudeau used the number of incidents and took it as the number of convictions. You made your numbers up based on your own assumptions.

You need to rethink your analysis. I don't think that "cleared" in this context means the charges were dropped. It means the crime itself was "cleared". From Wikipedia

I lack the time to adequately address all of your nonsense but I will take on a few of the most ridiculous comments Huh. So, I'm not an expert on the middle east but here is what Gwynne Dyer had to say back in 2003 before Hussein was given a show trial and executed But that's just Gwynne Dyer. He's only a military historian with a PhD in military and middle eastern history. I'm sure you have much better credentials. Hahahahaha. You mean you should be a student of history. You clearly have some things to learn. Are we to assume that you would favour deporting all of the fundamentalist Christians who object to sexual education classes? Well it took me about 19 milliseconds to find this Do you think he meant just take everyone??? You have no credibility.

This is an interesting line of thought and no doubt contains some truth. Human behaviour often has evolutionary roots. Careful, though. It can be tempting to draw conclusions solely based on a beautiful theory; but lots of beautiful theories are wrong. Humans aren't mantises; we are thinking beings that usually have multiple reasons for what we do. And cultural influences are pervasive and complex. So, I'd want to see some scientific experimentation to back this up. I think truth is where you find it. There is probably truth in the idea of male disposability but there is also truth in the teachings behind feminism.

You wouldn't just make this up, right? Please do give us a quote where he's lying and skewing stats.

Wow. You really have chutzpah. Voting for a government that is more ideological and less evidence-based than any other I can think of in modern history. And then calling Green supporters anti-science. That's funny. I suppose when you vote for Conservatives, you really have a need to project your failings on to others. Maybe it makes you feel better about yourself. Unlike ideological faith, science doesn't preclude pursuing alternative theories and beliefs - in fact it thrives on them. And when it's proven wrong it adopts them. It's religion that can't tolerate other beliefs. Now can you see the difference?

Completely missing the point. Even if people don't go to jail, they can wind up with a criminal record. This can be a tool for police to hassle young people. And speaking of crime, the biggest beneficiaries of prohibition are those in organized crime. And proponents of prohibition should be forced to prove that the benefits of prohibition are greater than the cost. It can't be done.

The only poll that matters is the election.