Bryan

You're still painting the same small parameter picture, just using more words to describe it. If that's the limit of your experience, that's OK.

I didn't ask about EVERY lawyer. Do you know ANY who might disagree with how narrowly you are defining the concept of offshore assets?

And I never once said I wanted to protect rapists. In fact I quite clearly said that guilty people should be made accountable for their actions. Several times in this very thread.

Our credit rating didn't get down graded over $800M. It's the over $21B total debt that has doubled since 2008 that is the problem.

The city has a lot of dead spots. It also seems like Michael Faraday must have been the architect for most of the buildings I need to go inside of.

I can't get a signal most places that I go -- right in Winnipeg.

That's what I thought.

MTS' coverage in Manitoba is really bad. Unlimited data sounds great, except when you can't actually use it most of the time.

Yes.

Do some Canadian tax lawyers disagree with the very narrow way that you are defining the management of offshore assets? Yes or no?

Do any of them disagree with you about what is not legal? About what you can do right out in the open?

And they don't all agree with your interpretation do they?

You do know that there are Canadian tax lawyers who openly specialize in structuring things so that they don't fit that specific narrow box, right?

Not really, because most of the city is quite safe, It's just a concentrated area downtown and slightly north of it where things are bad. There's a lot of "the criminals are the real victims" mentality in local politics about that. Poverty/addictions/despair/etc. A lot of people are terrified of being called racist no matter what direction they to go to try to help, so they opt not to talk about it at all.

IF they're breaking the law, no it's not acceptable. It's understandable though, and it's what you WILL get if a government tries to rip off it's citizens. People have different definitions of what a reasonable limit is, but most people, if it gets over 50% people will look for ways to reduce this. Again, You're not claiming that there are no legal ways to reduce the amount of tax you pay in one country by incorporating in another, right?

Some of them may have committed crimes (it certainly appears that way), but having an offshore account is not a crime, nor is incorporating there. We don't yet know for sure which ones were actually breaking the law and which were utilizing a legitimate means of reducing their tax load. Lots of people who don't have anywhere close to that level of assets have legitimate offshore businesses and accounts. There are countries, for instance, where a foreigner has to incorporate there if they want to buy vacation property. Yeah, you need to be able to afford to buy that, but that doesn't necessarily make you a multi-millionaire.

The "so what" is, that's what you get when you try to take too much from people. Be fair and they'll pay it. Rip them off, and they won't. Please tell me you don't think that "offshore" automatically means illegal.

Worst education outcomes, worst healthcare wait times, highest child poverty, out of control taxation, etc. We've fallen far behind on almost every measure. The part that did him in was an emphatic promise not to raise the sales tax during the last election, followed by an immediate incrrease in that very tax, with documents being leaked that the tax hike legislation was already drafted when he was telling people that the idea was ludicrous. The fun part was, we had a law that said PST increases must be voted on specifically by referendum. They just decided to change the law, and went ahead and did it anyway. The flooding is still a problem, but we didn't have an action movie level one this year, so there's that. The crime is still bad, especially in and around downtown. Still at the top of the most murders per capita list. Still having tourists getting assaulted and robbed. But yes, there is a small park that holds Rennaisance Fair type events, with costumes and antique longbow competitions. Maybe that where the changes are happening.

The implication was that they don't pay their share -- the fact is they pay a much bigger share, both in total dollars and in percentage of their income.

Perhaps it's just got so far to go, that even big changes on a percentage basis are a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed. The suburbs are growing much faster Still, even in the last decade, I've seen far more things closing than opening. More buildings standing empty. If there is real growth happening, they are working really hard to hide it. I'm honestly trying to think of a downtown business I would patronize. Everything of note I used to shop at either went out of business or moved away from downtown.

Something that only 2% are interested in is a huge leap from being a "force" by any definition of the word. I will grant you that student housing for U of W is better now than when I went there. I spend a lot of time there too. 5 to 6 days a week. It's a shell of what it was when I lived there. It's not a safe place anymore, a lot more building as empty, the few businesses that still remain are closed at 5.

The top earners already pay the majority of the tax dollars collected.

No one with any sense wants either of those things. The traffic, the parking, the crime, the drugs, the homelessness, the dearth of reasonable shopping, etc. There's a reason everything is closed at 5. The number of people who really live downtown in a single digit percentage of the population.

I don't know We've been hearing that for decades. I think that what you see downtown is a taxpayer funded illusion. Winnipeg downtown is generally a money pit. Every year or two, THIS is the thing that will turn things around -- it always starts off looking good, but it rarely pans out. The growth is in the suburbs, most Winnipeggers HATE downtown and they resent being coerced into going there. True North Square, IMO, is tomorrow's Portage Place.

What is it that you think they are missing? Sure, Saskatoon and Regina are much smaller than Winnipeg, but both places are very modern and growing. I'd much rather live there than here.