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Take the middle road on taxes
Re A Tax Affecting Only The Wealthy? You Decide (Report on Business, Sept. 15): The Liberal government should find some middle ground on the corporate tax-reform issue. Set up a private corporation and pay yourself in dividends? Sure. Invest retained earnings in the corporation? Up to a point. At some number ($3-million?), it's no longer about planning for retirement, but about wealth accumulation. Which is fine, but should not get special treatment.
Pay dividends to a spouse? Sure. The tax code offers ways spouses can reduce total combined tax. Pay dividends to kids? No way, regardless of their age. If private corporations can do this, then the tax code should allow salaried employees to do something equivalent. (Full disclosure: I was a salaried employee all my life, sometimes with minimal benefits and sometimes with great benefits.)
Ira Greenblatt, Ottawa
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One way the Liberals could avoid a series of head-on collisions with small-business owners, farmers, medical professionals and other targeted groups is to raise the corporate tax rate. This would leave the present options in place, but widen the net to produce more tax revenues.
R.J. Monterio, Fredericton
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Flames arena fires indignation
Re Game Misconduct (editorial, Sept. 14): Talk in Calgary these days encompasses city financing of the arts and music – in the same breath as the discussion about bankrolling a big chunk of the $550-million needed for a new Calgary Flames arena. History tells us that practitioners of the arts have struggled for centuries with economic deprivation. The NHL, on the other hand, is filthy rich and its practitioners are grossly overpaid.
Kudos to The Globe and Mail for taking a stand against their attempted pillage.
Ken Mackenzie, Calgary
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Next up, Trutch Street
Re Montreal Bids Adieu To Amherst (Sept. 14): Kudos to Montreal for removing biological-warfare advocate general Jeffery Amherst's name from its streets. In the 18th century, Amherst supported distributing smallpox-infected blankets to Indigenous people.
Vancouver should take a page from Montreal and strike Joseph Trutch's name from its streets. British Columbia's first lieutenant-governor after the province joined Confederation, Trutch despised native people, describing them as the "ugliest and laziest creatures" he had ever seen. His contribution to our province was to deny aboriginal title in 1870, while reducing the land previously set aside by James Douglas for reserves by more than 90 per cent.
Alexandra Phillips, Vancouver
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Hmm. No time to tell …
Re CBC TV's Behind-The-Scenes Mastermind (Obituaries, Sept. 11): The first time I met Arnold Amber was in the fall of 1989, when he made his way to the federal office of the New Democratic Party. The NDP was organizing a leadership convention to replace Ed Broadbent and the CBC had agreed to televise the proceedings on its main network. Arnold was focused on the Saturday afternoon balloting. We discussed the number of candidates in the field and the nearly 3,000 delegates expected to attend. He challenged me on the party's claim that we could conduct a ballot and report results in 45 minutes.
I don't think he was convinced, but he said: "We will cover your convention until 7 p.m. Saturday and then we are cutting away to broadcast Hockey Night in Canada, regardless of where your party is in picking its new leader."
The balloting began at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 2. After three ballots, the field was reduced to two candidates – Audrey McLaughlin and Dave Barrett. Ms. McLaughlin won. Mr. Barrett came to the podium to congratulate her and make the result unanimous. Then, she addressed the delegates.
In the excitement of the moment, I had stopped looking at my watch and had totally forgotten Arnold's time ultimatum.
The next morning, a convention visitor told me how interesting the TV coverage had been. "After Audrey spoke, the convention delegates sang O Canada and then they dropped the puck at the Winnipeg Arena."
Dick Proctor, Victoria
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Um, only time will tell?
Re Handel Completes Messiah (Sept.14): In 1750, the Parliament of Great Britain passed The Calendar (New Style) Act, with the result that Great Britain replaced the Julian calendar, its existing calendar, with the Gregorian calendar, which was already in place in most of western Europe. In order to make this change, the calendar in England was advanced by 11 days, so that Wednesday, Sept. 2, 1752, was followed by Thursday, Sept. 14, 1752.
Accordingly, it is, if not inaccurate, at least misleading to report the date on which Handel completed his work as Sept. 14, 1741, leading one to infer that Sept. 14, 2017, was the 276th anniversary of that great musical moment. But the former date is a date on the Julian calendar while, of course, the latter date is one on our current Gregorian calendar.
In fact, Sept. 14, 2017, on the Gregorian calendar corresponds to Sept. 1, 2017 on the Julian calendar. The anniversary of Handel's completion of the Messiah will occur on Sept. 27, 2017, of the Gregorian calendar. So you have a few days to consider printing a timely correction.
Bernard D. Katz, Toronto