Coordinates | 3°8′51″N101°41′36″N |
---|---|
Honorific-prefix | The Honourable |
Birthname | James Michael Flaherty |
Honorific-suffix | PC MP |
Office | Minister of Finance |
Primeminister | Stephen Harper |
Term start | February 6, 2006 |
Predecessor | Ralph Goodale |
Constituency mp2 | Whitby-Oshawa |
Parliament2 | Canadian |
Term start2 | January 23, 2006 |
Predecessor2 | Judi Longfield |
Constituency am3 | Whitby-Ajax |
Assembly3 | Ontario Legislative |
Term start3 | June 3, 1999 |
Term end3 | November 29, 2005 |
Predecessor3 | Constituency established |
Successor3 | Christine Elliott |
Constituency am4 | Durham Centre |
Assembly4 | Ontario Legislative |
Term start4 | June 8, 1995 |
Term end4 | June 3, 1999 |
Predecessor4 | Drummond White |
Successor4 | Constituency abolished |
Birth date | December 30, 1949 |
Birth place | Lachine, Quebec, Canada |
Party | Conservative Party |
Spouse | Christine Elliott; 3 children |
Residence | Whitby |
Profession | Lawyer |
Alma mater | Princeton UniversityOsgoode Hall Law School |
James Michael "Jim" Flaherty, PC, MP (born December 30, 1949) is Canada's Minister of Finance and he has also served as Ontario's Minister of Finance. From 1995 until 2005, he was the Member of Provincial Parliament for Whitby—Ajax, and a member of the Progressive Conservative Party caucus. He was a cabinet minister in the government of Mike Harris, and unsuccessfully sought the leadership of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives on two occasions.
Flaherty won the riding of Whitby—Oshawa in the federal election held January 23, 2006 as a member of the Conservative Party of Canada narrowly beating Liberal incumbent Judi Longfield. He was re-elected in 2008. Flaherty's wife Christine Elliott represents Whitby—Oshawa in the Ontario Legislature.
He and his wife, Christine Elliott, have 20-year-old triplet sons.
Flaherty was re-elected in the 1999 election in the redistributed riding of Whitby—Ajax, and was named Attorney General with responsibility for Native Affairs on June 17, 1999. On February 8, 2001, he was appointed Minister of Finance and Deputy Premier. He was a key promoter of tax credits for parents sending their children to private and denominational schools, which the Tories had campaigned against in 1999. Minister of Education Janet Ecker opposed this policy change.
Flaherty's leadership campaign focused on "law and order" themes, and one of his proposals was to make homelessness illegal. His purported plan was to have special constables encourage homeless persons to seek out shelters or hospitals. He argued that his policy would save the lives of homeless persons; leadership rival Elizabeth Witmer and other critics described it as callous, and ineffective against the root causes of homelessness.
Flaherty also promised to implement further tax cuts, carry through with plans to create a tax credit for parents sending their children to private school, and privatizing the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. Flaherty also emerged as a social conservative in this campaign, particularly a staunch stance against abortion and his association with pro-life groups. On April 15, 2002, Eves demoted him to the less-prominent position of Minister of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation. Flaherty retained this position until the Tories were defeated in the provincial election of 2003. Flaherty himself was re-elected by a sharply reduced margin.
On February 4, 2006, the Toronto Star reported that Flaherty still owed as much as $64,000 to the PC Party of Ontario from his 2004 leadership campaign.
On June 13, 2005, the Canadian news website bourque.org reported that a meeting of prominent Conservative organizers and fundraisers had been held to plan for a Flaherty bid for the leadership of the federal party should Stephen Harper resign. In December 2005, the 2006 general election was called. Flaherty resigned his seat in the Ontario legislature to run for the Conservative Party of Canada in the riding of Whitby—Oshawa, narrowly unseating incumbent Judi Longfield.
Flaherty's wife, Christine Elliott, won Flaherty's former provincial seat in a by-election, defeating Longfield who was running as the provincial Liberal candidate. This marked the first time in Canadian history that a husband and wife have simultaneously represented the same electoral district at two different levels of government.
There had been an increasing number of corporations converting to income trusts which would result in them paying lowered taxes; Flaherty argued that income trusts would cost the government $500 million annually in lost tax revenue and shift the burden onto ordinary people. The Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors have argued that foreign takeovers of Canadian income trusts have had the opposite effect and caused decrease in federal government tax revenues. Tax leakage, which served as Flaherty’s central policy justification for his 31.5% income trust tax, was addressed during the Goodale Income Trust public consultation process of Fall 2005, during which time HLB Decision Economics worked collaboratively with the Department of Finance and published their findings in paper entitled “The tax revenue implications of income trusts”, dated November 24, 2005. The study, available to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty prior to his October 31, 2006 decision, concluded that there is no tax leakage from income trusts. The author of the study, Dennis Bruce, went on to testify at the Finance Committee’s Public Hearings on Income Trusts in February 2007 and issued a press release following his first day of testimony entitled "Independent economists discredit govt tax leakage claims" which outlines the numerous gross errors that were made by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the government in asserting the claim of $500 million in annual tax leakage. Bruce concluded the ongoing tax leakage, post 2010, after taking into account legislated tax changes, is $32 million per year, about five percent of Flaherty's figures.
Diane Francis, editor-at-large for the National Post, urged that the rule changes be recanted, arguing that there were flaws in the policy which hurt ordinary, hard-working Canadian investors. Francis pointed out that the root of the problem is that the decision was based on analysis by federal officials who regard RRSPs and pensions as tax "exempts" even though they are merely deferral mechanisms. The tax leakage analysis used by Flaherty is incorrect because it does not reflect deferred taxes paid by Canadian income trust unitholders.
Special hearings by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance commenced January 30, 2007. John McCallum, the Liberal finance critic, called on Flaherty to explain the reasoning behind the change in income trust tax policy. McCallum said "Your first problem is that having lured hundreds of thousands of ordinary Canadians into income trusts by promising not to raise taxes you then cut them off at the knees."
On February 28, 2007, the committee released their report, Taxing Income Trusts: Reconcilable or Irreconcilable differences?, recommending a reduction of the proposed tax to 10% from 31.5%.
In a July 9, 2007 interview on Business News Network, former Conservative Alberta Premier Ralph Klein criticized Harper and Flaherty for their mishandling of the income trust issue, and for not keeping their word on income trust taxation. According to the Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors, the change in tax rules cost investors $35 billion in market value. Stephen Harper specifically promised "not to raid Senior's nest eggs" during the 2006 federal election.
Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier claims Flaherty sidestepped responsibility for billions in infrastructure dollars being sought, when Flaherty advised municipalities to “do their job” because the feds are “not in the pothole business.” “Let’s get on with the job and stop complaining about it and do their job,” Flaherty continued, noting the Building Canada fund will inject $33 billion into cities to help deal with the infrastructure crunch. However Bronconnier said the plan is merely a “repackaging” of a number of pre-existing funding arrangements. The Building Canada Fund has been strongly criticized for being designed to fail, due to excessive red tape, which has delayed much of the funding from being awarded.
Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion went further by issuing a challenge to Flaherty to publicly debate the need for permanent federal funding for the repair and upkeep of municipal roads and bridges. McCallion said “Flaherty has stated in the media that some of the municipalities have not kept up with infrastructure and did not establish adequate reserves. Well, I can tell him that he is dead wrong. The facts are that Mississauga has carefully set aside reserves for infrastructure for years.” McCallion noted that cities are trying to maintain 58 per cent of public infrastructure with eight cents of every tax dollar. Flaherty did not accept Hazel McCallion's offer to debate.
The Toronto Star determined that several people who supported Flaherty when he was an Ontario cabinet minister or who supported his two failed bids to lead the Ontario Tories were awarded employment contracts or given appointments. The employment contracts awarded were under the $25,000 Treasury Board contract bidding limit. Bronwen Evans received a $24,877.50 contract to write speeches for Flaherty from June 2006 until last February. David Curtain, who worked on Flaherty's Ontario leadership campaign, received $24,877.50 to write the finance minister's first budget speech. Curtain was also paid $3,350 to write a keynote address earlier in 2008 for Flaherty. Lawyer James Love, who donated $63,000 to Flaherty over two leadership campaigns, was appointed to the Royal Canadian Mint. Another Flaherty donor, Carol Hansell, was appointed to the board of directors of the Bank of Canada in October 2006. Toronto family law lawyer Sara Beth Mintz, an Ontario Progressive Conservative Party vice-president, received $24,900 for budget "analysis, assessment and advice." MacPhie & Company also got another contract for $24,645 for work done on Advantage Canada, a long-term, national economic plan. Opposition parties say they are suspicious that contracts are coming in just under $25,000 in order to give business to Flaherty's friends and supporters.
On May 13, 2008, Flaherty appeared before the Public Accounts committee, facing questions about multiple sole-sourced contracts worth more than $300,000 that were given by the government. The finance minister says he was unaware his former chief of staff broke government rules in handing a well-connected Tory an untendered contract to write the 2007 budget speech.
Category:1949 births Category:Anglophone Quebec people Category:Attorneys General of Ontario Category:Canadian Ministers of Finance Category:Conservative Party of Canada MPs Category:Deputy premiers of Ontario Category:Lawyers in Ontario Category:Living people Category:Members of the Canadian House of Commons from Ontario Category:Members of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada Category:Osgoode Hall Law School alumni Category:People from Montreal Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario MPPs Category:People from Whitby, Ontario
de:Jim Flaherty fr:Jim Flaherty pl:Jim Flaherty ru:Флаэрти, Джим fi:Jim FlahertyThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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