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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 12 April 2022

Dawn Gallagher Murphy refuses to explain how she was selected as PC candidate for Newmarket-Aurora. 

I laughed out loud when I read in Newmarket Today that Dawn Gallagher Murphy won’t talk about her selection as the Progressive Conservative candidate in Newmarket-Aurora.

Obviously a deal was done between Doug Ford and her boss, sitting MPP Christine Elliott. 

There was a trade-off but we don't know the details.

Internal Party Matters

Dawn says she can’t talk about “internal party matters” as if selecting a parliamentary candidate is akin to a Papal Conclave.

Why can’t she tell us what qualities Doug Ford saw in her that persuaded him to appoint her?

Is she comfortable being imposed on the local party as their candidate when they had no say in her selection?

Dawn is a candidate with no political past. Has she ever run for election before? At any level. Dawn leaves no footprints in the sand. No letters to the local press. No articles. A thin Facebook presence (photo right is from her Facebook page).

She joined Twitter last month and has tweeted once. 

Blank sheet of paper

I cannot find any evidence of Dawn expressing a personal opinion about any controversial issue, local or national. She echoes her employer's view of the world. But that's only to be expected. Perhaps she was the ghost writer for "Christine’s Chronicles" and the MPP’s newsletters. I don't know. Maybe she was more than the MPP’s gatekeeper, arranging appointments and managing the office.

Dawn says she believes in the government’s record over the past four years.

I would love to see her on a public platform defending that statement against all comers.

Dream on.

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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 11 April 2022

The latest polls show Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives way ahead of the opposition in the run up to the Provincial Election on 2 June. 

The respected polling aggregator 338canada.com regularly shows the PCs getting over 35% support with the Liberals and the NDP jockeying for second place getting support around the 26% mark. Because of our First-Past-the-Post system this translates into a majority Ford government. But, of course, a lot can happen during the campaign which doesn’t officially start until 4 May 2022.

Bribing the voters

For the moment, Ford is hard at work bribing the voters, targetting motorists. Ford's decision to abolish the license plate fee and send out refunds (costing the Province $1.1B in lost revenue) was a taste of things to come. We’ve seen the abolition of road tolls on Highways 412 and 418 and go-aheads for construction of Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass. Then there’s the cut in gas duty and raising the speed limits on some 400 series highways. 

"Ironclad guarantee"

We can expect more eye-popping announcements in the Provincial budget which has been postponed until later this month to get closer to the election. The PCs passed a new law in 2019 requiring the delivery of budgets by March 31 – described by the then Finance Minister, Vic Fedeli, as “an ironclad guarantee”.  

So much for that.

Ford has promised the health sector millions. Bringing down the deficit used to be the standard war-cry of the Progressive Conservatives. But it doesn’t seem to matter these days. Ontario’s budget deficit amounted to $1,597 per person in 2020, the fifth highest in the country.

A new Southlake

Here in Newmarket, we are promised a new Southlake. Like everyone else in Town I want to see a new hospital. The one we have is overcrowded and there is no room to expand. So, we are told the solution lies in two sites: the current one at Davis Drive is to become a walk-in centre with the acute facilities going to a new – as yet unidentified – greenfield site, ideally within 10km of the Davis Drive site.

Personally, I think the two-site solution is a second best. There are synergies when medical facilities are clustered together. But the land simply isn’t available for Southlake to grow on its present site – and over the years no-one took the trouble - nor had the insight - to acquire it.

In the bag 

The PCs talk about the new hospital as if it’s in the bag. The back-slapping and whoops of congratulation have been deafening. But, in reality, all Southlake is getting is a cheque from the Province for $5M to help it work up its plans. The hospital’s January 2020 Master Plan is not publicly available nor is the Province’s response. We don’t know where the promised acute hospital will be located nor when it will be built. Not even a provisional date.

The same formulation (promising a new hospital but giving a few million dollars to work up the plans) is used elsewhere – for example, in Barrie and Brant – coupled with gushing quotes from local PC MPPs.

We need to spend more on health. Not just talk about it.

Ontario has lowest health spending in Canada

Last week the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario published a report comparing Ontario’s fiscal results with the other provinces after the first year of the COVID-19 Pandemic. It shows that, on a per person basis, Ontario’s total program spending in 2020 was the lowest in the country, with the least amount in health spending.

“Health spending per person in Ontario was $4,800 in 2020, the lowest in Canada and $536 (10.0 per cent) below the average of the other provinces… Since 2008 when the data is first available, Ontario has consistently had among the lowest levels of per person health spending in the country.”

Buck-a-Beer certainly knows how to spin a tale. 

And, for the moment, it looks like the voters will buy it.

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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 09 April 2022

The big news out of the UK this week was the jaw-dropping revelation that Akshata Murty, the wife of the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, is “non-UK domiciled” for tax purposes. This means she does not pay UK tax on her worldwide income despite living in Number 11 Downing Street, rent free, paid for out of the public purse. 

She claims domicile in India where she was born and her parents live.

She says she will now pay full UK taxes on her worldwide income but the UK's Guardian newspaper reports that Murty will retain her non-dom status:

"which could in future allow her family to legally avoid an inheritance tax bill of more than £275m".

India does not have an inheritance tax.

The Guardian reports that:

“Under non-dom rules, Murty did not legally have to pay tax in the UK on the estimated £11.5m (CAN$18.6M) in annual dividends she collects from her stake in Infosys, her billionaire father’s IT business. UK tax residents would be expected to pay about £4.5m (CAN$7.2M) in tax on the dividend payment.”

It was an astonishing admission. But, in one sense, it didn’t surprise me. The super-rich have long benefitted from complex rules designed specifically to lighten their tax burden – or eliminate it entirely.

"Little people"

The late New York real estate heiress, Leona Helmsley, famously remarked 

"only the little people pay taxes." 

Then she went to jail.

Here there is no suggestion Murty broke the law, only that she used the arcane rules on domicile to her clear advantage. It is estimated that Murty may have avoided paying £20M (CAN$32.4M) to the UK Treasury, which her husband heads as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Despite saying yesterday that she would be paying UK tax in future on her worldwide income there are still questions to answer.

Time to get rid of non-dom status

But after this latest scandal it is surely time for the UK to get rid of its special category of taxpayers, the non-doms, which is an absurd hangover from the days of Empire. 

We know the overwhelming majority of UK taxpayers play by the rules. 

The super-rich, by contrast, play the system.

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Updated and this from the Observer 10 April 2022: Top Conservatives say Rishi Sunak's chances of becoming Prime Minister are over. And from Andrew Rawnsley: The Stench of Entitlement

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Written by Gordon Prentice

Published: 05 April 2022

Lord Black of Crossharbour, who renounced his Canadian citizenship to join the House of Lords in 2001, has been on leave of absence from the Lords since 5 September 2017. He has spoken twice in the Lords – the last time over twenty years ago. So why on earth does he want to remain a member of the UK Parliament? And, more to the point, why would the Lords want him back? 

Black seems to be happy enough here in Canada, holding forth on the major political issues of the day. He told readers of the National Post on 7 December 2018:

“I do expect to reapply as a Canadian citizen eventually — I have been mainly living here for nearly seven years, have not had so much as a parking ticket and have certainly been a substantial taxpayer.” 

Defamation Threat

I can remember the exact date on which I first became intrigued by Conrad Moffat Black and his blustering style. On 24 July 2019 he threatened to sue me for defamation for describing his Lordship as a convicted fraudster – which he is. Personally, I think it an outrage that a convicted felon like Black should still be a member of the Westminster Parliament.

The House of Lords Reform Act 2014 originally proposed that a peer convicted of a serious offence overseas (imprisonment for one year or more) should be automatically disqualified from the Lords - as is the case for a sentence handed down by the Courts in the UK. However, the Bill was later amended to allow the House of Lords to vote on whether disqualification should apply in the case of a conviction overseas.

That said, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that had Black gone to jail after 14 May 2014 (when the Bill received Royal assent) he would have been expelled from the Lords.  

UK Parliament = UK taxes

Since 2010, the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act deems all members of the UK Parliament to be “resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled in the UK for tax purposes”. At the time, Ministers said there was a clear expectation that members of the UK Parliament should pay UK taxes. S41 was the vehicle for doing this, deeming or treating members of Parliament as being UK resident and UK domiciled for tax purposes even if, in reality, they were not UK resident or UK domiciled. In practice, peers can live anywhere they choose, including Canada.

But, not unreasonably, the 2010 Act obliges all members of the UK Parliament to pay UK taxes on their worldwide income. As there is no payroll reference for House of Lords members (because they do not receive a salary for attending, only expenses) it is their responsibility to declare their worldwide income to HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs). There is no absolute requirement for peers to file a tax return. They must do so only if they fulfil the Self-Assessment criteria.

The system is built on trust. HMRC does not keep a record of which members of the House of Lords are non-UK resident and/or non UK domiciled.

This change in the law – obliging UK Members of Parliament to pay UK taxes on their worldwide income - was triggered by my 2007 Freedom of Information request on the tax status of the multi-millionaire Conservative peer, the slippery tax dodger, Lord Ashcroft. On 1 March 2010 Ashcroft admitted for the first time that, throughout his ten-year membership of the Lords, he had been non-domiciled, meaning that he was not paying UK tax on his worldwide income – despite giving a clear and unequivocal assurance in 2000 that he would do so.

Coleman Federal Correctional Facility, Florida. 

When the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act became law Conrad Black was serving time in the Coleman Federal Correctional Facility in Florida. He may have been unaware of the Act and how it might affect him. I don’t know. But since then he has pretty much stayed away from Westminster, taking leave of absence from the Lords on 5 September 2017. 

From time-to-time Black teases about returning to the Lords. He told his National Post readers on 7 December 2018:

“I have enjoyed it (membership of the House of Lords) and though I have been officially inactive for some years, I have returned and been generously received and look forward to resuming my full active membership.”

We are not told who generously received him. But we do know he has not bothered to apply for an Official Pass (though, quaintly, as a peer he does not actually need one to get into the building).

On 30 May 2019 the BBC reported that, after his “pardon” by Trump, Black was planning a return to the Lords but it all came to nothing.

Leave of Absence 

At the start of every new Parliament peers are asked if they intend to participate in the work of the Chamber. If, for any reason, they are unable to give that commitment they can (a) resign from the House of Lords or (b) request leave of absence. In the latter case, they tell the Clerk of the Parliaments they are temporarily unable to fulfill their duties as a member but

“expect to be able to take part again in the proceedings of the House in due course”.

This is a notoriously elastic undertaking. However, in recent years the House of Lords Procedure Committee has been quietly closing the loopholes which allow absentee peers like Black to retain their membership of the Lords. (Click "Read More" below for details)

The recent revision of the Lords Standing Orders (February 2021) advises peers that:

“When applying for leave of absence, a member of the House should state in their written application the date by which they expect to return, the reason for their leave of absence and that they have a reasonable expectation that they will be in a position again to take part in the proceedings of the House.”

Sleeping Member

Black, a sleeping member, is totally disengaged from the work of the Lords. He no longer posts an official portrait. He has been inactive for so long that he has been exempt from registering any interests in the Lords Register of Members Interests for more than a decade.

In the light of this, I am left wondering if peers on leave of absence, like Black, have forgotten about the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 and its requirement that all members of the UK Parliament pay UK taxes on their worldwide income. 

Last year I raised this issue with Lord Gardiner of Kimble, the Senior Deputy Speaker who chairs the House of Lords Procedure Committee. He told me that, having reflected on the points I made, he recognised:

“there was a possibility that members of the House may be unaware that Section 41 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 continues to apply when they are on leave of absence’

He told me:

“I think it is important that the House does what it can to ensure all members understand their position on leave of absence, so I am currently exploring options for reminding members going on leave of absence that they must continue to be resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. One option is to add such a reminder to the letter sent to members going on leave of absence by the Clerk of the Parliaments. I am taking that forward.”

By the time of the next UK General Election (which could be as far away as January 2025) Conrad Black may well be living in the UK with his wife, Barbara Amiel. 

$14,000,000 mortgage 

In her brutally frank 2020 memoir “Friends and Enemies” Amiel chronicles the sales of her husband’s London, New York and Palm Beach properties leaving him with his property at 26 Park Lane Circle which she describes as their “Toronto redoubt”. But that, too, has now gone. She recalls Black telling her:

 “I’ve held out, but we have to sell this house… We have to get rid of the fourteen-million mortgage plus the million and a half annual running costs.” 

She says she knew he was right.

She told the Tatler on 8 October 2021 there was a buy-back agreement on the Toronto mansion they had just left, but she suspects they’ll buy somewhere in the UK. She says they miss London and they miss their friends there. 

“I want the world to open up. I want to be able to go to concerts. I, even at this horribly advanced age, want to go to a bar like Annabel’s and canoodle with Conrad in a corner.” 

Clearly, Canada’s loss will be Britain’s gain.

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Explainer on non-domiciled status: The UK's Guardian newspaper revealed on Wednesday 6 April 2022 that the wife of the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer is non-domiciled. And what the tax experts say.

Conrad Black in the UK at the Cliveden Literary Festival October 2021. Still spinning a tale, he tells his audience:

“The late William F Buckley invited me to become a columnist for the National Review after I had been spuriously convicted as is now universally recognised and… at least it is acknowledged by the U.S. Government anyway…”

Read more: Conrad Black’s Leave of Absence