Ever wonder about the real value of a free press and journalism?
If you haven’t – that’s completely understandable. For decades we’ve all taken it mostly for granted.
Journalists expose injustice, unfairness, corruption. That’s their job. And those stories sold newspapers and advertisers wanted to be in those news pages cheek to jowl with those big stories, knowing that readers would see their ads. And, of course, subscribers wanted to read those stories.
And those big stories, sometimes, just sometimes, led to changes in government, investigations and righting wrongs.
But given the nature of the ‘news’ industry of today, those big stories are becoming scarcer and scarcer.
So, we were delighted to read Kathy Tomlinson’s special investigative report in the Globe and Maillast week. Tomlinson was contacted by a citizen who wanted people to know about real estate fraud and tax evasion in his city.
Demetre Lazos had contacted police and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to report the crimes, and he was ignored.
He contacted the newspaper and Tomlinson laid it all out for readers.
In a nutshell, her report detailed how foreign investors can, and do, cheat the Canadian system, and therefor taxpayers.
It is mind boggling, not because it has been done for decades – but because the government has done nothing about it.
After Tomlinson’s report started to get news legs, there was the usual finger pointing, excuses and hand wringing. And now the CRA says it is launching a review into the actions of B.C. real estate speculators.
But how can honest taxpayers trust the system now?
If the CRA did not act on evidence given to it prior to the newspaper report, why would we have faith that it would be able to adequately deal with it now?
The tax system is one of the core engines of a democracy. Yes, many folks try to pay as little taxes as possible, but if honest taxpayers can’t count on the CRA to hold the most rich to account, it degrades what little trust many of us still cling to in our institutions.
When the government department responsible for administraton of the tax system can’t manage its own department, it’s time to dig deeper.
A CRA review is simply not enough in this situation given what we have learned and how we have learned it.
A special ad hoc RCMP division should be created to dig much deeper.
