Dear Editor,
Your readers might do well to read up a bit on Ireland’s recent economic history before lining up to support Mr Whitestone’s line in his Canada’s Business column of April 15.
He speaks of his personal contact with the Prime Minister of Ireland “many” years ago when it was enjoying the “best economic performance of any nation” and tries to use that as evidence of the correctness of his opinion on Canada’s tax policy.
He fails to mention that Ireland had become a member of the European Union trading block and foreign firms, especially American ones, saw it as a gateway to a market with more population than the US itself. Canada is not a gateway to the EU.
He did not bother to mention the later collapse of the Irish economy, bank failures, outward migration of workers etc. or the 85 billion Euros (currently about $C 117 billion) bailout package it then received from the EU. Canada cannot plan on getting EU bailouts.
He decries the ability of the wealthy to move their income to other jurisdictions “like the Cayman Islands” while ignoring the fact that the US Government is even now upset about their large corporations, like Google and Microsoft, are shuffling their books so they make major profits in their offices in Ireland.
It’s a free country (more or less) and everyone is entitled to their own opinion but we need to remember that opinion columns are only opinion columns, not facts.
Brian Wannamaker
