Let’s open all the books

It’s no secret that the Harper Conservatives hate unions.

They’ve repeatedly emphasized how the NDP is beholden to Big Labour and tried to force an inquiry into partial union sponsorship of a recent federal conference. They’ve reduced the rights to collective bargaining, forced back to work legislation on Canada Post and threatened it upon Air Canada’s union (a private corporation) before they even walked off the job.

Couple this with Harper’s tendency to use his caucus to introduce slightly more controversial notions as private members bills and you get Greater Vancouver Conservative MP Russ Hiebert’s new private members bill.

The bill’s content is still confidential, but its title shows it will seek to change the rules governing labour organizations under the Income Tax Act, which exempts unions, along with charities and municipalities, from paying taxes. If adopted, the bill will force unions “to apply financial disclosure rules” that are already in place for charities, said a source, given the tax benefit that they receive.

The bill was introduced yesterday, so the contents are available online now [pdf].

Like almost everything the Conservatives have done while in government, they provide no real evidence of what (if any) tax breaks unions receive, a fact not missed by Jim Stanford at the Progressive Economics Forum.

Right now charities, which are able to grant tax receipts for donations in exchange for being non-partisan entities, are the only corporation/society required to make public disclosures of their financials.

What could be interesting, however, would be to go beyond Hieber’s simple bill and require all non-profits to make their books public. Let’s find out what the Fraser Institute and other right-wing think tanks have been receiving and spending money on. Or we could go even further and demand that all corporations, whether or not they’re for profit, must make public their financials. Then we could see how the banks, media giants, and other corporations operate – how much their executives are paid. Some countries like Norway and Finland even require personal income taxes to be made public.

So let’s put the question to Hiebert: Is this a mere partisan attack on an institution responsible for nearly all modern labour reforms or is he willing to consider expanding his bill for the good of the country?

Unfortunately, I think I can guess how he’d answer.