Diane Francis Attacks Harper

What's this? The Conservative editor of the Financial Post, Diane Francis, is saying the tory's income trust decision was a 'mistake'?

Harper's mistake needs correcting

Stephen Harper and his Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, have destroyed their credibility and unethically sideswiped investors because of a lack of policy imagination in dealing with some of the underlying problems concerning income trusts.

I don't disagree that problems exist and that, obviously now, Stephen Harper's pledge to leave them alone was foolish.

But their approach has been even more foolish and they have, in essence, attacked Bay Street's excesses and unnecessarily harmed Main Street.

While I'm sympathetic with the need for change -- see the underlying hidden problem described below -- I'm totally unsympathetic toward a Prime Minister who breaches his contract with voters. It's even more egregious considering that he could have met challenges and also his commitment by grandfathering existing income trusts and preventing future ones.

Instead he chose to destroy his reputation and tens of billions in value.

Ouch.

When the National Post is going after a Conservative government, you know something's gone horribly wrong.