Jim Doak can't see the ground from his lofty tower on Bay Street

The way Toronto financial analyst Jim Doak sees it, Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath and groups such as the Campaign to build ‘One Big Campaign’ (CBOBC) are, well, pretty much evil!

Howarth outraged Doak and his privileged, elite friends on Bay Street last week by proposing a two percentage point increase in provincial income tax for people earning more than $500,000, as a way to help close Ontario’s budget deficit.

Income disparity is also one of the major issues that CBOBC believes should be tackled by the proposed huge campaigning network that would include hundreds of activist groups and progressive unions.

“It’s nasty,” Doak said during a debate on CTV. “It’s ethnic cleansing. She’s defining a group not by culture or language, but my how much money they make, and she wants to get rid of them.”

Jim Doak,
President and Managing Director
Megantic Asset Management

Doak was appearing in a debate against Armine Yalnizyan, senior economist for the Centre for Canadian Policy Alternatives. Yalnizyan later tweeted: “As an Armenian it was a stunning comment to hear as his opening defence, and incredibly challenging to avoid commenting on.”

Doak claimed that the two per cent tax increase will drive the super-rich out of Ontario and the financial community will have to follow – the kind of fear mongering that the rich always offer up when they are faced with the prospect of paying a little more.


I’ll bet he didn’t know that his self-serving and misinformed comment would go viral, allowing hundreds of thousands to see his ridiculous comments on the Internet and Twitter!

The top 100 Canadian CEOs were paid an average of $8.4 million in 2010, a 27 per cent increase over the previous year, said a report published  by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says.

In comparison, the average Canadian earned $44,366 that year, or 1.1 per cent more than in 2009.

So who is Jim Doak? Sadly, the man with this kind of opinions is one of the top dogs on Bay Street.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the 56-year-old Doak is connected to 28 boards in five different organizations across eight different industries.

Strange that Bloomberg lists his “Total Calculated Compensation” at $75,250. Hmmm! I would have thought his income would be more than that – like, into the millions a year. I’d be curious to see how many tax loop holes he’s been able to take advantage of.

Jim Doak, like all of the rich folks on Bay Street, gives back to his community. He has played a leading role for years at Alliance Française de Toronto and he gives to the Hospital for Sick Children.

Given his outrage over the possible paying of a few more dollars in taxes, he seems to be typical of the Jekyll and Hyde kind of men that have been allowed to inbreed and develop on Bay Street.

The Bay Street crowd doesn’t want to understand the income disparity issue that Andrea Horwath and CBOBC are worried about. They feel they are totally entitled to earn as many millions as they can. The towers are so high on Bay Street that they cannot see the ground.

Frankly, they need to have their mothers take them by the ear and give them a good talking to.

It is disturbing that these kinds of people, through their symbiotic relationship with the Harper regime, have so much power and control over the lives of millions of ordinary Canadians.  They continue to disregard their world counter parts, groups such as the International Monetary Fund, that clearly states  that continuing on the road to even greater income disparity is not the way to end the economic crisis.

Perhaps folks would like to personally tell Jim Doak what they think about his comments.

None of the businesses he is closely involved with seems to list an email address on their websites. However, Doak is a proud past-president of the Toronto Society of Financial Analysts, and I am sure they would be pleased to forward any comments left for him on their email form.

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