An early bird might get in for $25,000. But most attendees will pay $50,000 to $75,000 for the four-and-a-half-hour forum. No worries, however, the Canada Revenue Agency will let you write it off as part of a subsidies for corporations and the rich tax code.
The morning before Mark Carney’s CEO Summit begins in Toronto, the Milken Institute is hosting its first ever Global Dialogues Toronto. The event is “Highlighting Canada at the Center of the Next Era of Global Growth.” As former Minister of International Trade, who left government last year to become a Senior Fellow at Milken Institute International, Mary Ng explained, “Global Dialogues Toronto creates the space for Canadian business leaders and global investors to move beyond introductions and into the kind of substantive dialogue that leads to tangible investment, meaningful partnerships, and lasting economic impact.”
The CEOs of RBC and TD banks, Dave McKay and Raymond Chun, are speakers at the event. So are the CEOs of the AGF Management, Eldridge Capital and Fortress Investment, which together manage about $200 billion.
The Milken Institute is an exclusive forum. Based in California, the non-profit has annual revenues exceeding $380 million US. With satellite offices in several locations around the world, the Milken Institute hosts forums in many cities. According to information online, tickets to its events cost upwards of $75,000.
Canada Revenue Agency guidelines allow a business to right off a Milken Institute ticket as a deductible corporate expense. According to an online search, “Yes, a ticket to a Milken Institute event or conference can qualify as a deductible corporate expense under Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) guidelines, provided it is actively used to earn business income, meets general reasonableness tests, and fits specific conference or entertainment limits.” Apparently, in some circles it’s “reasonable” to pay $75,000 for a networking session.
A ticket to a half day conference costs around twice what a worker at the hotel hosting the event makes in a year. Even though it’s a unionized hotel, Park Hyatt Toronto pays $35,000 a year at the lower end. Information available online suggests that an employee with seniority can make up to $85,000. At the top end of the wage scale, they’d at least have $10,000 or $20,000 leftover after paying for a ticket though the Park Hyatt worker wouldn’t be able to write off the conference as a business expense.
The pre-conference hosted by Milken Institute is a window into the rarefied world of Carney’s CEO summit. It reflects an outrageous level of inequality that shouldn’t exist in a “democracy”.
On September 14-15 the prime minister is hosting 100 of the world’s wealthiest bankers and investment managers in downtown Toronto. It’s an important opportunity to demonstrate our displeasure at an economic and political system that is rigged to make the already wealthy even richer and lessen the share of the world’s wealth going to the vast majority of us who live on the planet. The ecology of which is also being devastated by the same wealthy minority.
We should be raging against the machine that encourages inequality and environmental destruction at Carney’s Davos on Lake Ontario.
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