Yesterday, the TSX took a nose dive, losing the most points in a single day since April 2004. The reason? The Minister of Finance announced that income trusts would be taxed the same as corporations.

Why is this an issue? Two of Canada’s biggest corporations announced about a month ago that they would become income trusts. By becoming income trusts, these corporations would save billions of dollars in taxes.

Of course, the government got scared because that would mean a loss in revenue for them, so changes had to be made. With the announcement that income trusts would be taxed the same as corporations, many people started pulling their money out of income trusts trading on the TSX. On top of that, the 2 corporations are now putting their conversions to income trusts on hold.

What does this have to do with social media? Everything.

You see, the ruling government made an election promise last winter not to touch income trusts. Global National showed 2 clips from Stephen Harper stating he wouldn’t mess around with income trusts. Not just that, but this promise is layed out in the Conservative Party campaign book.

This is the reason I couldn’t be a politician. I couldn’t live with myself if I made a promise and broke it.

I believe this is the reason why many politicians choose not to use social media as part of their election campaign. It means that they’ll have to be transparent and be honest. It means that there’ll be a record online of the promises made and the promises broken.

In essence, blogosphere and podosphere would be all over them for lying. The comments section on these politicians’ blogs and the comment line for their podcasts would be filled with upset individuals, pointing out their dishonesty. In a space that thrives on honesty, transparency and openess, politicians just can’t thrive or survive.

Look what happened to Garth Turner because of transperancy. It’s no wonder our Prime Minister Stephen Harper won’t allow comments with his audio podcasts. It comes as no surprise that only 2 of the Liberal leadership party hopefuls are using any sort of social media.

And although I like what Stephen LeDrew is doing, he has no hopes of winning the mayoral race for the City of Toronto, so he can afford to be more transparent and experiment with video podcasting much more than could David Miller, the frontrunner.

I’ll end this post with a quote from Michael Port. In response to my blog post about how to use social media to raise your own profile, he said:

“The good news is that social media is hard to manipulate. Sure, just like anything, there are those who try, but social media helps great marketers and business owners who do great work; even if, from time to time, someone uses social media irresponsibly or hurtfully.”