Was there a leak? (cont'd)

The evidence mounts... From CTV, as transcribed by MKBraaten:

Don Drummond, VP/Chief Economist: CTV said that Drummond told them he first heard about the announcement via email, 4 hours in advance of announcement. Also, stated that Liberal strategists in Ottawa were the source of email. (UPDATE: The National Post has Drummond saying CTV got this part wrong: the email came from a reporter.) CTV quoted Drummond as saying “Alot of people seemed to know there was an announcement coming and a few people seemed to know what it was.” Jim Leech, Teachers pension fund - CTV said that Leech received emails at about 2 pm stating that the announcement was guaranteed. CTV Quoted Leech “I got a bunch of emails around 2pm saying for sure Goodale was making an announcement after the close.” Sandy McIntyre, Sentry Select Capital: CTV reported he sent the following email: “There is a strong rumour out of Ottawa that Goodale is going to pronounce after the close today his trust solution…hope my sources are right!” Mcintyre said his sources were quoting ‘well connected Liberals’.

The same Sandy McIntyre shows up in this piece in the Toronto Star:

Sandy McIntyre was about to head for a noon meeting at the King Edward Hotel on Nov. 23 when a phone call alerted the Bay Street stock picker that Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, whose government was days away from calling an election, was poised to make a major announcement. When the senior portfolio manager at Sentry Select Capital returned to his office about an hour later at 12:30 p.m., McIntyre says, he fielded another call. This time, a trading floor contact "who was clearly excited" boasted his bank's investment adviser had been told by a government source that Goodale would reveal how the Liberals planned to handle dividend taxes. "It's pretty clear somebody leaked this thing and they should be held responsible," McIntyre says now. "We had a 5 to 7 per cent move in heavily traded securities in the last three to four hours before the close ... (which) indicates there was information available to the buyer that wasn't available to the seller. "You had large investors enjoying a substantial windfall in profits and once again the small investor got screwed," McIntyre says, adding he wrote a letter of complaint to the Ontario Securities Commission on Nov. 24 about the income trust imbroglio. The securities regulator's response advised him to file a formal complaint, McIntyre says. The S&P/TSX capped income trust index rose 1.5 per cent on Nov. 23 and the Yellow Pages Income Fund, among Canada's largest income trusts, rose 3.4 per cent — all before Goodale said at a 6 p.m. press conference in Ottawa that the government doesn't plan to tax income trusts, high-yield securities worth $170 billion. Underscoring the importance of the announcement, the S&P/TSX capped income trust index the following day soared 4.4 per cent, its biggest gain in at least eight years.

Not conclusive, but as they say, probative. On the other hand, the Globe doesn't see a pattern:

The RCMP faces a big challenge figuring out who may have benefited from advance information about Ottawa's plans for income trusts. Trading records provide few clues as to who could have been tipped off before Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's announcement last month, and there had been speculation for weeks about what the minister was planning to do... Several stocks with high dividends, such as BCE Inc. and Rothmans Inc., traded heavily in the hours before the announcement, some gaining as much as 5 per cent that day [Nov. 23]. Many trusts, such as Yellow Pages and Superior Plus, also traded actively. However, it is far from clear that the activity was anything more than informed guesswork. A look at the trading records shows that different brokerage firms led the trading of each stock, suggesting there was no concentrated pattern. For example, CIBC World Markets led the buying and selling in Yellow Pages that day while RBC Dominion was the most active in Superior.

SEE ALSO this CTV story: "RCMP may be on 'wild goose chase': Bay St. veteran"