I have never been a fan of income trusts. First, they offload tax to individuals who are often less capable of managing the load and, far more importantly, they stymy innovation in our financial sector. Why bother investing in companies that may have a strong future when you can invest in an income stream from a mature business? Income trusts vacuumed up strong but infexible companies like the Yellow Pages but had no interest in the possibility of new markets. R&D investment? What's that?

That is why when BCE decided it wanted to become an income trust the government had no choice but to say, "hold on there, somebody has to keep us competitive in the non-energy sector." You may remember that when BCE said it was going that route it also decide to concentrate on "well-established" businesses. No. More. Innovation.

That was bad enough but here is a IT side-effect that no one seemed to talk about over the past few years: one of the reasons, I speculate, that Ontario's venture capital market has been so soft is that with everyone in Toronto's financial sector chasing big, fat income trust conversions they had no time left to prime the entrepreneurial pump. That left a lot of good startups at the bottom of a Darwinian, survival of the fittest, pond.

So, the income trust king is dead! It is about time and we wonder how the markets are going to react this morning to the news. Entrepreneurs, it is time to dust off those financing pitches and hit Bay Street again. Who knows, they may just have time to listen to you now.