What a ton of baloney. When in doubt, call your local securities regulator to get the low-down. After all, you American taxpayers are paying for that service.

The Canadian Income Trust market is in fact a mature market of products that may or may not represent investment value. Some of these deals fail to pay the expected dividend, in which case they are called Broken Trusts. Some others simply go out of business.

The problem is that the good ones " the ones that Canada's leading investment broker-dealers " firms like RBC Capital Markets or CIBC World Markets or BMO Nesbitt Burns etc follow and in many cases sponsor " are not the ones touted in the U.S. market letters.

The latter, I might add, include a lot of garbage. They have to turn to stock touts to raise a bid.

So rather than waste anybody's precious time, let me say (again) that there are some good Income Trust vehicles that pay very high dividends because of the unique legal and financial structure plus a solid business model and prudent management oversight. The latter two features are missing in many of these companies, unfortunately.

RBC Capital Markets " Canada's largest broker-dealer " has issued the following report on this subject. Income oriented accounts ought to read the material. Download RBC Aug 9 Income Trust report.

As for me, I'm not a big fan of these trusts, but, as a former RBC DS employee, I have the utmost regard for their professional work.

About the trusts, I think the accounting doesn't make sense. I believe that, due to crazy accounting rules, a lot of the dividend is just a return of capital, and that the financial structure is set up so as to reward those companies that don't do much in the way of capex spending, proper facilities maintenance, and so forth.

Having said that, I admit I'm not an expert. For that expertise, I turn to Al Rosen a Toronto-based forensic accountant who happens to be one of the most brilliant people I ever met. There's nothing about accounting this man fails to understand. And he hates these income trusts. So buyer beware.

That pony today may turn out to be a dog tomorrow. Choose carefully.