Une véritable réconciliation avec les peuples autochtones doit aller au-delà des symboles pour se traduire en actions concrètes pour accélérer le rattrapage économique des Premières Nations, des Inuits et des Métis.

En cette Journée nationale de la vérité et de la réconciliation, examinons la contribution potentielle de la finance durable à ce rattrapage. En 2015, la Commission du même nom avait appelé le milieu des affaires à s’engager à reconnaître les droits des peuples autochtones, à leur faire place parmi leurs employés, dirigeants et actionnaires, à investir dans leurs communautés et à éduquer leur personnel sur ces enjeux.

PENSER AUX SEPT GÉNÉRATIONS À VENIR

Dans la culture autochtone, la terre n’appartient à…

Taxes are a necessary evil. Necessary, because we must fund government services. Evil, because they do damage beyond the cost to those who pay them – discouraging work and saving, misallocating where our scarce resources go, and encouraging underground activity. The federal government’s coming levies on banks and insurers – a corporate income surtax and the “Canada Recovery Dividend” – don’t even qualify as “necessary.”

These taxes were part of the Liberal campaign platform for last year’s federal election. The platform committed to raising the corporate income tax rate on bank and insurer profits above $1-billion from the 15 per cent other businesses pay to 18 per cent. It also proposed the Canada Recovery Dividend: a…

Inflation around 8 per cent is something many Canadians had never experienced until this summer. As a country, we are rediscovering how much inflation hurts. The shrinking value of our dollars is bad enough on its own, but inflation harms us in more subtle ways, including through its interactions with taxes and government benefits. Now would be a good time for some changes to lessen the pain.

Below are several examples.

When personal income tax thresholds and benefits are fixed in dollar terms, inflation pushes workers into higher tax brackets even when their real incomes do not rise. Some tax thresholds are indexed to inflation, but others are not.

Alberta, for instance, has just announced it will resume indexation…