The Future of Poison Pills in Canada: Are Takeover Bid Reforms Needed?
Proposed takeover rules will produce winners and losers and need rethinking, according to a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “The Future of Poison Pills in Canada: Are Takeover Bid Reforms Needed?,” author Anita Anand, a University of Toronto law professor, assesses the rules proposed by the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), and recommends […] Dump the 120-day takeover rule: Financial Post Op-Ed
By Anita Anand
This month, Suncor Energy Inc. made a hostile bid to acquire Canadian Oil Sands and in particular its 37 per cent in Syncrude Canada Ltd. The Suncor bid raises questions about the appropriate legal regime governing takeover bids in Canada. Securities regulators have not historically operated on the basis of harmonized rules governing defensive tactics that a target board, like Canadian Oil Sands, can adopt prior to or in the face of a bid. This disunity may fade away as the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) stand poised to adopt a new takeover bid regime.
Under the CSA draft rules, a takeover bid would have an irrevocable 50 per cent minimum tender condition. Once met, the rules would require an…
Manitoba’s highly paid teachers: Winnipeg Free Press Op-Ed
By David Johnson
Teacher salaries must be attractive enough to draw talented people into the profession. The interesting question is: is there evidence on how much is enough? In Canada, provinces that pay their teachers more do not achieve better student results.
To come to this conclusion, some background is necessary. The first step is to see how teachers’ salaries stack up versus other earners in the province, as a way of measuring the attractiveness of teaching relative to other jobs. I compared 2013/14 teacher salaries, adjusted for age and education, to earnings of all employees and similarly educated employees in each province.
Surprisingly, teachers’ relative earnings vary a lot depending on the province.…TPP pressure on Canada, but US is super-star in agriculture subsidies: Financial Post Op-Ed
Published in the Financial Post on July 27, 2015
Lawrence L. Herman, founding partner at Herman & Associates, practices international trade law and is a Senior Fellow of the C.D. Howe Institute in Toronto.
Americans provide billions in protectionism to dairy that will have to be given up for trade deal.
We rail against Canada’s supply management system. Rightly so. It’s a Soviet-style regime that is out of step with Canada’s international trade interests and objectives.
Every credible Canadian think-tank has said that supply management is a regressive system that distorts the market by guaranteeing dairy, poultry and egg producers a positive return on production, inhibiting competitiveness and, in the…
Canada can manage dairy supply without breaking its TPP promises: Globe and Mail Op-Ed
Published in the Globe and Mail on July 27, 2015
Daniel Schwanen is vice president of research at the C.D. Howe Institute.
On Tuesday, the trade ministers of 12 countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement will meet in Maui, the first such encounter since the U.S. Congress granted Trade Promotion Authority to President Barack Obama last month.
With this “fast track” authority in its pocket, Mr. Obama’s administration can credibly commit to concluding trade agreements with other countries. It is now quite possible that the negotiations, which Canada joined in 2012, could be completed this year.
The TPP encompasses economies accounting for about 40 per cent of global income. It would…
Deep-6 the High-5 Ontario electricity program: Financial Post Op-Ed
Published in the Financial Post on July 24, 2015
Benjamin Dachis is a Senior Policy Analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute. Anindya Sen is the author of the C.D. Howe Institute study Peak Power Problems: How Ontario’s Industrial Electricity Pricing System Impacts Consumers.
The cost to an industrial business of consuming electricity during a single High-5 hour is $52,000 per MWh
A clumsy Ontario government program threatens Ontario’s industrial businesses with inordinately high electricity costs this month. The result is that businesses either shut down production or go off-the-grid to save money. But there is a better way.
July is historically the hottest month of the year in Ontario, giving July…
An Opportunity not to be Wasted: Reforming Ontario’s Recycling Program
The government of Ontario should make individual producers responsible for recycled products while permitting them to achieve recycling goals as they see fit, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “An Opportunity not to be Wasted: Reforming Ontario’s Recycling Program,” author Aaron Jacobs urges Ontario to follow the lead of other provinces, notably Manitoba, […] Why Canada’s Royalty Rates Are Shortchanging Musicians: Globe And Mail Op-ed
Published in the Globe and Mail on February 20, 2015
By: Marcel Boyer
Marcel Boyer is the author of the recent C.D. Howe Institute publication “The Value of Copyrights in Recorded Music: Terrestrial Radio and Beyond.”
Anyone who watched this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony saw musicians calling for “fair pay across all platforms” through higher royalty rates, including radio and the Internet. Artists in Canada should be protesting too: The competitive value of recorded music is about 2.5 times greater than the current level of royalty payments.
Authors and composers (music publishers) and performers and makers (record labels) own the copyright for a set period on their musical works and…
Will TV viewers get better value and choice from pick-and-pay?: Globe and Mail Op-Ed
Published in the Globe and Mail on March 23, 2015
By: Benjamin Dachis and Lawson Hunter
Benjamin Dachis is a senior policy analyst and Lawson Hunter is a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute and co-author of “Scrambled Signals: Canadian Content Policies in a World of Technological Abundance”. From 2003 to 2008, Mr. Hunter served as executive vice-president and chief corporate officer of Bell Canada and BCE Inc.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) wants to give Canadians greater affordability and choice in their television viewing. But will the CRTC’s Thursday ruling, mandating partial channel unbundling, help on either of these counts?
Starting next…
How U.S. price envy makes us forget about economic facts: Globe and Mail Op-Ed
Published in the Globe and Mail on December 10, 2014
By: Fin Poschmann
Finn Poschmann is vice-president of policy analysis at the C.D. Howe Institute and chair the organization’s Competition Policy Council.
Monday this week was a bad day for markets in Canada; Tuesday was a no good, very bad day for economics.
James Moore, the federal Industry Minister, followed through Tuesday on the government’s promise to address the “Canada-U.S. price gap,” aimed at ensuring that Canadians do not pay “unfairly” more than Americans or anyone else for the same goods.
Back in 1974, when the federal opposition offered price controls as a way of addressing inflation, prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s response was…
Peak Power Problems: How Ontario’s Industrial Electricity Pricing System Impacts Consumers
The Ontario government should scrap its peak-demand electricity-pricing program for large industrial electricity users in order to lower costs for Ontario households, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “Peak Power Problems: How Ontario’s Industrial Electricity Pricing System Impacts Consumers,” author Anindya Sen suggests that this program is responsible for one-quarter of the […] Simplifying the Rule Book: a Proposal to Reform and Clarify Canada’s Policy on Inward Foreign Direct Investment
Ottawa should end the economic review of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “Simplifying the Rule Book: a Proposal to Reform and Clarify Canada’s Policy on Inward Foreign Direct Investment,” author A.E. Safarian warns that Canada’s FDI regime needs reform, including scrapping the vague “net-benefit […]