Op-Eds
As the refreshed Trudeau minority government pushes forward with what we presume will be revised versions of Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s controversial bills C-10 and C-36, we suggest it pause, breathe and consider a more poised approach.
The problems with online harms legislation (C-36) are being revealed through the responses of numerous civil and human-rights organizations. The issues connected to C-10 are more firmly embedded within the public memory because of the controversy that ensued last spring when Mr. Guilbeault sought to grant the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) authority over the internet, including personal social-media posts. Its stated intent, while lacking in…
Big changes are afoot in the way patent drugs are priced in Canada. At present, Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), a federal agency, is responsible for setting maximum prices for patented drugs (i.e., pharmaceuticals, biologics and vaccines). The agency has been criticized for failing to rein in prices, which are higher than in some peer countries. This criticism is unfair: the tools the PMPRB was given to regulate drug prices when it was established in 1987 have become less effective over time.
To address this problem, the federal government has authorized the PMPRB to introduce new pricing regulations, now scheduled to come into force in January. We think this is the wrong strategy. Instead of relying on…
In a Post op-ed earlier this spring, “Why Canada’s toothless Competition Bureau can’t go after Big Tech,” Vass Bednar and Robin Shaban argued that Canada’s competition authorities are unable to “protect consumers from the dominance of Big Tech firms like Google and Facebook.” They advocated turning the Competition Bureau, a law enforcement agency, into an agency that investigates, and may even impose penalties or remedial action for conduct that has the potential to be anti-competitive. And they proposed giving the Bureau the power to seize data or compel production of business documentation for “market studies” from entities that are not even being formally investigated. As a 2017 report from…
Controversial government efforts forcing streaming companies to pay into official Canadian culture funds will only gain public acceptance if the legislative club currently being used is replaced with a scalpel.
The main aim of Bill C-10, an Act to Amend the Broadcasting Act, was originally to regulate online streaming companies such as Netflix and to level the playing field between traditional broadcasters and those services. Fair enough, but using the Broadcasting Act and granting the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) sweeping powers over the internet is at best an awkward solution, and at worst an unworkable and damaging one. Both the Act and the CRTC were designed to…
Même si le fardeau des impôts payés par les entreprises est ultimement porté par des personnes – actionnaires, employés et consommateurs –, le sens commun exige que les compagnies fassent leur part et on s’insurge lorsque les plus grandes profitent des paradis fiscaux pour se défiler.
L’administration Biden a ravivé l’espoir d’un accord international sur un taux d’imposition minimal et sur la capacité des pays à taxer les ventes faites à distance par les FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) sur leur territoire national.
Selon l’Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE), les stratégies fiscales qui exploitent les différentes règles des pays pour faire disparaître des profits ou les déplacer…
