Op-Eds
Rare is the precedent-setting securities case that emerges from the Yukon Court of Appeal. The recent attempted arrangement between InterOil Corp. and Exxon Mobile Corp., however, has given rise to such a case. The decision contains a welcome judicial pronouncement on fairness opinions in the context of corporate mergers.
InterOil was set to merge with another corporation before Exxon came forward with a “white knight” offer. InterOil’s financial adviser, Morgan Stanley, provided it with a fairness opinion stating that the merger (which was structured as an arrangement) was fair from a financial point of view.
While fairness opinions are common in merger transactions, their purpose may be legitimately questioned. Should…
The Ontario government has signaled that it is going to find a way to reduce your electricity bill. For this to work, it should stop relying on hiking your taxes to lower your electricity bill and instead focus on real reform of the electricity system.
Most previous plans to reduce electricity bills relied on having taxpayers or other electricity users foot the bill for lower electricity costs only for some. The first plan was the Ontario Clean Energy Benefit, which came straight from tax dollars. That was replaced by the Ontario Electricity Support Program for low-income households. The province puts the cost of that program on other electricity users.
The government also recently eliminated the Debt Retirement…
Last week, a new tax introduced by the B.C. government came into effect with the goal of slowing down the unrelenting increases in Vancouver-area house prices. The additional 15-per-cent transfer tax specifically targets foreign nationals looking to buy real estate.
We must ask whether it will meet its stated objective of making Vancouver housing more affordable for the so-called middle class and, perhaps more important, what are its unintended consequences?
Whether or not Vancouver housing prices fall – or their increase moderates – as a result of this tax depends on a host of factors. There are many different possible reactions by foreign buyers.
I’ll focus on three possible scenarios.
In the first, foreign…
The way we watch television is changing rapidly, but our regulations aren’t keeping pace. The federal government’s recently announced review of Canadian content and communications policies is an opportunity to catch up. The review should replace Canadian content rules with direct subsidies, focus regulatory hearings on the benefits of competition between technologies and drop ownership restrictions.
Ottawa now supports Canadian content in many ways. It requires broadcasters to offer a certain proportion of Canadian content, and funds that content either directly or by requiring broadcasters to chip in. And it financially supports the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
The government regulates the sector through the…
December 14, 2015
A fundamental public policy question is how to address the possibility of inflated real estate values and excessively high levels of household indebtedness.
There is little question that these trends have been fuelled by exceptionally low interest rates. However, the Bank of Canada’s mandate is to set monetary policy to achieve the 2-per-cent inflation target. In recent years, that objective has called for exceptionally low interest rates.
This has been supportive to the economy through a number of channels, such as reducing the cost for business investment and helping with international competitiveness through a weaker Canadian dollar. But what if the seemingly low-forever interest rates are…
