Up With Corporate Taxes
Progressives often present corporate-tax cuts as having transferred billions of dollars from the Canadian government to big business. This characterization is largely correct, but neglects the fact...
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Alcan and Interest Deductibility
The following op-ed, which is printed in today’s Vancouver Sun, picks up some key themes from this blog: Subsidizing the transfer of jobs abroad Vancouver Sun Monday, June 4, 2007 Page: A7 Section:...
View ArticleCIBC and Oil Royalties
More fascinating stuff from that CIBC report follows: While many of the big names in the mining and metal processing industry have been spoken for, there are even larger capital inflows potentially...
View ArticleMel Watkins on Foreign Take-overs
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=6c433a24-f12a-4584-9706-9f123ded8234 A good piece from today’s Ottawa Citizen. I’ve been similarly struck by the concern re foreign state...
View ArticleRegulating Foreign Ownership: A Split in Business Ranks?
One of the key contradictions of neo liberalism is between the ideology of free markets and limited government, and the reality that transnationals can and do seek to enhance their competitive...
View ArticleForeign Ownership DOES Matter
I’ve pasted in below a letter to Ministers Bernier and Flaherty re the just-announced review of the Foreign Investment Act and foreign take-overs of large Canadian corporations. Links to the two...
View ArticleCameron on Stelco
The following column by Duncan Cameron is from rabble.ca: With the takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel, Canada loses its last domestically owned steel producer. Despite urgings from the Steelworkers, the...
View ArticleCanada-US Tax Treaty
On Friday, the Finance Minister and the Treasury Secretary signed the Fifth Protocol of the Canada-US Income Tax Convention. The Canadian government lined up several business organizations in advance...
View ArticleWhat campaigns for trade deals are made of
An interesting memo just cropped up from Costa Rica in the midst of the debate about the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), one of the latest installements in the string of plans to free...
View ArticleCanadian Manufacturing, Global Supply Chains and National Regulation
I spent the morning at Industry Canada’s global supply chains conference. The general tenor of the opening plenaries was as expected – Canadian corporations should slice and dice their supply chains...
View ArticleWorst Diane Francis Column Ever
Diane Francis has written many unsubstantiated columns. On July 6, for example, she claimed that “Canada has the highest corporate taxes in the world.” However, based on the following quotes, Tuesday’s...
View ArticleWhat to Do About Sovereign Wealth Funds? Private Equity?
I’m not one of those who are inclined to see sovereign wealth funds as especially dangerous creatures, especially if the alternative is private transnational corporations. I’d like Canada to have more...
View ArticleThe Current Account Deficit
Statistics Canada revealed today that, in the fourth quarter of 2007, we ran a current account deficit for the first time since 1999. It is difficult to get a handle on what pushed us into deficit...
View ArticleShocking FDI Statistics
No this isn’t the Economics National Enquirer. I mean shocking. Really shocking. Hasn’t anyone else out there noticed what’s happened to Canada’s net FDI position, in the wake of the mega-massive...
View ArticleConservatives Block Foreign Takeover
Jim Prentice appears to have done what no previous Liberal or Conservative government had been prepared to for more than two decades under the Investment Canada Act. As the NDP has noted, preventing...
View ArticleReport of the Competition Policy Review Panel
The report has been released: http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/cprp-gepmc.nsf/en/h_00040e.html This corporate dominated panel has put forward a set of highly pro business recommendations. Given the...
View ArticleCompetition Law vs Neoliberal Competition Policy
I wrote a paper for a volume on the OECD and competition policy last year, but the editors ultimately wanted less policy analysis and more on the inner workings of the OECD, so it got dropped. But a...
View ArticleKari Levitt’s JKG Lecture
Back in June, we co-awarded the first John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics to Kari Levitt and Mel Watkins. Unfortunately, there was a snag with the transcription of Kari’s lecture and she had to...
View ArticleThe Speech from the Throne and Foreign Ownership
Says that “Our government will proceed with legislation to modernize our competition and investment laws, implementing many of the recommendations of the Competition Policy Review Panel.” The key...
View ArticleDanny Chavez vs. NAFTA
I have generally been underwhelmed by media coverage of AbitibiBowater’s prospective NAFTA challenge of Newfoundland and Labrador’s decision to reclaim natural resources that the company previously...
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