Op-Eds
The retail trade data for February, released Friday, show a continuing rebound in in-person shopping relative to the online variety, as people-to-people interactions emerged from restrictions imposed during the pandemic.
Retail e-commerce — which includes when goods purchased online are subsequently picked up in a store — was a lifeline for Canadian businesses in 2020. But in-store shopping has come back with a vengeance. Despite the emergence of high-profile online suppliers, fierce competition remains the order of the day in retail.
Since peaking at 10 per cent of total sales by Canadian retailers in the first days of the pandemic, e-commerce’s share of retail sales has fallen sharply — to just over five…
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tables the federal budget Thursday. She should use the occasion to implement policies that would improve Canada’s lacklustre innovation. A useful step in that direction would be to announce that income from patents and other intellectual property (IP) will be taxed at a special low rate. Generally described as an “IP Box,” such an initiative would boost Canada’s flagging R&D spending, raise our low commercialization rate, and stem an outflow of IP profits to tax havens.
As I explain in a C.D. Howe Institute paper published today, two developments make this a good time for an IP Box. The first is an OECD-inspired international agreement that income taxed at a preferential rate must be derived…
Canadian governments are counting on strong economic growth to reduce debt burdens that ballooned during the pandemic. But realizing that growth depends on how well Canadian businesses adapt to rapidly changing market realities.
In the near term, Canada’s economic recovery looks promising as business activity bounces back.
In the longer term, however, Canada’s economy faces strong headwinds that are not being factored into government projections. Canada’s economic challenges go beyond slowing labour force growth and modest productivity gains. Fiscal recovery forecasts do not consider the probability of more frequent and costly natural disasters or the implications of the global economic transformation to stave off the…
La partie ne sera pas facile, mais les régulateurs ont commencé à serrer la vis au Bitcoin, à ses milliers de cousins cryptos et aux infrastructures qui gravitent dans cet univers opaque et apatride.
La Financial Conduct Authority du Royaume-Uni, incapable de superviser adéquatement Binance, la plus grande Bourse de cryptomonnaies au monde, interdit ses activités sur son territoire. La plateforme n’a pas répondu aux questions de base posées par le régulateur, qui estime que ses « produits complexes et à haut risque » font courir des « risques significatifs » aux investisseurs.
Binance, incorporée dans les îles Caïman, n’a pas de siège social. Chaque mois, il se négocie sur cette Bourse immatérielle des…
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…
