The media often talks about workers’ and student unions, but rarely about professional corporations. In a study published late in 2015, we asked ourselves if they we functioning properly, i.e. if they were aptly fulfilling their mission to protect the public. We realized that there were a number of important…
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Over the past 10 years, the CCPA has documented annually the average pay of the highest-paid 100 CEOs of companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange as well as the relationship between that average and the annual employment earnings of a Canadian earning the average weekly wage for a full…
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Following the revelation of Volkswagen’s interesting and creative approach to compliance with emissions standards affecting its diesel-powered cars, conversation has focused on two questions: who is to blame, and how much should Volkswagen have to pay in fines and compensation? The answer to the first is certainly not the chair…
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VW’s house of lies about dirty emissions from “clean” diesel cars isn’t a scandal as much as a syndrome, fallout from a belief that less government, more market will produce the best results. But “self-regulation” is producing worse results over time; and the “fix” that governments are coming up with…
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What a surprise! The NDP makes a proposal for a very modest increase in corporate tax rates – not even to their level before Stephen Harper took office – and defenders of all things corporate in Canada turn on their scary corporate tax number generating machine and produce – wait…
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According to many mainstream (neoclassical) economists, cutting corporate income tax (CIT) rates is wise public policy. By reducing the cost of capital, more of it will be supplied, and because investment is a key driver of growth, reducing CIT rates leaves firms with more after-tax income to plough into growth-expanding…
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In a televised exchange with Michel Nadeau of the Institute for gouvernance of private and public organizations (IGOPP), I stated that public corporation executives’ level of compensation functioned just like a ransom. The discussion heated up, and I did not have the chance to explain what I meant when I…
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The shaky economy seems to have prompted Canada’s CEOs to pontificate on what steps should be—nay, must be—taken to solve our economic woes as a nation. Case in point: on Monday, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) released a paper titled “Career ready: Towards a national strategy for the…
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As Target Canada tumbled into bankruptcy, Loblaw announced that its fourth-quarter profits more than doubled. What should we make of this tale of two retailers? The main reason for Loblaw’s surge was its acquisition of Shoppers Drug Mart last March, which turned it into Canada’s largest grocer and pharmacy chain. …
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How much money do you currently have in your bank account? Enough to hold out for a week? a month? six months? How would you like to have $111 billion set aside? To give you a better sense of just how much that is, it’s almost a third of Quebec’s…
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