With the parliamentary clock ticking down and the government yet to pass their ‘affordable housing and groceries’ bill—the first piece of federal legislation tabled in the fall sitting—the NDP have agreed to help the Liberals advance Bill C-56 in exchange for a series of amendments inspired by a similar bill from Leader Jagmeet Singh, CTV News has learned.
Seems reasonable. This is how government should work.
Can’t wait to hear from Conservatives that there’s an ‘coalition’ and how that’s bad for Canadians.
The Conservatives would find something to whine about regardless. Listening to them is like listening to my cats playing with a jingly ball on a hardwood floor at 3:00AM: irritating and with zero information value. At least with the cats I can confiscate the ball.
“But, because the Conservatives weren’t willing to let debate on the bill collapse… we thought that was an opportunity for us to have some leverage to get the Liberals to improve the bill.”
LOL. Conservatives aren’t willing to do much to help taxpayers.
Increasing the maximum penalty for bad corporate behaviours, such as price fixing and overcharging, to $25 million for the first infraction and $35 million each infraction thereafter
IMO, this money should go directly back to consumers. After all, these companies are stealing from us, so we should be entitled to get our money back. But $25 million wouldn’t be enough… these guys are robbing us of an extra 20-30% on each grocery bill.
Agreed.
There are about 40M people in Canada.
Presumably, all of them eat food.
Granted, not everyone shops at the same chain, but for quick/easy math, let’s say ~25% (10M) shop at “GroceryCorp”.
If GroceryCorp fixes prices by just $1 per shopping trip, they will make an extra 10M.
If we assume biweekly shopping trips, that’s an extra $20M per month of stolen money.These numbers are all very generously underestimated ($1?? I wish), and this corporation still nearly breaks even in one single month of price gouging. This has been going for years.
I almost hesitate to say this bill is better than nothing, even. Those responsible need to be subject to prison, not some mildly bigger slap on the wrist ffs.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Any large corporation will happily eat fines all day long if they are still turning a profit from whatever crime they are committing.
This is why Facebook and Google continue to commit privacy violations. Why Bell Canada still practices deceptive marketing and sales. And why Loblaws and friends are reporting record profits each new year.
If the fines don’t HURT these companies, they are ineffective.
The moment corporations outgrew fines was the moment capitalism seriously turned sideways. Not that there weren’t always serious issues, but it’s insane that we allow these entities to exist entirely outside of meaningful legal prosecution.
I’d prefer to see fines linked to profits AND length of time they were stealing, ie: $20 mil x 44 months of theft = $968 million fine
That will get their immediate attention.
Fines of any sort for large corporations are literally just legal bribery to get some responsible party out of facing prosecution. Corporate bad actors have the power to do far more damage to people and land than an individual can, yet they get to buy their way out.
That’s exactly why any punishment has to do damage. And it needs to be swift and severe.
An individual who ruins lives tends to have their lives ruined buy the justice system in most cases. The same needs to apply to companies, or at least, the people running those companies.
It’s worse than nothing because a lot of people will see this and think “well a million is a lot, so this is good.”
Appeasing people with what amounts to nothing is not a good thing.
That’s exactly what I’m thinking. It’s worse than nothing, because it’s in place of anything actually useful.
The fines needs to be at least equal to the profits, and preferably a more. Anything less and it’s a “cost of doing business”
ETA jail time for company officers would work, too, but it’s hard to prove, especially when corporations are designed around the idea of distributed malfeasance.
The jail time would be hard if you were arbitrarily picking officers or trying to prove what each one did or didn’t do, but I’m sure a law could be written laying out a chain of command/criminal responsibility. And instead of increasing a single scapegoats sentence for multiple offences it could be distributed among the c suite / board.
IMO, this money should go directly back to consumers
It nearly does. The government collects the fines, which reduces public deficit, which allows the government to either lower taxes or spend more relative to what it would do otherise, which means money ends in the pockets of citizens either way.
That may be true, but consumers who overspent on food, and are in this present day struggling, should get the money back in cash.
I’ve never had a tax break in all the years that I’ve been robbed by grocery stores.
In other words, we haven’t been collecting nearly as much as what’s been taken from us.
Specifically, the changes that will be permitted to Bill C-56 are:
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Increasing the maximum penalty for bad corporate behaviours, such as price fixing and overcharging, to $25 million for the first infraction and $35 million each infraction thereafter;
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Allowing the Competition Bureau to conduct market study inquiries if directed by the minister responsible or recommended by the Commissioner of Competition, and require consultation between the two officials prior to the study; and
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Enabling the Competition Bureau to go after big corporate players who abuse their dominance to engage in anti-competitive acts, such as squeezing out smaller players, by revising the legal threshold to lessen competition in the market.
All good stuff including coop housing eligibility for the GST rebate
Those infraction charges should be based on the profits made by the company doing the price fixing or overcharging. The charges have to be significantly higher than their profits otherwise it just becomes a fee to do business.
The fees should be all profits made from the activity plus those fees
Can you include a link for gst rebate for coops? Would like to read it.
From the same article:
Blaikie also told CTV News that the NDP have received assurances that these changes, as well as one tweak to allow co-operative housing to be eligible under the GST housing rebate, will be backed by Liberal MPs on the finance committee when they come to a vote.
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Singh is the best leader the NDP has had, no one plays hardball like him
Why do we even need a friggen election? I’m 60yo. I’ve NEVER seen the government working the way it’s supposed to (generally speaking, …role eyes), for so long as it has in this minority government.
No one, right now, can railroad anything through under a majority - just ‘cause we’re in charge! Basically, what both Cons & Libs want.
NDP are “passive kingmakers” right now -Yay!
100% agreed. Minority governments ensure far more Canadians are represented since the aggregate population represented by a minority coalition will almost always be larger than that represented by a single majority party.
Especially if the NDP forms the minority. A Liberal/NDP minority represents more than 50% of all voters.
Well this statement didnt age well
Good thing Layton isn’t around to bring this all down and hand the government to the cons like he did in 2005
