BY Sylvain Charlebois (AIMS Senior Fellow) Downsizing is never easy, no matter what. And just weeks away from the Holidays, reducing staff is not good for morale. Yet changes in the grocery industry is causing grocers to rethink store structures, which includes laying off staff. Metro has let 250 people go in recent weeks. Loblaw also [...]
By Patrick Webber (AIMS Research Associate) Sometimes governments increase tax rates but actually end up with less tax revenue. New Brunswick is a good example of this paradox. The province’s income tax rates have been erratic over the last decade, particularly for the top tier of earners. The top rate of provincial income tax [...]
By Howard Anglin, J.D., Executive Director, CCF; Michel Kelly-Gagnon, President and CEO, MEI; and Marco Navarro-Génie, President and CEO, AIMS Big things sometimes have very modest origins. When Gerard Comeau, a retired lineman, contested a $300 fine, he had no idea that he was planting the seeds of a legal battle that could end up [...]
BY Sylvain Charlebois (AIMS Senior Fellow) Loblaw is the latest grocer to commit to offering home delivery. Starting in December, the number one food retailer in Canada is looking at deploying this strategy from coast to coast. It intends to deliver food at home, for a fee of course --an ambitious plan indeed. After spending [...]
by SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS (AIMS Senior Fellow) A bread cartel is alive and well in Canada; or is it? The Competition Bureau is carrying out an investigation of major grocery chains in search of evidence of retail price fixing. Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, Wal-Mart, and other companies have acknowledged the continuing investigation. The outcome of this inquiry [...]
By Joseph Quesnel (AIMS Research Associate) Charlene Combdon, 36, is an award-winning Indigenous entrepreneur and business owner from Newfoundland and Labrador. She has a history of defying expectations, particularly as a female of Indigenous background in a non-traditional area of work. She recalled a time where she was trying to get a business client on [...]
By PATRICK WEBBER (AIMS Research Associate) New Brunswick’s government recently announced that NB Liquor will oversee the sale of recreational marijuana in the province when legalization comes into effect next year. At the press conference where this announcement was made, NB Liquor CEO Brian Harriman said that the Crown Corporation’s goals were break even profit-wise [...]
by SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS (AIMS Senior Fellow) Despite Canada’s optimism, NAFTA talks seem to be heading nowhere. Wanting to push back on Mexico’s influence over the American economy, Washington now is indicating that the bilateral option with Canada is more appealing. In Trump’s playbook, multilateral deals are highly complex and can only benefit smaller markets to [...]
A new idea from AIMS would create a modern employment insurance system that meets the needs of workers and employers. Here’s how the new system would work: Payroll deductions would go into an individual Personal Security Account for each worker. Individuals who lose work could draw benefits under a single national standard, [...]
Keeping families and jobs in rural Canada is not easy. Proposed changes to capital gains rules would make it harder for a family member to keep the family farm, according to AIMS senior fellow Sylvain Charlebois. Many wonder how values embedded in everything the family business does can survive if the next generation [...]