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U.S. urges Canada to abandon digital tax plans

Published

1 year ago

July 7, 2023

WASHINGTON –

Canada, the United States and Mexico wrapped up a two-day status report on their shared continental trade agreement Friday as the deal that replaced NAFTA passed its three-year anniversary.

There are three more years to go before a required review in 2026 that has the potential to scuttle the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, but International Trade Minister Mary Ng doesn’t sound worried.

The Free Trade Commission meetings, this year hosted by Mexico, are an annual exercise to ensure the deal is being implemented as designed — and to hear Ng tell it, each year offers more proof that the USMCA is worth saving.

“This is the largest trading relationship in the world, and we are working together to be more competitive,” Ng said in an interview after the meetings wrapped up.

Ensuring the three countries can get past the 2026 review for USMCA, known in Canada as CUSMA, will guarantee a full 16 years of prosperity until the current terms of the agreement expire in 2036, she said.

“We all recognize there’s a date in 2026, but 16 years, 2036 — that’s the goal.”

Much of the discussion focused on “under-the-hood stuff,” she said, including efforts to ensure small and medium-sized businesses are better integrated into the value chains the agreement is meant to foster.

It also focused on assessing efforts to introduce labour reforms in Mexico, where Ng said Canada’s labour unions have been integral in helping to ensure more workplaces are meeting the standards set out in the deal.

The union certification process, once a six-year ordeal, now takes only six months, she said, with some 10,000 new collective agreements in place to benefit an estimated 500,000 newly unionized workers.

During bilateral discussions Thursday, Ng and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai exchanged long-entrenched positions on the usual array of irritants, including Canada’s plan to implement a digital services tax next January.

The measure is aimed squarely at digital enterprises that are based outside Canada — many of them headquartered in the U.S. — that generate revenues from the engagement, content and data of their Canadian users.

Canada has delayed implementing the three per cent levy until 2024 in hopes of waiting out a separate but similar international digital tax regime, spearheaded by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Separate U.S. and Canadian summaries of the bilateral meeting featured Tai urging Ng to abandon the tax plan, and Ng urging Tai to sign on to the OECD measure, which it has yet to do.

“Canada was very much a part of that” OECD effort, as was the U.S., Ng noted. “We all negotiated this, so let’s work as hard as we can to get this implemented.”

Tai also called on Ng to make good on a USMCA commitment to allow home-shopping channels like QVC to operate in Canada — an effort the minister said is well underway and close to fruition.

“We’ve made good progress — this is one of those files that I would classify as ‘well advanced,”‘ she said.

“We are working to implement that part of the agreement … and that work continues.”

Ng said she also pressed Tai on two other outstanding issues: duties on Canadian exports of softwood lumber, and the question of whether the U.S. will abide by a tribunal ruling on automotive parts.

A dispute panel ruled late last year that the U.S. interpretation of foreign content rules for autos was “inconsistent” with the terms of the deal.

The USMCA increased the allowed “regional value content” for automotive parts to 75 per cent, up from 62 per cent, as part of an effort to give all three countries a bigger piece of each other’s auto manufacturing sector.

In a core component such as an engine, the long-standing concept of “roll-up” allows such a part to be considered as having 100 per cent North American origins once the regional threshold of its various elements is met.

It’s an essential step to determine which vehicles are deemed duty-free. The U.S. had tried to argue for a more rigid interpretation of the agreement’s language, but the panel rejected that argument outright.

Since then, the U.S. has been largely silent on how it intends to respond, and officials in Tai’s office offered no clues during a telephone briefing Wednesday about whether the meetings would produce any clarity.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 7, 2023.

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Whitehead becomes 1st CHL player to verbally commit to playing NCAA hockey

Published

3 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

Braxton Whitehead said Friday he has verbally committed to Arizona State, making him the first member of a Canadian Hockey League team to attempt to play the sport at the Division I U.S. college level since a lawsuit was filed challenging the NCAA’s longstanding ban on players it deems to be professionals.

Whitehead posted on social media he plans to play for the Sun Devils beginning in the 2025-26 season.

An Arizona State spokesperson said the school could not comment on verbal commitments, citing NCAA rules. A message left with the CHL was not immediately returned.

A class-action lawsuit filed Aug. 13 in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York, could change the landscape for players from the CHL’s Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. NCAA bylaws consider them professional leagues and bar players from there from the college ranks.

Online court records show the NCAA has not made any response to the lawsuit since it was filed.

“We’re pleased that Arizona State has made this decision, and we’re hopeful that our case will result in many other Division I programs following suit and the NCAA eliminating its ban on CHL players,” Stephen Lagos, one of the lawyers who launched the lawsuit, told The Associated Press in an email.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Riley Masterson, of Fort Erie, Ontario, who lost his college eligibility two years ago when, at 16, he appeared in two exhibition games for the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires. And it lists 10 Division 1 hockey programs, which were selected to show they follow the NCAA’s bylaws in barring current or former CHL players.

CHL players receive a stipend of no more than $600 per month for living expenses, which is not considered as income for tax purposes. College players receive scholarships and now can earn money through endorsements and other use of their name, image and likeness (NIL).

The implications of the lawsuit could be far-reaching. If successful, the case could increase competition for college-age talent between North America’s two top producers of NHL draft-eligible players.

“I think that everyone involved in our coaches association is aware of some of the transformational changes that are occurring in collegiate athletics,” Forrest Karr, executive director of American Hockey Coaches Association and Minnesota-Duluth athletic director said last month. “And we are trying to be proactive and trying to learn what we can about those changes.

Karr was not immediately available for comment on Friday.

Earlier this year, Karr established two committees — one each overseeing men’s and women’s hockey — to respond to various questions on eligibility submitted to the group by the NCAA. The men’s committee was scheduled to go over its responses two weeks ago.

Former Minnesota coach and Central Collegiate Hockey Association commissioner Don Lucia said at the time that the lawsuit provides the opportunity for stakeholders to look at the situation.

“I don’t know if it would be necessarily settled through the courts or changes at the NCAA level, but I think the time is certainly fast approaching where some decisions will be made in the near future of what the eligibility will look like for a player that plays in the CHL and NCAA,” Lucia said.

Whitehead, a 20-year-old forward from Alaska who has developed into a point-a-game player, said he plans to play again this season with the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League.

“The WHL has given me an incredible opportunity to develop as a player, and I couldn’t be more excited,” Whitehead posted on Instagram.

His addition is the latest boon for Arizona State hockey, a program that has blossomed in the desert far from traditional places like Massachusetts, Minnesota and Michigan since entering Division I in 2015. It has already produced NHL talent, including Seattle goaltender Joey Daccord and Josh Doan, the son of longtime Coyotes captain Shane Doan, who now plays for Utah after that team moved from the Phoenix area to Salt Lake City.

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AP college sports:

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Calgary Flames sign forward Jakob Pelletier to one-year contract

Published

3 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

CALGARY – The Calgary Flames signed winger Jakob Pelletier to a one-year, two-way contract on Friday.

The contract has an average annual value of US$800,000.

Pelletier, a 23-year-old from Quebec City, split last season with the Flames and American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers.

He produced one goal and two assists in 13 games with the Flames.

Calgary drafted the five-foot-nine, 170-pound forward in the first round, 26th overall, of the 2019 NHL draft.

Pelletier has four goals and six assists in 37 career NHL games.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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Kingston mayor’s call to close care hub after fatal assault ‘misguided’: legal clinic

Published

3 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

A community legal clinic in Kingston, Ont., is denouncing the mayor’s calls to clear an encampment and close a supervised consumption site in the city following a series of alleged assaults that left two people dead and one seriously injured.

Kingston police said they were called to an encampment near a safe injection site on Thursday morning, where they allege a 47-year-old male suspect wielded an edged or blunt weapon and attacked three people. Police said he was arrested after officers negotiated with him for several hours.

The suspect is now facing two counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

In a social media post, Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson said he was “absolutely horrified” by the situation.

“We need to clear the encampment, close this safe injection site and the (Integrated Care Hub) until we can find a better way to support our most vulnerable residents,” he wrote.

The Kingston Community Legal Clinic called Paterson’s comments “premature and misguided” on Friday, arguing that such moves could lead to a rise in overdoses, fewer shelter beds and more homelessness.

In a phone interview, Paterson said the encampment was built around the Integrated Care Hub and safe injection site about three years ago. He said the encampment has created a “dangerous situation” in the area and has frequently been the site of fires, assaults and other public safety concerns.

“We have to find a way to be able to provide the services that people need, being empathetic and compassionate to those struggling with homelessness and mental health and addictions issues,” said Paterson, noting that the safe injection site and Integrated Care Hub are not operated by the city.

“But we cannot turn a blind eye to the very real public safety issues.”

When asked how encampment residents and people who use the services would be supported if the sites were closed, Paterson said the city would work with community partners to “find the best way forward” and introduce short-term and long-term changes.

Keeping the status quo “would be a terrible failure,” he argued.

John Done, executive director of the Kingston Community Legal Clinic, criticized the mayor’s comments and said many of the people residing in the encampment may be particularly vulnerable to overdoses and death. The safe injection site and Integrated Care Hub saves lives, he said.

Taking away those services, he said, would be “irresponsible.”

Done said the legal clinic represented several residents of the encampment when the City of Kingston made a court application last summer to clear the encampment. The court found such an injunction would be unconstitutional, he said.

Done added there’s “no reason” to attach blame while the investigation into Thursday’s attacks is ongoing. The two people who died have been identified as 38-year-old Taylor Wilkinson and 41-year-old John Hood.

“There isn’t going to be a quick, easy solution for the fact of homelessness, drug addictions in Kingston,” Done said. “So I would ask the mayor to do what he’s trained to do, which is to simply pause until we have more information.”

The concern surrounding the safe injection site in Kingston follows a recent shift in Ontario’s approach to the overdose crisis.

Last month, the province announced that it would close 10 supervised consumption sites because they’re too close to schools and daycares, and prohibit any new ones from opening as it moves to an abstinence-based treatment model.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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