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When our infrastructures deteriorate, when social benefits are
frozen, when our living conditions are precarious, it is because of
tax havens. A source of growing inequalities and colossal tax
losses, the use of tax havens by large corporations and wealthy
individuals explains the increasingly popular austerity policies of
governments in the West. With formidable efficacy and clarity, and
in the wake of the Paradise Papers leak, Alain Deneault raises the
political questions behind of this legalized theft: What are the
consequences of tax havens? How do we counter the private
sovereignty thus conferred on the powerful? As taxpayers shoulder
the social and financial burdens while corporations hide billions
in off-shore tax havens, Deneault identifies the urgent need to put
an end to this legalized theft.
Imperial Canada Inc. sets out to ask a simple question: why is
Canada home to more than 70% of the world's mining
companies?Created by the British North America Act of 1867, Canada,
rather than turning away from its colonial past, actively embraced,
appropriated, and perpetuated the imperial ambitions of its mother
country. Two years later, it took possession of Rupert's Land all
of the land draining into Hudson Bay and the North West
Territories from the Hudson's Bay Company, 3 million square miles
of resources, and set about its nation-building enterprise of
extending its Dominion  from sea to sea."This Canadian imperial
heritage continues to offer the extractive sector worldwide a
customized trading environment that: supports speculation, enables
capital flows to finance questionable projects abroad, pursues a
pro-active diplomacy which successfully promotes this sector to
international institutions, opens fiscal pipelines to Caribbean tax
havens, provides government subsidies, and most especially, offers
a politicized legal haven from any risk of litigious recourse
attempted by any community seriously affected by these
industries.Traditionally rooted in Canadian law, the right to
reputation effectively supersedes freedom of expression and the
public's right to information. Hence, Canadian  bodies corporate,"
i.e. Canadian-based corporations, can sue for  libel" any and all
persons or legal entities that quote documents or generate analyses
of their corporate practices that they do not approve of. Even
foreign academics have become hesitant about presenting their work
in Canada for fear of such prosecution.The authors of Imperial
Canada Inc., all respected scholars in their fields, meticulously
research four factors that contribute to the answer to this
question: Quebec's and Ontario's mining codes; the history of the
Toronto Stock Exchange; Canada's involvement with Caribbean tax
havens; and, finally, Canada's official role of promoting itself to
international institutions governing the world's mining sector.
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