Roundup: Protectionism panic!

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Panic! Burger King may be looking to buy Tim Horton’s in order to move their combined headquarters to Canada in order to take advantage of a lower tax rate! But let’s all be concerned about the loss of a national treasure – um, which has only just returned its headquarters to Canada after it spun off from American owners Wendy’s. The NDP were immediately out front, concern trolling about the loss of small town Tim Horton’s outlets and Canadian jobs when in fact the bigger story is that Burger King wants to move their headquarters here, meaning money in government coffers – while the practice of “tax inversion” (where a larger company buys a smaller one in a lower-tax jurisdiction and moves their joint headquarters to the lower tax jurisdiction) angers American Congressmen. Canadian Business wonders what’s in it for each partner of the takeover, while Jason Kirby wonders if the merger is trying to mask each other’s weaknesses. Here’s a look at the activist investor who was behind the previous move, and who is helping to drive the current one. Here’s a history of Tim Horton’s ownership, and a history of the less-than-optimal past partnership with Wendy’s. If you’re concerned about brand nationalism – which companies are still “Canadian” – it may be a dying trend in a globalized future, but here are five that are still ours. And Stephen Gordon leaves us with this:

Correctional Services wants enhanced powers to crack down on contraband as the number of banned items being seized is on the rise. The rise is apparently attributable to tougher measures, but shaking down visitors will do more harm than good, as any expert will tell you it’s not the visitors bringing in the contraband – it’s the staff. We’ll see if CSC is going to try to get tough on its own employees, or if this will be more bluster.

The Chief Justice of the Federal Court is taking a stand, that the court is not biased in favour of the government, after the many false allegations levelled against it during the whole Nadon appointment controversy.

As Harper’s Northern Tour rolls along, he joined the search for the lost Franklin Expedition’s ships, which the Royal Canadian Navy is participating in this year. Michael Den Tandt writes more about it here. Not on the tour is the Nunavut prison, which remains a squalid, drug-ridden eyesore a year after a report outlining the problems with a facility that should have been decommissioned.

Despite their plans to ground four Challenger jets permanently to save costs, the government has backtracked a little bit and will only ground two, because it turns out that the military needs them for more than just shuttling VIPs and that having too few of those planes would present some pretty big scheduling problems. Oops.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is now adding his voice to the calls for an inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Andrew Coyne gives a really well reasoned argument for why we don’t really need an inquiry, but action on the real issues that plague many First Nations communities instead.

An ousted former Manitoba chief says the government is using audits of First Nations to punish those who are critical of the government, and that he wasn’t given a chance to give receipts or justifications for the expenses that certainly look questionable on the face of it. His analogy of the government being like an octopus – some hands helping, others beating them up – seems a little at odds with the notions of accountability and transparency that are the norm for governance in Canada generally these days.

Here’s an interesting court case around a $1.6 million bequest to the NDP by a former Montreal professor, and his daughter’s battle against it.

Former Bloc leadership hopeful André Bellavance has quit the party, at odds with the new leader and the direction he’s taking the party. That leaves two MPs left in the Bloc – one of whom won’t run again, the other who was first elected as a Progressive Conservative under Mulroney – and a leader without a seat. We’re also up to seven Independent MPs these days, for those of you keeping score.

Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu is being asked to apologise to his Senate colleagues and to take courses in contemporary management after having dated his staffer. The full sanctions still need to be voted on by the whole Senate once they return in the fall.

Jean Charest says he’s done with politics, so can we please stop asking him about federal political ambitions? No? Sigh.

And from the overly sensitive files, the UK embassy in Washington was forced to apologise after tweeting a picture of a White House cake with sparklers on it to commemorate 200th anniversary the British torching the president’s residence during the War of 1812. Apparently the Americans were offended.