Law and Economics Commons^™

Patents And Plants: Rethinking The Role Of International Law In Relation To The Appropriation Of Traditional Knowledge Of The Uses Of Plants (Tkup), Ikechi Mgbeoji

PhD Dissertations

Legal control and ownership of plants and traditional knowledge of the uses of plants (TKUP) is often a vexed issue, particularly at the international level because of the conflicting interests of states or groups of states in the matter. The most widely used form of juridical control of plants and TKUP is the patent system which originated in Europe. This thesis rethinks the role of international law and legal concepts, the major patent systems of the world and international agricultural research institutions as they affect legal ownership and control of plants and TKUP. The analysis is cast in various contexts …

Disabusing The Tax Aid Narrative: What Inter-National Tax Equity Really Means For "Poor" Countries And How To (Re)Frame It, Okanga Ogbu Okanga

PhD Dissertations

International tax regimes (e.g., the “double taxation regime”) are created by states with competing tax jurisdiction to coordinate their tax rules and, specifically, to address common efficiency problems like international double taxation. In developing such regimes, states attempt to balance competing tax policy priorities: efficiency, administrability, and equity. This work engages with equity, as a policy norm of international tax (inter-national tax equity). It is my thesis that the framing/articulation of inter-national tax equity suffers from a narrative problem that, perhaps, stems from its apparent conceptual unclarity and multifarious usage. This narrative problem is most evident in the articulation of …

Voices From Below—Africa’S Contribution To The Development Of The Norm Of Corporate Responsibility To Respect Human Rights, Akinwumi Olawuyi Ogunranti

PhD Dissertations

The long conversations about corporate responsibility predominantly take place in forums and conferences in the Global North. Yet, the majority of the human rights abuses and their impacts are felt by peasants, farmers, children, and women in local communities in the Global South who do not have a voice in the institutionalized governance systems that animate global affairs. This thesis answers the question of how norms and human rights institutions in Africa can influence the corporate responsibility to respect (CR2R) norm as embedded in pillar II of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Through the theory …

Fiscal Decolonization-Indigenous Fiscal Autonomy And Tax Jurisdiction, Riad Kherallah

LLM Theses

This thesis focuses on the relationship between Indigenous fiscal autonomy and self-determination. Indigenous nations’ ability to achieve self-determination is dependent upon their ability to autonomously finance self-government. Unfortunately, Canada’s colonial policies have weakened Indigenous economies and rendered them dependent upon the Crown. Due to Indigenous nations’ lack of fiscal autonomy, Crown policies designed to promote Indigenous self-government have proven inadequate. This thesis argues for using the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a blueprint for developing more equitable economic relations. While there are various elements to Crown-Indigenous economic relations, this thesis focuses on the distribution of …

Cash Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper, Shiri Pasternak, Naiomi Metallic, Yumi Numata, Anita Sekharan, Jasmyn Galley, Samuel Wong

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Picking up from Land Back, the first Red Paper by Yellowhead about the project of land reclamation, Cash Back looks at how the dispossession of Indigenous lands created a dependency on the state due to the loss of economic livelihood. Cash Back is about restitution from the perspective of stolen wealth.

From Canada’s perspective, the value of Indigenous lands rests on what can be extracted and commodified. The economy has been built on the transformation of Indigenous lands and waterways into corporate profit and national power. In place of their riches in territory, Canada set up for First Nations a …

The Ethical Tax Judge, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This chapter advances the claim that judges have an ethical obligation of competence that requires them to enhance their knowledge about language (in the context of statutory interpretation) and income tax law design and policy. It articulates some of the foundational understandings that support that competence and provides a simple hierarchy of approaches to interpreting income tax law. It concludes by contending that greater competence is not only more ethical but also advances other important societal goals fulfilled by the imposition of income tax systems.

Revisiting The Economic Community Of West African States: A Socio-Legal Analysis, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Recent years have seen a growing scholarly interest in the conditions of emergence of regional trade agreements in Africa. These analyses have advanced our knowledge on a range of technical issues, from specific institutional transformation of regional economic communities such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to broad legal issues relating to the provisions of the regional trade agreements. Most literature on ECOWAS is, however, informed by legal formalism that interprets the text of the treaties strictly and without context, leading to a dominant interpretation of failure.

By contrast, this thesis adopts a socio-legal approach and argues …

The High Cost Of Transferring The Dream, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper is part of a larger project where I use the facts in tax decisions to reveal something about who we are. It looks through a small window into the lives of the people who find themselves caught between our collective and their individual expenditure aspirations. More specifically, it explores the circumstances in which individuals find that their outstanding tax debts pose a threat to their ability to maintain ownership of their home.

In this paper I use the facts of tax cases for two ends. First, I am interested in disrupting legal knowledge hierarchies. We choose cases to …

Aboriginal Food Security In Northern Canada: An Assessment Of The State Of Knowledge, Harriet Kuhnlein, Fikret Berkes, Laurie Hing Man Chan, Treena Wasonti:Io Delormier, Asbjørn Eide, Chris Furgal, Murray Humphries, Henry Huntington, Constance Macintosh, Ian Mauro, David Natcher, Barry Prentice, Chantelle Richmond, Cecilia Rocha, Kue Young

Reports & Public Policy Documents

As the world’s population increases, as global markets become more interconnected, and as the effects of climate change become clearer, the issue of food insecurity is gaining traction at local, national, and international levels. The recent global economic crisis and increased food prices have drawn attention to the urgent situation of the world’s 870 million chronically undernourished people who face the number one worldwide risk to health: hunger and malnutrition. Although about 75% of the world’s undernourished people live in low-income, rural regions of developing countries, hunger is also an issue in Canada. In 2011, 1.6 million Canadian households, or …

The Dilemma Of Public–Private Partnerships As A Vehicle For The Provision Of Regional Transport Infrastructure Development In Africa, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

With regional economic integration (REI) as a major strategy for development, the African continent hosts a plethora of regional economic communities of varying ambition longevity and success. While in the 1970s, political-economic ideas built mainly on the “developmental state” informed the design of most of these agreements, the change in economic thought in the 1980s which ushered in the “neoliberal turn” has since influenced the design of most REI schemes in Africa, including the New Partnership for African Development. However, among other factors, inadequate transport infrastructure linking regions poses a major impediment to regional trade and development in Africa. The …

Report To Parliament - On The Readiness Of First Nations Communities And Organizations To Comply With The Canadian Human Rights Act, Naiomi Metallic

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Enacted in 1977, the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) aims to ensure equality of opportunity and freedom from discrimination in federal jurisdiction. At the time that the CHRA was passed, however, it was understood that adjustments would have to be made before the federal government and First Nations operating under the Indian Act could be fully compliant with the new law. As a result, section 67 of the CHRA explicitly shielded the federal government and First Nations community governments from complaints of discrimination relating to actions arising from or pursuant to the Indian Act. This was intended to be a …

Precarious Pathways: Evaluating The Provincial Nominee Programs In Canada, Jamie Baxter

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Temporary foreign workers in Canada experience substandard employment relationships, are explicitly denied many formal rights and are practically excluded from most employment protections. Led by a growing emphasis on workers’ temporary status as a root cause of their employment-related vulnerabilities, some advocates, as well as elected officials, are now calling on governments to improve opportunities for workers to attain permanent residency in Canada, primarily for those in lower-skilled occupations. The central aim of this paper is to evaluate whether Provincial Nominee Programs are likely to address the real insecurities faced by vulnerable lower-skilled temporary foreign workers. Given that there are …

Adding Social Condition To The Canadian Human Rights Act, A. Wayne Mackay, Natasha Kim

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Almost a decade ago, in June 2000, the Canadian Human Rights Act Review Panel conducted a comprehensive review of the Canadian Human Rights Act [CHRA] and recommended that “social condition” be added as a prohibited ground of discrimination. Since then, no action has been taken to implement this recommendation, despite calls for action from international bodies, political actors, human rights agencies and organizations, and academic commentators to provide protections from discrimination for those suffering from social and economic disadvantage. The authors analyze the experiences at the provincial level with socio-economic grounds of discrimination, jurisprudential developments under the Canadian Charter of …

Extending Charter Benefits To Canada’S Poor, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

While the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has had a major impact on Canada’s political landscape in its first 25 years, its impact on social and economic rights has been minimal. The courts should assume a larger role in advancing the rights of the many Canadians living in poverty and despair.

Judges have traditionally regarded matters of social and economic policy as falling within the expertise of the legislative and executive branches of the state. The Charter has done little to dispel that view. The elected branches of the state must continue to play a major role, but the …

Social And Economic Rights In Canada: What Are They And Who Can Best Protect Them?, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article examines the development and current status of positive social and economic rights in Canada. Exploring the comparative competence of legislatures, courts and human rights tribunals, Wayne MacKay suggests that courts should depart, with caution, from their traditional deferential role to legislators. Due to their flexibility and accessibility, HR Tribunals should supplement the role of the courts and legislatures in giving effect to social and economic rights, which should form part of a holistic package of human rights in Canada.

Barriers To Access To Abortion Through A Legal Lens, Jocelyn Downie, Carla Nassar

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In addressing whether the procedure for obtaining abortions was operating equitably across Canada, the 1977 Badgley Report concluded that for many women, access to abortion was “practically illusory.” Sadly, although abortion on request became legally permissible for Canadian women in 1988, access to a safe and legal abortion remains practically illusory for many women today. A woman seeking an abortion in Canada must overcome numerous barriers. She must find a way to secure for herself some of the limited resources that our health care system provides for abortion. She must also expend her own, often scarce, personal resources: her time, …

Women And Children In The Economy: Reflections From The Income Tax System, Faye Woodman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

I have been asked to speak on “women and economics” with specific reference to the Canadian tax system. It is my thesis that the economic vulnerabilities of women and children in this nation are reflected and reinforced in the tax system. Further, it is my view that societal attitudes about who should support, and how we should support, children contribute to a complex synergy within the economic/tax system. This has the potential to produce a new underclass of government dependents who are dependent because, paradoxically, they receive so little support. Finally, I end with a plea for a broader commitment …