18 May

Feds want tighter rules to ground fly-by-night movers

General

Posted by: Steven Brouwer

The federal government is putting the moves on movers. Industry Canada wants to tighten the rules for moving companies after a deluge of complaints from consumers who say they’ve been ripped off by crooked operators. Armed with a cellphone and a Kijiji or Craigslist ad on the Internet, scam artists are preying on Canadians looking […]

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18 May

Even recession didn’t slow down Canadian’s spending, report finds

General

Posted by: Steven Brouwer

Neither recession, global uncertainty nor growing joblessness appears to have stayed Canadians’ appetite for spending money they don’t have. A new report by the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada shows that household debt in the country kept rising through the recession and peaked in December at $1.41 trillion. That’s $41,740 on average per Canadian, […]

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30 Apr

In Defense of the HST

General

Posted by: Steven Brouwer

Don’t shoot me. I’ve come to believe that the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) introduced by British Columbia’s Liberal government was the right thing to do. It’s hard not to think so, if you take the time to speak with tax policy experts, look at the results of HST in other jurisdictions (most notably Atlantic Canada), […]

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20 Apr

New rules for rental properties could squeeze first-time homebuyers

General

Posted by: Steven Brouwer

VANCOUVER, B.C. – Buying a house in the hot housing markets of Vancouver, Toronto and other major cities in recent years has been a possible dream for some first-time homebuyers only because many of those houses had suites they could rent out. But new rules coming into effect April 19 will all but wipe out […]

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