Trevor Norris, Associate Professor of Educational Studies at Brock University, had a piece recently published in The Conversation about the possibility of taxing tech companies to benefit schools.

He writes:

“As the one year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring a pandemic arrives, it is increasingly apparent that not everyone is having a hard time: Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon earned US$38 billion in profits in the second quarter of 2020 alone. The Guardian reports that Amazon’s share price is up 62 per cent over the past year, and Apple’s 70 per cent.

While the coronavirus has infected more than three-quarters of a million Canadians and taken more than 22,000 lives, the Canadian economy has also been devastated. 

Statistics Canada reports “GDP growth rate declined by 2.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 and 11.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2020,” for an overall annual decline of 5.1 per cent. The federal debt alone is expected to be $380 billion for 2020–21.”

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