{"id":54150,"date":"2018-11-01T08:14:43","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T12:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=54150"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:55:56","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:55:56","slug":"armstrong-ontario-open-for-business-but-not-for-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2018\/11\/armstrong-ontario-open-for-business-but-not-for-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"ARMSTRONG: Ontario open for business, but not for everyone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Armstrong,\u00a0Associate Professor of Operations Research in\u00a0Brock\u2019s Goodman School of Business, wrote a piece recently published in the Hamilton Spectator<\/em><\/a>\u00a0about the Ontario government’s interventionist practices undermining free-market principles.<\/p>\n

Armstrong writes:<\/p>\n

During last June’s election campaign, Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives promised to “open Ontario for business”. Since then, they’ve indeed adopted several policies with pro-business appearances. But the policies’ details often include government intrusion into what should be free-market decisions.<\/em><\/p>\n

The most recent case concerns the province’s legislation on cannabis retailing that passed last week. The Conservatives initially had taken a business-friendly approach to this. In August, they’d cancelled the ex-governing Liberal’s floundering plan for government-owned cannabis stores. Instead, they promised to open pot retailing to businesses. That was a welcome move toward free-market principles.<\/em><\/p>\n

But their law intervenes in the market by arbitrarily favouring some companies over others. It limits licensed cannabis growers \u2014 but no other firms \u2014 to a single retail outlet each.<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s a huge setback for the big growers. Some were planning provincewide chains of perhaps a hundred stores each. The Conservatives’ decision means the firms with the greatest cannabis expertise are all but barred from retailing it here.<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s a mystifying choice. These are Canadian firms producing products in Ontario, often in Tory-blue rural ridings. They’re leaders in an expanding, potentially global, industry. Why handicap them on their home turf?<\/em><\/p>\n

Continue reading the full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Armstrong,\u00a0Associate Professor of Operations Research in\u00a0Brock\u2019s Goodman School of Business, wrote a piece recently published in the Hamilton Spectator\u00a0about the Ontario government’s interventionist practices undermining free-market principles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,7,6],"tags":[594,5610,4395],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54154,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54150\/revisions\/54154"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}