The center of many conversations ever since Trudeau was voted as Prime Minister has been the legalization of marijuana. This last Friday, Ottawa proposed a legal weed tax of at least a dollar per gram sold, if not more. The other possibility is a 10% of the final retail price, and whichever yields more money will be chosen.

        Federal and provincial sales taxes would be applied on top of the excise tax, with the final price tag varying across the country because provinces have different sales taxes. Many sources have decided to do calculations for examples of how much a gram of weed would end up costing. For example, on an $8 gram of pot sold in Ontario, the final purchase price would be $10.17, with a $1 excise tax and $1.17 HST. Bill Blair, Liberal MP, announced this news to the public saying, “I’m very comfortable that the level of taxation that has been determined as appropriate in this case achieves our goals of keeping the price sufficiently low to be competitive with an illicit market, while at the same time not creating an incentive for the consumption and purchase of this drug.” Blair also stated to the public that “the market is currently controlled by almost 100 criminals.”

Provinces had already been on edge with different opinions once Trudeau announced his plan to legalize marijuana, but this proposition by Ottawa has brought even more stirring to the pot. The idea that is receiving the most scrutiny is that Ottawa is planning to split the tax revenue 50-50 between their city and the rest of the provinces. With this detail, a vast majority of the provinces are disagreeing with the tax that Ottawa wants to enforce, saying that they all feel that the rest of the provinces should receive a larger cut of the tax revenue, which is estimated to be 1 billion dollars.

One billion dollars. That is a very large amount of projected money being earned solely from the sale of weed once it is legalized. From a personal standpoint, I do not have an opinion for consumers who will actually be looking to purchase marijuana, but I think that it is quite unfair that Ottawa keeps half a billion dollars while the rest is put up for sharing for the rest of the country. Many provinces could use this extra tax revenue to address current existing issues. A dollar per gram or 10% of a final retail is a ridiculous amount of tax that is being paid, so I feel that Ottawa can even things out by spreading more tax revenue to the rest of the provinces.

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References:

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-news/ottawa-proposing-legal-weed-tax-of-at-least-1-per-gram-plus-gsthst/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cities-marijuana-revenue-1.4395422

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ottawa-proposing-legal-weed-tax-of-at-least-1-per-gram-plus-gst-hst-1.3672170

As we all may know, the new, highly-anticipated iPhone X was announced for pre-order last week. The highly-anticipated phone sold out in less than a week, without anyone having hands on the phone itself. However, just today, an engineer from Apple was just fired after his daughter posted a hands-on look at the iPhone X.

What for? While many people have posted other videos with the iPhone X in hand, it was the particular phone that Brooke Peterson showed off that caused her father to lose his job. This wasn’t a garden variety iPhone X, as it was her father’s phone, which was an employee model with some secrets that Apple did not want to reveal. Brooke’s YouTube footage showcased both private employee-only QR codes and a Notes app with Apple product codenames. To add to the trouble, Brooke’s video was filmed in Caffe Macs, a cafe on the main campus of Apple’s headquarters in California. Caffe Macs is supposedly a place where employees can chat without fear of being filmed.

Was it reasonable for Apple to take these actions?

First of all, it is a violation of the rules to film on Apple’s campus, so filming a video especially on the iPhone X is a definite violation of the rules. Also, the fact that employee and company secrets were shown in the video for the world to see is also another red flag for Apple. As Brooke quoted, “At the end of the day, when you work for Apple, it doesn’t matter how good of a person you are. If you break a rule, they just have no tolerance.” She continues to say that their family is not mad at Apple and that her “father takes full responsibility for the one rule he broke.”

From a personal standpoint, I think that it was a reasonable action for Apple to take, considering there was a similar situation with Microsoft years ago when an employee’s son showed pictures of the Xbox 360 prior to its release to public. However, it is very difficult not to sympathize with the family. Brooke’s father poured his heart and soul into the project only to be laid off with less than a week to the iPhone X’s physical release to the general public.

My takeaway from this situation is that we should always monitor ourselves and what we post on social media, because without knowing, there is huge potential for major consequences.

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Also, an additional external blog post that I looked into has some interesting input from many different Reddit users: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/79brb1/apple_fired_the_engineer_whose_daughter_released/?st=j9dox7yq&sh=c2eb2e7f

References:

https://gizmodo.com/apple-reportedly-fires-engineer-after-daughters-iphone-1819952027

https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/28/apple-fires-employee-over-iphone-x-video/

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/28/16565110/apple-engineer-iphone-x-youtube-video

http://fortune.com/2017/10/29/apple-reportedly-fires-engineer-after-daughter-posts-iphone-x-video/

Sears was one of the first revolutionary companies to open large stores that sold a wide range of everything, whether it be clothing, shoes, toys, home appliances, and much more. They were the pioneers of e-commerce and they had seen lots of success over the range of 6 decades, but all of it is seemingly coming to an end. Just a couple of days ago,it was announced that Sears was to liquidate all of their stores in Canada. Despite all the opportunities and success, what was the cause for the fail of Sears?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sears-closures-impact-small-communities-1.4353011

It does seem like a shock that such a big franchise has reached the point of having to liquidate all their stores. However, few people were surprised by the news because it was such a long time in coming. These few people mainly include the employees and people working for Sears along with long-time customers. “I knew it was going to happen,” said 28-year employee Zobeida Maharaj. “Sears Canada has seen dwindling sales for several years, as the chain was waylaid by growing debt loads and shifting consumer tastes towards online sales, where the chain got left behind”.