 Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | John Tavares versus the CRA: a pivotal court battle 'everyone will be watching' | | |  | John Tavares of the Toronto Maple Leafs is disputing a CRA claim that he owes $8 million in back taxes and interest. (Derek Cain/Getty Images) | | | Toronto Maple Leafs captain John Tavares is taking the Canada Revenue Agency to court over an $8 million tax bill.
"It's a pivotal case and everyone will be watching," said Richard Powers, an associate professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
At issue is a $15.25 million US signing bonus which Tavares says should be taxed at a much lower rate than the rest of his salary. The CRA believes the entire compensation package should be treated as salary and taxed the same way.
Players throughout the NHL use signing bonuses as a way to structure their contracts so they have a limited tax liability and to spread out the value of the contract. Tavares's first year of his seven-year contract saw him receive a total of $15.9 million US. Only $650,000 US of that was his actual salary. The rest was his signing bonus.
Powers says the use of signing bonuses has become common practice in major sports leagues, so the Tavares case matters to other players, other teams and other agents as well. "The players all talk," he said. "This will affect a lot of people because it's how they structure their deals."
Canadian sports teams already operate at something of a disadvantage to American franchises in low-tax jurisdictions like Florida. A paper published by the Fraser Institute nearly a decade ago highlighted how taxes can be a roadblock to attracting new talent. "Teams in uncompetitive tax jurisdictions like Toronto and Ottawa will have a more difficult time attracting NHL free agents," wrote authors Sean Speer and Charles Lammam.
Longtime NHLer Nick Kypreos says cases like Tavares's are precisely why agents earn the money they do. Kypreos, now host of the Sportsnet program The Real Kyper and Bourne, says players will watch the CRA ruling, but also trust that their agents know tax law inside out. "I don't think anyone should be too scared right off the bat to just assume that Canada is turning itself into a place where I can never play and think I can't make a lot of money," said Kypreos.
Tavares's claims have not been tested in court and the CRA has yet to file its response. The CRA did not respond to calls for comment on this story. | | | | | Not yielding | | |  | (Marco Di Marco/The Associated Press) | | | | Lava reaches close to the road to Grindavík, Iceland, near the exit for the famous Blue Lagoon spa yesterday. A volcano in southwestern Iceland has erupted for the third time since December and sent jets of lava into the sky. The eruption triggered the evacuation of the Blue Lagoon, one of the island nation’s biggest tourist attractions. Read about the potential for centuries of eruptions on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula here. | | | | | | | | | In brief | | | A man who targeted Canadians for cryptocurrency investment scams is speaking out after escaping a Cambodian compound where he was forced to do it. In an exclusive interview with CBC's Marketplace, the Malaysian man says he became a victim of human trafficking after he answered a post on a Facebook group advertising a customer service job with a Cambodian casino. The man spent four months with others essentially held captive in compounds in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. While there, he was forced to start conversations with strangers online, gain their trust and convince them to make dubious investments. "If we don't follow [the rules], we will be beaten or electric-shocked," he said. Investment scams, particularly ones involving cryptocurrency, represent the highest victim losses in Canada, at more than $300 million in 2023, beating out romance scams, phishing and other fraud. Read more about the fraud, including so-called pig-butchering scams, here.
The vehicle owned by Canada's justice minister has been stolen three times in three years. Justice Minister Arif Virani's government-owned Toyota Highlander XLE was stolen last November but was later recovered, according to documents tabled in the House of Commons last week. It's the same car that was stolen and recovered last February when David Lametti was justice minister. Another 2019 Toyota Highlander was stolen during Lametti's tenure in February of 2021. Government-owned vehicles assigned to other federal officials have also been stolen in recent years. Federal ministers met with law enforcement, border officials and industry players yesterday for a national summit to address a rising wave of auto thefts. "It's unprecedented," RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said during the daylong meeting. "And the extreme violence that's associated to that and what we're seeing, it's something that was never seen before." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hinted at tougher penalties. Read more about the auto-theft summit here.
Vladimir Putin used his interview with U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson to take another shot at Ukraine's leader, and Canada, for joining in a standing ovation for a veteran of a Second World War Nazi unit. Ukrainian Canadian Yaroslav Hunka was praised in Parliament during a visit by Volodymyr Zelenskyy for fighting the Russians during the Second World War. Media reports later revealed that Hunka fought with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a unit made up of Ukrainian volunteers from Galicia that was under Nazi command. The Russian president, speaking through a translator, told Carlson: "The president of Ukraine stood up with the entire Parliament of Canada and applauded this man. How can this be imagined?" While historians say men joined the unit for a variety of reasons — including a desire to fight for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union — the incident was a major diplomatic embarrassment for Canada. Putin has repeatedly claimed he is waging war on Ukraine in order to "de-Nazify" the country. Read more about the interview here.
A special counsel report released yesterday paints U.S. President Joe Biden as suffering from mental decline. The report, which says Biden struggled to remember what years he was vice-president or when his son died, landed amid headlines involving the president's repeated references to having recent conversations with long-dead world leaders. A furious Biden reacted at an impromptu evening news conference where he fumed at the special counsel for mentioning his dead son, Beau: "How in the hell dare he raise that?" Biden said. As proof of his fitness, he then cited his major legislative and other wins, like getting humanitarian aid into Gaza. However, he promptly undermined his own message by referring to Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the president of Mexico. However, special counsel Robert Hur refused to lay charges against Biden for improperly storing classified documents in three locations. The report also credits Biden's behaviour as co-operative with investigators, contrasting it with Donald Trump's actions in a similar case. Read U.S. political correspondent Alex Panetta on how the report exonerated Biden legally but ravaged him politically here.
Now here's some good news to start your Friday: It was a slow news day in Halberstadt, Germany, on Monday as hundreds gathered at a church to hear a very long song switch from one chord to another for the first time in two years. A makeshift device that uses sandbags to hold down the keys of an organ is 23 years into a 639-year-long performance of a composition called Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) by the late avant garde musician John Cage. The chord change "was a magic moment," said Rainer Neugebauer, head of the John Cage Organ Foundation. The performance began on Sept. 5, 2001, which would have been Cage's 89th birthday, with a goal of continuing for 639 years. When he's feeling optimistic, Neugebauer imagines a future where the song goes even longer than planned. "Maybe [people in the future will] say, 'Oh, that's not as slow as possible. We can do it a little bit slower.'" Read more about the song — and listen to the chord change — here. | | | FIRST PERSON | At 76, I love walking and hiking. But an ice storm forced me to face my body's limitations | Keeping active is a huge part of life for 76-year-old Isobel Cunningham. But when an ice storm hit, she was forced to come to terms with her aging body's limitations and tap into new strengths. Read her First Person piece here. | | | | | | | Your weekly look at what’s happening in the worlds of economics, business and finance. Senior business correspondent Peter Armstrong untangles what it means for you, in your inbox Monday mornings. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter. | | |  | Down the Super Bowl conspiracy rabbit hole | | Taylor Swift’s romance with NFL star Travis Kelce has pulled in a lot of new football fans. And kicked off some next-level conspiracy theories. This year’s Super Bowl has gotten weird. Listen to today's episode. | | | Today in history: Feb. 9 | | | 1941: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill appeals for American aid in one of his most dramatic speeches during the Second World War. The speech contained the now-famous phrase, "Give us the tools and we will finish the job."
1966: The NHL announced it will double to 12 teams for the 1967-68 season. The six new teams were the California Seals, Los Angeles Kings, Minnesota North Stars, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins and St. Louis Blues.
1978: Ottawa declares 11 Soviet officials persona non grata for allegedly trying to infiltrate the RCMP Security Service.
1997: The Simpsons became the longest-running prime-time animated series, beating the record previously held by The Flintstones. | | | (With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters) | | | | |  | CBC NEWS APP | The most convenient way to get your news
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