Two words dominated the headlines above all others this week: The Panama Papers.
On Monday, a consortium of journalists including the CBC released their first stories on a series of 11 million documents unearthed from a Panamanian law firm documenting secret offshore accounts own by some of the world's rich — and some of the famous.
While so far, there's no clear-cut instances of illegality, the idea of the 1% using tax havens to hide their wealth didn't sit right with our readers.
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron attends the first plenary session of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington April 1, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst - RTSD73J (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Protests in Iceland over the prime minister's connection to the leaks forced him to step aside, while bank executives in Europe also got the axe. British Prime Minister David Cameron is being pressured to resign due to a link between his family and the story.
Even Canada's big banks came out defending themselves — saying they're confident they do enough to prevent tax evasion as it is.
While it's true there's nothing in and of itself about using foreign bank accounts, the outrage shows there's a problem, CCPA economist Armine Yalnizian told us this week.
"Mostly it is perfectly legal and that's the really scandalous part and how we've made this legal to be able to shelter money from our own governments," she said.
The show must not go on
Another story that really resonated with our readers this week was this one about a controversial law that is costing one U.S. state business.
Vancouver-based Lionsgate is moving production of one of its new TV shows out of North Carolina and into B.C. after a law was passed that cracks down on anti-discrimination rules for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people
Among other things, it requires that all bathrooms be used according to the biological gender on a person's birth certificate. It's the first law in the country that attempts to limit bathroom options.
"That's frankly a policy and a standard that I think should remain," Governor Pat McCrory said in signing the bill into law last month.
But that view is costing the state money. In addition to Lionsgate pulling out, payment processing firm Paypal has cancelled a $3.6 million factory there that would have created 400 jobs. And a New Jersey drug company is threatening to do the same.
Yet another example of a social issue moving to become a business one in these changing times.
Cold-fX lawsuit seeks OK
Another major story we brought you this week was the ongoing saga of the maker of over-the-counter drug Cold-fX and a class action lawsuit in British Columbia which claims the product doesn't work — and the company knows it.
"Cold-FX is the only natural health product that is clinically proven to boost our immune system, reducing the duration, severity and frequency of cold and flu symptoms," the company's marketing material claims, recommending users take multiple expensive pills as a precaution against and treatment for influenza and other common colds.
But those claims have a B.C. litigator upset as he says the drugmaker, Valeant, misled consumers, and ignored their own research about the short-term effectiveness of the product.
Valeant denies the allegations and wants the judge to reject the class action application, which has yet to be certified.
Other stuff
Those were just a few of our more popular stories this week. Check out our landing page for more, and don't forget to follow us on Twitter here.
In the meantime, here's a day by day of our best stories of the past seven days.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
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