It’s important for Canada’s two elite class action franchise lawfirms to give the appearance of a fair fight.

Behind the scenes, the amount the franchisor will be paying out to the lawyers has already been agreed to.

Why risk paying out +$1B when $25 million to each law firm (> 0.5%) will trip up the lawsuits?

It’ll never get to trial anyway.

Information is much, much more valuable to franchisees than any franchise law will ever be.

Start the dialogue, record the franchisor’s every move and retain that information through successive ownership changes.

Start educating  your members in the two businesses they run: the store and the franchise relationship.

I started WikiFranchise.org in Feb 2009. I keep it open although most wikis are closely held.

Those with a greater command of the information, wins every time.

• weblog
• smart phones
• wikis

 

Vigorous provincial government relations are invaluable in influencing Tim Hortons Brazilian-based vulture capitalists.

Franchisees need to speak out to their local MPPs (member of provincial parliament).

Queen’s Park, Toronto, Canada

The independent franchisee association should make a legislative “wishlist” a priority.

Nothing, nothing makes a franchisor and his allies (Canadian Franchise Association, CFA et al) stand up and take notice.

Anyone who says talking to politicians is a waste of time, is working full-time for 3G, the CFA, its 1,199 other franchisors and their supporters: banks, legal service providers.

Start by suggesting the Ontario government reverse the onus on good faith in the Arthur Wishart Act.

Est. 1998

Mike Colle, MPP Eglinton Lawrence, Susan Kezios, President, American Franchisee Assocation, AFA and Les Stewart, Canadian Alliance of Franchise Operators, CAFO, Wishart Act hearings, 2000.

Les’s expert witness testimony.

John Sotos, Sotos LLP and Susan Kezios, AFA, Wishart Act hearings, 2000

John’s expert witness testimony. Susan’s expert witness testimony.

Tony Martin MPP Sault Ste. Marie and Dr. Gillian K. Hadfield, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 2000.

Dr. Hadfield’s expert witness testimony.

Three MPPs get together to try to make franchise fraud a criminal offence, Second Reading, 2010.

Les Stewart, ON Premier Kathleen Wynne and Don Morgan, 2015.

Q: Why should any public official help your family when (it appears) you don’t give two hoots about the other +70,000 franchisee families?

Is there an economic value to knowing precisely who the “rebel” Tim Hortons franchisees are?

Yes, especially if the franchisor wanted to do a mass termination or consolidation of stores.

 

Who would likely collect and deliver the membership list?:

• franchisor,
• independent franchisee association – executives,
• independent franchisee association – management,
• association lawyer, or
• franchisee advisors (former franchisor/founder, former president).

Probably the emails sent to a safe server as well.

How many of the 25,000 Syrian refugees will become cannon fodder to the franchise industry via government guaranteed liar loans?

Several thousand, I’d imagine.

How? The moral hazard-riddled, Canada Small Business Financing Program.

Details:

• WikiFranchise.org: Immigrants as Prey, Cannon fodder, Language shortcomings create a vulnerability
• Franchising Opportunism, 2005 paper

 

 

 

What advice might Taleb give the CDN Target and Tim Hortons franchisees who are thinking of “lawyering up”?

Someone once called me franchising’s black swan.

In science, you need to understand the world; in business you need others to misunderstand it.

What does Nassim Nicholas Taleb define as a “sucker”:

The sucker’s trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don’t know, rather than the reverse.

Suckers think you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers. economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending.

We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract. What they call “risk” I call opportunity; but what they call “low risk” opportunity I call a sucker problem.

I have no pecuniary interest in these schmozzles, only a few friends and their staff that I care about.

You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.

What is the Canadian Franchise Association doing to protect the 1,100 CDN franchisees and 96,000 employees at Tim Hortons?

The Canadian Franchise Association says it …advocates on behalf of franchisors and franchisees in Canada…

Tim Hortons is a member of the CFA. The CFA’s Code of Ethics says that their members’ should treat each other with fairness.

Tony Martin former ON MPP and MP made certain recommendations from his experiences during the public hearings which led to Ontario’s 1st franchise law.

News Release
April 4, 2000

Investigate Franchise Association Abuses: Martin

Tony Martin, MPP

Tony Martin, MPP, Sault Ste. Marie
New Democratic Party
News Release
Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Canada

INVESTIGATE FRANCHISE ASSOCIATION ABUSES: MARTIN

TORONTO – The Consumer and Commercial Relations Ministry should investigate the Canadian Franchise Association over its failure to help Ontario franchise holders, NDP MPP Tony Martin said today.

The CFA is advising the Conservative government on proposed changes to provincial laws governing franchise agreements. But the association is under fire from hundreds of its own members for its indifference to their complaints, the NDP Critic for Consumer and Commercial Relations said in the Legislature today.

“The CFA has been of no help to many hundreds of entrepreneurs who lost their shirts in shoddy franchise deals,” Martin said. “Instead of taking the CFA’s advice this government should be sending in ministry staff to thoroughly investigate this association’s failures.”

Martin raised the case of Brenda Hope, a mother of two from Coldwater who lost $90,000 as a Chemwise Inc., franchisee. For more than a year, the CFA has refused to look into Hope’s complaints, although it endorsed Chemwise as a member.

Similarly, the CFA has refused to accept a registered letter from Bulk Barn franchisees who have a series of complaints against the franchisor. Martin was also refused when he tried to deliver the letter. The Sault Ste. Marie MPP called on Consumer and Commercial Affairs minister Bob Runciman to act now to protect small businesspeople.

“Perhaps the minister can convince the CFA to live up to its responsibilities to mediate franchise disputes. If he can’t, we need a full-scale probe of this group. It’s the least we can do for hard-working families who lose everything in dubious franchise deals,” Martin said.

The MPP has proposed his own legislation, Bill 35, that is far tougher than the government’s Bill 33. The Martin Franchise Bill would require full-disclosure of franchise contracts, a dispute resolution mechanism, the right to associate and the freedom to source products outside of the chain when not trademark related.

-30-

Also: Martin’s questions directed to the CFA during their Mar 2000 expert witness testimony.

Source

• List of CFA Members: Brands, Banks/Financial Institutions, Lawyers

Your quest for franchisee justice will lead you to a “white knight” lawyer who will betray you.

The franchise bar appears to 1st time user franchisees as fundamentally fair, adversarial and zero sum. That is a dangerous myth.

The economic incentives for the “franchisee-friendly attorneys” are to give the pretence of a fair fight (definition: an attempt to make something that is not the case appear true OED) since your being sold-out can be easily explained. Franchisee stupidity and shortsightedness is the most cited, least reality-based reason given.

Answer:

Your franchisee attorney will defect on 100% of all large cases because the franchise industry is effectively a single-payer industry for legal services (franchisors: +95%). As in other human waste treatment systems, the franchise bar functions to let pass the little cases go to trial (to keep the payers fearful and motivated) but skims off the large chunks for the elite 2 firms.

Question:

Why would any franchisor pay out 100% of a massive claim to a group of franchisees for multi-year bad faith dealings when they could cut two cheques (1. their own lawyers and 2. your attorney) to manage the case to a “satisfactory conclusion”? Would 10 per cent of what franchisees are owed be a reasonably figure?

If you were a rational, profit-maximizing multi-decade career Big Franchising professional (who has their own very high sunk costs invested in the status quo industry practices and structure, btw), Wouldn’t YOU just keep your mouth shut, turn a blind eye and play along, too?

There are ways to deal with these perfectly explainable and rational, multiple-level credence good dangers but you may need to start serving legitimate authority instead of the posers that scatter when the light switch goes on the industry.

— Sir Galahad:The Quest of the Holy Grail,  Arthur Hughes, 1870.

Les, you’ve been a disappointment.

An outstanding observation after 4 years of work with a franchisee association.

Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1922 – 2007

The franchisee is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends.

Being sold out is the rule not the exception in all legal, consulting and association representation.

Quote:

The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another.

— Norm Chomsky 1928 –