Guest Speaker Gabriela Rios Granados

Department of Political Science Speaker Series presents:

Gabriela Ríos Granados (Institute of Legal Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico)

Labour and Economic Informality in Canada and Mexico: Different Ways of Addressing the Issue

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

2:00-3:30pm

Hall Building, Room H-1220

"Taxes are the price of living in society." Mexico has a low tax culture that is directly linked to economic and labor informality. Half of the GDP comes from economic informality, a sector in which there is a parallel state where taxes are not paid and there are no basic rights or social security benefits. In Canada, informality is a growing social phenomenon, but it is not comparable to the Mexican case. This talk will look at the different ways of approaching a social phenomenon that affects most countries, generating inequalities and lacking foundations of basic rights.

Gabriela Ríos Granados is Professor at the Institute for Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She is former President of the Mexican Academy of Fiscal Law and former Special Prosecutor in the Office of the Attorney General of the Mexican Republic. In 2016, she received the UNAM’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz prize for best woman academic. Her research focuses on fiscal and budgetary law, and she has published widely on taxation, public spending, and social rights.