Tax law
In Ontario, the Retail Sales Tax law and Bulletins state that the "coupon must be reimbursed by the franchisee". By submitting them to other merchants, the merchants were in essence breaking Ontario law when they failed to include the discount in the value of the goods being calculated for being taxed. Some merchants were accepting Canadian Tire money as a discount, but then were not calculating and remitting the sales taxes, as required by law, and then were getting fined for the practice; this is an ongoing issue.