Sunny Freeman2013-05-19T02:04:15-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=sunny-freemanCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sunny FreemanGood old fashioned elbow grease.Telus Mobilicity Buyout: $380 Million Deal Faces Regulatory Scrutinyurn:newsml:thecanadianpress.com:20130516:233736912013-05-16T09:45:11-04:002013-05-16T17:32:19-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
But it remains unclear whether the government, which has sought to foster more competition in the wireless sector, will allow the sale to go ahead, given that it will mean one less option for consumers.
The companies say the deal is necessary to ensure that Mobilicity's 250,000 customers would continue to get service without disruption and that its employees will keep their jobs.
"The status quo isn't an option," said Telus spokesman Shawn Hall.
"This will ensure service is maintained for their customers, and preserve the jobs of their 150 employees."
Mobilicity was part of a wave of small wireless companies launched after the last wireless spectrum auction in Canada.The company had been losing money and launched a restructuring plan last month. The companies say the entire purchase price will be used to satisfy Mobilicity's secured and unsecured debt.
"Mobilicity has been losing a significant amount of money every month. The financial strength of Telus will allow the business to be continued in a way that will benefit customers and employees. An acquisition by Telus is the best alternative for Mobilicity," said William Aziz, Mobilicity's chief restructuring officer.
Mobilicity, along with other smaller wireless players like Wind Mobile and Public Mobile, has been struggling to gain market share against behemoths Bell, Telus and Rogers ever since the upstart companies entered the market nearly five years ago, offering Canadians looser contracts and discounted plans.
At this point, it's unclear whether the Competition Bureau and Industry Canada would block the sale, but both organizations said Thursday they will review it.
Industry Minister Christian Paradis suggested Thursday that the deal will be closely scrutinized due to its potential effects on competition in the sector.
"The agreement between Telus and Mobilicity is subject to regulatory approvals. The government will take the time required to review the proposal carefully," he said in a statement.
"Our government has taken significant action to promote competition in the wireless sector."
The companies had been keeping the government briefed on Mobilicity's financial hardships and their agreement "as things developed, said Telus' Chief Marketing Officer David Fuller.
"We believe the government has all the information necessary to make a considered decision in favour of this transaction," he told HuffPost in an email.
He dismissed criticism that Canada's wireless market is not competitive and said consumers will continue to have choice.
"In such a capital intensive industry having three large national players and more than a dozen smaller providers makes Canada one of the most competitive wireless industries in the developed world."
But consumer advocacy group OpenMedia.ca said it is dismayed and believes the sale will diminish the check on the big three that other players provided.
"We think losing one of the our largest independent cell phone providers to the big three will lead to less choice and competition and likely raise Canada's already sky high cell phone prices," it said in an email.
"This takeover moves us in the wrong direction and we're hoping the government will stand up for Canadians and ensure we have independent affordable telecom options."
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The deal comes as no surprise to observers, as hints of takeover talks had recently emerged in media reports. But the real question is whether Canadian regulators will allow one of the new players to be bought up by an incumbent, said Dvai Ghose, a telecom analyst at Canaccord Genuity.
"On the one hand, we believe that the government does not want to see the death of new entrants and so may well block the deal," he said.
On the other hand, he notes that Mobilicity has tried and failed, and if it's not allowed to be sold, its 250,000 customers would lose service and its employees could lose their jobs.
"That being said, we assume that the government would rather have a non-incumbent third party acquire Mobilicity and so may ask Mobillcity to show through bankruptcy [proceedings] whether it can attract an independent buyer before begrudgingly allowing its sale to an incumbent."
Despite the government's best efforts to boost competition, market forces seem to be working against the new challengers,whose limited cash flow and the expensive infrastructure required to succeed have prevented them from expanding.
Wind Mobile CEO Anthony Lacavera has suggested a merger of the smaller three players would help them to survive. But with both Wind, the biggest of the three new entrants, and Public Mobile also reportedly on the auction block, it appears it is too late for such a move to create a viable fourth player.
Any potential buyer for small players – whether it be a domestic or foreign company – will have to face the glaring question of whether there is enough room in the Canadian market for four major wireless companies, which has not been possible even in the much larger U.S. market.
If the Mobilicity deal is allowed to go ahead, it could be very positive for the big three incumbent players, but if it is blocked by government, Canadians will be left wondering who will finance new entrants, if not the big three players, Ghose said.
"Perhaps the free market focused Conservative government will eventually come to the conclusion that the market could not support a fourth player in every region and so it should concentrate on managing the incumbents rather than artificially forcing competition," he wrote in a note.
"Given regulatory uncertainty, we wonder if this announcement will have much impact on incumbent wireless driven equities today. However, we do not see this as in any way negative for the incumbents, in particular Telus who may be allowed to buy Mobilicity just for its spectrum and tax loss value."
Telus is offering "a reasonable price" that really only includes value for Mobilicity's spectrum and tax losses, with no value placed on its network or customer base, Ghose said. He estimates that Mobilicity paid some $243 million for its advanced wireless services spectrum, a specific amount of band set aside for that carrier, and has more than $100 million in tax losses.
Telus, whose presence is most robust in Western Canada, requires more spectrum to better compete against its peers in central and eastern parts of the country. Acquiring Mobilicity's spectrum would help it do that, especially given that the government has said it will limit the amount major incumbents can purchase to one of four blocks of the most valuable spectrum.
The deal would give Telus more scarce AWS spectrum, the radio waves that facilitate cell service, which is controlled by the government. In 2008, Industry Canada cracked down on the amount available to incumbent players in order to encourage start-up carriers to enter the market and help open up competition.
It instituted a rule disallowing license transfer from the small telcos to the bigger ones illegal until 2014.
That hasn't stopped other attempts from the incumbents to garner more of that valuable spectrum to position them for the future, when more consumers are expected to use their mobile phones for more activities and demanding more broadband and higher speeds.
Rogers Communications Inc. announced earlier this year it has an option deal to buy Shaw's unused spectrum in 2014, but it's still unclear whether that deal will get the government green light.]]>Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO: Download Caps Holding Canadian Internet Backtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-14T21:56:36-04:002013-05-15T09:14:19-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/Netflix Canada’s booming subscription rates are driving Canada’s cable providers into the online video market in an attempt to remain relevant to viewers who are increasingly cutting their cords, the company’s CEO told a Toronto digital media conference Tuesday.
Reed Hastings believes cable companies such as Rogers Communications Inc. and BCE Inc. are doing the right thing by jumping on board video streaming services, because their traditional business models are heading the way of fixed-line phones, he said in a keynote speech at the Canada 3.0 conference.
"Probably half of you still have a fixed line telephone, right? But you ... hardly use it, almost all of your communications are on your mobile phone, but the fixed-line is kind of a security blanket," he said.
"And I think that's how linear cable and satellite will be," he said, adding that they are not likely to face a rapid decline.
Hastings said he's looking forward to more Canadian competitors launching online streaming services.
"What we can look forward to with the entry of Netflix and its success is then having a competitive response," he told the conference.
"Through all of these competitive offerings, we all learn, we all get better. There's more bidders for content so the content owners are happy and there's more choices for all of you."
Hastings struck a more conciliatory tone toward Canada’s telecommunications companies -- the biggest of whom dominate both the television and internet markets in Canada -- than he did during a more private audience earlier in the day.
In an interview with the National Post, he said the practice of monthly download limits was an obstacle unique to Canada.
In many cases in this country, those internet providers holding back downloading are the very cable companies he is encouraging to get into the online video market.
Netflix has been painted as a foreign threat by Canadian cable operators seeing their viewers cut their cable in favour of cheaper, more flexible online options such as subscription services like Netflix, free options like networks’ websites, or unauthorized downloading.
The company’s “over-the-top service” (meaning it’s delivered on another company’s broadband infrastructure) has been painted as a threat both by telecommunications companies who blame it for eating up their bandwidth and taking eyeballs of their shows, as well as by cultural groups and content providers who say it is eroding Canadian content.
George Cope, CEO of BCE Inc., Bell’s parent company, told a CRTC hearing last week that its controversial takeover of Astral Media should go ahead as is because it would provide a crucial Canadian alternative to U.S.-based Netflix, which has been in Canada for two years now and has some two million subscribers.
Rogers Communications Inc. has also said it will launch a Netflix-type service and Quebecor's Videotron has already done the same for Francophones.
The CRTC has so far stayed away from the issue, noting that studies show Netflix and other over-the-top services have so far had a minimal impact on the market.
Hastings said he believes there's enough room in the market for everyone, adding that he believes Canadians will spend their time and money on many different apps, just as they have divided their relaxation time between books, television and other pastimes.
"It will be completely compatible to have a Netflix app, to have a Rogers app, to have a movie channel app, to have YouTube as an app," he said.
"Because in the broadest sense, we compete for relaxation time. … You go home, the kids are in bed, you want to watch something to relax, you've got many choices."
For a lot of people internet video is still a novelty, and more competitors will help it become more mainstream, he said.
"So that's why we look at it and say if there's a lot of new competitors, it might actually help the internet video market grow even faster because then we're all exchanging ideas," he said.
"It really helps to have a lot of competitors come in the space because everyone talks about who's doing what and it can really help to build the market even faster and larger than it would otherwise be." ]]>Unemployment: Canada Adds 12,500 Jobs In April As Rate Holds Steady At 7.2 Per Centurn:newsml:thecanadianpress.com:20130510:232795752013-05-10T14:00:08-04:002013-05-17T11:06:25-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/ Statistics Canada’s April Labour Force Survey revealed employment among youth — those aged 15-24 — fell by 19,000 jobs in April, while the unemployment rate in the age group rose three-tenths of a point to 14.5 per cent.
Overall, Canada’s labour market bounced back from a four-year low in March, churning out 12,500 net new jobs — all full-time. That helped take some of the sting out of March’s massive 54,500-job contraction, though the unemployment rate stayed at 7.2 per cent.
Economists noted that young workers were the only demographic counted by Statistics Canada that has not recovered the jobs lost during the recession.
April was the third consecutive month in which there was a decline in jobs for youth and the unemployment rate in that demographic edged up to the October 2012 level, the Conference Board of Canada pointed out.
High youth unemployment has been a problem since the recession, when about 200,000 jobs for youth disappeared, with few of them coming back, said Pedro Antunes, the board’s director of national and provincial forecasting.
“So these latest monthly numbers are just more bad news. We just haven’t seen this segment of the labour market recover at all,” he said.
Antunes said he believes the labour market is fairly tight overall, and he has been starting to hear some organizations complain they are having trouble finding employees in some parts of the country. The problem appears to be that the jobs they are calling for do not align with what young people have been trained for, he said.
“We do suspect that what employers are looking for is not necessarily the skill set that youth have and that’s been the ongoing problem in general since the recession.”
There appears to be a correlation between lost part-time jobs and rising youth unemployment as, increasingly, the types of jobs open to young people trend toward temporary, part-time and contract work.
“Most of them are employed part-time or not fully employed, certainly,” Antunes said.
Youth tend to feel the brunt of a slow economy, Antunes said, because they "are the least experienced, they have the least tenure and they’re the first to go when there is a cycle, that’s nothing new. We saw that in 2008-2009 just like we had seen in many previous recessions or slowdowns.
"What’s really surprising about this recession is that it’s been so long-lived for youth. ... We haven’t seen any recovery in terms of employment for that cohort since the recession and we’re now running four or five years since then,” he said.
Erin Weir, an economist at the United Steelworkers union, noted that although unemployment numbers remain stable, the lower number of Canadians counted as being in the work force suggests there are more jobless than the official count.
"One would expect the participation rate to decline over time as more Canadians retire," he said.
"However, April’s figures reflect a drop in labour-force participation among those below the age of 25 rather than long-term population aging."
Ken Lewenza, president of the Canadian Auto Workers’ union, said he is concerned that the new jobs created have no impact on tamping down “chronically high” youth unemployment.
“Government should not allow the economy to limp along at this pace indefinitely — it is a terrible growth and jobs strategy. Persistently high unemployment in many parts of the country, particularly among young people, requires action on the part of government and industry,” he said in a statement.
“In failing to address the problem of high youth unemployment, we’re turning our back on young people struggling to find jobs, pay forever-escalating tuition costs and just get by.”
Despite an overall rebound in Canada’s labour market, April's gain wasn’t sufficient to offset the losses of the first three months of the year, leaving Canada about 13,000 jobs short of where employment stood on Jan. 1.
Among the positive signs in the report: Some 36,000 full-time jobs were added in the month, mitigated by a 23,600 drop in part-time work. As well, all the net new jobs were employees, rather than in the self-employed category. And the battered manufacturing sector added 20,600 workers, the best month in almost a year.
On the negative side, all the gains came in the public sector, with private-sector employers actually shedding 20,000 jobs. That fact surprised some economists, as Canada's governments are supposed to be in belt-tightening mode and have called on the private sector to stop sitting on cash and start spending to stimulate the economy.
—With files from The Canadian Press]]>Canada's Newspapers Push Paywalls, Cut Jobs As Ad Revenue Evaporatestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-09T06:57:14-04:002013-05-09T08:29:13-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
Following a particularly tumultuous decade for newspapers, 2013 may prove to be the breaking point for some Canadian operations scrambling to find new streams of revenue and overhaul their business models as traditional print advertising dries up.
The decline of newspapers is old news.
Many Canadian news operations, slammed by the same forces that led to bloodletting in U.S. newsrooms, have already undergone rounds of buyouts and layoffs, leaving newsrooms depleted and journalists decrying a decline in quality.
But a new silver lining is emerging amid the gloom – there are indications readers may finally be ready to pay for online content.
By the end of this year, a majority of Canadian dailies are expected to have embarked on the great paywall experiment. Most are opting for the less restrictive metered model, which allows non-paying readers limited free articles each month and some access through social media or search engines.
Torstar Corp. said Wednesday that it is counting on the Toronto Star’s forthcoming digital paywall to offset shrinking print advertising revenue, which fell 16 per cent in the first three months of 2013, a drop of nearly $11-million. The parent company of the Toronto Star and other dailies reported first-quarter profits fell 76 per cent to $4.2 million compared to the same period last year.
The Toronto Star reaffirmed that it will lay off 55 editorial and advertising employees and outsource editorial jobs to Pagemasters North America, a fledgling copy-editing and page-design shop whose employees earn about half the money that an equivalent editor at the Star would make. The Star has rejected a proposal by the union that would keep those jobs in house.
The job cuts are part of industry-wide budget slashing that appears to have reached a fevered pace in the past six months.
Postmedia Network Inc. abolished regional publishers and asked West Coast staff to take buyouts last month after announcing dismal first-quarter results that included a 10 per cent decline in revenue. Sun Media announced late last year the layoff of some 500 employees. Even The Globe And Mail – arguably Canada’s best example of a functioning paywall – recently offered buyouts to editorial staff.
(The Huffington Post Canada, which has no paywall, competes for digital advertising and audience with newspapers named in this story.)
Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank believes dramatic cost-cutting will continue as news organizations transition to online subscriptions. Some Canadian dailies, the news veteran predicts, will not survive the transformation. Still, he is optimistic that a new model is emerging.
“We’re working away at it, and I think we can find one where we continue to have professional journalists, as well as make use of bloggers,” he said in an interview with The Huffington Post Canada.
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Newspapers had for decades relied on the 80-20 business model in which 80 per cent of revenues were derived from print advertising – including classifieds – with subscription revenues making up the rest. The strategy was upended by the Internet, to which readers have turned for free sources of news and where advertisers pay a fraction of the price of print campaigns.
As Canadian newspapers come to grips with the fact that their business model is undergoing not a recessionary blip but a permanent structural change, publishers are moving toward leaner organizations.
Unless drastic measures are taken, the existing business model will not be sustainable, the publisher of the Vancouver Sun and The Province said in a bluntly worded memo last month that asked staff to accept a buyout.
“Over the last few years, The Vancouver Sun and The Province have seen alarming and unprecedented revenue declines, the majority of that from traditional print advertising,” the memo from Gordon Fisher said.
“Over that same period, we have seen growth in our digital revenues, but not nearly enough to close the gap. That trend is not abating. It is accelerating.”
Phillip Crawley, publisher of The Globe and Mail, said the paper has signed up some 90,000 digital subscribers during its first six months operating a metered paywall (he would not say how many of those are existing print subscribers). Still, he added, publishers are feeling pressure to cut expenses amid a sluggish economy and advertisers’ growing interest in online.
“We obviously are caught in that same pattern that everybody else is, and I don’t think anyone else is telling a different story. ... It’s a case of how well you can monetize the digital side.”
Newspapers have anxiously watched positive trends from The New York Times’s two-year paywall experiment that has seen more than 700,000 readers open their wallets, although the rate of subscriber growth shrank in the most recent quarter.
Canadian publishers feel the moment is ripe to take the paywall plunge.
“We hadn’t done very much to train people to think that everything on the Internet wasn’t going to be free, but since then we’ve seen the evolution of a tremendous amount of digital commerce,” Cruickshank said.
“There’s been a rapid, rapid shift, there is now an acceptance of the notion that this information has some value and it needs to be paid for. … I think some people will be willing to pay something, and I think that number will continue to grow.”
Paywalls will not save the newspaper industry, Cruickshank said, but they do represent the next step toward recovery.
“To sustain the big commitment to newsrooms,” he said, “we have to get paid for content, and this is the next point of evolution in the business model. Is it perfect? No. They’re actually kind of limited in respects.
“Clearly, we’re not going to achieve the same kind of business results in digital that we did over many years in print – not through paywalls and digital display ads – so we’re going to have to think very broadly about other ways to give service to readers and advertisers and find new sources of financing.”
Newspapers have recently accelerated the push both to cut jobs and to erect paywalls,
said Paul Morse, president of the Southern Ontario News Media Guild, which represents employees at the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and Sun Media papers.
“They paid the price for turning a blind eye to it before, and now there’s a rush to deliver the new models,” he said.
“Paywalls are going to create revenue, and that is what’s going to pay for the jobs, so it’s clearly the way that they have to go,” he said, adding that they will work only if newsrooms are willing to invest in the quality of the product behind them.
Some critics argue that hiding some content risks losing website traffic from readers unwilling to pay and advertising dollars from marketers flocking to sites with an optimal number of eyeballs on their ads.
Results from Canadian newspapers that have already gone behind metered paywalls suggest that, while readers still visit paywalled sites, they spend less time on them and click through to fewer stories, reducing their likelihood of viewing numerous ads.
An analysis of four newspapers – one from each of Canada’s major publishers – that have gone behind paywalls in the past year finds that, on average, unique visitors were up four per cent year-over-year in the opening months of 2013 when all four papers were behind a paywall, according to data from comScore, a digital analytics company.
But compared with the first quarter of 2012, when none of these papers was behind a paywall, total pages viewed fell an average of 43 per cent, average minutes per visitor declined 40 per cent and average pages per visitor were down 43 per cent, the comScore figures reveal.
Paywalls can serve to turn off advertisers searching for high-efficiency and high-volume in their ad spending, said Kris Davis, senior vice-president of customer service at Media Experts, a Canadian media planning and buying company.
“Some of the sites that are pioneers in the paywall space and have done fairly well, are having to to retrench a little bit because it is a challenge, there is so much free content out there,” he said.
Papers that erect paywalls but lack in high engagement or reader loyalty may see a boost in revenue from the finite number of readers willing to pay, but they also risk turning off readers and advertisers, he said.
“They’re going to lose the ability to monetize that audience – if they lose a third of their audience, they’re going to lose revenue on the other side of it [the paywall].”
Post-recession advertising budgets have bounced back, but cost-conscious marketers still prefer to spend online, where they will see the most traction, accountability and return on their investment, Davis said.
Advertisers like online advertising better not only because it is cheaper but because they can see when, where and how many people click on their ads. Those intent on garnering as many viewers as possible have more options than ever, including alternative news sites, search engines or social media sites, he added.
But other advertisers, like those that Crawley said the Globe is attracting, are willing to pay top dollar for the chance at reaching a highly engaged, higher value audience that fits into their target demographic.
Traffic figures do not concern Crawley. He said that the paper’s paywall is geared toward offering paid subscribers premium content unavailable from free news sources and that advertisers have been willing to pay to target such an audience.
The Globe and Mail has created an interdepartmental committee composed of editorial and non-editorial staff that monitors, 24 hours a day, which content clicks best.
Studying the content that makes people willing to pass through a paywall gives the paper information about how to bump subscriptions, while analyzing which stories stimulate the most traffic helps attract advertisers seeking a targeted audience, Crawley said.
The Globe has “absolutely not” seen a decline in ad revenue, he said, citing a 14 per cent increase in digital ad revenue this year. He would not produce a figure for print advertising revenue, the segment its competitors are most worried about. The Globe and Mail is privately owned and therefore not required to release financials.
Other newspapers are reporting growth in digital ad sales, but because that stream currently represents as little as 10 per cent of overall advertising revenue, the impact of growth in that segment contributes only minimally to companies’ bottom lines.
Postmedia chief operating officer Wayne Parrish said the chain’s paywalled papers, including the Ottawa Citizen and the Vancouver Sun, have seen a similar level of digital advertising revenue growth as those that offer unlimited free access, such as the National Post.
The company will put the rest of its papers behind paywalls in the next few weeks.
Postmedia aims to have 75,000 digital subscribers, including those with print subscriptions (which, he says, is also the measure the Globe uses) by September.
Growing subscribers at the chain’s dailies will be more difficult than at niche papers like the Wall Street Journal or flagships like the New York Times, but Parrish believes Postmedia’s plan to invest in content will help convince readers to make the switch.
“We think if the quality content is there, that there’s certainly opportunity for metro papers as well.”
Unlike some of its peers, the Globe created premium paid content to sit behind the wall before it was erected, which distinguishes it from its Canadian competitors, Crawley said.
“If you’re going to look generally at what’s happening to paywalls, you have to sort out the wheat from the chaff,” he said.
“All (Postmedia is) doing is putting up a paywall just simply to grab some cash; Sun Media has done the same.”
Sun Media could not be reached for an interview for this story.
Newspaper paywalls are still in their early days. Even newspapers that are successful will have to focus on cutting costs until their business models evolve to allow for a healthy level of investment in journalism, Cruickshank said.
Parrish holds no false hopes that paywalls are enough to save the industry’s broken business model.
“Paywalls are not at all a panacea in any shape or form, but they have the potential, and I stress potential, to be part of the overall revenue solution.”
Adam Shine, a media analyst at National Bank, believes the next few months will help paint a better portrait of the feasibility of newspaper paywalls in Canada.
“The sustainability of paywalls and the willingness of consumers in general to pay for newspapers will remain dependent on the quality of the content,” Shine said.
He added that paywalls are not the only innovative business model for Canadian newspapers, pointing to La Presse’s decision to buck the paywall trend with a design-conscious, advertising- supported daily news app.
“The publisher has taken an alternate route that appears destined to reduce print subscriptions,” he said of the Montreal paper.
As newspapers take tentative steps toward a next-generation revenue model, publishers face a Catch-22 in shrinking the legacy costs of their newsrooms, Davis said.
Investments in reporters, investigative resources and international bureaus are needed to produce the quality content that attracts advertisers, he said, while slashing at the cost of quality leaves papers with little to distinguish them from a free news source.
“Who’s going to pay for that content that’s going to be repurposed online?”]]>Consumer Debt Canada: Bankruptcy Risk Greatest For 'Pre-Retirement' Group, Review Findstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-06T11:07:50-04:002013-05-06T11:09:08-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/ Bankruptcy trustees Hoyes, Michalos & Associates reviewed filings from 2011 and 2012 and found the average bankrupt Canadian is a 43-year-old man with more than $61,000 in debt. That’s about three times the national average of about $18,000 of non-mortgage debt per Canadian.
The average age of bankrupt Canadians shot up from 41 years in 2009, while the average amount owed rose two per cent in two years. And 57 per cent of Canadians who filed for insolvency were male.
But the group with the highest debt levels were those aged 50 to 59, whose unsecured debts — including credit cards, personal loans and other forms not backed by assets — exceeded $84,000, the study found.
“The most at risk group are ‘pre-retirement’ debtors,” said Ted Michalos, a trustee with Hoyes, Michalos & Associates Inc.
“At a time in their lives when they should be rapidly paying down debt, their financial burden continues to grow.”
Many older Canadians saw their retirement savings decimated during the recession and a slow economic recovery has not helped them to make up the losses. At the same time, interest rates have remained ultra low, encouraging consumers to borrow.
About 81 per cent of the debtors in the overall study were working when they filed for bankruptcy.
The average 50- to 59-year-old debtor was working, but earned less than their peers in the 40- to 49-year-old age group. Meanwhile, one-in-three supported at least one dependent and most homeowners still had substantial mortgages.
“They are squeezed from all sides” said trustee Douglas Hoyes.
“They are often supporting both older children and aging parents, making debt payments, and may also be dealing with medical expenses for themselves or family members.”
Some use credit cards to make ends meet but become so pressured by the cost of servicing those huge debt loads that they are forced to file for bankruptcy, or the alternative consumer proposal, which allows debtors to pay back a portion of what they owe, Michalos said.
Among the insolvent Canadians studied, average debt-to-income ratios were 215 per cent, which means they owed $2.15 for every dollar earned, compared to the national average of 165 per cent. Debtors aged 50 to 59 had the highest debt-to-income ratios, at 297 per cent.]]>National Household Survey That Replaced Long-Form Census Is Unreliable: Expertstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-05-06T06:04:49-04:002013-05-08T12:30:00-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
These are some of the more dire potential consequences for Canadian communities if information gleaned from the controversial voluntary alternative to the long-form census paints the inaccurate portrait of Canada that experts fear.
Economists and statisticians are skeptical about the accuracy and usefulness of data that begin to trickle in this week from the inaugural 2011 National Household Survey. The Conservative government decided in 2010 that the survey would replace the mandatory long-form census, despite their acknowledgement that the decision was made without consultation, an ensuing outcry over the hasty move, and warnings it would jeopardize the quality of Canadian information.
The first report using the new voluntary data collection method — relating to aboriginals, immigrants and ethnodiversity — will be released on Wednesday.
Experts who have for years relied on census data for an updated look at changes in such groups in Canadian society now question how useful the new information will be.
The worst-case scenario is that all levels of government, as well as non-profit and private sector groups, will make decisions about community planning based on the wrong information, said David Bellhouse, a statistics professor at the University of Western Ontario.
“The tragedy of it is, the government was warned that this would happen," he said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to cancel the long-form census over privacy concerns met with a wave of backlash from groups, including opposition parties, community organizations, professional associations, economists and government analysts. Former chief statistician Munir Sheikh resigned in protest over the death of the mandatory census, delivering a definitive message that a voluntary survey cannot replace a mandatory census.
"We have never previously conducted a survey on the scale of the voluntary National Household Survey, nor are we aware of any other country that has. The new methodology has been introduced relatively rapidly with limited testing," it cautions on its website.
"We are confident that the National Household Survey will produce usable and useful data that will meet the needs of many users. It will not, however, provide a level of quality that would have been achieved through a mandatory long-form census."
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Experts warn that results from the survey will contain biases, that the new methodology renders it incompatible with previous censuses and that those biases will muddy other Statistics Canada surveys, which are used as the basis for policy planning.
Economists and statisticians do not buy the explanation that privacy-related complaints were behind the government’s decision to kill the long-form census — census data are protected by privacy legislation. Some believe the Tories eliminated the long-form census for purely political reasons.
Critics say the move to the NHS could allow the government to justify a reallocation of money away from programs for members of under-represented groups and that the data could be more easily manipulated by people with particular agendas. Others worry that the cost-conscious government could cite the problematic quality of data from the survey as a reason to kill any attempt to collect data on such a wide scale.
“It is a terrible disaster that for political reasons we lost a wonderful tool, which really (placed) Canada at the forefront of analysis," said economist Paul Jacobson of Jacobson Consulting Inc. “We have not gained a replacement that can be as good, period. We have gained something that will be as good as it can be, I hope.”
The long-form census, which was sent to one in five Canadian households and produced a 94 per cent response rate, was said to produce a non-biased sample of the Canadian population and was one of the most important planning tools in Canada.
Statistics Canada, economists and statisticians say the biggest issue with the new survey is a problem inherent in voluntary methods of data collection called the "non-response bias," which holds that marginalized groups — the very groups most in need of services — are the least likely to volunteer information, which means their status is under-represented.
Those groups include the poor, immigrants, aboriginals, the less educated and mobile students.
That problem, experts say, could skew data on everything from Canada's religious composition to income levels, which could hurt planning for the country's future.
The government has tried to adjust for the anticipated lack of response by sending the NHS to one in three households, a 65 per cent increase over the long-form census.
Experts say, however, a larger sample size does not solve the non-response bias because the same groups of people are still less likely to respond even in a bigger pool of people.
The response rate to the NHS was 68.6 per cent, a rate that, though larger than what StatsCan had prepared for, is not an acceptable basis for comparisons, Bellhouse said. In some communities, he said, response rates were as low as 25 per cent, and a few even had a response rate of zero.
"When you get a response rate that is that low, especially from a government survey, there could be quite a difference between the people that have responded and those that haven’t," he said.
Because of the minimal response in some areas, the data are basically useless at the community level, Bellhouse said. The lack of detailed information makes it difficult for communities to plan bus routes or for advertisers to target their marketing campaigns.
“Those data are completely unreliable in terms of any kind of planning purpose for people wanting to use the data for planning about their community," Bellhouse said.
Kevin Milligan, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia, is particularly worried about low-income Canadians being under-represented because they are less likely to report their incomes. Some economists believe high-income Canadians are also less likely to report their earnings truthfully in a voluntary survey. That could make Canada's income equality picture appear rosier than it is because all data obtained will be skewed toward the middle class, Milligan said.
“The big issue here is the overall distribution of income, any changes that we see — and there have been big changes over the past 30 years — we don’t know when we look at the NHS if what we're seeing is a result of changes in the sampling procedure or changes in the underlying distribution of income,” Milligan said.
Frances Woolley, a professor of economics at Carleton University, recently wrote a blog asking how economists should approach the data and whether they should use it at all.
Using religion as an example of the challenges to validity in voluntary information, she pointed to potential problems in the first set of data being released — covering groups such as aboriginals and immigrants, who are among those believed to be least likely to respond.
“Religion’s a subjective thing," she said, adding that that makes it difficult to adjust the results based on information from previous censuses. Many of the changes are coming from new immigrants or young people, who are less likely to respond.
There is also a strong correlation between religion and willingness to fill out a survey, as some religions encourage volunteerism and civic engagement, while others breed introverts who exclude themselves from non-religious society.
“How are you going to adjust for the fact that religious people are going to be more or less likely to fill out the survey?" she asked. “We won’t know if it’s a real trend or if it’s a change due to the different method of data collection.”
The survey data, along with the inherent non-response bias, will be useful in some regards, but not in the way economists find most interesting — comparing current results with the past to discover trends, Jacobson said.
StatsCan warns that there is a real risk that the different methodology will affect the comparability of the NHS data.
That has some economists, such as Jacobson, on edge.
“We’re not going to be able to tell whether they’re different, and telling whether things are different is what matters to an economist,” he said.
The long-form census, which was considered an accurate representative sample of Canada, was used as an anchor or the control to reduce the risk of bias in other StatsCan surveys, such as the closely watched Labour Force Survey.
The unreliable NHS data are still likely to be used as an anchor because the survey is the best tool available, but that could exaggerate, rather than reduce, biases in other surveys.
Statisticians use something called weighting in survey data to make the result more representative of the entire population.
For instance, if fewer low income people respond, their answers are weighted as if they were two people to even out responses. The long-form census, because of its depth and completeness, used to be the population benchmark for all other surveys. The NHS is a survey that will also have to be weighted, destabilizing its validity as that benchmark.
“The reason we knew what the whole population looks like is because we had the census that was the anchor of the whole system. Now the problem is we don't have that anchor to compare all these voluntary surveys to, and they become much less useful if we don’t have that anchor anymore,” Milligan said.
"The fact that there’s going to be survey weights (in the NHS) is an admission that this new survey is not representative, because, if it was representative in itself, you don't have to have survey weights to undo the bias."
Experts, who say they do not doubt the expertise and competence of Statistics Canada, await a clearer picture on the caveats and methodology used, as well as the level of confidence the agency has in the data, when the first results are released.
StatsCan analysts face a monumental challenge in trying sift through what it has and use its methods to make results as accurate as it can, Jacobson said.
"How StatsCan presents this information will define their reputation."
Canada had been consistently ranked at the forefront of information gatherers in the world, experts say, but many question how that reputation can continue after it presents the watered-down NHS data.
CUPE economist Toby Sanger said there will always be an element of distrust with the NHS data and questions the government's motives, especially given that is also slashing staff and resources at the agency. The end of accurate data contributes to an erosion of evidence-based public policy in this country, he said.
“In a broader sense, it’s sad for Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada was considered one of the pre-eminent, one of the best statistical agencies in the world. I’m not sure it would be considered in that place anymore.”
Some information crunchers are still in awe of the government's hasty decision and see it as yet another way the Tories are working to stifle scientific research and access to information.
"[The government] ignored scientific evidence and muzzled a lot of scientists, and in [getting rid of the long-form census] they've degraded one of the most important institutions that we have in terms of providing solid and objective information," Sanger said.
There is nothing that kills social science research more quickly than lack of good data, Woolley said. “If you want to kill social science research, the best thing to do is to destroy the data.”
Bellhouse, admittedly cynical, said it appears the Conservatives do not want the public to have the information that they would need to question the government’s policy decisions, and he believes the lack of quality data from the NHS would be a convenient excuse to kill the Canada-wide survey altogether.
“If you don't have the information, then they can do whatever they want, because no one has correct information.”]]>Bangladesh Factory Collapse: Joe Fresh Owner Loblaws Moves Into Damage Control Modetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-29T09:15:36-04:002013-04-29T16:54:58-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
“We are committed to finding an approach that ensures safe working conditions, drives lasting change in the industry and helps prevents other tragedies,” the company said in a statement.
UPDATE: Loblaw says it will provide compensation for families of the victims who worked for its supplier in Bangladesh.
"We are working to ensure that we will deliver support in the best and most meaningful way possible, and with the goal of ensuring that victims and their families receive benefits now and in the future," spokeswoman Julija Hunter said following the Monday afternoon meeting.
Joe Fresh is facing a backlash from customers angered by news of poor and unsafe working conditions at the Bangladesh garment building that collapsed last week. At last count, the death toll in the tragedy had reached 377.
Police had ordered an evacuation the day before the collapse due to deep visible cracks in the walls. The factories’ owners ignored the order and told more than 2,000 workers it was business as usual. Bangladesh authorities arrested the owner of the building on Sunday.
“Once it has been proved that they are enforcing safe, humane, dignified working conditions to all the manufacturers, I will once again buy Joe Fresh/Loblaws. Until that day, I will boycott their merchandise and stores,” said one commenter.
“Your words are hollow and far too late for the many victims of this travesty. Loblaws has profited handsomely no doubt from the abominable labour conditions in which those workers operated on a daily basis,” another wrote.
Loblaws executives are attending the meeting with other Canadian retailers and the Retail Council’s Responsible Trade Committee to discuss how to move forward.
However, the company would not say whether it plans to sign onto the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement, a binding solution that would create rigorous inspections, transparency and oversight, which is being advocated in a petition by the International Labour Rights Forum.
Any obligations Joe Fresh has in this case are ethical or moral, rather than legal. Still, whether Joe Fresh can save face depends on how it navigates this crisis, experts say.
The backlash Joe Fresh faces over its outsourcing so far has been more contained than what Royal Bank of Canada faced in its own outsourcing scandal earlier this month, when news broke that it was axing 45 employees and forcing them to train their Indian replacements.
The difference is that RBC’s scandal hit closer to home and involved Canadian jobs, said Anil Verma, a professor of global industrial relations at the University of Toronto.
“But in this case, we don’t know these workers, most Canadians have never been to Bangladesh, there’s a kind of disconnect at the human level, even though it’s a far greater tragedy.”
“If this were a factory in Nova Scotia or B.C. and if this building collapsed, or there was a fire or something, it would have a bigger impact.”
But if Joe Fresh doesn’t announce meaningful change, the brand could face further damage, he said.
“They have to rebuild that trust with consumers.”
A big Canadian company could make an impact by picking only suppliers committed to improving their systems, rather than those who meet the bare minimum requirements to pass audits, Verma said.
“What Joe Fresh and others could do is do a better job of selecting who they deal with and look at the quality of management, look at the leadership, look at their motives and weed out those that tend to be short-term and profit-focused.”
Loblaws said it has sent senior representatives to meet with local officials in Bangladesh “to get a precise response on what caused this tragedy.” The company added that it has also spoken with the federal government, international audit companies and Canada’s Maquila Solidarity Network, which promotes better wages and conditions for workers in export processing zones.
“Our audits align with those of industry around the world, but we recognize that these measures do not address the issue of building construction or integrity,” it said.
“Loblaw is committed to finding solutions to this situation by expanding the scope of our requirements to ensure the physical safety of workers producing our products.”
Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest garment manufacturer, following China, and has become a popular source of cheap labour for Canadian clothing companies including Joe Fresh and Gildan Activewear. Last year, Canada’s imports from Bangladesh totalled $1.2 billion, the vast majority coming from clothing. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is the equivalent of about C$38 a month.
The collapse was “a tragedy of a poor, corrupt country without good institutions,” said Keith Head, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.
“Joe Fresh bears some responsibility for doing work there, but how are that country’s conditions going to improve without growth and rises in income, which we’re seeing in Bangladesh? It’s developing at a fairly rapid clip, in large part thanks to these exports, so it’s really hard.”
Still, he added, Loblaws has the leverage to pressure the employer into taking a day off of production rather than seeing workers go to work in a cracked building.
“I think a company has a responsibility to try and take those actions that would make the workforce safer, even though those people are employed by another firm,” he said.
“I expect they get clothing, T-shirts, delivered to them according to spec and they don’t ask a lot of questions. Maybe they should ask more questions.” ]]>Earth Day 2013: 9 Canadian Companies Working To Save The Worldtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-22T05:02:47-04:002013-04-22T08:22:56-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
But some Canadian startups aren't waiting for the government to come around, and are pursuing innovations that could -- with luck and the right opportunities -- help to save the world from climate catastrophe.
From underwater energy storage to smarter solar panels, companies from across the country are developing technology that could change the way we live, work and commute.
But risk aversion on the part of Canadian investors makes it difficult for the innovative ideas produced by home-grown startups to make their way into the commercial market.
While Canada consistently ranks in the top 10 in terms of clean tech innovation, many Canadian companies find it hard to get off the ground due to a lack of interest from investors, said Vicky Sharpe, president and CEO of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, a federal government-supported venture capital fund.
“In general we don’t have the capital to build these companies because the risk appetite isn’t there,” she said, adding that Canadian companies get on average about 44 per cent of the capital funding that a U.S. startup receives.
“It’s not until you get the disruptive technologies that can create major markets, or major environmental gains ,that you get what you need, so that hesitancy is problematic.”
There is not enough discussion in Canada about climate change at the corporate and political levels to support Canadian innovations, says Tom Rand, a clean tech investor and adviser for Mars Discovery District in Toronto.
“Basically businesses are not going to solve this problem until the rules of the game make it in their best interest to solve this problem. Business does not operate with idealism, saving the world, goodness of the planet in mind, they operate with profit in mind and they have to.”
He believes a price on carbon is needed in order to convince businesses to step up to the plate and make moves toward battling climate change.
“A price on carbon has nothing to do with the right or the left or politics, it is simply the most effective tool we have in the market economy to solve this problem,” he said.
“Unless you put it into that framework, it’s just neat companies doing neat things.”
Those companies also require more capital from Canadian investors because the alternative is that those businesses will either move to the U.S.,where funding is better, or “die on the vine,” he said.
“That’s why we’re worried about Canadian venture capital -- not just because we want to solve everyone’s problem called climate change but because we also want to create those high value jobs in Canada,” Rand said.
“Companies that are solving the climate change problem are solving the mother of all problems and there’s going to be a commensurate reward for that, and that ultimately is going to be reflected in Canada in jobs.”
Here are nine cool startups working to tackle climate change (text version below slideshow):
Morgan Solar
Solar power is one of the most ubiquitous and renewable alternative energy solutions, but the cost of making the silicon chips that store the energy has been prohibitively expensive.
Toronto’s Morgan Solar provides a lower-cost option to get the most out of expensive silicon chips using refractory surfaces, including lenses, mirrors or prisms, that surround the chip and concentrate sunlight on a very small piece of silicon, helping to lower production costs.
Hydrostor
Much of the energy produced through electricity goes unused during off-peak hours. Hydrostor has a cheap storage solution that would help make energy grids more efficient.
Toronto-based Hydrostor’s technology mechanically converts electricity (produced from hydro, wind, or other sources) to compressed air for storage in underwater accumulators (balloons) at times when grid demand is low. When energy demand spikes, the weight of the water pushes the air back to the surface, where the process is reversed and converted back into electricity. The company boasts the low cost, environmentally-friendly nature of the process.
Borealis GeoPower Inc.
Geothermal energy is a long-term renewable energy source. The problem is, it’s a risky and expensive investment. GeoPower Inc. is a team of experts and consultants that help Canadian geothermal companies that have focused on projects elsewhere, become major players in the Canadian energy market.
The Calgary-based company is a project manager focused on growing the number of geothermal energy projects in Canada. Enhanced geothermal technology drills deep into the ground to harness heat from the inner earth, with near zero emissions. With proper engineering, geothermal systems can run indefinitely. Geothermal has the lowest long-term costs of all alternative energy sources.
BioAmber Inc.
Chemical production is usually a toxic and energy intensive process. BioAmber has developed a way to replace some of the man-made materials used in everyday products with plant-based products.
Montreal’s BioAmber Inc. is a sustainable chemicals maker using bio-based compounds to replace petroleum-based succinic acid with one derived from agricultural by-products. Applications include everything from de-icing agents to cosmetics to food additives.
Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies
By-products like phosphates and ammonia in wastewater can clog infrastructure pipes, increasing the energy and cost of pumping the water through.
Vancouver-based Ostara has designed a process that removes phosphates and ammonia from waste, then combines them into a premium environmentally-friendly slow-release fertilizer.
Titanium Corporation
Calgary’s Titanium Corp. could change the way the world views the oilsands, or at least reduce some of the negative side effects associated with the waste by-product tailings ponds.
Its technology removes bitumen, solvents and other high-value minerals at oilsands production sites, keeping it out of tailings ponds, which makes the water easier to recycle for reuse in the extraction process, in turn reducing the amount of water taken from nearby rivers and lakes. The bitumen and minerals are then resold into the market.
Woodland Biofuels Inc.
Ethanol is a greener way to fill up a tank than oil-based gasoline, but has traditionally relied on corn and other sources of food for production. Woodland has found a way to produce ethanol using any type of biowaste (mostly agricultural or wood waste).
Mississauga, Ont.-based Woodland produces cellulosic biofuel by tearing wood chips apart and putting them back together to form ethanol, a cheaper alternative to gasoline. It is also a more sustainable way to create ethanol than the traditional method of using food materials.
General Fusion
Nuclear energy’s label as a clean technology is a very much disputed one. Though it doesn’t produce greenhouse gases, or pollution, it produces toxic radioactive waste that can be dangerous for thousands of years, or spark a meltdown that would release radioactive chemicals into the air.
General Fusion, based in Burnaby, B.C., is developing a safer process for nuclear energy that uses a fusion process, in which isotopes of hydrogen can be extracted from seawater and derived from lithium, rather than uranium or plutonium. Like nuclear fission, which is currently used, the reaction releases a significant amount of energy, but doesn’t have the potential for meltdown, there are no radioactive by-products and fuel is virtually unlimited.
Electrovaya
Transportation is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
This Mississauga, Ont.-based company’s mission is to make electric powered vehicles a commercially viable alternative to gas with its lithium ion batteries that enable more power to be stored in a smaller space and can be used in various modes of transportation -- from cars to ferries. It also builds storage systems for electricity created by renewable intermittent sources of energy such as wind and solar power.]]>Unpaid Internships Canada: Work Experience Is Worth The Lack Of Income, Some Saytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-18T14:01:03-04:002013-04-18T14:10:03-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
Li, a 21-year-old marketing student at Ottawa's Carleton University, knew she’d be graduating with little hands-on experience into a competitive job market for young Canadians, a demographic with an unemployment rate of 14.2 per cent, double the national average. She tried to apply for paid internships but those went to applicants with more experience.
“I felt that I was hitting a dead end, I didn’t have enough experience to acquire an internship, but then I needed experience for when I graduated so it’s kind of a Catch-22.”
Li stumbled upon SpringTern, a site that connects young Canadians looking for real world experience at businesses who need help completing individual projects. All projects are completed on a volunteer basis. Founder Ben Wise says the site has no restrictions on who uses it — from students to 50-year-olds who want to try something new.
“I saw the internships and there were so many and they were all related to something that I wanted to do and they were all start-ups that were new and in terms of budget, they didn’t have that much money to spend on talent,” she said.
“I guess their expectations were pretty low and they were pretty open to anything.”
But proponents say such programs help students transition from textbooks to real world learning, and help those willing to forgo a paycheque to gain experience required to stand out from their competitors.
Li has completed three unpaid internships through the SpringTern program, doing the work remotely and on her own schedule. For her, the goal of an internship should be learning, not money.
“Before doing an unpaid internship, the one thing I was worried about was a company just wanted to have free labour and I wanted to make sure I was actually learning from it,” she said.
“That’s the difference between a paid and an unpaid internship to me. When it’s unpaid, if you get the right one, it’s usually somebody [who] wants to teach you things and it’s actually about learning rather than someone who pays you.”
Her first internship was at Kiddology, a learning software startup in Toronto. After about a year, the company started to take off and decided they could start to pay her.
She used that internship to build her resume and landed a paid internship at the same time. That catapulted into a third internship, which is unpaid. She’s fine with that.
While completing her last year at university, Li is still doing one internship along with a full-time job in marketing which she recently landed.
“I think when I did my interview with the people I’m working with now, they thought it was amazing as to how I was able to juggle all those internships and the fact that it was unpaid, I think, helped in giving me the advantage because it shows people I’m not doing it for money.”
Li says she was lucky to attend school in Ottawa and live with her parents, who also helped pay for her tuition. She also worked part-time from grade nine through to her third year of university.
She credits her unpaid internships with helping her land a job even before graduation day.
“Unpaid internships are that bridge in the middle to give you that experience that you need without the employer having to take that much risk.” ]]>Unpaid Internships: U Of T Students' Group Calls For Ban, Says 300,000 'Illegal' Interns Working In Canadatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-18T09:08:04-04:002013-04-18T14:25:44-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) contends that more than 300,000 Canadians are “illegally misclassified” each year as interns, trainees and non-employees, a situation that they say has a destabilizing effect on the economy because unpaid work drives average wages down while increasing student debt at a time when the youth unemployment rate is twice the national average at 14.2 per cent.
They wrote a letter last week asking provincial Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi to ban “all forms of unpaid labour that benefits employers.”
In Ontario, as in most provinces, unpaid work violates labour laws unless it falls under a list of exemptions. Under those laws, interns deserve pay if their duties fall under the definition of “work,” which classifies them as employees.
Naqvi thanked the UTSU for the letter in an email Wednesday to Huffington Post Canada, but stood by the province’s law, saying that it provides “strong protections around internships.”
“If you perform work for someone – unless you are self-employed, in a co-op placement, or a trainee – you are an employee covered under the Employment Standards Act and should be paid – it doesn’t matter if you are called an ‘intern’ or not,” he wrote in an email.
“Not only are we concerned about the effect of unpaid internships on students, but we are also concerned with the health of the labour market for post-secondary graduates and youth, who are currently facing an 18 per cent unemployment rate upon graduation,” the group said in the letter signed by president Shaun Shepherd. The union also wants the province to enforce its Employment Standards Act (ESA) better.
Critics of unpaid internships say many employers are flouting those rules by asking new grads to put in time without receiving a pay cheque or even the promise of an eventual job. Proponents say unpaid work is an increasingly necessary bridge between the textbook-centred world of academia and the real life experience required to land jobs in an increasingly competitive labour market.
Toronto City Councillor Ana Bailao was derided by some constituents this week after posting to a community email group a request that seeks applicants for unpaid “summer internship opportunities” who are either pursuing a degree or have recently graduated from college or university. The message was obtained by HuffPost.
The problem is that employers are exempt from the province’s ESA – which, among other things, requires payment of minimum wage – only if interns are enrolled in a post-secondary program.
After community members spoke out about her posting, Bailao responded by blaming “an office error” that misstated her request for “volunteers” as “interns,” adding that her “office budget does not leave room for monetary compensation.” Bailao's office said the councillor had no comment.
Those are just two of the most recent examples of employers caught in the crosshairs of a rising frustration among young people that coincides with an increase in temporary, contract and casual work in the Canadian labour market.
A recent report on precarious labour conditions in Ontario identified unpaid interns as one of the most vulnerable types of employees in the province. The report by the Law Commission of Ontario said existing laws and policies do not adequately protect unpaid workers.
The U of T students said the province’s ESA “disenfranchises students, trainees, interns and young workers by either partially or completely exempting them from employment standards protections.”
In addition to the exemption for unpaid work by students, the province’s ESA does not apply in a scenario that meets all of the following criteria: training is similar to that given in a vocational school; is for the benefit of the intern; the employer derives little benefit from the intern’s activities; the job does not displace other employees at the workplace; the intern is not promised a job afterwards and is advised that he or she will not be paid.
Ella Henry, legal director at the UTSU and a law student at the university, said that most unpaid internships do not fall within the very narrow list of exceptions to the ESA but the province is doing little to enforce the law. Her union is asking Naqvi to crack down actively on enforcement rather than simply acting when they receive a complaint.
“If the minister doesn’t respond and start taking action to enforce the existing legislation and look at whether there need to be changes, they’re going to be hearing more and more from students who feel the government is not particularly interested in the concerns of our generation.”
Still, not all recent grads agree that unpaid internships are detrimental.
Angie Li is about to graduate from Carleton University and the 21-year-old already has a job in her field. It’s a feat she feels is thanks to experience gained at three overlapping unpaid internships that she also balanced with her regular academic workload.
“I think when I did my interview with the people I’m working with now, they thought it was amazing as to how I was able to juggle all those internships, and the fact that it was unpaid, I think, helped in giving me the advantage because it shows people I’m not doing it for money,” she said.
Meanwhile Lauren Friese, founder of TalentEgg, a website that connects millennials with entry-level jobs, says students are going down a dangerous and slippery slope by criticizing all unpaid internships as bad or illegal.
She questions why student groups are asking governments to change laws in a way that would discourage companies from giving young people valuable experience that they otherwise would not be able to get, and without which they would be unable to enter the workforce successfully.
“Without internships – whether they’re paid or unpaid – (or) training, work and experience that is open to people that have absolutely no experience ... there is absolutely no way for those young people to get the experience they need to find that first meaningful paid career,” short of paying to go back to school, she said.
“When that’s the alternative, from a student perspective, a lot of the time, it’s actually better for their career to take some sort of internship, some sort of alternative work experience.”
Toronto-based labour lawyer Andrew Langille says illegal unpaid internships are a cross-country problem that perpetuates income inequality and creates an underclass of unemployed and underemployed youth. Those who can afford to take time to do unpaid work build their résumés, while others add to their student debt or settle for jobs for which they are overqualified to make ends meet, he says.
There are currently no statistics on how many Canadians are working for employers without getting paid. The U of T students are also asking the ministry to work with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada and Statistics Canada to track unpaid youth labour at the provincial and national level.]]>Canadians In Boston Marathon 2013 Decry 'Attack' (PHOTOS, VIDEO)tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-15T16:24:24-04:002013-04-16T11:44:46-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
Watson, who finished in 11th place with a time of 2:15, was settling into a celebratory lunch at the nearby Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel when he heard “a really loud explosion.”
“It sounded like a really loud thunderclap, so that’s what I thought it was, but I looked out the window and it’s a calm and clear day,” said the London, Ont., runner, speaking to HuffPost Canada from his hotel about 800 metres from the blast site.
“Twenty seconds later there was another one, so after that happened, you knew it was something significant, but you didn’t know what it was ... when something like that happens, unfortunately you think about 9/11 and stuff.”
Story continues under gallery.
Watson’s thoughts went immediately to his friends and family at the event. Luckily, everyone he knows is accounted for and safe.
“You try and get hold of them as quick as you can and you can’t so it’s scary, you don’t know how to react in a situation like that and there was a lot of upset people, it wasn’t cool.”
“It’s kind of surreal in a terrible, horrible way because you don’t expect it to happen, you’re at the Boston Marathon, it’s a road race, it’s a marathon, marathons are celebrations and they’re festivals and people are here for great reasons, they come from all over the world."
Many Canadian runners caught up in Monday’s mayhem at the Boston Marathon expressed similar feelings of shock and anger at what they believe was an attack on their community at a race that has become one of the biggest events for Canadian running enthusiasts outside of the country.
Two explosions tore across the finish line at around the four-hour mark of the legendary race, sending runners and bystanders fleeing the area covered by debris, blood and plumes of grey smoke. The explosions left at least three dead and dozens injured, with the number of casualties expected to climb.
Marathon runner David Emilio heard the explosions after he had finished his marathon in at time of 3:11, about 45 minutes before the chaos erupted. The 45-year-old marathoner from Toronto -- who was with 20 other runners from the Toronto area -- said he's heard from most of the runners from his group.
"We heard the explosion," he said from his hotel room a block away from the finish line. "For us it was panic for about 10 to 15 minutes while we were waiting to see what happened."
People were in tears, and they knew something terrible had happened.
"It’s just sheer, mixed emotions: Anger that someone is sick enough to do that. Everyone is half sad and half angry."
After the explosions, hundreds of ambulances started to stream into the area. "The electric feeling of Boston just died -- everyone was freaking out and automatically thought that something bad had happened."
The area hotels were locked down and as Emilio looked out of his hotel room, he could see the area beyond the finish -- tables were overturned, garbage bins searched. Small detonations were heard -- Emilio believes police were dealing with knapsacks left behind.
Emilio doesn't know if he'll do another Boston. For now, he says that all big city marathons -- Chicago, New York -- feel a little less safe.
Outside of the United States, Canadians represent the largest contingent of runners from another country: 2,083 registered participants, or 7.7 per cent of the 26,000 field, are Canadians.
Canadian Samantha Sykes said she feels the running community was “attacked.”
The 30-year-old Toronto woman had seen a security presence before and during the race -- mentioning that she took a picture of what looked like a sniper. She said she saw Marines on her way to the Athlete’s Village in Hopkinton, Mass., near the start of the race.
Sykes, speaking to HuffPost from her Beacon Hill hotel, finished her marathon with a time of around 3:30, about 40 to 50 minutes before the explosions. She had filtered into the finish area to grab her gear.
“It feels like a breach to be honest -- as a runner I feel like they attacked my friends,” she said.
Sykes has several Toronto friends running the race from the Running Room and Lululemon clubs. She said she was trying to locate or message them.
Sykes said she’d seen hotels near the finish line in Copley Square blocked off as fears of other devices spread. She's been getting updates by TV at her hotel. At first, she didn’t know about the explosions, until she started seeing all the messages from worried friends.
Michael Doyle, an editor at Canadian Running Magazine, had been watching Canadians cross the finish line about 45 minutes before the bombings. He estimates there were about 1,000 spectators near the line.
“Creepily enough, about 45 minutes before, I was exactly where the explosion apparently went off. It was the media, VIP and friends and family of the elite runners grandstand,” he said from a locked down zone near a medical tent in Copley Park.
“I didn’t hear a huge explosion or anything like that, it wasn’t how you’d expect this scenario to play out like giant black puffs of smoke or anything along those lines.”
Doyle grabbed his camera and managed to convince race volunteers to let him back inside a perimeter that had been set up. That’s when he saw members of the FBI, local police, ATF and military arrive on scene.
“When I was getting closer to the situation, you could see a lot of people on their phones, a lot of people asking if they’d seen their loved one that had just finished the race, trying to figure out where everyone was, people were crying,” he said.
“As you can imagine there was just a general state of shock.”
He heard what he believes was a third explosion. Then the security presence was ramped up in front of the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel, where many elite runners and race officials were staying.
Speaking with the Huffington Post Canada about an hour and a half after news of the explosions first broke, Doyle noted the crowd was beginning to “thin out.
“The volunteers, some are packing up and leaving, some are kind of just sitting down on park benches and staring off into space. People look pretty glum, pretty upset.”
Laura McLean, another runner from Toronto, was in the medical tent being treated for dehydration when she was pulled out to make room for victims of the explosions.
McLean says she saw people who were "really, really bloody."
The blasts went off about four hours after the race began.
Conservative Member of Parliament Ryan Leef was clear of the four block-long finish area when he heard sirens coming from all directions toward the start line: He didn’t hear any explosion.
“What a terrible thing to have happen to people, in what should have been their greatest of accomplishments,” he said in an email to HuffPost Canada.
“My thoughts are obviously with my fellow runners, organizers, volunteers, spectators and the families of the victims. We'll all remember the 117th running of the Boston Marathon, but now, sadly, for a far different reason than we all wanted at the start line this morning.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper took to Twitter to express his shock at the news, saying his "thoughts are with those who are affected."
The Department of Foreign Affairs has set up an emergency line — 1-800-387-3124 — to offer assistance to Canadians.
With a file from The Canadian Press]]>RBC Foreign Workers Controversy A Sign Of An Increasingly Anxious Middle Classtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-12T06:48:12-04:002013-04-12T07:42:28-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
The Royal Bank of Canada was thrust into the spotlight for its decision to outsource 45 information technology jobs to iGate Corp., whose workers in India were reportedly brought to Canada under the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program to receive training from the very RBC employees they were replacing. It is illegal for a company to bring temporary foreign workers into the country if it puts Canadians out of work.
After days of public outrage and negative headlines, CEO Gord Nixon issued an apology on customers’ log-in pages and in national newspapers Friday.
After all, the bank’s move to outsource work is certainly not unusual, especially in the financial sector, where many of its peers have also contracted out former in-house services to clamp down on costs as the economy slows.The other big five banks and thousands of other companies in Canada, from Tim Hortons to Air Canada, have outsourced parts of their business.
But legal and political experts say RBC may have become a lightning rod for a latent hostility that has been simmering among the Canadian public as the economy grinds to a near standstill, debt hits record levels and many are struggling to keep or find jobs.
At the same time, Corporate Canada continues to churn out profits, in part by cost-cutting and slashing jobs, while hoarding their cash reserves instead of investing in employment or spending to boost the economy – a behaviour that has raised the ire of Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.
“We haven’t seen much movement in average real wages in Canada, but we see escalating incomes at the top end of the distribution, and so there’s been a pervasive feeling that ordinary people aren’t feeling the benefits of growth,” said Lars Osberg, an economics professor at Dalhousie University.
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“That’s combined with the widespread knowledge of the high salaries at the top of the banking pyramid. “
RBC chief executive Gordon Nixon made $12.6 million in 2012, a 25 per cent increase over 2011, as the bank reported a $7.5-billion profit, up 17 per cent from the previous year. This at a time when banks were warning that cost-cutting is necessary to offset an expected decline in banking revenues.
Those figures, along with the knowledge that a large portion of profits come from Canadian mortgages and bank accounts, make banks an easy target for a public frustrated with an increasingly depressed labour market (the economy lost 54,500 jobs in March alone).
“Unemployment is ticking up and people are getting more worried,” he said.
But U.S. business consultant Steve Siebold says this anger is misdirected and that Canadians have no right to complain. Outsourcing is a reality, and it is not the bank’s responsibility to provide Canadian jobs, he said.
“It’s time to drop the entitlement mentality that just because you live in the neighbourhood [that] means a company should hire you. At the end of the day, you are responsible for what happens to you,” he said.
“To expect that the government, a local bank or anyone else is going to come riding in on the white horse to save you is ridiculous.”
The public anger at RBC is focused on employee assertions that the bank had not only fired them but had asked them to train their replacements – foreigners who will eventually do their work overseas.
RBC’s Gordon Nixon has acknowledged that one iGate employee entered the country under the temporary foreign workers program. And iGate told CBC that its employees enter the country through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program and intra-company transfer visas. Exact details remain unclear, however, as both iGate and RBC are tight-lipped about the contract. RBC directed The Huffington Post Canada to a press release and refused to answer any specific questions. IGate has yet to respond to inquiries.
Human Resources Minister Diane Finley has asked officials to review documents submitted by iGate after apparent discrepancies appeared between public statements made by RBC and information previously provided to the government by iGate.
Marisa Feil, supervising attorney at immigration law firm FWCanada Inc., says the story is more of an ethical issue than a legal one. While the moves of RBC and iGate are technically legal, she questions the level of government scrutiny the foreign workers’ applications received.
“I was surprised that this was made such a big deal of, because, technically, this is the procedure. It’s not like they came in without an LMO (labour market opinion) or there was foul play in that regard,” she said. Companies must obtain a favourable LMO from the government in order to receive a temporary foreign workers permit.
“People are upset because these Canadians lost their jobs, they’re bringing in these foreign workers to work here temporarily, to get trained and then send them back and then have them work (overseas) because the wages and the working conditions are a lot less strict.”
Feil feels that applications from some of Canada’s biggest companies may be spared a tough grilling by Service Canada about the qualifications they say are required for a job and about proof that they couldn’t find a Canadian to fill the role.
“What I think this sort of scandal shows is that some of these bigger companies may be getting a little bit of a pass.”
There is an intended public list of employers who broke the rules and are no longer eligible under the program, but it is empty.
Feil said it is easy to engineer an application for temporary foreign workers by making qualifications so specific that no Canadian would qualify. The program allows employers to pay foreign workers 15 per cent less than Canadians under changes made by the Conservative government.
The website Outsource Canada points out that in some provinces, the number of unemployed Canadians is almost equal to the number of foreign workers operating there. In Alberta, for instance, there were 84,465 temporary foreign workers and 103,800 unemployed Canadians last year.
The RBC scandal has “touched a nerve” in a way that past stories about Canadians losing jobs to foreigners have not, said Armine Yalnizyan, a senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Some Canadians were shocked at the audacity of Caterpillar Inc.’s decision to move 450 Canadian jobs to Indiana, just 36 hours after so-called right-to-work legislation making it more difficult for unions to organize had been signed into law there. The company closed its plant in London, Ont., after its workers refused to take a 50 per cent pay cut.
And news that Chinese-owned HD Mining had been granted permits to bring temporary foreign workers from China to a British Columbia coal mine because of a job requirement that employees speak Mandarin sparked a federal review of the system.
But neither story provoked the same sort of reaction as the RBC scandal, which brought the issue down to a very personal level in a way that most Canadians can identify with. RBC employee Dave Moreau, who shared his story with the CBC, was an IT professional – a job that was supposed to be “safe” in the post-industrial knowledge economy, Yalnizyan said.
“We’re told that the banks are the vaunted sector ... they look bulletproof, and then suddenly you see this older white guy saying, ‘I’m training my replacement who’s going to end up doing work in India’ and you think, ‘Oh, my God. That could be me,’” she said.
“It’s like ‘holy crow, what does it take to get and stay in the middle class?’ and I think that’s the heart of the anxiety.”
The story is part of the “overall thrust” of companies’ seeking lower wages, particularly in the wake of the financial crisis, she said.
“With slow growth everywhere, the one way to crank up profits is by reducing your costs, and the one cost you can control is worker’s wages,” she said.
“The question is why should we be rooting for the banks or any form of economic growth if it is always for and about somebody else?”
Simon Kiss, a political scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University, says the story blew up because it comes at a time when the economy and jobs have been top of mind for Canadians since the recession.
“I don’t know that this has so much to do with RBC in particular,” he said, agreeing that the level of anger is not common.
“There’s kind of a latent reservoir of concern in public opinion for their financial security,” and corporations and foreigners are common targets of displaced anger during times of heightened insecurity, he added.
“I don’t know if people are making the connection between the hoards of cash, the healthy balance sheets that corporations have and the why workers are being outsourced,” Kiss said.
He isn’t convinced that this moment of heated debate on the future of labour in Canada will result in lasting change.
“The challenge for people interested in changing the policy is a) are they going to be able to sustain the public’s visceral reaction? and b) are they going to be able to get people to make the links between what is happening in this particular issue and something more general.”]]>Bill 85, Saskatchewan Employment Act, Erodes Union Power, Sets New Tone For Labour Relations In Canadatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-09T06:31:38-04:002013-04-09T08:58:31-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
The Saskatchewan Employment Act, also known as Bill 85, appears to contain only the least contentious changes to labour relations examined in a controversial government consultation paper that contemplated abolishing one of the labour movement’s most powerful tools – mandatory payment of union dues.
Still, changes that made it into the bill, which is slated to go to committee stage this week and is expected to be passed by the end of the spring session, have opponents fearing a serious erosion of union power, and champions proclaiming a new era of provincial labour relations that is fairer to employers.
Both sides of the debate agree that Bill 85, of which little is known outside the province, leaves the door open for U.S. “right-to-work” style laws that have made headlines in Canada since December, when border state and union stronghold Michigan became the 24th state to make compulsory union membership illegal.
Such laws have become increasingly popular since the recession as a means to lure business into economically-depressed states, but have been panned by critics like U.S. President Barack Obama, who says the title is a misnomer for laws that really mean “the right to work for less money.”
There have been calls in Canada by Conservative politicians at both the federal and provincial levels for similar changes and a debate over the merits of the Rand formula, a staple of Canadian labour relations that requires all employees in a unionized environment to pay union dues regardless of whether they join.
Saskatchewan’s bill was introduced to the provincial legislature in December – just as Michigan passed its own controversial legislation – after a months-long public consultation process that contemplated, among other changes to Saskatchewan’s labour laws, rejection of the Rand formula – a prospect that sparked the ire of organized labour and was left out of the final bill.
“While we're happy that right-to-work and elimination of the Rand formula didn’t make it into the new bill, there’s a lot of problems with the existing bill,” said Saskatchewan Federation of Labour president Larry Hubich.
“There’s a whole bunch of crap in there that – while it isn’t overt right to work – is purely intended to weaken unions.”
Those changes include mandating union transparency, redefining a “supervisory position”, and the introduction of voluntary employer recognition of unions that will not be protected under several sections of the act. The bill also proposes other amendments, such as expanding the maximum amount of hours allowed in a standard work day to 10 from eight and indexes minimum wage to inflation.
Bill 85 consolidates 12 disparate pieces, or about 900 pages, of labour legislation that the governing Saskatchewan Party says were outdated and made laws difficult to find and follow.
Premier Brad Wall’s government proposed the overhaul after legislation to limit strikes by public sector employees was struck down by the Court of Queen’s Bench in February 2012.
The government launched an appeal, which is expected to wrap up this year, as well as a broader update of the province’s labour laws.
It released a consultation paper last May that highlighted areas it was open to changing; including essential services legislation, limits on working hours, changes to minimum wages and, perhaps most controversially, the payment of union dues.
Should union members be able to vote on how their union dues can be used in a secret ballot vote?
Should union members be able to stipulate what their dues are used for?
Should union members be able to opt out of paying that portion of union dues that is not used for labour relations purposes?
To some, re-examining the Rand formula appeared radical in a province with booming economic growth; one of the lowest unemployment rates in Canada, at four per cent; one of the highest rates of unionization, at 35 per cent; and a history of left-leaning policies.
Don Morgan, the province’s Minister of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety, said the questions surrounding union dues were included after the party heard the issue raised on many doorsteps during the 2011 election campaign.
“We included everything that we thought we wanted to hear from people on; it didn't necessarily mean that we supported it,” he said.
“But when we went through the consultation process ... the people said, ‘No, we don’t want to revisit this.’”
Dionne Pohler, a business professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said the bill appears to be “pro-business” but not as “anti-union” as she had expected after reading some of the proposals contained in the consultation document.
“They posed them as questions, but there was a lot of very, very obvious right-to-work stuff in it.” she said.
Still, Pohler said, the new bill contains elements that could weaken unions, although the effects remain unclear, as many of the more difficult details of the bill (including the section dealing with the essential services bill still before the courts) have yet to be worked out. Her biggest problem with the legislation is how quickly the government has moved to push the complex set of laws through.
Some of the bill’s elements, such as voluntary recognition of unions by employers, could be a slippery slope that leads to an erosion of union power, Pohler said.
Voluntary recognition could streamline the union formation process by allowing a union with employer backing to bypass Labour Relations Board certification.
Certification can be a taxing and laborious process lasting up to two years, said Steve McLellan, CEO of the Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce.
“There’s a natural adversarial environment when a business is being unionized, and it’s a distraction to productivity,” he said.
The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour’s Larry Hubich says the practice encourages watered down, employer-friendly unions that risk making favourable sweetheart deals at the expense of workers’ interests.
Labour groups also point out that the bill does not require the union to demonstrate it has support from the workers and contains a clause allowing employers to end their recognition, but no recourse for employees to renounce the group or question its legitimacy.
The bill is also one of the few in Canada that requires unions to provide audited financial statements to their members and disclose the results of all member votes, a practice that many unions say they are upholding voluntarily, but one that could also cause financial hardship for smaller unions.
Morgan said the new rules were adopted because many people said they wanted to know how their dues are spent and how members voted, without being singled out by asking at a union meeting.
Inspired by the federal government’s Bill C-377, which enraged labour groups, the less stringent provincial bill could be deemed unnecessary if C-377 is adopted, Morgan said.
Union groups are also troubled by the bill’s narrowing of the definition of “employees” who can be included in a bargaining unit, which they say interferes with employees rights to belong to the union of their choice. It expands the definition of supervisory position to include those assigning and monitoring quality of work; those who schedule hours of work or overtime; and those whose duties include confidential access to records on labour relations, business planning or policy advice.
That will not only mean a decrease in union membership and funds, Pohler said, but also can “really upset the balance that organizations have struck” and cause friction between workers.
But Morgan said the new criteria eliminate conflicts of interest, such as union members who know confidential information about the employer during a collective agreement.
Hubich questions the agenda of a government whose Ministry of the Economy is run by an MLA who once proposed right-to-work legislation himself.
Bill Boyd, now the province’s Minister of the Economy, tabled the unsuccessful “Saskatchewan Right To Work Act” bill in 1998 that aimed to eliminate the mandatory payment of union dues.
Premier Brad Wall himself has mused about the Rand formula and questioned in the legislature in May whether young people should have to pay union dues.
He clarified his belief that individuals should not be allowed to opt out of union dues, but said he is willing to consider whether certain groups – such as students, young people or the disabled – should be let off the hook.
Morgan said the issue is off the government’s radar for the near future.
There are still provincial business organizations, however, that believe Bill 85 does not go far enough, and which continue to lobby against the Rand formula.
The Saskatchewan Chamber of Commerce argued in its submission to the consultation process for right-to-work-style laws, but also recognized they may not be palatable.
“Members of unions in Saskatchewan should be allowed to opt out of paying union dues while still being allowed to work within a unionized environment,” the group said.
“By allowing unionized employees to opt out of paying union dues or being able to choose what the dues are allocated toward, it would encourage the unions to provide better value to their members in order to ensure that they would not opt out of contributing.”
CEO Steve McLellan said the bill’s greatest accomplishment is increasing transparency and fairness from the unions. Still, he believes the government should have gone further in confronting the issue of mandatory union dues.
“Am I shocked that the government backed away from it? Not at all. Do we stand by that it makes sense? Absolutely.”
“There are some elements of the union environment that are holy grails, and one of them is if you work in a union environment, you’ve got to pay the piper.”
Still, he believes the new legislation puts Saskatchewan “ahead of the pack” compared with the rest of Canada.
“The Saskatchewan model of labour renewal, its footprints will be in other provinces very soon,” he said.
Karen Low, executive director of Merit Contractors Saskatchewan, the province’s only open shop association, said the changes in Bill 85 did not live up to her expectations, which included the elimination of Rand. She believes the door for further discussion is still open, but “not wide.”
“There’s a lot of people in this province and throughout Canada that don’t necessarily want to become a union member,” she said.
“One of our basic fundamental beliefs is that employees should have the freedom of choice, and that’s why our companies are open shop – because employees should have the choice whether they want to work union or non-union.”
Larry Hubich has “no doubt” anti-union groups continue to lobby the government on right to work, but he says the only way to find out is through an access to information request as the government has fallen short of its promise to create a lobbyist database.
He questions why it has taken so long for the government to actually create a lobbyist registry while having no hesitation about consolidating 12 complex pieces of labour legislation into one within the span of a year.
Labour groups are calling on the government to postpone a decision on the bill until more is known, but Morgan believes his government has done enough consultation on the bill, and he is confident it is balanced.
“We know we’re not going to make everybody happy with it. That’s not the nature of how labour law ever is,” he said.
“I think we’ve had good input from everybody, and I don’t think prolonging the process will add anything to the end product.”
]]>Energy East Pipeline: What You Need To Know About TransCanada's Latest Plantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-05T05:28:36-04:002013-04-05T09:09:43-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
The TransCanada Corp. project, the Energy East Pipeline, would move oil from Alberta and Saskatchewan to ports and refineries in Atlantic Canada.
If it is approved along with Keystone XL (which would pump oilsands crude to refineries in Texas and then abroad) and the Northern Gateway project (which would push oil across British Columbia to a port in Kitimat, B.C. for export), Canadian crude would be pumped underground in three directions: east, west and south.
This would be good news for Canadian oil companies looking for new markets. Demand from the U.S., where the vast majority of Canadians crude is currently shipped, is expected to dwindle in the coming decade as the country looks to become energy self-sufficient.
Meanwhile, global oil demand — especially in Asia’s rapidly developing markets — is expected to skyrocket. In order to benefit from that increase in demand for Canada’s supply, pipeline supporters argue the country needs to build capacity to ship the product to market.
The west-east pipeline proposal is unique in that it would ship oil both for use in Eastern Canada, which could help lower pump prices for Atlantic Canadians, as well as create another channel for Canadian crude to be exported overseas.
Here’s a primer on the latest pipeline to enter the conversation on Canada’s energy future.
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What is the west-east pipeline?
Calgary-based TransCanada Corp., the company behind Keystone, plans to build a pipeline that would ship mostly light oil, but also heavy crude, from oil rich Western provinces across the country the East Coast.
The Energy East Pipeline could have the capacity to transport as many as 850,000 barrels of crude oil per day beginning in 2017.
The plan is to convert about 3,000 kilometres of an existing natural gas pipeline and add an additional 1,400 kilometres of new pipeline.
What's the argument for a west-east pipeline?
Oil from Western Canada is essentially landlocked, making it difficult to move to international markets, which drives down its price by as much as $40 a barrel compared to the world standard.
It is also difficult to ship Western crude across the country to Atlantic Canada, which instead relies on foreign sources of oil, a situation that is less than ideal in a country that has so much of its own oil waiting to be sold.
TransCanada says the pipeline could reduce the need to import foreign oil to process at refineries in Eastern Canada, while Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver argues that the Energy East Pipeline could deliver Canadian oil to large energy consumers in Asia, in addition to making the country less dependent on foreign oil.
In addition, a lack of pipelines to export oil has left a glut of oilsands crude sitting in a bottleneck in the U.S. Midwest, which has depressed Canadian oil prices compared to the U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, which in turn trades at a discount to the cost of Brent crude. Those low prices have cost the Canadian and Alberta governments millions in lost royalties.
What is the status of the Energy East Pipeline?
TransCanada has launched a formal process to solicit long-term commitments from companies interested in having their crude shipped east. The process is open until June and will help the company determine the commercial viability of the project. It says it has already determined the project is technically and economically possible. The company plans to seek regulatory approvals later this year if the current phase is successful. If all goes according to plan, the pipeline is expected to ready for shipments by 2017.
What is the pipeline’s route?
The exact route will be determined after a public and regulatory review, but the starting point would be a new tank terminal in Hardisty, Alta. Three other terminals would be built along the line: one in Saskatchewan, another in the Quebec City area and a third near Saint John., N.B. The line would be about 4,400 kilometres long, including the segment already built for TransCanada’s natural gas line. New sections will need to be built in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Eastern Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.
Where will the oil go?
Crude from the pipeline would be shipped to energy-hungry markets in Asia and elsewhere, as well as to refineries and eventually consumers in the Atlantic provinces.
The proposed terminals in Quebec City and Saint John would include facilities for marine tanker loading for export. The project would also include delivery to existing Quebec refineries in the Montreal and Quebec City areas, as well as a large Irving Oil refinery in Saint John.
What are the potential environmental issues?
Environmentalists argue the pipeline could put waterways and communities along its route at risk as well as add the potential of a major oil spill on the east coast from export tankers waiting to take the crude abroad.
Because oilsands product emits an estimated five to 15 per cent more carbon than conventional oil, refining more of it in Canada would likely increase the country's total carbon emissions. However, the U.S Defence department recently determined that emissions from transporting and using fuel from oil sands was not significantly different from those made with conventional oil.
What are the potential challenges?
Technical issues include relatively small refineries on Canada's east coast that have only limited capacity to refine tarry bitumen and a short-term potential overcapacity if all three proposed pipelines are completed on schedule between 2015 and 2018.
But the more immediate obstacle is from environmentalists who warn, among other potential risks, that the plans to convert a gas pipeline to oil could pollute Canadian sources of waters. Vocal criticism from environmentalists and First Nations groups have held up the approval process for both Northern Gateway and Keystone.
The project will be subject to public and regulatory reviews.
What are the potential political hurdles?
Politicians appear to be lining up behind the idea of a west to east pipeline. Potentially because 3,000 kilometres of the project is already in the ground, the proposal suggests refining at least some of the oil at home, which could reduce high gas prices in Atlantic Canada.
The project has the support of the federal government as well as the provinces of Alberta and New Brunswick and support in principle from Quebec. Federal Liberals have also expressed support, and even NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, who is staunchly opposed to Northern Gateway, has voiced support.
Would this pipeline render Keystone and/or Northern Gateway unnecessary?
According to the industry, all three lines are necessary if Canada wants to meet its export potential in the coming decades. The west-east pipeline would complement, rather than replace, the other two pipelines and build capacity to ship oil west east and south, the industry argues.
What are the benefits for Canada?
Drivers in Atlantic Canada currently pay as much as 20 per cent more to fill up than those in the Western provinces. Among other factors driving prices higher, they are paying a premium to import foreign oil, while Canadian oil sits ready for use.
Proponents say the pipeline will create a new domestic market for Western Canadian oil, as well as potentially open a new door for international export.
In addition, the project could contribute to job creation and economic growth, with some estimates saying it has the potential to create thousands of jobs during construction and a few hundred permanent positions. ]]>Tax Deadline Canada: More Tax-Filers Opting To Do It Themselves, BMO Saystag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2013-04-03T00:18:32-04:002013-04-03T08:10:51-04:00Sunny Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/sunny-freeman/
BMO Nesbitt Burns’ latest tax study, released Wednesday, found that 46 per cent of respondents said they will prepare their own returns ahead of the April 30 tax filing deadline, rather than rely on a tax professional, family member or friend. Forty-two per cent said they will opt for someone else to file for them.
The findings are a mirror image of last year’s results, when 46 per cent said they wanted someone else to deal with their taxes.
The trend toward self-filing is growing as households look to pare expenses like accountants and as tax software becomes a simpler alternative to the tedium of pencilling in numbers from line to line.
More than one third – 35 per cent – of those surveyed said they would use tax software to file, “an indication of the country’s growing adoption of and comfort with technology,” BMO said.
“Think of in the past when we were all writing out our tax returns... . You have to do 15 calculations just because of one change in a number,” said John Waters, vice-president, head of tax and estate planning at BMO Nesbitt Burns.
“(Software) just makes the process easier, and it’s more user friendly than it has been in the past, certainly more than writing out the tax returns.”
Of the 5.9 million returns processed by the Canada Revenue Agency already this year, the vast majority, 91 per cent, have been filed online, with just nine per cent filed on paper, according to data as of March 25.
The majority of those, 56 per cent, have been submitted by third parties through E-file, while 35 per cent have been filed by individuals through Netfile.
There have been about 400,000 fewer returns filed so far this year than during the same period of 2012, when 83 per cent were filed electronically, suggesting the proportion of electronic filings this year could be even higher when the portrait is complete after the April 30 deadline.
Tax experts believe the rise of DIY software will render self-filing even more popular in the coming years.
Cleo Hamel, a senior tax analyst at H&R Block, said a number of clients who used to come through their doors every year have switched to the company’s DIY software filing system. She believes all returns could eventually be filed online.
“Doing it yourself might be one of those things that just happens, you just get used to it,” she said.
Tax software that has emerged from H&R Block, Intuit’s Turbo Tax and Canadian competitor Ufile, are more cost-effective than paying at least $69.99 for an H&R Block filing or thousands of dollars for a complicated return prepared by a certified accountant. They also allow filers to prepare their returns when they want and where they want – no appointment necessary. H&R Block’s software runs from $15.95, while Turbo Tax starts at $17.99 for its most basic package and UFile starts at $15.95 for an individual.
As H&R Block’s network of tax consultants loses customers to tax software, the company is in a heated competition with Turbo Tax. In the United States, H&R Block is reportedly considering legal action against Turbo Tax for commercials suggesting that H&R Block uses experts “with no tax experience necessary.”
The rise of tax software comes as the CRA – striving to become leaner and more efficient – is encouraging Canadians to file online and have refunds channelled through a direct deposit to their bank account rather than receive a physical cheque.
It has removed the necessity of an access code delivered by mail that had been required in previous years, allowing consumers to file returns with their social insurance number and date of birth for security. It also cut off its Telefile system that allowed those with very simple returns to call them in and has stopped sending out paper return packages to discourage filing on paper.
But even though tax software makes self-filing easier, there will always be some Canadians who would rather pay someone else to deal with the hassle of the return.
“There are still a large number of people who hate that whole aspect, and it has nothing to do with tax, they’re just not number people,” Hamel said.
“Whether you do it yourself or you use a third party, I think it depends on where you are and what kind of tax return you have ... if the individual doesn’t understand the complexity they won't do it themselves.”
Gabe Hayos, vice-president of taxation at the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, said that while most Canadians still use third-party preparers for their returns, he is not surprised by the trend toward DIY.
“As the technology improves and the software gets cheaper, people are probably at the point of buying, so this may be a trend that we see going forward.”
Many organizations, including the CRA, are encouraging self-prepared returns, and technology is the driver. Hayos is not concerned that the trend could spell the end of tax experts; rather, he believes more self-filing could free advisers to help with the more technical and complicated aspects of tax preparation.
“It’s advantageous for, frankly, the cost of preparing and the better usage of advisers, because they’re used for what they do best, which is things that are unique or unusual to deal with.”
The BMO survey was conducted online among 1,002 Canadians between March 15 and March 19. The margin of error for a probability sample of that size is plus or minus 3.1 per cent 19 times out of 20. ]]>