Did you know that there is a hard pattern to the amount of effort put into projects and that this pattern can be seen in every from life, to sports, to meetings? That pattern is a “U”. When people are assigned a task they quickly meet and start thinking about the task at hand but then effort slumps until half way through the allotted time when effort substantially increases. In 1988 Connie Gersick from UCLA (now at Yale) wrote a…
Canada is a group of diverse territories held together with a brilliant formula that effectively transfers money from wealthy Provinces to poor Provinces, or so the story goes. The official name is ‘Equalization Payments’ and they are a core building block of Canadian confederation. For the first 75 years of Canada’s existence the money was transferred largely at the whim of the Federal Government but in 1957 a formal equalization formula was agreed upon. Unfortunately, the formula that is used…
It may be counter intuitive but Microsoft actually increased output by 40% in its 2500 person Japanese operations by mandating three day weekends in August 2019. Most of the performance gains came from: reduced meeting length the majority of meetings changed from one hour meetings to 30 minute meetings having more remote meetings primarily using Microsoft Teams More than 90% of staff said they preferred the 4 day work week to the traditional 5 day and Microsoft intends to run…
Today one of linchpins of Canadian energy, EnCana, announced it is changing its name, has a new logo and is moving its ‘domicile’ (legal/trading head office) to the United States. Of course, they claim that there will be no job losses in Canada but that is clearly not the way the real world works. Former employees of Nova, Nexen and Devon can tell you first hand the effect corporate mergers, acquisitions and relocations actually have on staff. Several analysts are…
Many students complain that they are overpaying for tuition. While angry student marches and high profile media events are main stay of student life, the reality of the post secondary education funding is quite a different story than you might expect. In reality, degree granting college and university students only pay about 25% of the cost of their education in Canada. According to Statistics Canada: “…The proportion of revenues from tuition fees has grown from 23.5% in 2011/2012 to 26.6%…
We found it difficult to source a simple table of the 2019 Canadian Federal election results but did find a list of vote tallies from midnight on Election day on the Elections Canada website. We cleaned up the data (removed 20+ fringe parties and unneeded columns) and make it available below. It is important to note that the results did change in some ridings but this table provided us with a base to work from in our article: If Greens…
The Green Party of Canada was on the fringe until the last two elections. Previously they had a logical platform that was very similar to the Conservatives but with a focus on clean energy and illogical rejection of Nuclear energy. However, Green positions have recently moved the far left, by Canadian standards. This repositioning of the party has put them in direct competition with the New Democratic Party for votes, as the Conservatives and Liberals attract nearly all of the…
For the October 21st 2019 Federal Election I applied for and was offered the position of Central Poll Supervisor in a small city near Calgary, Alberta. I was surprised by several things you may find interesting. In particular I was surprised at Elections Canada’s drive to ensure every Canadian votes. You might think that an odd finding but Elections Canada is a Government department and many of those are not known for their singular concern about the public. My seven…
The new NAFTA (aka North American Free Trade Agreement or United States Mexico Canada Agreement) has an interesting minimum wage requirement that is not well understood. Here are the key facts: USD $16/hour wage minimum is required on 40% of the components in cars and 45% of the components on trucks The $16/hour is required to be paid by the manufacturer to its EMPLOYEES and not the contracted suppliers to companies like GM, Chrysler and Ford $1.60 of that $16/hour…
The most straightforward form of government is a “majority” government. Majorities occur when a single party receives more than 50% of the seats. Minority and Coalition governments occur when a natural majority was not achieved, but what is the difference? What is a Minority Government: A minority government is formed when the party that wins the most seats, but less than 50% of the total, informally agrees to work another party (or parties) on specific areas of agreement to archive…
What happens to oil pipelines in a post oil world? Many people think the massive expenditures in pipelines result in a permanent oil infrastructure. The fact is that pipelines originally constructed to move oil are both reversed and repurposed all the time. The graphic to the right is from 2014 and shows that oil pipeline reversals and repurposing are not new. Here are some real world examples about what happens to old oil/gas pipelines. PIPELINE REVERSALS: Enbridge ‘Line 9’ reversed the…
It has been noted that during the gold rush most miners did not get rich, but the people who sold them their pick axes and dynamite certainty did. In the same vein Google has said it is not those with the most powerful computers that will win in the future, it is those with the most data. Perhaps electric cars are the same. Tesla just released amazing new version 3 electric charging stations in Regina Saskatchewan Canada: “…The new stations…
Proton Technologies of Calgary has taken existing technologies and combined them into a method or ‘process patent’ that gives them exclusive rights to produce hydrogen in the ground. This means that all of the CO2 and other greenhouse gases remain locked in the ground where they have been for millions of years. It also massively reduces the complexity and cost allowing Hydrogen to be produced 80% to 95% cheaper than the current process. At that rate, hydrogen will be several…
A few weeks ago, a small privately held Calgary startup named Proton Technologies announced they were successfully generating cheap hydrogen from old oil fields. Today we interviewed their CEO, Grant Strem, and learned that the company already had net positive cash flow with big plans for the near future. Producing Hydrogen with ZERO Emissions at 20% of the Cost? Keeping the process in the ground means there is no expensive carbon capture requirements. The process, shown to the right, produces…
A analysis by Statistics Canada of 2016 Canadian Provincial budgets shows that Alberta spends an average of 10% more on services than the Canadian average. Albertans spend a shocking 26% more than the Canadian average on Education. Government expense by function per capita, 2016 Alberta Canada Alberta Premium Health $4,944.00 $4,475.00 $ 469.00 Education $3,047.00 $2,455.00 $ 592.00 Economic affairs $2,112.00 $1,275.00 $ 837.00 Social protection $1,393.00 $1,770.00 $ (377.00) General public services $ 947.00 $1,658.00 $ (711.00) Public order…
In a word, yes. Average spending on health care is now over 40% of all Canadian Provincial expenses: “…health care spending as a share of program spending and health care spending as a share of the economy, shows clearly that the last 15 years (ie., between 2001 to 2016) saw provincial governments increase health care spending at an unsustainable pace. Indeed, during this period, health care spending grew by 116.4 percent, outpacing growth in other program spending (94.6 percent) and…
Lets start by explaining that yes, you can acquire Ontario high school credits while in China, mostly through schools that have paid to be be certified by the various Ministries of Education. On its face, that sounds like a good idea for two reasons: It brings in revenue to the school system in the form of certification fees It provides a Canadian ‘how to think’ curriculum in a part of the world where education frequently relates to ‘what to think’ So…
A Canadian company named Proton Technology has developed the worlds first large scale, cheap method of producing ultra-clean hydrogen from oil. “This technique can draw up huge quantities of hydrogen while leaving the carbon in the ground. When working at production level, we anticipate we will be able to use the existing infrastructure and distribution chains to produce H2 for between 10 and 50 cents per kilo. This means it potentially costs a fraction of gasoline for equivalent output” said…
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