If you have been following the President Trumps Trade War with China (and to a lesser extent, Canada, Mexico and Europe) you might think it will be good for US workers in the long run. It turns out that after nearly three years of increasingly aggressive trade sanctions that China has been hurt, but shockingly it has actually resulted in INCREASED imports to the United States on net. Here are the facts: Manufacturing companies are leaving China, but they are…
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…
You probably already knew you could vote: on election day in by joining thousands of people in line in limited site advance polls with dozens of people in line by mail in ballot but did you know you can vote NOW at ANY of the 500 temporary or permanent Elections Canada offices? Between now and October 15th, 2019 from 9am to 9pm you can just walk in with your ID. You do NOT need to have your voter card, although…
This topic is a departure from our usual focus on politics, tech and China but we thought it made an excellent point in a funny way you would like. As a… lets go with ‘gruff’ person myself, I sadly see tiny parts of Coleman Sweeney in me (pun intended!) and I have signed up for organ donation too. Be an asshole and sign up! In most countries you just have to fill our an organ donor card or sign the…
It is oft said by those who disapprove of carbon taxes that: Carbon taxes are ineffective Carbon taxes target the wrong people The Canadian Federal Government does not have right to impose a carbon tax All three of these statements are demonstrably incorrect. University of Ottawa Professor of Law and Economics, Stewart Elgie, explains that the dissenting judges in the Saskatchewan and Ontario carbon tax cases are not disagreeing with the principle that the Federal Government has the right to…
There are many that think Huawei is just a puppet of the Chinese government and an equal number that think the Huawei bans and bad talk are nothing more than hype designed to stifle a non-Western competitor. We recently wrote two articles explaining some of Huawei’s background: 10 Short Answers To Why Huawei is so Scary To Western Countries Who Owns Huawei? A Fascinating Story but neither our previous articles nor the political hype have clearly explained why countries should…
People typically purchase stocks in a company for two reasons: to make money from an increase in stock price over time to make money from dividends However, there is a third way to make money with stocks… a very risky way called ‘short selling’. What is Short Selling Stocks In Simple Terms? A ‘short’ as it is called in the financial industry is a bet against a companies stock. To short a stock, you ‘borrow’ shares from someone with a…
UPDATE: November 24, 2019 TMX announces that at the end of September 2019, there were 2200 constructions workers hired and that number was expected to grow to 3000 by the end of the year. UPDATED: July 21 2019 Since the start of the 2019, there have been many important events in the Trans Mountain Pipeline saga and it is easy to get lost. To clarify the issues we have appended the following entries to our master list “Complete Trans Mountain…
A man was looking for a place to sit in a crowded university library. He asked a girl: “Do you mind if I sit beside you?” The girl, in a loud voice, replied, “NO, I DON’T WANT TO SPEND THE NIGHT WITH YOU!” All the people in the library started staring at the man, who was deeply embarrassed and moved to another table. After a couple of minutes, the girl walked quietly to the man’s table and said with a…
If you live in Alberta, BC, Ontario… ok… Canada, or the US or UK or Australia… ok… if you live on planet earth, you have heard about Carbon Taxes. Those that are for them claim they will cure all environmental ills and those against claim they are just another government tax grab. We dug into the facts and came up with 5 Myths about Carbon Taxes we thought you would find interesting: MYTH 1 – Carbon Taxes Don’t Change Behaviour…
If a company has a data breach involving personal data (i.e. staff names, addresses, Social Insurance numbers), there are three laws that may apply in Canada: 1 – PIPEDA – Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act – Canada PIPEDA is Canada’s federal law covering cyber privacy and mandates that “… notification shall be given as soon as feasible…”. We have called the Office of the Privacy Commissioner who is the regulator and asked for clarification on what “…as soon…
The first time you heard of antitrust laws being used to break up large companies you likely thought that that it would result in a destruction wealth. Depending upon your political persuasion or past experience with the company, that may or may not have bothered you. However, it is important to remember that the driver behind antitrust law is to increase competition and innovation, there by creating more wealth. In fact, breaking up large companies is usually advantageous to the…
In the video below Canada’s top civil Servant Michael Wernick explains what is wrong with the media coverage of the SNC-Lavalin Case. He starts by explaining that there are many things in Canadian Politics that worry him: Inflammatory language “like treason and traitor” from social media and supposedly responsible politicians alike Physical violence against politicians “I am afraid someone is going to get shot this year during the political campaign” Foreign interference Reputation of people trying to help their country being…
There is much talk about “Deferred Prosecution Agreements” because of the SNC Lavalin bribery scandals. The insinuation from many media outlets is that a Deferred Prosecution Agreement lets companies go without punishment. This is far from how DPA’s actually work. Here are the top five things everyone should know about Deferred Prosecution Agreements: 1 – What a Deferred Prosecution Agreement Is: A Deferred Prosecution Agreement effectively has the company plead guilty and do whatever the Government prosecutor wants them to…
We wanted to know more about Canada’s oil refineries so we spent a few hours collecting information and mapping it. We show where the refineries are, the year they were constructed and how much they produce. The bubbles are scaled correctly to give you a sense of proportion at a glance. Click to Expand Map Location Year Constructed Operator Details Type Capacity (in 1000s) Lat Long Burnaby, BC 1936 Parkland Fuel (formerly Chevron) Refinery 55 49.1 123 Prince George,…
Below are the biggest conventional oil discoveries of 2018 grouped by the country they were found in. As you can see, these top 10 countries alone found more than 6 Billion of Barrels of Oil Equivalent. Those that want to “keep it in the ground” are just not realizing that oil is a global commodity. As large as Canada and the US are at producing it, if we don’t others will. That means blocking pipeline like the Northern Gateway, Energy…
UPDATED: JULY 19, 2019 We spent many hours pouring over old records, press releases and news articles to generate this complete time line of all things Trans Mountain. Many of the entries are linked to specific websites as references. Entries without link were mostly taken from THIS file sourced from the now defunct BCWaters.org site. We also have picture gallery of both old and new Trans Mountain images HERE. 1947 Feb Oil discovered near Leduc (near Edmonton) Alberta 1951 Mar…
At first glance, the November 30th 2018 announcement that Marriott Hotels / Starwood had their reservation database hacked and 500 million client records stolen seems like just another data breach that we have all become accustomed to. However the Marriott breach is no run of the mill event, here’s why: 1 – The Marriott breach is the third largest breach in history: Marriott is the owner of some major brands that you likely have had dealing with and those were…
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