The chairman of the company that co-owns the Utah coal mine where six workers are trapped has campaigned to improve mine safety - but his companies have incurred millions of dollars in fines over the last 18 months.
Must be a compliance problem.
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Their Satanic Majesties Request is a psychedelic rock album by The Rolling Stones recorded and released in 1967. Its title is a play on the "Her Britannic Majesty requests and requires..." text that appears inside a British passport. Although, initially dismissed as a poor attempt to match The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the album is now considered one of psychedelic rock's greatest albums.
Why don't we sing this song all together?
Open our minds let the pictures come
And if we close all our eyes together
Then we will see where we all come from
Pictures of us spin the circling sun
Pictures of us show that we're all one
In a carefully orchestrated leak, the Charest government has served notice that it wants a new constitutional round to entrench what it calls "a Charter of Open Federalism," adopting the language of Stephen Harper's famous Quebec City speech, and effectively throwing his own words back at him."Open Federalism" coming from a guy who says; " War Is Peace"
In a Canadian Press story played prominently by Le Devoir yesterday, Quebec Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Benot Pelletier was all too available to confirm that Quebec would be "very, very insistent" on advancing open federalism on the division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces and specifically limiting the federal spending power.
For one thing, this is too clever by half. For another, it is a complete misread of both the political temperature and the public's mood in the Rest of Canada. However disposed Harper, as a proponent of classical division- of-powers federalism, might have been to such a gambit before Charest blew it on the fiscal imbalance, the prime minister can hardly entertain it in the context of Quebec's having got what it asked for, and coming back for more.
And the irony in this is that it will be public sector workers pensions that will probably ending up owning it.
The government has reportedly received advice that Edmonton's Canada Place is the most valuable of the nine buildings being considered for sale. It is worth $265 million if sold under a 25-year lease-back deal.Canada Place was valued at $152 million when the Treasury Board approved its construction in 1984. But in 1988 Kenneth Dye, then the federal auditor general, reported that the new Edmonton home of 3,200 federal civil servants would end up costing taxpayers $100 million too much.
Part of the extra cost was the result of a decision to have Canada Place built privately under a lease-purchase deal instead of having the government build it.
But Dawson wasn't sure how a benefit for business can work for the government.
"They're not in business and they're not necessarily going to re-employ that money at any kind of a return."
As for possible buyers for Canada Place, Dawson said large pension funds may be interested.
See:The Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) now invests 45% of its assets outside Canada, up from 36% in 2005. Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund increased the percentage of non-Canadian assets in its equities portfolio from 56% in 2005 to 66% in 2006. OMERS has increased its foreign assets from 29% in 2000 to 39% in 2006.
With almost $500-billion in combined assets, the five top Canadian pension funds are getting a bigger piece of the global play book.
Not surprisingly, Canadian pension funds are now viewed as virtual private equity groups, says David Mongeau, of U.K.-based Avington International, a global mergers and acquisitions advisory firm that stickhandled a number of recent deals including the Legacy REIT sale with Caisse de depot, and the BCIMG purchase of the Canadian Hotel Income Properties Real Estate Investment Trust.
"Nearly all large scale-farmers would say take away the monopoly," says Gary Pike, a Calgary-based agricultural consultant whose clients include many of the country's most successful growers. "There's a fundamental belief [among the public] that the board is bringing a big premium for farmers, but full-time farmers can pick off opportunities much better than the wheat board," he said. "They can take their marketing into their own hands."The corporatization of farming in Canada continues supported by the Harper government.Mr. Doerksen is a good example of what he's talking about. Something of a rarity today, Mr. Doerksen is a prosperous farmer. At a time when more than half of prairie farmers are either losing money or barely breaking even, the 32-year-old university graduate has annual revenues in excess of $1-million and takes three holidays a year. Last winter, he took his family to Costa Rica.
He has a degree in agriculture and regards his farm as a business as opposed to a livelihood. He's at home in the arcane world of agricultural futures, and he's equally adept at building relationships with customers. He recently bought a fleet of trucks as a way to provide better service to the food companies that buy his lentils and other non-wheat board crops.
Long-term farming decline continues
Thousands more farms and farmers disappeared through the first half of this decade, continuing a steady long-term decline that began six decades ago.But thanks to increases in efficiency, the size of farms and government support, the value of their produce has increased, and increased more than their costs.
Those are among the key findings of Statistics Canada's "Snapshot of Canadian Agriculture" from its 2006 census, released Wednesday, that also revealed there are more "million dollar" farms than when the previous census was conducted in 2001 but also more farmers working off the farm to supplement their farm incomes, especially in the economically booming Western provinces.
Farms, meanwhile, got bigger, with the average size increasing eight per cent to 295 hectares from 273, leaving the amount of land devoted to farming in Canada virtually unchanged at just over 67.6 million hectares.
While Canadians often think of Canada as a major agricultural nation, Statistics Canada noted that a comparison with seven other countries that have conducted a farm census over the past decade revealed that Canada "despite its size has by far the smallest proportion of total land that is agricultural at only 7.3 per cent, mainly because of soil quality and the nature of the Canadian climate and terrain."
And Canada had the third-smallest amount of land devoted to farming of the eight, which included the U.S., Britain, France, China, Brazil, Australlia, and Argentina.
Still, Canada's farmland was increasingly productive.
Meanwhile, the proportion of farms with inflation adjusted gross receipts of $1 million or more increased to 2.6 per cent of all farms in 2006 from 1.8 per cent, and those "million-dollar" farms accounted for more than a third of all farm receipts.
Hog farms were the most likely to be "million dollar" farms, with 18 per cent of them falling into that category, followed by poultry and egg farms. In contrast, only two per cent of field crop farms, which are the most common in Canada, were.
Two-thirds of farms, or most, had gross receipts of between $250,000 and $1 million.
However, just 55.8 per cent of farms earned enough to cover their costs.
"Million dollar" farms were the most likely to cover their costs - 86 per cent did. However, more than one quarter of the smallest, with receipts of less than $25,000, also did, mostly fruit and vegetable farms, or greenhouse, nursery and floriculture operations, and many of them located in urban areas.
Still, nearly half of all farm operators also worked other jobs or businesses, up from just under 45 per cent in 2001, with 20.2 per cent working more than 40 hours in other jobs. Slightly fewer were working full time on the farm - 46.7 down from 47.7.
Report highlightsLIVESTOCK
- Hog farming accounts for only 2.6 per cent of all farm operations but 18 per cent of hog farms report gross receipts of more than $1 million.
- The number of beef farms declined even though the number of head of cattle increased. BSE knocked many farms out of business while surviving farms had to keep cows longer since they could not be exported.
- Fewer chickens are laying more eggs to meet consumer demand.
- Turkey farming increased and birds are getting bigger.CROPS
- The census found a shift from annual crops like wheat and barley to perennial crops such as alfalfa.
- Wheat, hay and canola are the top three crops grown in Canada.
- Blueberries beat out apples as the biggest fruit crop for the second consecutive census.
- Grape production for use by wineries grew by almost 15 per cent
- The area used for vegetable production decreased nearly 7 per cent.
- Sweet corn is the most popular vegetable, grown in almost one quarter of the total vegetable area.
- For the first time, maple sap was produced west of Ontario.ORGANIC FARMING
- The census counted both organic farms and for the first time farms transitioning to organic, which is why the numbers jumped from 2,230 to 15,511 farms or 6.8 per cent of all farms.
- Field crops are the dominant organic product.
In Alberta, 25,000 electricians, pipefitters, millwrights, plumbers and refigeration mechanics in the oilpatch are in intense negotiations for new contracts and another 5,000 could join them on strike by mid-August if talks break down. Electricians recently rejected a four-year deal offering 5%, 6.5%, 6.5% and 6.5%.See:The precedent for robust increases was recently set at Sun-cor Energy Inc., where 2,100 unionized won annual gains of 7%, 6% and 6% over three years, plus a $4,000 lump sum payment, up from a previous contract averaging 3.2% per year and no lump sum.
Meanwhile in the booming Alberta construction sector, wage settlements have gravitated toward the 7% to 8% range over the past two years, up from previous gains of 3% to 5%, said Stephen Kushner, president of Merit Contractors Association, representing non-union employers in the province. About 160,000 of the 200,000 construction workers in Alberta are open shop.
"We can all talk about core inflation and the niceties of that, but for the average person in Alberta, the overall inflation rate is 6%," said Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets.
No charges to be laid in friendly-fire death of Canadian soldier
Bre-X case an "embarrassment" for Canadian law, says expert
Judge sets aside Mulroney ruling on $470000
The U.S. asked an independent panel to resolve a dispute over a softwood lumber accord with Canada, saying the country is ignoring a cap on exports to the U.S. and that Canadian firms are still getting unfair subsidies.
Molson Coors profits rise on Canada business
Molson to close profitable Edmonton brewery, throwing more than 100 out of work
