Finding new life for wine-grape residue

Chardonnay pomace may be rich in health-enhancing compounds

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS

Research News

 

California produces nearly 4 million tons of world-class wine each year, but with that comes thousands of tons of residue like grape skins, seeds, stems and pulp. What if scientists could harness that viticultural waste to help promote human health?

Maybe they can, according to new research from food scientists at the University of California, Davis. In a study published in the journal LWT - Food Science and Technology, the team discovered a wealth of potentially health-enhancing compounds and sugar molecules called oligosaccharides within chardonnay wine-grape pomace.

Oligosaccharides are found in many plant and animal tissues, including human breast milk. Recent advances have revealed oligosaccharides' vast potential to support intestinal health.

"We were surprised by the diversity of the oligosaccharides in the chardonnay wine grapes, including the presence of structural elements found in mother's milk," said Amanda Sinrod, lead author and a master's candidate working with Professor Daniela Barile.

The UC Davis team analyzed the molecular composition of chardonnay residue provided by Jackson Family Wines and Sonomaceuticals, a company founded by two food industry businesswomen to develop new uses for viticulture waste. Wine-grape pomace, or marc, comprises about 30 percent of the original wine-grape material, and much of it is left to decompose in the sun.

Potential source for food or supplements

"It's all about sustainable wine production and finding a second life for wine grapes," Barile explained. "Up to this point, chardonnay marc has been regarded as a byproduct of winemaking with little or no value. Early results are encouraging that marc could be a valuable source for oligosaccharides and other compounds that support health and nutrition."

UC Davis researchers were among the first to decode the magic of oligosaccharides in mother's milk. The sugar molecules don't nourish the baby directly. Instead, they feed a strain of bacteria in the infant's intestines that helps build immunity against illness and disease. That discovery is helping scientists develop methods and products to improve human health.

Barile's lab innovates technologies for recovering health-enhancing compounds from various agricultural and industrial waste streams, such as whey, legumes and chickpeas. Her team previously discovered oligosaccharides in both red and white wine residue and is pleased with preliminary findings from the chardonnay analysis.

"There is more research to be done, but early results are promising that chardonnay marc can become a source for developing supplements and other food products to support health," Barile said.

Oligosaccharides appeared to be especially abundant in the wine-grape skins. In earlier research, scientists detected oligosaccharides in the finished wine product, but not in large concentrations. Researchers didn't include bottled wine in this study.

The chardonnay marc samples were also rich in flavonoids, healthy compounds found in many fruits and vegetables. Researchers are exploring whether the oligosaccharides work independently or synergistically with these bioactive compounds to support intestinal health. The team is studying how growing conditions, vintages and processing might affect the health potential of viticulture waste.

"We observed significant differences in the relative abundance and type of oligosaccharides in different parts of the marc, so further research is needed to maximize their potential in food product design," Sinrod said.

###

The UC Davis team included Cooperative Extension Specialist Selina Wang and Xuequi Li with the Olive Center, and Mrittika Bhattacharya and Bruna Paviani with the Department of Food Science and Technology.

Taking down human traffickers through online ads

Algorithm designed to spot anomalies in data finds new purpose in stopping trafficking

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and McGill University have adapted an algorithm first developed to spot anomalies in data, like typos in patient information at hospitals or errant figures in accounting, to identify similarities across escort ads.

The algorithm scans and clusters similarities in text and could help law enforcement direct their investigations and better identify human traffickers and their victims, said Christos Faloutsos, the Fredkin Professor in Artificial Intelligence at CMU's School of Computer Science, who led the team.

"Our algorithm can put the millions of advertisements together and highlight the common parts," Faloutsos said. "If they have a lot of things in common, it's not guaranteed, but it's highly likely that it is something suspicious."

The team calls the algorithm InfoShield and presented a paper on their findings at this year's IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE).

According to the International Labor Organization, an estimated 24.9 million people are trapped in forced labor. Of those, 55% are women and girls trafficked in the commercial sex industry, where most ads are posted online. The same person may write ads for four to six victims, leading to similar phrasing and duplication among listings.

"Human trafficking is a dangerous societal problem which is difficult to tackle," lead authors Catalina Vajiac and Meng-Chieh Lee wrote. "By looking for small clusters of ads that contain similar phrasing rather than analyzing standalone ads, we're finding the groups of ads that are most likely to be organized activity, which is a strong signal of (human trafficking)."

To test InfoShield, the team ran it on a set of escort listings in which experts had already identified trafficking ads. The team found that InfoShield outperformed other algorithms at identifying the trafficking ads, flagging them with 85% precision. Perhaps more importantly, it did not incorrectly flag any escort listings as human trafficking ads when they were not. False positives can quickly erode trust in an algorithm, Faloutsos said.

Proving this success was tricky. The test data set contained actual ads placed by human traffickers. The information in these ads is sensitive and kept private to protect the victims of human trafficking, so the team could not publish examples of the similarities identified or the data set itself. This meant that other researchers could not verify their work.

"We were basically saying, 'Trust us, our algorithm works,'" Vajiac said.

To remedy this, the team looked for public data sets they could use to test InfoShield that mimicked what the algorithm looked for in human trafficking data: text and the similarities in it. They turned to Twitter, where they found a trove of text and similarities in that text created by bots.

Bots will often tweet the same information in similar ways. Like a human trafficking ad, the format of a bot tweet might be the same with some pieces of information changed. Rabbany said that in both cases -- Twitter bots and human trafficking ads -- the goal is to find organized activity.

Among tweets, InfoShield outperformed other state-of-the-art algorithms at detecting bots. Vajiac said this finding was a surprise, given that other algorithms take into account Twitter-specific metrics such as the number of followers, retweets and likes, and InfoShield did not. The algorithm instead relied solely on the text of the tweets to determine bot or not.

"That speaks a lot to how important text is in finding these types of organizations," Vajiac said.

###

The paper's authors are Christos Faloutos, Catalina Vajiac and Namyong Park from Carnegie Mellon University; Reihaneh Rabbany, Aayushi Kulshrestha and Sacha Levy from McGill University, Meng-Chieh Lee from National Chiao Tung University; and Cara Jones from Marinus Analytics.

COLLECTIVISM + MUTUAL AID = @

Life satisfaction among young people linked to collectivism

Loyalty to family and mutual assistance are important regardless of culture

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

Research News

 

An international group of scientists from Italy, the USA, China and Russia have studied the relationship between collectivism, individualism and life satisfaction among young people aged 18-25 in four countries. They found that the higher the index of individualistic values at the country level, the higher the life satisfaction of young people's lives. At the individual level, however, collectivism was more significant for young people. In all countries, young people found a positive association between collectivism, particularly with regard to family ties, and life satisfaction. This somewhat contradicts and at the same time clarifies the results of previous studies. Russia was represented in the research group by Sofya Nartova-Bochaver https://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/143572312, Professor at HSE University's School of Psychology. The results of the study have been published in the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being.

https://iaap-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/aphw.12259

What is this about?

Research shows that cultural factors play a significant role in explaining differences in indicators of subjective well-being and, in particular, life satisfaction.

Life satisfaction is one component of subjective well-being. It is an individual assessment of the correlation of living conditions with standards, a sense of correspondence between desires and needs on the one hand, and achievements and resources on the other.

Cultural factors include the values of individualism or collectivism. In general, an understanding of individualism is based on the assumption that people are independent of each other. It is a worldview centred on personal goals, uniqueness and control. Collectivism, on the other hand, assumes the importance of connections with others and mutual obligations.

Scientists distinguish between collectivism and individualism both at the cultural level (part of the national culture) and at the individual level (the individual's worldview). In this case, within the scope of the approach taken by the American psychologist Harry Triandis, individualism and collectivism can be considered in two dimensions -- horizontal and vertical:

• Vertical Individualism (VI) is characterized by a desire to be outstanding and gain status through competition with others.
• Horizontal Individualism (HI) is related to the desire to be unique, different from the group and able to rely on oneself.
• Vertical Collectivism (VC) is characteristic of people who emphasize the integrity of their group and maintain competition with outgroups (a group of people to which the individual feels no sense of identity or belonging), as well as the possible subordination of their desires to authority.
• Horizontal Collectivism (HC) is related to the desire to be like others, to follow common values, and to live interdependently without having to submit to authority.

The study's authors set out to discover how different dimensions of collectivism and individualism relate to life satisfaction in young people during early adulthood.

How was it studied?

The study involved 1,760 young boys and girls aged 18-25 from China, Italy, Russia and the USA -- countries that differ greatly in their individualistic values index. The average age of the respondents was around 20 years old. All of them university students, studying primarily social and behavioural sciences.

According to Hofstede's model, Italy and the United States are individualist cultures, while China and Russia are collectivist.

The study used special methods and questionnaires to identify individual levels of collectivism and individualism -- the Horizontal and Vertical Individualism and Collectivism Scale (INDCOL), as well as the level of life satisfaction -- the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). The influence of gender, age and cultural differences on life satisfaction was taken into account.

What were the findings?

At the country level, it was confirmed that individualism is closely linked to the degree of life satisfaction among young people. The higher the country's index of individualistic values, the more satisfied respondents are with their lives. Americans are the luckiest in this regard, as the USA has the highest individualism index, followed by Italians in second place and Russians and Chinese in third and fourth place, respectively.

At an individual level, the results were different -- life satisfaction showed a positive correlation with the two collectivist dimensions (vertical and horizontal) regardless of the type of culture. However, no significant correlations were found with either vertical or horizontal individualism.

The study showed that the degree of life satisfaction among young people is related to interdependence and social communication in different types of cultures. The researchers cite the example of Russians and Italians. For both, although some live in a collectivist country and others in an individualist one, life satisfaction is positively related to the successful fulfilment of social roles and obligations. Although this is to be expected, the transition to adulthood in Italy, as the authors note, is strongly intertwined with family relationships.

Previous research on American samples has not shown a relationship between life satisfaction and mutual social commitment. But this study did, for both levels of collectivism.

Overall, the fact that vertical collectivism, namely family ties and the obligation to take care of one's family, even at the expense of one's own needs, contributes positively to life satisfaction is unexpected and noteworthy, say the researchers. At the same time, the findings show correlation with a recent study proving that family and social relations are important basic components of happiness in different countries, regardless of gender and age.

Why is this needed?

Early adulthood is a period when there are still few social obligations and more opportunities to live out individualistic values. The original hypothesis of the study was that levels of life satisfaction are positively related to individualistic values at a personal level. Concluding this would have confirmed the results of much previous work. However, the results turned out to be the opposite.

The authors note that this study is more age-restricted than previous ones and also looks at the relationship between life satisfaction and different dimensions of individualism and collectivism. The new findings suggest that further research in this area is needed to clarify the particular influence of individualist and collectivist values on different aspects of subjective well-being.

Here, however, the researchers make it clear that this situation can occur not only because Americans and Italians are more satisfied with life, thanks to their countries' individualistic culture, but also because of differences in social inequality, the increased availability of opportunities and future life prospects.

Canadian bowler on his $100,000 win and why bowling should be in the Olympics

Special to National Post 

EARTH DAY 2021

© Provided by National Post Canadian bowler François Lavoie competes during the PBA Tours Super Slam at Bowlero Lanes in Annandale, Va. on Sunday, April 18, 2021. Lavoie has won the Guaranteed Rate PBA Super Slam. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-PBA Tour-Reinhold Matay *MANDATORY CREDIT* ORG XMIT: CPT650


By Ceilidh Young

Canadian bowler François Lavoie won the Guaranteed Rate PBA Super Slam last weekend in Annandale, VA, earning him US$100,000. The 28-year-old from Québec City was seeded fourth going into the tournament, where he beat the No. 1 seed Chris Via in the semi-final and advanced to the final, winning 247-202 over Kyle Troup.

Lavoie, who now makes his home in Wichita, KA, is a two-time U.S. Open Champion, and will now be headed to the PBA playoffs beginning April 24. Lavoie told the National Post he has never been feeling more confident and shared other insights about his game.

The interview was edited for clarity and length.

Q: What do you plan on doing with the prize money that you won?

A: I think most of it is going to go towards a house. I bought a house just last year, so a good chunk of it is gonna help pay that off.

Q: Oh, that’s great, as you probably know the housing market here in Canada is crazy.

A: I know, yeah. I’ve been looking because I’ve been trying to, eventually, maybe sometime in the future, try to move back to Canada.

Q: How did you get into bowling?

A: My dad was the one who got me in. He bowled a little, but he was never competitive or anything like that. But instead of trying to scramble to find babysitters all the time, they would take me to the bowling centre when he was bowling. They would turn on a lane next to them, and I would just throw some shots there and stuff like that. I honestly don’t remember any of it, but that’s the story my parents tell me.

Q: You continued to pursue bowling instead of another sport or hobby. Why bowling?

A: I get that question a lot, because it’s obviously not a popular sport like some of the other ones. I played a little bit of hockey, and tennis in the summer when I was younger as well, but bowling was what I did first, and it was something that I was good at from an early age. I started competing in junior tournaments around Québec City, and eventually around the province, and when you’re young and you’re doing something that you’re good at, its super-gratifying and it gives you some self-confidence. So that’s how it started with me, performing well and me winning tournaments at a young age — and I just kept doing it.

Q: So, your parents are the ones who got you bowling, what do they think about your career now?

A: They’re really happy for me, they have always been really supportive. My dad was the one who got me into it, and he was the one I spent all my time with in bowling centres around Québec City, around the province and eventually around the country. So, he’s always been really supportive, and he’s always wanted the best for me. He was actually kind of demanding, he had high expectations for me, and I think that translates to me having high expectations for myself. My mom, she’s seen me bowl like a handful times in my whole life. She’s not a bowler herself, so she didn’t follow throughout my career, but she follows me now.

Q: Can you pinpoint a moment when you thought, wow I’m good at this, I can do this.

A: Yeah, I think that would have been in 2009, when I was 15 or 16, when I qualified for the under 21 Team Canada for the first time. 2010 was my first international competition representing Canada, and that tournament was probably the start of it all. That was the World Youth Championship in Finland, and I ended up getting a bronze medal. The atmosphere of the tournament, the travelling, everything surrounding it, the lifestyle, all that stuff — that’s when it opened my eyes to what competitive bowling was like, and that’s when I really set my sights on pursuing a career in that sport.

Q: Do you have another job right now or is it bowling full time?

A: Right now, I’m only bowling. I would say the top 30-40 players on the PBA tour are probably making their living through bowling.

Q: You’ve said that this has been your best season yet. What made this season so different for you than the others?

A: It’s a really strategic sport, it’s a precision sport, it’s a repetition sport, so all those things come into play. I would say that my strategies have been better this year. I have been working with a few different people, a few different coaches, and we’ve been able to strategize better. My accuracy has always been my strong suit.

Q: How long would you like to continue in the sport of bowling?

A: I would want to continue for as long as possible, and in our sport that’s a little bit longer than in some of the more physical sports. There are some players on the tour right now who are in their late thirties, early forties, who are still competitive. There are a few things that kind of suck about bowling, like we don’t make as much money as some of the other pro athletes, but we’re able to do it for a longer period of time. So, I could see myself doing this for another 20 years or so.

Q: Do you think that bowling is a game or a sport?

A: To me, it doesn’t really make sense to try to debate if bowling is a game or a sport because I think both are valid and both have their place. There are definitely some people who are going to go bowling once a year, have some fun with friends, and that will be it. What I do is a sport and what the general public does when they go to a bowling centre is a game, and that’s OK.

Q: Do you think that bowling should be considered for the Olympics?

A: I think so, we were on the shortlist for Tokyo 2020. We’ve been trying for a few years, we’re a part of the Pan Am games and the World Games, so the next step would be to be included in the Olympic games. I think we’re going to keep trying, and hopefully it happens one day, because that would be pretty special to participate in the Olympics.

Q: If you could give one piece of advice to any young athlete, what would it be?

A: Have fun, be a kid and enjoy what you’re doing

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Nearly 400,000 users of a Turkish crypto exchange fear millions of dollars may be stolen after its CEO abruptly fled the country, reports say

snagarajan@businessinsider.com (Shalini Nagarajan)

© Haber Global/YouTube Thodex CEO, Faruk Fatih Ozer. Haber Global/YouTube

About 400,000 users of a Turkish crypto exchange have filed a criminal complaint against its CEO.

They fear that investments worth thousands of dollars may be missing after its website shut down.

CEO Faruk Fatih Ozer flew out of Istanbul on Wednesday.

Several users of Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex fear their investments worth millions of dollars may be missing after being unable to access their accounts or withdraw their money from the platform.

A lawyer representing them filed a criminal complaint against its CEO on Wednesday, according to multiple reports, after Thodex posted a statement on its website that says it would be closed for four to five days to evaluate a partnership offer.

"World-renowned banks and funds, whose names we are going to announce when the agreement process is completed, have been wanting to invest in our company and proposed a partnership for a long time," the company said in a statement.

"For this process to be completed, transactions need to be halted and the sale process needs to be completed."

Many users tweeted they were unable to access their accounts and were worried they may be victims of a scam, Reuters reported, citing Turkish media outlets. Oguz Evren Kilic, a lawyer, said he was contacted by the users on Wednesday and a criminal complaint has been filed on behalf of them all.

Thodex had 400,000 users, of which 390,000 were active, according to Kilic. He told Bloomberg that CEO Faruk Fatih Ozer flew out of Istanbul via a commercial flight on Wednesday evening and hasn't responded to multiple phone calls.

A photo of Ozer departing from Istanbul has been published by Turkish news outlet Demiroren.

Thodex last month promoted a campaign to boost its user numbers by announcing a giveaway of 4 million Dogecoins. But several users tweeted they hadn't received the meme currency after all, according to Bloomberg.

A public prosecutor in Istanbul has launched an investigation into Thodex, according to Anadolu Agency. The company's website currently only displays a statement about its claimed sale process. It also tells users not to fall for "negative news on the internet" about Thodex.

Turkey only last week banned the use of cryptocurrencies effective April 30, saying they may cause non-recoverable losses for parties involved. Under new rules, citizens can still hold crypto, but can't use it to make payments towards goods and services.

Insider was unable to contact Ozer for comment.
Read the original article on Business Insider

Huge global disparities in electric car ownership - study

By Nick Carey 

EARTH DAY 2021

© Reuters/ALY SONG Auto Shanghai show in Shanghai

LONDON (Reuters) - Europe and China dominate the world market for electric cars, but there are still very few electrified vehicles on the roads in large markets like Russia, South America and Africa, according to a study conducted by the Munich Mobility Show.

Europe sold more new electrified vehicles than China for the first time in 2020 and between them the two markets are home to more than 70% of the 9.9 million electrified cars sold so far, the study shows.

Sales of electric and plug-in hybrid cars in the European Union almost trebled to over 1 million vehicles last year, accounting for more than 10% of overall sales.

The Munich Mobility Show - the revamped and expanded successor to the Frankfurt auto show, which is slated to be held in September this year - examined vehicle registration data from a number of sources and found that through 2020, China had 4.2 electric vehicles on the road, Europe had 3.2 million and the United States had 1.7 million.

New electric vehicle sales rose in all major markets in 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic, except for the U.S. market where sales fell 6%.

While 80% of the electrified vehicles sold so far in China and 79% of those sold in the United States were battery electric models, only 54% of those sold in Europe - including the European Union, European Free Trade Association countries and the United Kingdom - were battery electric, as the continent is still fairly reliant on sales of plug-in hybrids.

Plug-in hybrids face an uncertain future in the EU as policymakers are considering regulations that could make them uneconomical for carmakers to produce.

The Munich Mobility Show's study also showed vast disparities in electric vehicle ownership.

Norway, with a population of 5 million and strong support for electric cars is an unparalleled success, with a cumulative total of 433,609 electric cars sold so far and new sales of more than 105,000 units in 2020.

But Russia, with a population of around 145 million, only sold 1,760 electrified cars through 2020.

Cumulative electric car registrations through 2020 in South America, a continent with a population of more than 420 million, were below 18,000.

And the only registrations in Africa, a continent that is home to 1.2 billion people, were exclusively in South Africa and totaled just 1,509 cars through 2020.

(Reporting by Nick Carey; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

J.D. Power says Canadians 'unimpressed' with their wireless service


TORONTO — J.D. Power's latest annual study of Canadian wireless network performance found consumers were even hungrier for data than last year, but a significant portion were unimpressed with the quality they got.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

It found 24 per cent of about 9,500 people contacted said they have at least 10 gigabytes of data in their monthly plan, up from 20 per cent in 2020.

Another 17 per cent had unlimited data plans, up from 11 per cent in 2020.

About 14 per cent said they exceeded their plan's data allowance in the past six months.

The biggest use of the data was browsing (an average of 57 minutes over the previous 48 hours) followed by video and music streaming (46 minutes)

Only 67 per cent of the wireless customers agreed that their carrier’s network was reliable when streaming music and video — a finding that J.D. Power said is a red flag for carriers because of how much data is used for that.

“Despite massive investments in infrastructure and technology, customers remain relatively unimpressed by their carriers' wireless networks,” said Adrian Chung, director of the technology, media and telecom practice at J.D. Power Canada.

This year's J.D. Power study of Canadian wireless network quality was conducted in February and March, about a year after wireless and internet usage patterns changed dramatically because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Industry observers, including some of the major carriers, have noted that wireless phones were used less by some customers while they worked from home because they relied more on their internet and in-home Wi-Fi wireless connections.

In other cases, there have been anecdotal reports of some customers increasing their wireless data packages because of slow or inaccessible internet connections outside of urban areas.

The federal budget included an additional $1 billion for the Universal Broadband Fund, bringing the projected total to $2.7 billion by 2026. It's just one of many public and privately funded efforts to build high-speed internet and wireless networks in rural and remote regions.

The J.D. Power study of Canada's wireless services provided a regional analysis of customer experience in different parts of Canada and ranked the carriers in those areas.

It found that BCE's Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility tied for first place in Ontario, with eight problems per 100 connections (8 PP100).

In the east region, which includes Quebec and the four Atlantic provinces, Quebecor's Videotron had best ranking at 5 PP100, just ahead of Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility at 6 PP100.

In the West region, which includes five provinces and three northern territories, Telus Mobility had the best ranking (8 PP100) followed by Rogers (9 PP100) SaskTel (10 PP100).

Telus said in a statement that J.D. Power has ranked it as No. 1 in Ontario for seven consecutive years, including this year's shared top spot.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 22, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BCE, TSX:RCI. B, TSX:SJR. B, TSX:T, TSX:QBR. B)

David Paddon, The Canadian Press

Lifelike robots are proliferating thanks to the pandemic
CBSNews 


The coronavirus pandemic is pushing robots — long used for everything from heavy lifting to online customer service — toward finally becoming more lifelike.

© Henrique Casinhas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images David Hanson, SingularityNET Founder (L), gives a press

"I've been very worried about COVID-19 lately," said Sophia, a creation of the Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics. Sophia, who has appeared onstage at a multitude of technology conferences and even appeared on "The Tonight Show," is one of the world's best-known androids — robots designed to appear humanlike. Sophia can now carry on a conversation, offer a range of facial expressions and even high-five.

Hanson designed the robot in 2016 and has been improving the technology ever since. Last month, a piece of art Sophia co-created was auctioned for $688,000 — the first time an artwork created by a robot has been sold.

But the company doesn't intend to make an army of artists. Instead, the robots are meant to be used as health care aides, using a chest-mounted thermal camera to take a person's temperature and pulse. They will start rolling out of the factory in the first half of this year, company founder and CEO David Hanson told Reuters recently. He plans to sell "thousands," he said.

The coronavirus pandemic has made robots more common. Businesses now use them for tasks like disinfecting public areas and delivering food. Experts in automation predict the COVID-19 crisis will make people even more willing to rely on robots, especially for jobs that are low-paid and potentially dangerous.

But there's also a new emphasis on making robots more humanlike.

Promobot, a Russian company, is creating machines that can work in customer service alongside their human counterparts. Currently it has about 10 of these robots in use. They can respond to voice commands and help process applications.

At $42,000 apiece, the robots aren't cheap. But the makers point out that, unlike human workers, they never need a lunch break — or vacation.

As Canada’s federal and provincial budgets swell, sales-tax increases may follow

Higher sales taxes would be an easy-to-implement and effective way to beef up government revenues, Askari says. But they are considered a somewhat regressive form of taxation, one that hits low-income households harder than higher-income ones, he notes.

Erica Alini 

NO NOT A BANDIT, 

ITS THE FINANCE MINISTER

© Provided by Global News Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland walks to a news conference before delivering the federal budget in Ottawa, Monday April 19, 2021.

Canada's provincial and federal government debt has ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it has for governments around the world, as they cope with both the costs of a health emergency and the need to use taxpayer dollars to prop up their economies.

But in Canada, some of the new public spending will settle at a permanently higher level or resume an upward trend once life goes back to normal, some economists say.

Read more: How Canada’s federal budget affects benefits, taxes, and the minimum wage

In Ottawa, the 2021 federal budget is eyeing a slew of new measures — from a national childcare system to revamping the outdated Employment Insurance program and a bump in Old Age Security benefits — that go far beyond a temporary increase in federal outlays to carry the country through the last months of the pandemic and restart the economy.

"Budget 2021’s ambition goes far beyond these targeted efforts to boost the recovery," RBC economist Josh Nye writes in a recent report. "The government is significantly increasing transfers to older Canadians and lower-income workers." And that, he notes, would mean permanently higher spending."

And at the provincial level, healthcare costs were ballooning even before the pandemic — a trend that economists say will likely continue even after the battle against COVID-19 is over

So does that mean Canadians should expect tax increases once the economy is back on solid enough footing?

That depends on who you ask.

For Bill Robson, CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute, higher taxes are "implicit" in the 2021 federal budget.

A first analysis by the Institute of Ottawa's latest spending roadmap suggests "we're really on a knife's edge here," Robson says.

"If they're lucky with interest rates, if they're lucky with economic growth rates, then (we'll) probably have a stable debt ratio," he adds.

With federal deficits of $354 billion for 2020-21 and expected at $155 billion for 2021-22, and more than $50 billion for the following two years, the size of the federal debt is set to hover around 50 per cent of GDP until at least 2025-26, according to current budget projections.

Read more: Post-COVID-19 Canada: What the federal budget tells us about the end of the pandemic

But that ratio could creep higher if borrowing costs increase or the economy hits a rough patch, Robson says.

The few revenue-raising measures introduced by the budget — such as a new luxury tax on high-end cars, yachts and private aircraft — won't count for much in the federal government's balance sheet, Robson predicts.

And there was no mention in Ottawa's 739-page budget of increasing the goods and services tax (GST), a move the C.D. Howe Institute has been advocating for.

A hike in the GST rate, which has been sitting at five per cent since 2008, would be an effective way to boost revenues, Robson argues.

"A lot of economists would like to see higher GST instead of other taxes because it is such a broad and robust tax base that doesn't discourage people from working as badly as personal income taxes do," Robson says.

And higher sales taxes also don't tend to drive business out of Canada to the same degree that corporate tax hikes do, he adds.


Still, if Ottawa was pondering raising the GST, the right time to do it would likely be sometime in 2023, when the economy is back on its feet and Canadians who've been benefitting from the government's COVID-19 emergency income supports will be in a better financial position to pay, Robson says.

Mostafa Askari, chief economist at the University of Ottawa's Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy (IFSD), on the other hand, doesn't see federal tax hikes as inevitable based on the latest spending patterns laid out by Ottawa.

Read more: Budget 2021: What’s missing as feds say no to new GST hike, universal basic income

Askari's analysis of the latest federal budget shows that, barring significant interest rate increases or a long-term slowdown in economic growth, "what you will see is that the debt-to-GDP ratio actually starts to decline gradually over time." And that, he adds, "is what we call a sustainable fiscal structure or fiscal policy."

That's because about 60 per cent of the federal government's spending is currently based on formulas that ensure those outlays grow as fast or slower than GDP. Social transfer to other levels of government, for example, are capped at three per cent a year, while Canada's long-run GDP growth trend (including inflation) is around four per cent per year, Askari says. The Canada Health Transfer and equalization payments are also linked to GDP growth, which ensures they won't expand faster than the economy.

While the budget presented by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland would dial up permanent spending, it stops short of setting Canada on an inevitable path of expenses growing faster than GDP, Askari says. Notably, Ottawa resisted provincial calls to boost health transfers, he adds.

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Still, the federal government's fiscal position is becoming more vulnerable to changes in underlying conditions like interest rates, Askari says. Interest rates rising by two percentage points or more over the next four or five years, for example, could mean that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio may not actually shrink over time, he warns.

But it's in some of the provincial government coffers that Askari sees the most serious fiscal strains. Healthcare spending, which makes up about 40 per cent of provincial budgets on average, will keep growing fast even after the pandemic is in the rearview mirror, due in large part to the ever-rising costs of new drugs and treatments as well as the needs of Canada's aging population, he says.

That's why Askari sees room for sales tax increases at the provincial level.

For example, a provincial sales tax — however, unsavoury politically — would "significantly" help in Alberta, where provincial debt remains relatively small compared to the size of the provincial economy but the debt-to-GDP ratio keeps rising.

An increase in net debt to $82 billion this year will leave Alberta’s net debt to GDP ratio at 24.5 per cent. But continued deficits are set to push that to 26.6 per cent by 2023-2024, according to the province's 2021 budget projections.

But both Askari and Robson singled out Newfoundland and Labrador as facing an especially daunting fiscal picture. Like Alberta, the province has been facing the twin challenges of COVID-19 coupled with uncertainty in the oil market. But the province's greatest fiscal woe comes from its demographic makeup, Askari and Robson say.

"They have a huge problem and the aging population," with healthcare costs set to balloon, Askari says.

Higher sales taxes would be an easy-to-implement and effective way to beef up government revenues, Askari says. But they are considered a somewhat regressive form of taxation, one that hits low-income households harder than higher-income ones, he notes.

Still, without an increase in revenues or a boost to economic growth, there's a risk one or more of Canada's provinces may need Ottawa to come to the financial rescue, Robson warns.

"I would much prefer to see the federal government leave more fiscal room for the provinces by not getting so big itself," he says.

Alberta teachers and education minister swap accusations of politicizing curriculum


EDMONTON — Education Minister Adriana LaGrange says the group representing Alberta teachers is playing politics with a proposed new kindergarten to Grade 6 curriculum and isn’t sincere about real bridge-building.

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The Alberta Teachers' Association has publicly stated the proposed learning plan is “fatally flawed, and teachers, academics and curriculum experts should work on a revised version."

“I have the utmost respect for teachers, and the work that they do, and the professionalism that they have,” LaGrange said when asked about the association Wednesday.

“I want them to weigh in on the curriculum," she said. "The union for teachers appears to want to make it more political. I really don’t want to go down that path. I prefer to work collaboratively.

THE ATA IS NOT A UNION PER SE IT IS A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION WHICH IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TEACHERS ACCREDITATION AS WELL AS TEACHER WELL BEING AND BARGAINING THE SAME AS THE DOCTORS BOTH BOOK OFF WORK THEY DO NOT HAVE PICKET LINES. IN BC TEACHERS HAVE A UNION THAT PICKETS AND A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ACCREDITATION, SOMETHING THE CONSERVATIVES IN ALBERTA WANTED TO DO HERE.

“The fact they have not reached out to me or my department since the curriculum has come out to set up a meeting, to have a discussion, speaks volumes to me.”

LaGrange’s spokeswoman, Nicole Sparrow, in a subsequent statement, said the minister’s door remains open.

“Alberta’s government will continue to work with the education system, including the teachers' union, to gather all feedback to make this the best curriculum possible,” said Sparrow.

“It is clear that the union is more interested in political theatre than actually providing feedback.”

Teachers president Jason Schilling lobbed the accusation right back.

“We need to have the whole curriculum redesign process depoliticized. In fact, I would like to see politicians get out of the way and let’s go back to the way we used to do curriculum redesign,” Schilling said in an interview.

Schilling said LaGrange cancelled a memorandum of understanding in late 2019 that had put teachers and other experts at the centre of the curriculum review. Teachers have fought for a place at the table ever since, he said.

“The association has essentially been shut out,” said Schilling.

“The minister is very well aware of the fact I have concerns about the curriculum, that I want to make sure that teachers are involved, (so) that we can get this right.”

The result has been a high-profile back-and-forth word fight. The teachers association says it was shut out of the curriculum consultation. LaGrange counters that 100 teachers were involved.

Schilling has said it was 100 teachers for two days who had to sign non-disclosure agreements.

The ATA has said 91 per cent of teachers in an in-house survey are against the curriculum. LaGrange has dismissed the survey sample she says was less than seven per cent as minuscule.

Sarah Hoffman, the NDP Opposition's education critic, said LaGrange and the United Conservative government need to meaningfully work with teachers who have the expertise and front-line experience on what works and what doesn’t.

“The minister is picking massive fights and trying to discredit teaching professionals who work to make sure students learn quality information to set them up for success,” said Hoffman.

The draft is to be piloted in select schools this fall and fully implemented in September 2022.

To date, almost 30 of Alberta’s 63 school boards, including the public school boards in Edmonton and Calgary as well as francophone school boards, say they won’t teach it.

It’s been the subject of fierce debate since being outlined by LaGrange in late March.

Advocates defend it as a common-sense approach that includes basic concepts, such as multiplication tables, along with real-life skills for the information age, including how to budget and computer code.

The ATA and other critics say the plan is not developmentally appropriate for young kids, is jammed with random facts, and too loosely structured with concepts well over students' heads. They say it pushes Eurocentric history while giving short shrift to francophone and Indigenous cultures and perspectives.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 21, 2021.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press