Canfor temporarily reducing Canadian production due to weak market conditions

The Canadian Press

Rows of lumber at a lumberyard in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, on Friday, May 7, 2020. The pandemic-fueled surge in home construction last year took North American sawmills by surprise, sending lumber prices to new records. Photographer: James MacDonald/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

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Canfor Corp. is temporarily reducing its Canadian production due to what it says are very weak market conditions.

The Vancouver-based company says there will be curtailments at all of its solid wood facilities in B.C. and Alberta.

It says the move will reduce production by about 150 million board feet in December and January.

 

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Canfor chief executive Don Kayne says the company will work to mitigate the affects on employees by providing support and identifying meaningful work during the downtime.

The curtailments will begin to be implemented on Dec. 19 and range from one to four weeks across its Canadian operations.

Canfor says it will continue to adjust operating rates to align with market conditions and anticipates that the majority of its B.C. facilities will operate below full capacity in the new year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2022.

Bill Cosby, NBCUniversal face new sexual assault suit from 'The Cosby Show' actresses, others


Plaintiffs further allege that the studio actively "enabled and aided" Cosby in these alleged sexual assaults to preserve their financial stake in his celebrity.

By Ben Whedon
Updated: December 6, 2022 -

Bill Cosby and NBCUniversal are facing yet another legal battle over "The Cosby Show" star's alleged sexual misconduct, with multiple plaintiffs filing a sexual assault and battery suit in New York on Tuesday.

"Each plaintiff was sexually assaulted and battered by defendant Bill Cosby in the same or similar manner when he used his power, fame, and prestige... to misuse his enormous power in such a nefarious, horrific way," the filing reads.

Plaintiffs further allege that the studio actively "enabled and aided" Cosby in these alleged sexual assaults to preserve their financial stake in his celebrity.

File
Cosby NBC suit

"Over the course of several decades, Bill Cosby engaged in the serial sexual assault of dozens of women for his sexual gratification while the co-defendants enabled and aided these sexual assaults to benefit financially by their association with Bill Cosby," the suit alleges.

The suit lists "sexual assault, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false imprisonment," among many of the alleged torts Cosby committed. They further assert that NBCUniversal Media and the other co-defendant firms did not investigate Cosby's actions or attempt to intervene.

While the alleged incidents occurred beyond the statute of limitations, plaintiffs are able to bring the suit by virtue of the New York Adult Survivors Act, which has created a one-year window suspending those limits to allow victims to come forward, Deadline reported.

Cosby was convicted of aggravated indecent assault in 2018 but a Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2021 asserting that his right to due process had been violated during the court proceedings. He was released from prison in June of that year and may not be retried on the same accusations.

Upon his release, Cosby professed his innocence and thanked the court for "upholding the rule of law."

He has since lost a civil suit against a separate accuser and must pay $500,000 in restitution, which he has thus far declined to do.

 

Scathing report urges major changes at FDA, even breaking up agency

Dec. 6, 2022 at 4:26 pm Updated Dec. 6, 2022 at 4:26 pm

  

By 

LAURA REILEY

The Washington Post

An outside group that was asked to examine problems at the Food and Drug Administration in the wake of an infant formula crisis this year offered a scathing indictment of the agency’s structure and culture and recommended major restructuring, including possibly breaking up the agency so that oversight of the food system gets more attention.

The FDA has long been accused of giving its food program short shrift, and it came under fire from members of Congress and others for not heading off a formula shortage that left many parents scrambling to feed their infants. The response to the formula crisis was hampered by flaws in the leadership structure and poor communication within an agency that seemed to be in a state of “constant turmoil,” according to the report from the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA, which the agency asked to assess its operations.

The report recommends several options for fixing the agency, which is housed within the Department of Health and Human Services and is responsible for overseeing aspects of the nation’s food system, as well as tobacco products and pharmaceutical drugs.

The task force’s first, most sweeping suggestion was to create separate food and drug administrations within HHS, which would require approval from Congress. The task force acknowledged this was “thinking big” and would be a longer-term solution to remedying problems but said the benefit would be elevating the visibility of each side and separating their budgets.

Other, less ambitious options included separating the food and drug arms but keeping them within a single agency, as well as creating a new deputy commissioner position with authority for overseeing food.

In a statement, FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf said he will review the report and make decisions about the future of the agency with input from experts inside and outside the FDA. 

The report comes in the wake of heavy criticism of the agency’s handling of a formula shortage earlier this year. Critics said the agency failed to act quickly enough on complaints about sanitation at a large Abbott Nutrition manufacturing facility in Michigan and then did not foresee the shortage triggered when the plant was shuttered to fix deficiencies identified by the FDA.

At least four babies fell ill from a bacterial infection after drinking powdered formula manufactured there. Two of the babies died. FDA investigators were not able to identify the source of the bacteria, and the company said it did not originate at the factory. But the company recalled 5 million units of powdered formula, and the five-month closure squeezed formula supplies. This left many parents without reliable sources of food for their babies and medically fragile children.

Legislators and food safety experts asserted that agency leadership has allowed long-standing structural flaws to fester.

Food safety experts have long complained that the agency’s food oversight arm has been chronically understaffed and underfunded. Those problems, critics say, have been exacerbated by poor communication between its centers. More broadly, experts say, the agency has prioritized the drug and medicine side, frequently drawing leaders with medical backgrounds and without food industry knowledge.

“This report exceeds expectations because it represents a formal acknowledgment of all the issues in the foods program that have taken place over many years,” said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for Consumer Reports. “That’s actually a very significant step.”

A bias toward the medical side, experts say, led to miscommunications and failures. A whistleblower report from a former employee alleging safety risks at the Abbott plant took four months to reach the top food safety official. The former employee subsequently dropped a federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration complaint, Abbott chief executive Robert Ford said in a call with investors this fall. Additionally, the coronavirus pandemic meant many food manufacturing facilities went without on-site inspections for most of a year.

In response to criticisms earlier this year in congressional hearings, Califf, a physician who was appointed to the top post in February, acknowledged that the response to the formula crisis took too long and that “some decisions in retrospect were not optimal.” Califf announced the review of the agency organization during a May hearing, and the Reagan-Udall review launched on Sept. 8.

Organizations representing consumers, the food industry and state food regulators are pushing to restructure the FDA. In April, the groups sent a letter to Califf, calling on him to unify the FDA food program under a deputy commissioner for foods, with accountability to the agency commissioner and direct authority over the agency’s food safety centers.

The Reagan-Udall task force suggested the agency establish a new structure with clear leaders and roles, that it develop a culture in which decision-making is rooted in scientific evidence and that it commit to better transparency, timeliness and predictability in decision-making.

“What’s clear is that the agency’s cultural and structural failures are contributing to communication, organizational and risk management failures that are making our food less safe,” said Scott Faber, a food safety expert with the Environmental Working Group. “Any of the structural reform options proposed by this task force would make the current system better, provided the Congress follows through on the needed resources.”

The Reagan-Udall Foundation is an independent nonprofit group created by Congress to help modernize industries and sectors covered by the FDA. It is funded by the FDA and large corporations that have business with the agency, including drugmakers Eli Lilly and Pfizer as well as Nestlé USA, which makes baby formula.

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CannTrust CEO was warned over illicit pot growing: former compliance worker

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press

A former director of quality and compliance at CannTrust Holdings Inc. says he warned the company's chief executive that Health Canada could levy penalties if the firm grew cannabis in unlicensed rooms at its Niagara, Ont. facility. 

In the months leading up to Health Canada finding pot growing in unlicensed rooms, Graham Lee said Tuesday that he told Peter Aceto he couldn't say what the exact consequences could be, but knew the government regulator had previously issued warning letters and handed out penalties.

For example, Lee said Health Canada reviewed CannTrust's inventory more extensively after it discovered the company using a storage facility at its Vaughan, Ont. location contrary to licensing.

“In general, Health Canada was there every day checking up on the inventory," Lee recalled.

Though he warned Aceto about consequences, Lee said he didn't give him advice about whether to disclose alleged unlicensed growing to the public or Health Canada. Lee, who was hired by CannTrust in 2017, also didn't report it to the public or Health Canada because he didn't consider it his job.

His comments were made at the Old City Hall courthouse in Toronto in response to questioning from Dihim Emami, a lawyer representing the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) in a case aiming to prove Aceto and other former CannTrust executives are guilty of several offences related to unlicensed growing at the Niagara facility.

Aceto, former CannTrust chairman Eric Paul and former vice-chairman Mark Litwin have pleaded not guilty to fraud and authorizing, permitting or acquiescing in the commission of an offence.

Litwin and Paul are also facing insider trading charges, and Litwin and Aceto are charged with making a false prospectus and false preliminary prospectus.

The OSC and Royal Canadian Mounted Police allege Litwin, Aceto and Paul did not disclose to investors that about 50 per cent of the growing space at CannTrust’s Pelham, Ont. facility in the Niagara area was not licensed by Health Canada. They say the men used corporate disclosures to assert that they were compliant with regulatory approvals.

They also allege that Litwin and Aceto signed off on prospectuses used to raise money in the U.S., which stated that CannTrust was fully licensed and compliant with regulatory requirements, and that Litwin and Paul traded shares of CannTrust while in possession of material, undisclosed information regarding the unlicensed growing.

The men no longer work for CannTrust and their lawyers are arguing their clients are all innocent.

Frank Addario, Aceto’s lawyer, previously told The Canadian Press his client was hired because of his financial acumen and track record. Before his time at CannTrust, Aceto was the president and chief executive of ING Direct Canada.

Addario also pointed out that CannTrust was subject to inspections and financial audits that uncovered no material issues.

“The evidence will show Peter Aceto behaved legally and with integrity during his time at CannTrust,” Addario said in an email.

However, Lee testified Monday that the growth of cannabis in unlicensed rooms was "very openly discussed" at the pot company.

“There was no hiding this. There was no denial of this," he said.

On Tuesday, he reinforced those allegations, describing how he brought up his concerns about unlicensed activity during at least one meeting in February 2019 that he recalled Aceto attended.

“I noticed that no one in the room was referring to or cognizant of the fact that these were unlicensed areas, so I reminded them," Lee said.

In response to questioning from Litwin's lawyer Scott Fenton on Tuesday, Lee added that during the application process, Health Canada requested photos of the doors in some of the unlicensed rooms where growing was occurring to ensure security protocols were being followed.

Lee asked staff to move plants out of the photos. He admitted this could be seen as "deception," but argued Health Canada might have already had knowledge that plants were in the unlicensed rooms.

"I did not hide the plants from Health Canada," he said. "On other occasions, we recorded them on reports, we took them through the rooms.”

He also believed the regulator heard about the unlicensed growing from Nick Lalonde, a former CannTrust employee who Lee heard was terminated for performance issues.

In the summer of 2019, Lee said Lalonde messaged him on LinkedIn asking if Health Canada would be OK with some of the company's practices, including unlicensed growing.

“You may reply if you like or I can ask Health Canada myself,” Lee said Lalonde wrote.

Lee didn't respond to the message, but said he wasn't particularly concerned

"I had a pretty fatalistic approach at this point. It is what it is," he told the court. "Lalonde is going to say what he is going to say and we will deal with the consequences.”

Health Canada later visited the facility. Lee deduced it was because of Lalonde because the regulator's questions mirrored the issues raised in his message to Lee.

By August, Lee was terminated and he surmised it was because of his knowledge of unlicensed growing along with his communications with Health Canada. 

Lee, who still had 5,000 shares in the company, felt “not happy but not surprised.”

Book distributor Thomas Allen & Son to close in 2023, pass contracts to Firefly Books

Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press

A customer picks out a book in the Kinokuniya Co. book store at the Aeon Mall in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, May 26, 2019. , Photograph: Taylor Weidman/Bloomberg

Thomas Allen & Son, one of Canada's oldest book distributors, will close its doors in a matter of months, becoming what the company's CEO describes as another casualty of consolidation in the publishing industry.

Jim Allen said he had little choice but to shutter the 106-year-old business after several publishers it worked with were acquired by larger houses that handle distribution in-house. 

"It's just one more marker for the changes that have been occurring in the industry," said Allen, whose great-grandfather founded the distributor. "There have been a number of pretty large, independent family-owned companies that do what we do that have disappeared over the years."

Thomas Allen & Son distributes books, most of which are published internationally, as well as stationery and calendars to bookstores, libraries and other retailers. 

But many smaller publishers who have contracts with book distributors like Allen's have been acquired by larger publishing houses, which either handle distribution themselves or have existing contracts with larger, global distributors.  

Allen said plans for the closure were made in 2021 after Workman Publishing, whose books and calendars made up a significant portion of his company's annual sales, was acquired by Hachette Book Group. Hachette handles its Canadian distribution in-house. 

"It was sort of a foregone conclusion. I had considered selling the business, and I had spoken privately to a number of different people about that," he said. 

But as the company isn't a publisher and doesn't own any intellectual property, he said options for selling the company were limited. 

Allen said he came up with what he believes is a best-case solution for the closure: passing distribution contracts to the Richmond Hill, Ont.-based Firefly Books starting at the end of March 2023.

Firefly is largely a publisher, but has a small distribution arm that will expand to take on these contracts, Allen said. 

As it stands, roughly 10 staff members work in Allen's office, he said, and 20 work in the warehouse. He said about eight of the office staff will be offered contracts with Firefly, as will some of the warehouse workers. 

"It was not an easy decision," Allen said of the closure. "But I think it's probably the best decision under the circumstances as the market gets more and more difficult."

Thomas Allen Ltd. was founded in 1916, and published books by Nellie McClung, William Lyon Mackenzie King and Agatha Christie.

Three decades later, the founder's son, Forbes Duncan Allen, joined the company and built up the distribution business.

Jim Allen is the fourth Allen to helm the company, and in 2000 he launched a renewed publishing division, Thomas Allen Publishers, which he sold to Dundurn Press in 2012.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2022

Profits in 15 sectors, including oil and gas, driving bulk of inflation: Report

The Canadian Press\

A new report by the Centre for Future Work found that growth in corporate profits this year compared to pre-pandemic has been concentrated in a small number of sectors where consumer prices have also risen the fastest.

Report author and economist Jim Stanford analyzed the profits of the 52 business sectors tracked by Statistics Canada, and found that just under a third of these sectors were responsible for driving overall corporate profits up. Combined after-tax profits in the 15 most profitable sectors grew by 89 per cent during the most recent 12-month period compared to the four quarters before the pandemic hit. 

Meanwhile, profits in the other 37 sectors tracked by Statistics Canada fell during the same period. Among all sectors combined, profits were up almost 30 per cent. 

After-tax corporate profits in 2022 so far make up 17.4 per cent of Canada’s GDP, the highest share in history, Stanford said. 

The oil and gas sector tops the profitable list by far with a $38-billion increase in profits, or more than 1,000 per cent, since 2019. Other highly profitable sectors included mining, which saw profits rise by almost 700 per cent, banking, real estate, building products, motor vehicle dealers, grocery stores and food manufacturing.

In fact, the report said that large price increases on eight specific products sold or produced by those sectors accounts for more than half of overall inflation in the past year, based on Statistics Canada data.

Stanford said he found this number “startling.” 

“Both the concentration of profits in those sectors, and the concentration of price pressure in products produced by both sectors, really shows that this is not a generalized overheating problem," he said.

These eight products were home fuel oil, home natural gas, gasoline, mortgage interest, groceries, home maintenance, motor vehicles and insurance, and together Stanford calculated they accounted for 3.51 percentage points of the overall October inflation rate, which was 6.9 per cent. That’s despite the fact that those eight products make up less than 30 per cent of the weight of the CPI basket as measured by Statistics Canada. 

Stanford argues that this data proves rising corporate profits are the dominant cause of inflation, since those eight products alone account for more than half the percentage-point increase in the latest inflation numbers. 

Some of those eight products, like gas, also had knock-on effects on things like food prices, the report notes, which also factor into inflation. 

Some economists and the Bank of Canada have expressed concern that as wages rise in the face of inflation, this could entrench inflation and cause what’s known as a wage-price spiral. In July, Tiff Macklem warned employers not to build inflation into longer-term contracts. 

But so far, wages have not surpassed overall inflation. In fact, corporate profits have increased around three times as fast as wages since the beginning of the pandemic, Stanford said. 

He said the Bank of Canada has been putting too much attention in recent months on the role of the labour market in persistent inflation. 

“The Bank of Canada's argument that inflation is up because Canadians have too much work and too much money to spend is absolutely contradicted by this evidence.”

The Bank of Canada has said that inflation increasingly reflects domestic pressures, and has cited Canada's low unemployment rate as "unsustainable."

The report recommends measures for policymakers to consider other than interest rate hikes, measures he argues in the report would be better than “a ‘cold bath’ of employment-reducing monetary tightening.” 

These include targeted price regulations to limit how much companies can profit from sector-specific disruptions, like in energy or housing; excess profit taxes; and offsetting fiscal support for consumers financed by said taxes. Stanford notes several European countries have already implemented some of these types of things, such as a price cap on energy, or excess profit taxes for the energy sector that go to household transfers. There are also examples of these measures within Canada, such as a recent tax on big bank profits, making such measures not unprecedented, he said. 

“We have taken it for granted that companies are allowed to charge whatever the market will bear, even in a national emergency. And our response to the inflation that results from that assumption has been to punish the people who are trying to pay for the stuff that’s vastly overpriced,” he said. 

“With targeted measures like that, you could take a lot of the steam out of this inflationary problem, rather than necessarily cooling off the whole national economy.”

Bank of Canada has room to stop hiking before U.S. Fed, survey shows

Erik Hertzberg and Sarina Yoo, Bloomberg News

The Bank of Canada has leeway to end its interest-rate hiking cycle in coming months even if the Federal Reserve keeps pushing borrowing costs higher next year, according to economists.

Governor Tiff Macklem and his officials can comfortably leave their benchmark rate as much as 100 basis points lower than that of their southern counterparts, a Bloomberg survey shows. 

More than half of the 16 respondents say the Bank of Canada won’t end up signaling a pause. But Macklem is nonetheless expected to stop hiking after this month’s meeting or in January, leaving borrowing costs at 4.25 per cent. 

In the US, short-term money markets are betting that Chairman Jerome Powell will raise the Fed funds rate to between 4.75 per cent and 5 per cent.

That gap in expectations suggests Macklem has some flexibility as he searches for an endpoint to Canada’s aggressive rate hike cycle, just as momentum in the domestic economy starts fading.

“The only reason that the Bank of Canada would be worried about diverging from the Fed would be the currency reaction,” Royce Mendes, head of macro strategy at Desjardins Capital Markets, said by email. “Given that there is already a material divergence priced into markets, the exchange rate should already have taken that into account.”

Consensus in the Bloomberg survey is split on whether the Bank of Canada will hike rates by 25 or 50 basis points at its meeting next Wednesday. Jobs data due Friday will be a key input into the decision.

Macklem and his officials have already raised the overnight rate to 3.75 per cent from the emergency pandemic low of 0.25 per cent that held until March. The Bank of Canada surprised markets and most economists at its last meeting by opting for a half-percentage-point hike, down from a 75-basis-point increase in September and a full-percentage-point jolt in July.

The Bloomberg survey took place between Nov. 25 and 30.

Other Highlights

• 94 per cent of respondents say Canada’s economy is more sensitive to interest-rate hikes than the US
• Half of economists say the Bank of Canada’s most recent forecasts for economic growth are too optimistic
• Respondents expect policymakers will start cutting the overnight rate in October 2023
• Nearly 80 per cent say the government of Canada’s spending isn’t undermining the central bank’s effort to return inflation to target