Archives for January 10, 2019

TransCanada Corp. is changing its name to TC Energy.

The pipeline and utilities company says the change better reflects the scope of its operations across North America.

TransCanada chief executive Russ Girling says TC Energy “clearly articulates” the company’s business which includes pipelines, power generation and energy storage operations in Canada, the United States and Mexico.

TransCanada shareholders will be asked to approve the change at the company’s next annual meeting.

The company says it plans to continue trading under TRP on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s efforts to run a feminist government should take an extra step to create a universal daycare system, and prevent the funding from being lost in electoral politics, says a leading expert.

The federal treasury is set to spend $7.5 billion over a decade to help fund child-care spaces across the country.

Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos was scheduled to be in Hamilton on Wednesday to talk about the Liberals’ child care commitment, which over the first three years will cost $1.3 billion and potentially create or maintain 40,000 subsidized spaces nationally.

The Liberals have often talked about being a “feminist government,” and while they have taken steps towards that goal, they should consider quickly doing more toward a universal system that could boost women’s participation in the labour force, Brock University’s Kate Bezanson argues in a paper published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Law and Equality.

Bezanson, an expert on feminist policy and chair of Brock’s sociology department, said in an interview there is a disconnect between the scope of policies the Liberals have enacted, particularly on child care spending and new parental leave policies, and the aspirational talk about the gender equality.

In some cases, government policy seems at times to replicate those of the previous Conservative government, which the Liberals frequently criticize.

“That disconnect … is notable for a government that is taking a lot of really important feminist steps,” Bezanson said.

Child care and parental leave may be expensive, she said, but they “also the yield the biggest results and those have been more lightly pressed than we would have imagined from a government that understands itself as a feminist government.”

Her paper also touches on concerns that long-term child care funding could be undone after this fall’s election if the Liberals don’t enshrine the spending into law — which the Liberals plan to do with the $40-billion national housing strategy — so whichever party is elected can’t cancel it.

Promises of transfers to the provinces are only good for three years, after which new funding deals must be signed.

This election year has already started out with questions about the long-term outlook of federal finances, which the Finance Department projects will remain in deficit for about 21 years, not including any new spending. That makes it difficult to commit to any major increases in spending, Bezanson said, noting that child care is often where funding is neglected.

Few communities outside Edmonton and Calgary meet target internet speeds set by the CRTC

To run her small-town business, animal trainer Colleen McCarvill needs a reliable internet connection.

But for two-and-a-half weeks, starting just before Christmas, she had no wireless connectivity on her acreage outside Onoway, Alta.

It taxed her patience, and cost her money.

“You are so reliant,” said McCarvill, who moved to the area three years ago. “I would have never lived here had I known that I would be this incapable of running (a business).

“If someone can’t reach me, or I can’t reach them through marketing, they go somewhere else.”

Unreliable internet connections in smaller Alberta communities are hardly unique to Onoway. In a report to the provincial government last year, a consulting firm found that — excluding Edmonton and Calgary — just 13 per cent of Alberta communities have service that meets target speeds set by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

The provincial government has said it is working on a broadband strategy, while the federal government has promised millions to improve connections in rural and remote parts of the country. Good service is increasingly viewed as a necessity, not a luxury, to ensure people have sufficient economic and social opportunities.

But even in Onoway, less than 70 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, many still struggle to find reliable service.

When McCarvill first moved to the area, she used a smaller service provider that offered what she characterized as a terrible connection. Then she switched to Telus, which provided a great year of service, followed by more frequent service disruptions.

Just before Christmas, she lost her connection entirely. She purchased an extra data package to stay connected using her iPhone, until her service was partially restored on Tuesday.

‘This needs to be viewed as an essential service’

McCarvill said her options are limited, but include the possibility of moving to a different community.

For Dustin Medori, president of Onoway-based Academy Fabricators, that’s not possible. The company employs almost 200 people.

His team has looked at everything, including the possibility of purchasing a fibre-optic cable.

“Telus has supported us,” he said. “They’ve given us different pricing and options to look at fibre-optic cabling. But for companies our size, it’s not really an option.”

The company has been in Onoway since 2006. While spotty internet has always been an issue, it has become more of a concern as the company has grown, with more people, more files, and more technology.

“If we want to see communities like Onoway or others in the province grow and attract new business, this needs to be viewed as an essential service,” Medori said. “No different than water and electricity.

“To have a limiting factor of the internet really impedes on business and town growth.”

In a statement to CBC, Telus stated it was “actively working” with McCarvill to resolve her issues. The company noted McCarvill uses a Smart Hub, and that it has sent her a new unit. “A Smart Hub provides home Internet service through a connection to Telus’ wireless LTE network and our wireless network in the area experienced heavier than normal traffic over the holiday season, which may have contributed to this customer’s experience.”  

Wyatt Skovron, a policy analyst at Rural Municipalities of Alberta, said the organization has been calling for the federal and provincial government to work more directly with municipalities to get quality broadband internet service to places that need it.

While some federal government programs are meant to do that, they often involve partnerships with a commercial service provider, which must think about profits, he said.

In some small communities, the local government has purchased broadband infrastructure, while others have partnered with an internet service provider to build the infrastructure. But the challenges for municipalities, and for commercial companies, are the same.

“These upfront investments aren’t cheap,” Skovron said.

“So there’s only so many municipalities that have the capacity or the foresight to dedicate that money and their resources and stuff to it. It’s tough. It’s one of those things that pays off in the long run but the upfront costs are significant.”

No rate increase expected, but decision will offer glimpse of bank’s thinking

The Bank of Canada isn’t expected to change its benchmark interest rate when it reveals its latest decision Wednesday, but that doesn’t mean the bank’s policy-makers think nothing has changed in the country’s economy.

The bank’s rate, known as the target for the overnight rate, is the interest rate it charges retail banks for short-term loans, and it filters down into the rate that Canadian borrowers and savers get on savings accounts, lines of credit and variable rate mortgages.

The central bank will announce its latest rate decision at 10 a.m. ET. CBC News will have live coverage of the decision and a press conference that follows shortly after that.

In October, when the bank last raised its rate to its current level of 1.75 per cent, the central bank justified its decision by noting the various ways in which the economy was humming along. Inflation was on the high end of the range that the bank likes to see in setting monetary policy, and the job market was chugging along.

The price of a barrel of crude had fallen from its highs, but West Texas Intermediate was still trading north of $65 a barrel, and business investment was rounding into form, too. Add it all up, and the economy was on track to grow by about 2.1 per cent this year — enough to justify a modest tinkering of the bank’s rate to more normal levels.

But that was then, and this is now.

Canada’s economy has since shown enough signs of weakness that there’s speculation a cut may be coming sooner or later, and at a bare minimum economists who cover the central bank are downgrading their expectations of just how many hikes may be on the way.

On Tuesday, new numbers from Statistics Canada showed that Canada’s trade deficit doubled to $2.1 billion in November, largely because oil prices plummeted, eating into the export side of the ledger.

And according to Scotiabank economist Derek Holt, “the window on trade conditions will get cloudier yet,” as the U.S. government shutdown potentially affects December trade data and Alberta’s production cuts take down energy exports in January.

If there’s reason for optimism, Holt says, it’s that the slowdown comes on the heels of a “torrid” pace for Canadian exports earlier in the year, so some declines were to be expected. “One issue I’d like to hear the [Bank of Canada] address tomorrow is the extent to which they feel the recent data is due to … pulled forward export demand,” he said.

Economist Avery Shenfeld with CIBC says the bank is in a tough spot, threading the needle between incorporating lowered expectations, and staying well clear of suggesting a cut might be required.

“We see the tone of the statement being along the lines of ‘we’ll get back to you later,’ rather than ‘we’re all done here, people’ in terms of further interest rate tightening,” Shenfeld said, adding that he expects the bank to stay on the sidelines until April at the earliest.

That’s a similar timeline to the one Robert Dent at Japanese investment bank Nomura Securities Inc. predicts, with a slight hike to two per cent in April followed by another cautious one at the end of the year.

Dent notes that despite some dark clouds on the horizon, Canada’s economy is doing well on a number of other fronts, notably the job market, where the jobless rate dropped to the lowest level on record in November at 5.6 per cent, and even managed to stay there through December, too.

Those data points will be factors the bank will consider, and a reason for the Bank of Canada to stay on the track it has already set for itself.

“The December statement suggests policy-makers remain confident that further rate hikes will be needed,” he said, but “the effect of rising interest rates on overly indebted households, persistently lower crude oil prices and slowing global growth all pose downside risks to the Bank of Canada outlook that may start to be acknowledged more forcefully at the January meeting.”

Bank of Montreal economist Benjamin Reitzes says with the picture looking cloudy, the bank is clearly going to err on the side of caution, but the question is, how much?

“Outside of a couple of decent domestic data points,” he said, “the policy backdrop has deteriorated, driven largely by global economic and financial conditions. Accordingly, expect more caution from Governor Poloz and the Bank to stay on the sidelines for at least the next couple of months.”

While all but one of the 18 economists tracked by Bloomberg think doing nothing is the likeliest outcome, traders in investments known as overnight index swaps think there’s about a one in six chance of a rate cut on Wednesday.