Archives for January 11, 2019

New Brunswick’s cannabis retailer is laying off staff, saying it has a better understanding of “operational needs” three months after the historic legalization of recreational marijuana.

Cannabis NB said most of the layoffs involved people with seasonal contracts, but some are part-time or full-time employees.

Spokeswoman Marie-Andree Bolduc said Thursday that despite supply challenges, operations have normalized at the 20 stores and they now understand the needs of each outlet.

She said the move is typical for new retail operations, and in line with a need for “long-term fiscal responsibility.”

Under the former Liberal government, New Brunswick had seen legalized cannabis as green gold — a chance to rake in profits and create production and retail jobs, with a community college program developed for cannabis technicians.

In a statement, Bolduc did not immediately confirm the number of people laid off.

“In preparing for the launch of the new legal cannabis industry, Cannabis NB wanted to ensure that a well-trained, qualified team was built that was large enough to set up the retail locations, fill the work schedules and deliver the right customer experience and education based on demand,” she said.

“The teams and roles were structured to allow flexibility in the delivery of the customer experience needed and manage expectations that staffing of stores may change after launch.”

Bolduc says they’ll be releasing quarterly sales figures at the end of January.

Ford Motor Co. says it is cutting jobs in Europe in a wide-ranging restructuring as it focuses on its most profitable models and shifts production towards electric cars.

In a statement, the company said Thursday that “structural cost improvements will be supported by a reduction of surplus labour,” both hourly and salaried.

The Dearborn, Michigan-based company didn’t reveal how many jobs would be cut and said reductions would be achieved as far as possible through voluntary departures negotiated with unions and employee representatives. Some 53,000 people work for Ford’s European operation, based in Cologne, Germany.

The move follows plans announced last year to reduce white-collar jobs across the company’s global business.

Steven Armstrong, group vice-president and president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said the company would focus on its most appealing models and exit its less profitable models.

“We will invest in the vehicles, services, segments and markets that best support a long-term sustainably profitable business,” he said.

The company said it would shift to more electric models and that every model from now on will have a battery version, whether a hybrid that combines internal combustion and battery power or a battery-only version.

Armstrong was quoted by the Financial Times as saying the number of layoffs would be in the “thousands” but declined to repeat that quantity in a conference call with reporters, saying only that there would be a “substantial impact” on the work force.

He said the scale of the restructuring assumed that Britain would leave the European Union as scheduled on March 29 with a negotiated deal defining trading relations. He said that business changes could be “significantly more dramatic” regarding the company’s U.K. plants in the event the country crashes out of the bloc without a deal — a scenario that could see, among other things, tariffs imposed on goods traded and widespread disruption at ports.

The arms-length agency that processes refugee claims in Canada estimated it would need twice as much money as it will ultimately receive to significantly tackle a major backlog in asylum claims, caused in part from an influx of irregular migrants.

Documents obtained under access-to-information law show the Immigration and Refugee Board drafted costing estimates in November 2017 showing it would need $140 million annually plus an additional $40 million in one-time costs to finalize 36,000 extra refugee cases every year.

That’s how many cases the board would need to complete to cut the backlog and also meet the current intake of new asylum claims.

The government ultimately earmarked $74 million to the IRB over two years in last year’s federal budget to address Canada’s refugee backlog, which currently stands at over 64,000.

The IRB says in the documents the amount will not be enough to finalize the outstanding claims within two years and that a longer-term strategy is needed to tackle the problem.

The documents also reveal employees processing the claims have raised concerns about heavy workloads, problems with their pay due to the Phoenix pay system and have pressed management about when the influx of claims will be considered a crisis.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will shuffle his cabinet Monday to deal with the resignation of Treasury Board President Scott Brison, he said in a news conference Thursday.

Brison announced Thursday morning that he won’t seek re-election this fall because he wants to spend more time with his family. He’ll said he’ll quit the cabinet before then because the government is best served by ministers who are running again.

Trudeau said he respects Brison’s decision to leave to spend time with his young twin daughters.

“Obviously this will require some changes to our cabinet, and that’s something that we’re going to be announcing on Monday,” he said to reporters during a tour of a new building at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C.

Trudeau refused to be drawn on whether he plans a small shuffle just to replace Brison or a larger one with multiple ministers changing portfolios.

As president of the Treasury Board (and the minister responsible for digital government), Brison has had responsibilities for minding the public purse and overseeing the federal public service. The portfolio isn’t flashy but can cause big headaches for a government if it’s mishandled.

“His thoughtfulness, his capacity to understand how best to deliver programming, his ability to understand Canadians through his many, many years of service was extremely valuable around the cabinet table,” Trudeau said.

Brison has been the face of the Liberal government in Nova Scotia, where the party won every seat in 2015. But he’s also been close to the story of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, who is facing a trial for breach of trust related to allegations he leaked secrets to promote a navy shipbuilding contract. Norman’s case is to go to trial late this summer, just as the campaign for the Oct. 21 election is getting underway.

Brison has been accused of pressuring the newly-minted Trudeau government in 2015 to suspend a $700-million plan to build a new supply ship, a move that the RCMP alleges prompted Norman to leak secrets to Quebec’s Davie Shipbuilding so it could pressure the Liberals into restarting the project.

Brison has told the House of Commons that he simply did his job as Treasury Board president, the minder of the public purse, to ensure taxpayers were getting good value for the ship contract.

Brison has denied accusations levelled by Norman’s lawyers and echoed by opposition MPs that he lobbied on behalf of Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding, which wanted the Liberals to cancel the Davie deal and hire Irving for the supply-ship job instead.