'The common good against the individual good'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 12:06 PM - 0 Comments

While the minister manages to both lament the intrusiveness of the census and encourage you to cooperate with next year’s “survey,” you can add TD Bank’s Don Drummond and the director of Toronto Public Health to the list of those who oppose the change. In addition to calling for an amendment to the Statistics Act, the Liberals want the industry committee recalled to deal with the issue.

The CBC’s David McKie, meanwhile, offers a review of the matter.

Currie says just because people dislike completing forms, doesn’t mean governments should let them off the hook. ”People objected to seatbelts. People object to legislation on anti-smoking. They object to the legislation on cell-phone use in cars. But we do things for the common good. We have to measure the common good against the individual good. Nobody says we should cut out jury duty and not have it obligatory. And no one says we should cut out the census except the minister.”

What if it doesn’t go as planned?

By John Geddes - Friday, March 26, 2010 at 11:55 AM - 11 Comments

Photograph by Sean Kilpatrick/ CP

Everything in Jim Flaherty’s 2010 budget hinges on his forecasts. The finance minister’s plan to shrink the deficit from a staggering $49.2 billion this year to a pesky $1.8 billion in just five years depends on steady economic growth. He’s often challenged for projecting five consecutive years of growth of around five per cent, including inflation. But Flaherty has a great comeback: he’s using the average of 15 respected private forecasts. He’s been known to rhyme off the forecasters’ names, as he began to in question period last week—“TD Bank, BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank…”—before the Speaker cut him off.

That roll call, though, may sound weightier than it really is. Of those 15 firms, Flaherty’s department told Maclean’s, six don’t attempt to project as far out as 2013-14 and 2014-15—the crucial years in his deficit-busting narrative. Of the remaining nine, some are less than ringingly confident about the numbers they offer. Take BMO Capital Markets, whose outlook is a touch more optimistic than the forecast average used in the budget. “We generally do not publish our long-range economic forecasts,” said Douglas Porter, BMO’s deputy chief economist, “and I would view these more as ‘assumptions’ than as ‘forecasts.’ ” Don Drummond, the chief economist at TD Bank Financial Group, is somewhat more pessimistic than the forecast average. Still, Drummond isn’t dismissive. “It is not as though they dreamed up a scenario biased to the optimistic,” he said. He views the budget assumptions as “credible,” although “the economy and revenues could certainly underperform.”

Yet Flaherty doesn’t build in any cushion against such potential disappointments. In his 2009 budget, he adjusted the private-sector forecast down just to be prudent—but not in 2010. Gone, too, is the old Liberal practice of setting aside contingency reserves. For Flaherty’s deficit-fighting plan to work, there can be no unpleasant surprises.

Add another to the enemies list (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 1:22 PM - 83 Comments

Michael Ignatieff selflessly beseeches the Prime Minister to spare the rest of the population and direct all anger at him.

I was shocked to read that Prime Minister Harper has again attacked a private citizen for expressing views on public policy that are perceived to be at odds with his government’s agenda. The Prime Minister’s behaviour is beneath the office he holds.  As an elected Member of Parliament, I am used to being on the receiving end of Mr. Harper’s style of politics.  But I draw the line at Mr. Harper’s attacks on members of the public.  The Prime Minister must withdraw these comments and apologize to Mr. Clark.

Whether or not one agrees with Mr. Clark’s advice, he is the CEO of one of Canada’s largest and most respected financial institutions, and he should be free to offer his opinion on Canada’s fiscal policy without fear of reprisal to his business or personal smears to his reputation from the Conservative government. This is the second time in a week that the Prime Minister has crossed the line in civil public discourse by maligning the reputation of a citizen for disagreeing with the Conservative government. Last week, former finance official Scott Clark was attacked by the Prime Minister, adding to the long list of non-partisans like Linda Keen, Peter Tinsley and Paul Kennedy who have been maliciously accused of partisanship for voicing their disagreement with his government’s policies.

Add another to the enemies list

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 12:12 PM - 68 Comments

Be careful what you say in public.

A member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Clark recounted a recent meeting of the high-powered, 150-company group. ”We had a meeting two weeks ago, and almost every single person said raise my taxes. Get this deficit done,” Clark said during a question-and-answer session at the TD Ameritrade Inc. conference. He spoke about a prebudget consultation he recently had with Harper. ”He doesn’t listen, but you get to chat with him,” the TD Bank chief executive remarked…

A day later, an email labelling Clark a rich supporter of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff went out from the PMO to senior Conservatives. Entitled “Millionaire Ignatieff Economic Czar Calls for Higher Taxes,” the email pointed out that Clark had been one of several financial experts who attended a dinner last spring to provide economic advice to Ignatieff. ”Yesterday, another member of Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff’s so-called `economic brain trust,’ Bay Street banker Ed Clark, lectured Canadians from sunny Florida on our need to pay higher taxes,” the PMO note said. It went on to say that Ignatieff will use statements from “his well-heeled economic advisers” to justify massive tax hikes for “working- and middle-class Canadians.” The email ended: It’s been reported “that Michael Ignatieff’s Bay Street buddy Ed Clark earned $11 million in 2009. He can afford higher taxes. Can you?”

A Hostile Climate

By Patricia Best - Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 12:10 PM - 25 Comments

Gord Nixon, 52 years old and chief executive officer of Canada’s largest bank, drove home from his downtown Toronto office one day in late July as per usual, to his mid-town manse on a neatly tree-lined street. By the time he got home he was apoplectic. The entire route, all the way to his front door, was postered with messages on light poles reading “Help us Mrs. Nixon,” aimed at his wife, Janet. That was in addition to similar notices plastered in the downtown core in the previous weeks. The posters didn’t say who “us” were, but Nixon knew what it was about.

It was the most provocative step to date in a campaign against the Royal Bank of Canada launched by a U.S.-based environmental activist group few in Canada had heard of—the Rainforest Action Network (RAN). The group’s purpose: to stop lending in Canada’s oil sands. Not cut lending, stop lending altogether.

RBC is, to be sure, a formidable target—it’s a bank with over $720 billion in assets. But RAN is also a force to be reckoned with. In the past 15 years, it has managed to get U.S. corporations like Citigroup, Home Depot and Boise Cascade to make concessions on environmental issues. It’s a slick organization posing as a grassroots and granola outfit; it counts a number of Hollywood celebrities among its supporters, and the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund among its donors. But it’s also a radical group that believes in creating a “business nightmare” for its corporate targets, according to its own literature. Its letterhead logo is a black panther, evoking extreme activism of the past, and it trains its members in civil disobedience. Its leaders speak like M.B.A. grads—Mike Brune, its executive director, has an accounting degree from Westchester University, but he has also been arrested at least 11 times.

Continue…

Newsmakers '09: U-Turns

By Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

TD Bank recovers from fee-fall
After plans to impose a $35 inactivity fee for lines of credit sparked nationwide outrage, TD Bank got the message. On top of scrapping the inactivity charge, the bank pledged not to implement any new or increased fees on most products this year. At Toronto-Dominion Bank, it seems the customer is right after all.

It’s their party
The last thing sitting politicians need to worry about, says federal Tory party president Don Plett, is duking it out in riding-level nomination fights. After all, holding onto power in a minority government can be stressful. And so, despite razzing the Liberals for the same policy, Conservative MPs will now, for the first time, be granted automatic nominations in the next election.

The natural
Women have yet another reason to throw their panties at Tom Jones. The Sex Bomb singer, 69, has abandoned his signature dark brown hair in favour of a more natural look, a decision he concedes he should have made years ago. “Women love it,” says the silver-haired Jones, who has also vowed to give up plastic surgery.

Okay, Tasers might be trouble
Breaking with past statements, the RCMP recently conceded that Tasers carry “the risk of death, particularly for acutely agitated individuals.” Now when Tasers are deployed, Mounties are advised to steer clear of the suspect’s chest, lest the electricity trigger a cardiac arrest. Apparently, jolting someone with up to 50,000 volts of electricity can, in fact, be dangerous.
Angelina’s dress reversal
Consider it this year’s most literal fashion switch. In a bid for what her stylist called a “more blouson” look, Angelina Jolie wore her Max Azria gown backwards to the Screen Actors Guild Awards. That the plunging neckline happened to highlight her toned, tattooed back was purely coincidental.

Make that a two-child policy
After three decades of imposing a severe one-child-only policy, China is reacting to a new reality: a workforce shortage. To balance out Shanghai’s aging population, men and women who are both only children are encouraged to go forth and multiply—twice.

That $600-million bomb
After a proposal to award $21,000 ($600 million in total) to each of the families of all those killed during the Northern Ireland Troubles—including members of paramilitary groups and even a bomber who died when his device exploded—drew fire from some of the bereaved, Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government rejected it.

Alberta: from riches to rags
Canada’s oil-laden province expects to be among those calling on Ottawa for a handout at the end of this fiscal year. Barring an unforeseen economic miracle, it will be the first time in more than 20 years that Alberta has asked for federal financial aid. Badly wounded by the stock market crash and plummeting energy prices, the once-rich province anticipates it will qualify for $220 million in fiscal stabilization funds.

U.S. military coffins visible once again
Eighteen years after George H. W. Bush banned U.S. media from recording images of military coffins returning from combat, the veil of secrecy has been lifted by the new President: provided the family doesn’t protest, media can once again photograph the homecoming of the country’s war dead.

Vatican sees the good in Harry Potter
A year after charging author J.K. Rowling with creating a story where “witchcraft is proposed as a positive ideal,” the Vatican’s official newspaper appears to have warmed up to Harry Potter. In L’Osservatore Romano’s assessment of Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Prince, the sixth film adaptation of the bestselling series, the paper proclaimed, “there is a clear line of demarcation between good and evil.”

Wikipedia closes ranks
The Web’s biggest open-knowledge bank isn’t so open anymore. As English-language articles passed the three-million mark, Wikipedia began keeping closer watch of entries on living people, giving a group of trusted editors the power to accept or reject revisions.

From reality TV to White House
Alejandra Campoverdi is a campaign intern who took Barack Obama’s message of change to heart. Before joining his team, Campoverdi, a Harvard grad, chose to put her other assets forward, appearing on the NBC reality show For Love Or Money and posing in Maxim. Her transformation prompted yet another about-face: shortly after she became an assistant to a deputy chief of staff, she was rumoured to be dating Jon Favreau, Obama’s 28-year-old speech writer who had previously bemoaned his singledom.

West Bank wall, schmall: it’s fine as it is
The West Bank wall, which Israel once proclaimed as “essential to keep out attackers,” isn’t so necessary anymore. After years of criticism from the international community over the barrier, which runs in and around the West Bank separating the Palestinian territory from Israel, Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s security service, told a parliamentary committee that now there’s “no need to finish” construction.

Sit back, relax and don't shop

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, November 12, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 22 Comments

Bobby Ammar wants you to feel at home. Well, not at home, exactly. More like the lobby of a boutique hotel, or an art gallery. Which is extraordinary, really. Because Ammar operates in the dusty business of selling cars. When the new Ericksen Infiniti dealership in Edmonton opened in September, complete with plush leather chairs, wide-screen plasma TV and, says general manager Ammar, “the most expensive cappuccino machine in the city,” it offered a peek into an emerging retail phenomenon—lounging. “We wanted a place where people could pour a latte, sit back and relax.”

Lounging is a reversal of almost everything we’ve come to expect from retail. Over the years, stores perfected the quick sell. Transactions-per-minute became the measure of success, with customers viewed more as commodities than living, breathing souls. Get in, do your business, then get out. But now a host of businesses, like car dealerships, but also dental offices, malls and even banks, want you to stay, take off your jacket and unwind. In a hyper-competitive retail landscape decimated by the recession, businesses are going to remarkable lengths to make you feel comfortable. If the waiting room was once the purgatory of retail, today it’s becoming an indulgence all its own. Continue…

CBC to use TV product placements

By Kate Lunau - Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 7 Comments

Who’s the biggest breakout star of CBC-TV’s lineup? Answer: TD Canada Trust. This fall, thanks to a new product-placement deal, the bank will appear in episodes of CBC’s Being Erica, Little Mosque on the Prairie and Heartland.

Long a staple of American broadcasting, product placement is still relatively rare in Canada, says Scott Moore, CBC’s general manager of media sales and marketing. As a trusted home of Canadian content, the network provides a “unique advantage” to advertisers. Continue…

About that political instability

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 10:19 AM - 6 Comments

Economists consider what that other economist has said about the ruinous effect of an election right now.

TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond, a former senior Finance official, noted that during elections and for longer periods if the government changes hands, there is a slowing in spending by departments, particularly of discretionary spending.

However, the effect on Ottawa’s $12-billion infrastructure stimulus designed to fight the recession would be minimal, if at all, he added…

Economists have a little more sympathy for Harper’s contention that an election risks political instability and could affect confidence in markets and the economy in general, although even here, they say the prime minister is stretching a point.

Under normal circumstances, the shutting down of government during the six weeks of an election would have little repercussions on the behaviour of businesses, markets and consumers, noted Ian Lee, MBA director of the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University in Ottawa.

He pointed out that Japan, which fell the hardest during the recession, just recently completed an election and yet still managed to be one of the few countries to manage growth during the second quarter. By contrast, Canada’s economy shrank by 3.4 per cent during the period.

The Commons: So much to answer for

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 7:11 PM - 26 Comments

The Scene. The good news for the Finance Minister was this: a full 45 minutes of Question Period passed this day without a single query about a federal deficit that may now be on track to total upwards of $170 billion. Not until after QP, surrounded by reporters, did the increasingly gaping hole in the national treasury come up. At which point, Jim Flaherty’s response was as follows.

“Well, you know, economists at TD and economists at the other banks are entitled to their view. I’m sure different economists will have different views. All of them were on average more optimistic than I was in the budget in January but they’re on the low side of the private sector forecasters right now.”

Er. Well, don’t get too worried about that $170 billion then. Indeed, it could be worse. For sure, it might be worse.

That though will be for whoever the Finance Minister is in 2014. Mr. Flaherty, no fool, will have surely bequeathed the position to someone else by then. Denis Coderre, say. Or Thomas Mulcair. Or Pierre Poilievre. Or whoever Prime Minister Gilles Duceppe decides to let handle the books.

In the meantime, the bad news for Mr. Flaherty was this: even without, apparently, the time to prepare some questions about our increasing indebtitude, the opposition still arrived for Question Period ready to press all sorts of issues said to demonstrate some failing or another in the minister. Continue…

The indictment

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 4:10 PM - 28 Comments

From Michael Ignatieff’s scrum after QP today.

Question: Will you be moving a motion of non-confidence before the summer break and will you also be supporting the Main Estimates, voting for the Main Estimates (off microphone)?

Michael Ignatieff: I don’t want an election. Canadians don’t want an election. But here’s where I am. I’m trying to make Parliament work with a government that every day is displaying more flagrant examples of incompetence. We’ve got a major medical crisis with the isotopes. They’ve got no plan. We’ve got, Toronto Dominion Bank just announced that the deficit over five years will be, wait for this, $168 billion. That’s the biggest number anybody has ever heard of. The public finances of this country are not under control. Right? Third, we’ve got an unemployment crisis with unemployment surging across the country. We’ve got Premier Campbell, we’ve got Brad Wall, we’ve got Premier McGuinty saying let’s do something about a national standard for EI. I’m not fancy about how we do it, but let’s do it. Right? We’ve got stimulus that needs to get out the door and only 6% of the stimulus has actually reached the country in the middle of the construction season.

So look, I want to make Parliament work. Canadians don’t want an election. I don’t want an election, but we have a problem, a serious problem about this government’s confidence, and I’m getting to the answer, next week, next week they have their second report card. Right? And as I said at the beginning of this, we’re holding these guys on probation. We’ll look at the data when we get it and we will make a serene and clear decision probably in the middle of next week. Thank you.

Econowatch

By Steve Maich - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 3 Comments

When will things go back to normal? That is the only question that seems to matter: when will this strange and frightening episode pass? It’s a fair question, but not exactly the right one. What most really mean is: when will my house price begin soaring again? How long before my stocks triple? And when will I feel safe to max out my credit cards again? Over the past 15 years that became “normal,” or at least common. But that isn’t coming back soon.

The reality is, everything we see happening around us is part of the process of returning to normal. For the past decade or so the laws of financial gravity were suspended. Now they are back in force, and those who soared the highest have the furthest to fall.

Continue…

'That is a strange call'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 1:46 PM - 8 Comments

In international news coverage unrelated to the Prime Minister’s bathroom habits, the Wall Street Journal’s John Jannarone doesn’t think much of our economist’s suggestion that buying opportunities abound for our banks. Full dismissal after the jump. Continue…

Correction

By Steve Maich - Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Some of you may have read in this week’s magazine, a story under my byline in which I refer to the fact that ESPN columnist Bill Simmons reported in his column he received a personal email from Ed Clark requesting that he stop referring to Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden as “Whatever the hell the Garden is called.” I repeated this anecdote as part of a short story in our magazine about the enormous inflation in prices for arena naming rights.

Anyhoo… turns out, the story is apocryphal. It seems somebody sent Simmons an email to that effect, claiming to be Clark, but it wasn’t Clark who sent it.  TD emailed this morning to notify me of my mistake. (At least I think it was TD who emailed…who can tell anymore?) I see that ESPN has removed that item from their website.

So, I apologize to Ed Clark, and to any and all readers to whom I fed misinformation. One of the key rules of journalism is “confirm everything.” I foolishly assumed that the original writer did the confirming for me. That is not an excuse, it’s a stupid rookie mistake.