As Trump Tightens Legal Immigration, Canada Woos Tech Firms: But Canada Is Not Silicon Valley

There Is More To High-Tech Immigration to Canada Than Meets The Eye

My long-time business partner and I, one of us in Canada and the other in Silicon Valley, earlier this year launched a business targeted at bringing immigrant entrepreneurs to Canada, Vendange Partners. http://www.vendangepartners.com

From our years’of experience in Silicon Valley and with technology entrepreneurship around the World, we knew that many of the best and brightest young entrepreneurs abroad dreamed of bringing their ideas to the United States to forge their skills and their new companies.  But from our discussions both in California and overseas it is clear that Trumpism is having a profoundly negative effect on this flow of talent into the American economy, both individual technical talent and entrepreneurial teams looking to start companies and raise capital.

The Canadian government and some of the provinces, particularly British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and to some degree the Maritimes, have done a commendable job of promoting high-tech immigration and entrepreneurship.  The Global Talent Stream visa is an excellent vehicle as described in The New York Times article included in this post. Global Talent Stream attempts to address the need for technical talent for companies already operating in Canada.  The competition for such talent and the salaries offered in the United States are a major problem for Canadian companies, particularly in AI and robotics. Theoretically at least, a Global Talent Stream applicant with an employer lined up can be working in Canada within about two weeks.

The so-called “startup visa” program for founders and already established teams wishing to set up in Canada is more complicated.  The program requires a committed investment from a “designated” Canadian investor and a letter of endorsement among other requirements before the visa is granted. The difficulties of doing this are something of a Catch-22. In practice in the past, endorsement letters were written by government listed “designated” investors without actual investment, but this still did not result in a wave of high-tech startups coming to Canada. The only other option is for entrepreneurs to bring a significant amount of their own capital with them to Canada.  This option has led to abuse. At its original launch under the Harper government, the startup visa program, unfortunately, became a magnet for immigration scams.  Hence, the startup visa program remains over-subscribed with applicants bringing their own capital to qualify for the “startup” visa for up to five founders.

Finally,  There is also simply too little smart Canadian venture capital and too many startups competing for the limited funds. It is also commonly acknowledged that Canada’s investment institutions and the Canadian financial mentality are not well-aligned with the Silicon Valley investment culture. Major U.S. pension funds like the California Public Employees Retirement System (better-known as CalPERS) annually invests 10% of its entire portfolio in venture capital funds. The same cannot be said generally about Canadian pensions funds and investment banks, as one example of the differences. Much lower risk debt capital and convertible debt seem to be more popular products in Canada.  In defense, it is often pointed out that the Canadian economy is roughly one-tenth the size of the United States. Yet, on a relative scale, the Canadian venture capital industry still does not compare well. Add to this the fact that the Canadian government has historically been far behind other OECD industrialized nations in R&D investment in innovation and you have major problems.  Anecdotally, the sheer amount of money and number of available investors in Silicon Valley alone is well-over 5oo compared with a mere handful in Vancouver. When the more than one thousand local indigenous BC startups actively seeking capital are layered onto the available sources of risk capital in Vancouver, there is major local competition before the immigrant entrepreneurs even arrive in Canada. Looking for risk venture capital in Canada, a la Silicon Valley is problematic.

With that candid and sobering analysis of high-tech immigration to Canada, for individuals who have taken the time to do an in-depth analysis of themselves, and the pro’s and con’s of such a major move, Canada may still offer many advantages to entrepreneurs, and those advantages are only likely to improve over time.

Vendange Partners

 

OECD Apparently Believes Global Tax Evasion Is A Legacy Issue: A Pigs Will Fly Moment

Tax avoidance is allegedly a ‘legacy issue,’ OECD’s Angel Gurria says

• Gurria was Speaking at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference in London
• He said governments were working hard to stop tax avoidance and evasion
• U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said her government is continuing to work against tax evasion

Published 12 Hours Ago CNBC.com

Photographer | Collection | Getty Images

Amid another leak of documents revealing large-scale international tax avoidance, the secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said Monday that tax avoidance was fast becoming a thing of the past.

“When we’re talking about the ‘Panama Papers’ or ‘Paradise Papers’we’re talking about a legacy that is fast disappearing,” Angel Gurria said.

Speaking at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference in London, Gurria said governments were working hard to stop tax avoidance and evasion.

“When we talk about ‘Double Irish’ or ‘Double Dutch’ (tax avoidance schemes) we’re talking about structures which are no longer there,” she said, adding: “This will not be repeated because of the work you and your governments and the OECD have done in the last few years.”

“There is quite literally no place to hide,” he said, noting that 50 countries had implemented automatic information exchanges regarding tax and that more nations were planning to do the same.

Gurria’s comments come after a leak of millions of documents revealing large-scale tax avoidance by high-profile individuals and companies via offshore financial services companies. The latest tax avoidance leak has been dubbed the “Paradise Papers” and comes after a similar leak in 2016 called the “Panama Papers” that showed how a Panamanian law firm allegedly helped its clients to avoid taxes by using offshore tax havens.

Speaking at the same business conference on Monday, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said that her government had continued the work against tax evasion that her predecessor David Cameron had begun.

“He started this work, not only in the U.K. economy but on an international stage. So we have seen more revenues coming into HMRC (the U.K.’s tax-collecting department) over the last few years, with £160 billion extra since 2010,” she said.

More work was being done to ensure “greater transparency” in the U.K.’s dependencies and British overseas territories, May said, and HMRC was already able to access more information about so-called “shell” companies.

“We want people to pay the tax that is due,” she said. That sentiment was echoed by the leader of the opposition Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, who said that society was “undermined” by anyone that did not pay the tax they owed.

Canada’s Open Door to Tax Fraud, Money Laundering

 

The Shell Game: Canada’s Lax Disclosure Laws Open Door to Tax Fraud, Money Laundering

Transparency International warns against country becoming a ‘haven for corrupt capital.’

Source: The Shell Game: Canada’s Lax Disclosure Laws Open Door to Tax Fraud, Money Laundering | The Tyee

Canada can avoid becoming a desirable destination for dubious global lucre if it acts soon.

How many shell companies exist in Canada? How many legal trusts? Who are the beneficial owners protected by such unnecessary veils of secrecy? No one knows because in most cases there is no legal requirement to disclose actual ownership even to regulators. In fact, more information is required to get a library card than to set up a company in most jurisdictions in Canada.

What we do know is that Canada ranks near the bottom among our OECD partners in terms of corporate disclosure requirements to fight money laundering and tax evasion. A recent report from Transparency International detailed the dismal situation and why our country has become a haven for dubious offshore property speculation.

“The Canadian government must take immediate steps to require all companies and trusts in the country to identify their beneficial owners to ensure Canada does not become a haven for corrupt capital,” warns Transparency International Canada executive director Alesia Nahirny.

Canada is one of the few developed countries that does not require the identities of company directors to be verified or any information on shareholders. In most provinces, it is legal to use “nominee” directors or shareholders without disclosing that they are acting on someone else’s behalf.

A nominee is essentially a sock puppet — the proverbial student or homemaker often listed as the title owner of some of Canada’s most expensive homes. Why would someone list a multi-million dollar property in someone else’s name? Some plausible reasons include to avoid taxes or to launder money. This practice remains completely and inexplicably legal in most parts of our painfully polite country.

Lawyers can also act as nominee directors, offering their clients an additional level of secrecy under solicitor-client privilege unavailable in most other countries. A ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015 exempted lawyers and their firms from important parts of the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act, further widening the yawning loopholes in our laws meant to fight money laundering. According to an international oversight body, the Financial Action Task Force of which Canada is a member, “the legal profession in Canada is especially vulnerable to misuse.”

Toronto lawyer Simon Rosenfeld was secretly taped in 2002 during a meeting in a Miami bar with an undercover RCMP officer, who was posing as a member of a Columbian drug cartel needing money-laundering services. According to the officer’s testimony, after exchanging a token dollar to cement solicitor-client secrecy, Rosenfeld bragged that moving illegal funds through Canada was “20 times” easier than the U.S., where arrest and convictions are much more likely. He described the Canadian enforcement regime as “la la land” and said that five other lawyers in Vancouver laundered $200,000 per month through trust accounts for a seven per cent commission.

The transcript of this conversation did not endear Rosenfeld to the jury during his prosecution and he was sentenced to three years in jail. He appealed the conviction and the higher court judge increased his sentence to five years. This rare successful enforcement provides some fleeting schadenfreude, but Rosenfeld’s seasoned and sad assessment of “la la land” continues to ring true.

Legal black boxes

Millions of legal trusts are estimated to exist in Canada, but there is no way of knowing since there is no requirement for them to be registered or file any record of their existence — again an outlier among other countries. They are supposed to file information on assets and trustees with the Canada Revenue Agency but only a small fraction actually do.

A trust is the consummate legal black box. Considered a mere private contract under Canadian law, trusts do not need to keep records on beneficial owners, let alone file such documents with the federal government. Trustees can conduct transactions without disclosing their role as go-betweens, making it difficult or impossible for financial institutions to comply with money laundering regulations. To our international embarrassment, the Financial Action Task Force found in 2016 that Canada was less than fully compliant in 29 out of 40 anti-money laundering measures and “non-compliant” regarding transparency and beneficial ownership of such legal arrangements.

Vancouver, Let’s Stand Up to Moneyed Interests of Real Estate

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Real estate in Vancouver and Toronto is where the rubber really hits the road on these national regulatory failings. Transparency International looked at the title documents for the 100 most expensive homes in the Lower Mainland and unsurprisingly found a sampling of all these methods to conceal the beneficial owners. Twenty-nine properties were held by Canadian or offshore shell companies, 11 were owned by nominees with no obvious source of income, six more were held by trusts. In total, 49 of these luxury estates collectively worth more than $1 billion had opaque ownership.

Canada’s lax legal oversight coupled with a decades-long public policy effort to incentivize wealthy citizenship has turned Vancouver into a global hedge city. Like London, New York, and San Francisco, Vancouver’s luxury properties have become a favored place to stash cash for the world’s wealthiest.

According to professor David Ley at the University of British Columbia, Canada effectively sold Canadian citizenships to rich offshore investors through the now-cancelled Business Immigration Program. Ley described the scheme during a lecture last September, detailing how up to 200,000 of the world’s wealthiest may have arrived in the Lower Mainland as a result of these public policy efforts, inflating property values and contributing to our current housing woes.

According to Ley, Canada’s BIP was heavily oversubscribed because Canada was selling citizenships for far below the international market rate compared to other countries with similar citizenship-for-sale incentive programs. In the U.S., candidates had to invest $1,000,000 and employ up to 10 Americans before being granted citizenship. In Canada, investors only had to loan provincial governments $800,000 to be paid back in full after five years. This come-and-get-it attitude towards passports and global capital seems sadly similar to other national assets such as natural resources, but I digress.

Besides ballooning our housing prices, was there a net economic benefit to this citizenship fire sale? According to Ley, the federal immigration database showed that “of all immigration streams to Canada, the Business Immigration Program led to the lowest declared incomes, lower even than refugees.” This was in part because wealthy offshore investors are so skillful at avoiding taxation coupled with a shocking lack of enforcement from the CRA.

Defending against dubious lucre

What can Canada do to clean up this mess and avoid becoming an even more desirable destination for dubious global lucre? A low-cost first step would be to require all Canadian companies and trusts to declare beneficial owners and publish this information on a public searchable registry. The United Kingdom brought in such a system in 2016 to improve in law enforcement and tax collection, which will more than cover the cost of implementation.

Transparency International has several other practical suggestions that are also supported by the banking sector and law enforcement:

• Beneficial ownership should be listed on all land title documents, ideally retroactively.
• Corporate registries should have the resources and requirement to accurately identify directors and shareholders
• The federal government should require all sectors — including real estate agents — to identify beneficial owners before transactions are conducted.

Besides money launderers, tax evaders and criminals, who could possibly oppose these sensible and long overdue reforms? Is the Trudeau government going to act quickly to plug these gapping holes and bring our country in line with the global fight against illicit capital? The recent cash-for-access events with wealthy offshore investors provide a telling opportunity to see on whose behalf Trudeau is acting. The whole country is watching.

OECD Slashes Canadian Economic Forecast Yet Again

One day after federal Finance Minister Joe Oliver deflected concerns over Canada’s poor economic showing to start 2015, the OECD announced that it now projects Canadian growth this year at about 1.5 percent, down sharply from 2.2 percent during its previous temperature reading in March and a full percentage point below its forecast last November. Oliver on Tuesday told a Parliamentary Committee that he does not anticipate a recession.

Carolyn Hyde of Bloomberg News discusses the revised OECD global economic forecast, and further negative impacts to the Canadian and U.S. economies

Today, June 3rd, the Paris-based body has also adjusted its timetable for the start of monetary tightening by the Bank of Canada to early-2016 from mid-2015.

Commenting on the main risk to even its reduced Canadian forecast, the OECD cites “a disorderly housing-market correction, particularly given high household debt, which would depress private consumption and residential investment and could, in the extreme, threaten financial stability.”

Other potential negatives for the Canadian economy range from a further fall in oil prices and slower than expected growth in the United States, to a sudden Chinese slowdown, which could translate into “a greater and more protracted than expected deceleration in activity, including weaker investment, exports and private consumption.”

Potential Canadian pluses include a recovery in oil demand and prices and higher than anticipated growth in the United States and other important export markets.

Royal Bank of Canada is more upbeat in a forecast also released today. The bank predicts a much better second half for the Canadian economy, with growth reaching 1.8 percent this year and 2.6 percent in 2016.

RBC acknowledges that investment will be weak for the rest of the year, as energy companies slash capital spending by about 30 percent. But the bank expects other sectors to pick up part of the slack, thanks to low financing costs and stronger demand.

But the OECD worries that investment everywhere will remain below the level of previous recoveries, partly because of weak consumer demand, continuing uncertainty about fiscal policies and a lack of structural reforms in several key economies.

“Despite tailwinds and policy actions, real investment has been tepid and productivity growth disappointing,” the OECD report says.

“By and large, firms have been unwilling to spend on plant, equipment, technology and services as vigorously as they have done in previous cyclical recoveries.

“Moreover, many governments postponed infrastructure investments as part of a fiscal consolidation.”

Iraq About To Flood Oil Market: More Grief Ahead For Canada

Underscoring Goldman Sachs forecast last week of oil prices at or below $50 per bbl until at least 2020, Bloomberg News is today reporting that Iraq is preparing to unleash a flood of new oil within the next few months.  This is very bad news for the price of Western Canadian Select bitumen, and Alberta oil sands producers.  Saudi Arabia’s strategy, together with OPEC, to squeeze high-cost oil producers of oil sands and shale seems to be working.  More pessimistic forecasts of WCS at $25 for an extended period now appear more plausible.  The complex interplay of oil and global economies could also have a reverberating effect on regions on the sharp edge of full-scale recession, including Canada, Europe, Russia and China.

Iraq About to Flood Oil Market in New Front of OPEC Price War
If shipping schedules are correct, a tidal wave of oil is coming.

BLOOMBERG NEWS by Grant SmithJulian Lee
7:37 AM PDT
May 26, 2015

(Bloomberg) — Iraq is taking OPEC’s strategy to defend its share of the global oil market to a new level.
The nation plans to boost crude exports by about 26 percent to a record 3.75 million barrels a day next month, according to shipping programs, signaling an escalation of OPEC strategy to undercut U.S. shale drillers in the current market rout. The additional Iraqi oil is equal to about 800,000 barrels a day, or more than comes from OPEC member Qatar. The rest of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is expected to rubber stamp its policy to maintain output levels at a meeting on June 5. While shipping schedules aren’t a promise of future production, they are indicative of what may come. The following chart graphs planned tanker loadings (in red) against exports.

As in previous months, Iraq might not hit its June target – export capacity is currently capped at 3.1 million barrels a day, Deputy Oil Minister Fayyad al-Nimaa said on May 18. Still, any extra Iraqi supplies inevitably mean OPEC strays even further above its collective output target of 30 million barrels a day, Morgan Stanley says. The following chart shows OPEC increasing output in recent months against its current target.

Defying the threat from Islamic State militants, Iraq has been ramping up exports from both the Shiite south – where companies like BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc operate – and the Kurdish region in the north, which last year reached a temporary compromise with the federal government on its right to sell crude independently.

CNN Money: Canada’s Economy Is A Disaster From Low Oil Prices

The evidence of a Canadian economic train wreck just keep rolling in. This report from CNN Money mentions last week’s Bank of Canada dismal report on the Canadian economy, and goes on to add additional economic data and comment from respected investment banks around the World. The one glaring omission is any political discussion of how Canada got into this mess, and who is responsible for it.

Canada’s economy is a disaster from low oil prices

By Nick Cunningham for Oilprice.com @CNNMoneyInvest

Low oil prices are threatening the health of Canada’s oil and gas sector, which in turn, is causing turmoil in Canada’s economy as a whole.

The fall in oil prices is forcing billions of dollars in spending reductions for Canada’s oil and gas industry. In February, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA) shelved plans for a tar sands project in Alberta that would have produced 200,000 barrels per day. Last year, Petronas put off plans to build a massive LNG export terminal on Canada’s west coast.

Moody’s recently predicted that very few of the 18 proposed LNG projects in Canada will be constructed. Most will be canceled. The oil industry is expected to lose 37% of its revenues in 2015, or a fall of CAD$43 billion.

That is bad news for Canada’s oil and gas sector. But even worse, Canada’s overdependence on oil and gas will threaten its broader economy now that the sector has gone bust.

The severe drop in oil prices has made the Canadian dollar one of the worst performing currencies in the world over the past year. The “loonie” used to trade at parity to the U.S. dollar, and even appreciated to a stronger level a few years ago, but now a Canadian dollar gets you less than 80 U.S. cents.

Disaster levels: While a weaker currency has complicating effects on the economy (it will also boost exports, for example), on balance low oil prices have been an unmitigated disaster for Canada’s economy.

Canada’s GDP “fell off a cliff” in January of this year, according to a report from Capital Economics, a consultancy. Canada’s economy could be shrinking by 1% on an annualized basis. For the full year, Capital Economics predicts growth of 1.5%, followed by a weak 1% expansion in 2016.

“Overall, unless oil prices rebound soon, the economy is likely to struggle much longer than the consensus view implies, even as the improving US economy supports stronger non-energy exports,” Capital Economics concluded. Other economic analysts agree.

Nomura Securities worries about “contagion,” as the collapse in oil prices lead to less drilling, declining demand for supporting services, falling housing prices, a sinking stock market, and weakness in other sectors like construction and engineering. The pain could be concentrated in Alberta in particular, where household debt averages CAD$124,838, compared to just CAD$76,150 for the rest of Canada. Now with the rug pulled out beneath the economy, there could be a day of reckoning.

High-cost oil: Much of Canada’s oil production comes from high-cost tar sands. When they are up and running, tar sands operations can produce relatively more stable outputs than shale, which suffers from rapid decline rates. But, nevertheless, tar sands are extremely costly, with breakeven prices at $60 to $80 per barrel for steam-assisted extraction and a whopping $90 to $100 per barrel for tar sands mining.
Even worse, Canada’s heavy oil trades at a discount to WTI, which makes it all the more painful when oil prices are low. The discount is nearly $12 per barrel below WTI right now. Some of that discount is the result of inadequate pipeline capacity, trapping some tar sands in Canada. The stalled Keystone XL pipeline is the most controversial, but not the only pipeline that has been blocked. The head of Canada’s Scotiabank recently warned that the inability to build enough energy infrastructure, plus Canada’s near total dependence on the U.S. market, puts Canada’s economy at risk.

The Bank of Canada surveyed the top executives at Canada’s 100 largest businesses found that two-thirds of them think it is critical to diversify the economy away from oil. With such a dependence on commodities, the oil bust has rippled through the economy, forcing layoffs and increasing unemployment. Consumer confidence is low, and hiring is at its lowest level since 2009, during the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis.

Of course, diversification can only be achieved over the longer-term. In the near-term Canada’s fate is tied to the price of oil.

Bank of Canada & OECD See Ever Widening Economic Impact of Oil Collapse

The Bank of Canada’s Spring 2015 Business Outlook Survey (link to complete report below) released this week, gives more reason for serious concern regarding the economic prospects for all Canada, and the widening impact of Canada’s “natural resource curse”: it’s fossil fuel based economy. The report points to a significant increase in business pessimism about the economy as a whole, well beyond the oil economy, which is causing business to significantly reduce plans for capital spending and hiring. As I pointed out previously, the impact of the oil economy collapse is likely to reverberate throughout the Okanagan. The BofC report suggests that the impacts will be even deeper and more diverse. The report also looks to greater macroeconomic impacts: longer term weakness and volatility of the loonie. With Canadian interest rates at an all time low there is even the prospect of deflation. The report’s optimistic expectations for some upside from a robust U.S. economy have vanished this week, with projections of zero growth in the U.S. economy in 2015.

Bank of Canada survey shows oil dimming business confidence

Read the complete Bank of Canada Report here: Business Outlook Survery – Spring 2015

Read about OECD Composite of Leading Indicators: OECD marks slowdown in Canada, even as other economies recover

Hiring intentions drop to lowest since 2009 in central bank’s quarterly scan of big companies

REBLOGGED from the CBC:  Pete Evans, CBC News Posted: Apr 06, 2015 11:46 AM ET Last Updated: Apr 06, 2015 9:29 PM ET

The Bank of Canada says cheaper oil prices are hurting sales forecasts and starting to hit confidence in industries far beyond the energy sector.

In its quarterly Business Outlook Survey, the central bank surveyed 100 representative companies across various Canadian industries and found that broadly speaking, cheaper oil has reduced sales expectations and cut into confidence in doing things like investing in new equipment and machinery, and possibly hiring new staff.

“More businesses than in previous surveys anticipate an outright decline in sales volumes,” the report said.

The survey interviewed business owners between the middle of February and the middle of March. The ongoing slump in oil prices had been underway for several months at that point, but it’s worth noting that Monday’s report is the first such survey since the central bank surprised markets with a rate cut at the end of January.

‘The oil price collapse is taking a toll’– TD Bank’s Leslie Preston

The survey “showed that firms are quite pessimistic about expanding their capacity over the next year,” TD economist Leslie Preston said. “The oil price collapse is taking a toll on Canada’s economy.”

The Bank of Canada’s quarterly survey suggests that gloom in the oil patch is starting to spread into different parts of the overall economy, potentially affecting hiring and purchases of new equipment. (Todd Korol/Reuters)

Although it remains in a range the bank calls “positive,” the outlook for hiring has dropped to its lowest level since 2009, when the world economy was in recession just about everywhere following the credit crisis.

Forty of the companies surveyed said they expect to hire more people in the next 12 months than they did in the previous 12. Another 40 said they expect to hire the same amount, with the remaining 20 saying they expect to hire less.

Good news?

If there’s a source of strength, it’s that the bank’s report suggests companies with strong ties to the U.S. economy are more upbeat. The U.S. is benefiting more from cheap oil than most economies, because it is the most diverse economy on earth and cheaper energy is good news for virtually every other sector.

“Firms’ outlook for the U.S. economy is generally strong, with the majority expecting this strength to support their future sales,” the report says. Cheaper oil has also hurt the loonie, which exporters to the U.S. cited as another reason for cautious optimism about sales from here on out.

Several firms reported foreign demand had increased thanks to the weakened Canadian dollar, but “while many firms outside the energy sector characterize the effects of lower oil prices and the weaker Canadian dollar as favourable for their business outlook, they expect some of the benefits to unfold only gradually in the future,” the report says.

UBC Faculty Joins Other Prestigious Universities Calling for Fossil Fuel Divestment

The University of British Columbia is following the lead of faculty and students at Harvard University, the University of California, Stanford University and many other universities across North America.  Also of note, Norway’s sovereign investment fund, the largest in the World @ $1.3 Trillion, has already made the decision to divest. The current fossil fuel market collapse and likely long term instability is prima facie evidence of the need for divestment, and to prevent further increases in carbon emissions.

UBC Faculty Open Letter Here: UBC Faculty Call For Fossil Fuel Divestment

This Big Idea is sweeping public and private institutional investment funds globally in the belief that it is overdue to begin more demonstrative action against human caused climate change.  Canadians have a particularly important role to play in this.  Current government policy has focused the economy on fossil fuels, at the expense of a broader based economy, and is now experiencing the wrath of the “natural resource curse. Canadian innovation and productivity have plummeted on the OECD scale, and Canada is entering a highly volatile and uncertain recessionary period, as forecast by The Conference Board of Canada, the International Monetary Fund, and numerous Canadian banks.

From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

Faculty at the University of British Columbia have voted in favour of the institution divesting its existing fossil fuel holdings and forgoing further investments in companies connected with fossil fuels.

“Students have spoken. Faculty have spoken. It’s time for UBC to act,” George Hoberg, professor in forest resources management, said in a statement. “Climate change presents an urgent crisis for humanity.”

The results of the referendum were released Tuesday, with 62 per cent of voters supporting divestment.

A fossil-free portfolio

Of UBC’s $1.2-billion endowment fund, more than $100 million is invested in oil, natural gas and coal. The faculty vote is calling on the university to divest completely from those holdings within five years.

“Just as UBC has pledged to use its campus as a ‘living laboratory’ for sustainability, we call on our university to apply its expertise with the same vigour to the endowment,” said Kathryn Harrison, professor of political science and a climate policy expert.

“UBC should devise a profitable, fossil-free portfolio that can serve as an inspiration for sustainable investing by other institutions.”

The faculty will now put their proposal to the university’s board of governors.

“UBC is a place of academic dialogue and debate, and we welcome our faculty members’ interest in our investment policies,” the university said in a statement responding to today’s result. “As the trustee of the endowment, UBC has a fiduciary obligation to ensure that it is managed prudently.”

A growing movement

The fossil fuel divestment movement started in the United States and has spread across North America and Canada.

Last year, UBC students held their own referendum on the issue, with an almost four-to-one vote in favour of divestment.

Today’s vote comes just before Global Divestment Day on Friday when, the UBC campaigners say, a divestment campaign will be launched at the University of Calgary.

Budget 2014 may represent a paradigm shift for Canada’s research and innovation: time will tell

I am both encouraged by and skeptical of these subtle changes to research funding, and glaring problems remain. As the writer, UBC Mathematics Professor, Nassif Ghoussoub, himself points out,  the largest portion of government research & innovation funding is “business as usual.”  The $500 Million earmarked as an Automotive Innovation Fund, is a laughable attempt to disguise a government subsidy as “funding for innovation.”  Distinct changes in policy and procedure are reported, as recommended by UBC President Stephen Toope, and MITACS CEO, Arvind Gupta. But with this federal government, only time will tell what will actually emerge. It will take at least 10 years of this new direction and funding to reverse Canada’s poor OECD standing in innovation and productivity. Some are skeptical of the lack of detail and with good reason, as recent government announcements of venture capital funding and new government backed loans for entrepreneurial ventures have yet to materialize, as has been reported in the Globe & Mail.

Piece of Mind

The substantial investment in university research that the Canadian government announced today is not the only story in Budget 2014. A bigger story may be the pivotal moment and the policy shift that it represents for this government on a research and innovation front, where it had been on the defensive. The $500 million to enhance the Automotive Innovation Fund may eventually end up being a subsidy for the Chrysler plant in Windsor, and the $222 million over 5 years for TRIUMF may be business as usual. The $37-million annual increase to the three research councils (NSERC, SSHERC and CIHR) could be seen as a positive change, even if in real dollars, CIHR’s budget has fallen 6.4% since 2009, NSERC’s has dropped by 5.7%, and SSHRC’s by 6.8%. However, the clear hint in the budget document that these new funds should be directed towards basic research, is already a big shift. But…

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Article: Canada’s economic growth to remain weak: OECD

Canada’s economic growth to remain weak: OECD http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canadas-economic-growth-to-remain-weak-oecd/article9587265/?_rob_utm_medium=twitter