Canada column for
Sunday, Feb. 2/20
THE CANADIAN REPORT
(c) By Jim Fox
The Canadian
government is making final arrangements to airlift 295 people out of the
epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China.
Canada’s public
health services has reported four confirmed cases, with three in Ontario and one in British Columbia, of people who recently
returned from China.
Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau said Canada has applied for Chinese approval to send a plane to
the locked-down city of Wuhan to transport the Canadians who have asked for
help to leave.
As well, the government
is co-ordinating evacuation efforts with other countries and going through a “deliberate
process” to get the Canadians home.
The World Health
Organization said the outbreak is a global emergency with China’s deaths rising
on Saturday to 259 and 12,000 confirmed cases.
Canada is assisting
the international community and World Health Organization to ensure the threat
from the virus remains low here and elsewhere in the world, Trudeau said.
With agreement on
terms of the new North American free trade deal, Premier Doug Ford wants his own for
Ontario, Canada’s most populous province.
Ford will travel to
Washington to discuss a trade strategy aimed at strengthening economic ties
while countering the U.S. “Buy American” policy.
He and Economic
Development Minister Vic Fedeli will attend the National Governors Association meeting
from Feb. 7 to 9 to discuss trade barriers and promoting investment and
economic opportunity.
Ontario is the top
trading partner with 19 states and the second-largest with nine others,
accounting for $390 billion a year in two-way trade.
---
News in brief:
- Sobeys is the
first Canadian national grocery chain to eliminate plastic bags as of last
Friday. It affects 255 stores and will remove 225-million bags from circulation
a year. Customers can bring their own bags, buy cloth ones or opt for
compostable paper ones. Walmart Canada charges five cents for each plastic bag,
saying it has reduced use by half.
- A recent slowing
of economic growth could lead to an interest-rate cut, the Bank of Canada
suggests. The central bank has kept its key overnight interest rate at 1.75
percent since October 2018. A future rate cut “hinges on how the data evolves
from here,” said bank governor Stephen Poloz.
---
Facts and figures:
The Canadian dollar
is lower at 75.55 cents U.S. while the U.S. dollar returns $1.323 Canadian before
exchange fees.
The Bank of Canada’s
key interest rate is steady at 1.75 percent and the prime-lending rate is 3.95 percent.
Stock markets are
lower with the Toronto Exchange index at 17,318 points while the TSX Venture
index is 575 points.
The average price
for gas in Canada is lower at $1.10 a liter or $4.18 for a U.S. gallon.
Lotto Max: (Jan.
28) 4, 10, 12, 27, 30, 44 and 46; bonus 7. (Jan. 24) 2, 11, 14, 21, 23, 34 and
36; bonus 5.
Lotto 6/49: (Jan.
29) 3, 14, 16, 23, 41 and 43; bonus 29. (Jan. 25) 8, 20, 21, 30, 32 and 48;
bonus 31.
---
Regional briefs:
- Ontario school
teachers are escalating their rotating strikes after three days of renewed
negotiations with the government failed to reach a settlement. Schools will be
closed for two days this week with a walkout by 83,000 members of the
Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. There will be a province-wide
walkout on Thursday and rotating strikes in various districts “until an
agreement is reached.”
- Opposition is
growing in Alberta over a proposed $20-billion oil sands mine north of Fort
McMurray. Proposed by Teck Resources of Vancouver, the mine would produce
260,000 barrels of oil a day with concerns it would cause “significant harm” to
the environment and Indigenous land. “In a time of climate crisis, there is no
way that we should be approving the largest tar sands project to date and the
millions of tons of emissions that project would release,” said Mike Hudema of
Greenpeace.
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Jim Fox can be reached at canadareport@hotmail.com
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