***** Canada Business News *****

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Vancouver couple claims $50M lottery win

VANCOUVER — A Vancouver couple has come forward to claim last Friday's $50-million Lotto Max jackpot.


Their ticket matched the seven winning numbers to set a record for the largest ever lottery jackpot win in B.C.


The lucky pair will be introduced to the media Tuesday afternoon at the British Columbia Lottery Corporation's Richmond office.


The winning ticket was sold at a Mac's convenience store in Vancouver.


Sunil Arora, the clerk who sold and later verified the winning ticket, said it was purchased by a regular customer on Thursday. The customer came back Saturday to check it.


"He checked his ticket on the checking machine," said Arora. "He couldn't believe it so he came to me to recheck it."

 

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Woman charged with bigamy for immigration marriage scheme

VANCOUVER — A woman is facing Canada’s first immigration-related bigamy charge in a British Columbia marriage-of-convenience scheme.

Jotika Ashni Reddy, 33, is accused of marrying one man on Sep. 27, 2006 in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey and a second man on Jan. 26, 2008 in nearby Delta, while she was already married to a third man.

Reddy then tried to sponsor the two men — both foreign nationals — for permanent residency in Canada.

“Each of them applied for permanent resident status on the basis of the marriage,” said federal Crown prosecutor Jenna Hyman.

Reddy is charged with two counts of bigamy and two counts of knowingly misrepresenting or withholding material facts under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Because immigration is a federal matter, the four charges are being prosecuted in federal court.

“It is the first time we’ve laid a charge of bigamy . . . in Canada,” said Canada Border Services Agency spokeswoman Faith St. John.

Reddy’s first marriage was registered in B.C. on April 26, 1997.

Civil court documents in 2008 listed Reddy, a resident of Edmonton, as a building maintenance worker.

She turned herself in to Canada Border Services Agency investigators in Surrey last week after a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Under Canadian immigration law, a Canadian citizen is entitled to sponsor his or her current legal spouse.


Immigration policy analyst Richard Kurland said it’s rare for a marriage of convenience case to slide over into the criminal justice system.

“It turns on the documents themselves,” said Kurland. “If the documents are in order, there is no defence.

“Your intent is trumped by the documents. You’ll have a hard time explaining two marriages in 24 months in the same jurisdiction with no divorce proceedings.”

Reddy’s next appearance is set for Federal Court in Surrey on Nov. 26.

Vancouver Province

 

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Tamil migrant accused of war crimes held: Report

VANCOUVER — An advocate for Tamil migrants said Wednesday he was "shocked" to hear one of 492 migrants who arrived in Canada on the MV Sun Sea has been accused of war crimes.


David Poopalapillai, spokesman for the Canadian Tamil Congress, said he was expecting to hear that some of the migrants — who arrived on the British Columbia coast in August — may have connections to the Tamil Tigers. "But we are surprised at the war crimes announcement."


The accused man is now being held in detention in the Vancouver area. His name cannot be published under a court ban.


The Canadian Press reported Wednesday that an officer for the Canada Border Services Agency said that officials ruled the man inadmissible to Canada.


A spokeswoman for the CBSA refused to confirm the report.


Migrants are inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act if they have violated the War Crimes Act or "engaged in terrorism."


The report did not say what the man is accused of, but said he will appear at a hearing in two weeks.


Poopalapillai said he will "let the legal system take its course."


"He has every right to defend this through the legal process," he said of the accused migrant.


"If there are any undesirable elements among these folks this system has its tools to deal with them."


A spokesman for Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews said he couldn't comment on the case.


"What I can tell you is that our government will not sit back while Canada becomes a target for criminal operations that are trying to take advantage of Canada's generosity," said Christopher McCluskey.

 

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Canada must prepare for 'fiscal squeeze' brought on by greying population: Economist

OTTAWA — With a greying population marching toward retirement and old age, Canada faces an unavoidable choice, a leading Canadian economist told a Parliament Hill audience Wednesday: raise taxes or curb spending — or both.


"I think most Canadians know that there is a population aging challenge," said Christopher Ragan, an associate professor of economics at McGill University, former visiting economist at the federal Department of Finance and former special adviser to the Bank of Canada. "But I think most Canadians do not know how big it is and what it implies."


He spoke at a "Big Thinking" lecture hosted by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences on Parliament Hill Wednesday. The lecture series is intended to connect prominent researchers with policymakers and ordinary Canadians, and members of Parliament, including Francis Scarpaleggia, Diane Ablonczy, Peter Milliken and Shawn Murphy, attended.


For decades, Canada's has enjoyed "double-barrelled" growth in its economy and workforce, Ragan said, with productivity consistently rising and labour-force participation growing as women joined the workforce en masse. But the enormous baby-boomer generation has swelled each part of Canada's age structure as it passed through and that generation is now on the cusp of retiring, Ragan said, which will throw the long-standing growth of the labour force into decline.


"Now, the oldest baby boomers, born in 1946, turn 65 next year, so they drop out of this share of the population, and then the whole process unravels for the next 20 years," he said. "There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that population structure, it's just that it's a reality we have to think about. We generally think aging is a good thing because it's way better than the alternative."


Economists can forecast the decline of the labour force with "an alarming amount of precision," Ragan said, and even if some people delay retirement after seeing their pensions and savings shrink — a pattern he's observed with his own colleagues at McGill — the decline in Canada's working-age population is inexorable.


The mass exodus of the baby boomers will push the labour-force participation rate of Canada's core working-age population down to 60 per cent from 68 per cent over the next three decades, he said.


That means a shrinking tax base right at the moment when age-related health-care costs are set to skyrocket — a conundrum Ragan calls the "fiscal squeeze."


Public health-care spending averages about $2,500 annually on people up until about the age of 55, Ragan said, and for every five-year increase in age after that, spending approximately doubles, so that the typical 85-year-old costs $23,000 a year in public health spending. At the same time, a greying population will drive up Canada's already substantial spending on age-related benefits, he said.


"The No. 1 item in the federal budget is (Old Age Security) — $33 billion a year, and growing," he said.


Over the next two decades, rising health and other age-related expenditures will represent a "fiscal shock" to the tune of 10 per cent of present government spending in Canada, he said.


One option is to "pretend the problem doesn't exist and try to borrow money," but that would push Canada up against the "debt wall" the country hit in the 1990s and the money would eventually need to be repaid, Ragan said. The only real options are to cut spending or increase taxes to bring in more money — or both — he concluded.


"We've got to have a serious conversation about whether we need higher taxes or whether we need lower spending, and if we're going to have lower spending, where is it going to be lower spending, and if we're going to have higher taxes, which higher taxes are they going to be," he said. "That's all of our jobs for the near future."

 

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Canadian builder's house on shortlist to shelter displaced Haitians

MONTREAL — To build a cost-efficient house in an earthquake- and hurricane-prone country like Haiti requires thinking outside the box of Canadian construction norms.


A Canadian builder believes he has developed just such a house, and he is on a shortlist culled from among thousands of applicants to provide his prototype to Haiti, which is seeking suitable housing for 1.5 million people left homeless after the devastating January earthquake.


A British firm hired by the Haitian government to find developers to supply housing has chosen a consortium headed by Rosemere, Que., entrepreneur Maurice Monette, founder of Tenta Inc., as one of its 265 candidates.


Monette will bring his prototype to Haiti this fall to be judged.


On Wednesday, he presented a full-scale model at a news conference in St-Eustache, Que. It resembles a bright, airy bungalow that can be subdivided into four apartments of roughly 18 square metres, each designed to accommodate one family.


The steel-beam foundation supporting the home sits on thin steel poles that are 2.5 metres long, which eliminate the need for cement foundations. Each provides the equivalent of 2,200 kilograms of anchoring weight, so the building won't blow over.


The fireproof floor sits a metre above ground. Aluminum posts that support the walls and roof are attached to the foundation beams with spring-loaded bolts that bounce in the event of an earthquake or hurricane.


The walls are built of foam panels, covered in a thin metal sheet, that have an insulation rating of R30, which will keep the house from turning into a "giant toaster" under Haiti's blazing sun.


The panels weigh only 12 kilograms each, so the walls can be constructed by one man working alone, and they fit into slots in the aluminum posts so they can slide up and down during an earthquake. The ventilated roof is built in the same fashion.


Monette calls his prototype "The Human" because it gives and moves like a living being, keeping it from cracking and collapsing when the earth shifts. Similar models he assembled in California have withstood winds exceeding 150 kilometres an hour, he said, and have been there for nine years.


A four-apartment house would cost $64,000, which Monette said seems expensive until compared to Red Cross transitional housing that costs $4,000 a unit and only lasts a few years.


"We are past wanting transitional housing," said Joseph Fignole Jean-Louis, a former Haitian member of parliament now serving as the vice-president of a Port au Prince chamber of commerce responsible for industry. "We want to build communities of 20,000 people with police stations and elementary schools where people can create lives."

 

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Fed stimulus fails to give TSX a boost

The Toronto Stock Exchange failed to get a bounce Wednesday from the announcement by the U.S. Federal Reserve that it would inject stimulus into the economy.


Major markets dropped after the Fed's Open Market Committee announced it would spend $600 billion U.S. by next June buying assets, but unlike other indexes, Canada's benchmark S&P/TSX failed to regain that ground and closed in positive territory.


The S&P/TSX was down 10.30 points, or 0.08 per cent, at 12,671.12, with its 10 sub-indexes evenly split between losses and gains.


"Equity and commodity markets have been volatile this afternoon following the announcement of the U.S. Fed's new quantitative easing program consisting of $600 billion of bond purchases between now and June or about $75 billion per month, near the smallish end of expectations," analyst Colin Cieszynski wrote in an afternoon note, pointing out that other economic news released on Wednesday indicated the slow global recovery continues.


The lack of dramatic upward movement on the markets and in commodity prices suggests that the markets had already priced in that amount of quantitative easing "and that some profit-taking may be underway," he said.


TD Economics senior economist James Marple cautions that at this point, quantitative easing can only do so much.


"Credit will continue to be constrained by household deleveraging and uncertainty in the housing market, and there is little reason to believe that an additional $x00 billion in reserves will significantly alter this paradigm," Marple wrote in a note. "At the very least, QE2 should succeed in holding down interest rates and give more time for the economic recovery to gain momentum."


Cieszynski also notes that the highlight on the Canadian economic agenda Wednesday wasn't expected until after the close, when the federal government was to announce its decision on whether to allow BHP Billiton's $38.6-billion U.S. hostile takeover of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Ltd.


The Canadian dollar came within a half-cent of parity in intraday trading, but slipped to close at 99.32 cents U.S., a gain of 26 basis points.


"Political decisions can have a large impact on share volatility, as can be seen in (Wednesday's) 27.7 per cent selloff in Taseko Mines after the government crushed the company's proposal to build a mine in B.C. over environmental concerns," Cieszynski said.


Potash Corp. shares were flat with Tuesday's close, down just 0.04 per cent to $146.21.


Taseko Mines Ltd. closed at $4.94 on Wednesday, a decline of 24.58 per cent, following Ottawa's decision, announced on Tuesday, to block the B.C. mine proposal.


Elsewhere on the TSX on Wednesday, Petrobank Energy and Resources Ltd. gained 5.72 per cent to $43.45 after announcing it would spin off its 66 per cent stake in Petrominerales Ltd.


WestJet Airlines announced a 72-per-cent increase in third-quarter earnings over 2009, and said it would start offering a dividend. Its shares closed at $13.37, up 4.53 per cent.


Torstar Corp. lost 2.27 per cent to close at $12.47 despite reporting third-quarter earnings that beat estimates.


Oil closed at $84.69 U.S. a barrel, a gain of 79 cents, while gold fell $19.30 to $1,337.60.


Canada's junior Venture exchange gained 6.23 points to close at 1,948.64.


The Dow Jones industrial average rose 26.41 to close at 11,215.13, a gain of 0.24 per cent, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.27 per cent, or 6.75 points, to 2,540.27.


Asian markets were higher on Wednesday, while European markets closed in negative territory.

 

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High school dropout rate cut in half in 2 decades

The number of young Canadians not getting a high school diploma has been slashed nearly in half over the last 20 years according to Statistics Canada, a change many experts say reflects the rising value of education in the country.


In 1990-91, nearly 340,000 or 16.6 per cent of young people aged 20 to 24 had not completed a high school diploma and were not attending school.


But in the last two decades, that number has dropped dramatically, falling to 8.5 per cent of young people or 191,000 by the 2009-10 school year, according to data released Wednesday.


"It's a dramatic change over time, and hopefully that means we can keep it going," said Andrew Parkin, director general of the Council of Ministers of Education.


"I think it shows that the value of education and the recognition of that value has been increasing."


Parkin, whose group is an intergovernmental body designed to provide a forum for the education ministries of all 13 provinces and territories, said governments across the country have recognized the value of education and its influence on everything from the crime rate to the economy.


Statistics Canada found that the rates fell in all provinces, with the biggest changes occurring in the Atlantic provinces. On the East Coast, rates fell from the 15 to 20 per cent range in the early 1990s to rates below nine per cent two decades later.


Newfoundland and Labrador, which had the highest dropout rate in the early 1990s at 19.3 per cent had the most significant change over the past 20 years, plummeting to 7.4 per cent in the 2007-10 three-year term, one of the lowest in the country.


British Columbia, at 6.2 per cent, has the fewest number of young people without a high school diploma, dropping by more than half from 13.3 per cent in 1990-91.


Quebec has the highest dropout rate, at 11.7 per cent, followed by Manitoba at 11.4 per cent and Alberta at 10.4 per cent.


Saskatchewan has a rate of 9.4 per cent and Ontario maintains the third lowest rate, at 7.8 per cent.


Paul Cappon, president of the Canadian Council on Learning, said students are often confronted with the difficulty of finding work without an education, which leads them right back to the classroom.


Even during good economic times, such as in 2007, dropouts had nearly double the unemployment rate of their graduate counterparts. And during the economic downturn in 2008-09, unemployment rates surged to more than 23 per cent, significantly higher than the 11.9 per cent rate among graduates.


Earnings data showed that full-time employed dropouts earn $70 less per week than their graduated peers, another factor that keeps people in school, said Cappon.


"Our initial completion rates aren't great," he said. "But what we're doing well is recuperating people through second-chance systems after they've been out of school for a year or two."


Cappon pointed out that Statistics Canada used the age category of 20-24 because that is when people are most likely to return to complete a high school diploma, either through the college system or specialized adult education programs.


Alan King, an education professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., said challenges remain in keeping young people in school.


More young women than men continue to stay in school, with a dropout rate of 6.6 per cent, better than the 10.3 per cent of young men. That gap has narrowed over the previous 20 years, when in 1990-91, the rate was 14 per cent for women and 19.2 per cent for men.


Rates were also lower for young immigrant adults than for their Canadian-born counterparts and higher for aboriginal youth in this age cohort compared with non-aboriginal youth.


But King said the numbers are reflective of society as a whole.


"Aspirations over the last 20 years have changed," he said. "Everyone from governments, to educators, to employers, to parents have seen the value in education."

 

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First home likely to be lofty affair

The dream of home ownership is no longer pie-in-the sky, it's just up in the air. Literally.

The crux of a Re/Max Ontario-Atlantic Canada report released this week reveals Canadians have stopped dreaming of "white picket fences" and are now focused on "funky loft apartments."

But even the real estate company had to admit in its press release that this desire to live in condominiums is principally being driven by the fact that's all many people can afford the first time they dip their toes into the housing market.

"As one of the few affordable housing options available to first-time buyers, the concept is poised for dramatic growth in years to come," said Michael Polzler, the executive vice-president of the company.

The condo market has become part of the urban landscape with one in every three homes sold in the Greater Toronto Area falling into the category. Even in small centres like Halifax, the condo has become a significant chunk of the housing market.

As home ownership levels have climbed during this housing cycle, one of the reasons behind the surge has been the rise of the condo, says Craig Alexander, chief economist with TD Bank Financial Group.

"Condos, generally speaking, have a lower entry point than many other dwellings. Of course, that is generalizing. But if you are single and you are entering the housing market for the first time, a one-bedroom condo is often the key entry point," he says.

Mr. Alexander says the big question for prospective condo buyers is what will happen to prices as supply begins to surge. Toronto is building more high-rise condo units than any other city in North America, says research firm Urbanation Inc.

"Condos are at most risk if we see a cooling and softness in prices," he says, adding the that this segment of the housing market is going to reap the benefits from a change in demographics and attitude that has people wanting to live downtown. "We are seeing a renaissance in urban living, people want to live in the core."

He can't prove it statistically, but Mr. Alexander says it's become more common for children to go directly from their parents' home to buying a home, skipping over the renting stage that had become common for previous generations.

Part of the reason is affordability, but government policy has also made it easier to buy property and the condominium model is gaining from the ease of entry into the market. Government-backed mortgage insurance has made it possible to buy a home with as little as 5% down, compared to 10% in the early 1990s. At one point the down payment could be as little as 0% until the government cracked down two years ago.

Then there's the amortization period, which was stretched to 40 years from 25 years by the mortgage industry before it was scaled back to 35 years. But even at that length, it's much easier to qualify for a mortgage as your monthly payment goes down.

But if all you can afford is a condominium, should you make a condominium your first home?

"The condominium market is more volatile, it moves faster in both directions. But having said that, owning a principal residence is generally a good thing, as long as you can afford that," said Ted Rechtshaffen, a certified financial planner and chief executive of TriDelta Financial Partners "It's a good wealth builder because it's the only thing you can buy that is tax-free [in terms of capital gains]."

All of that is true, but a condominium should be like any investment. You have to consider whether you plan to hold it long term. If you do, then price gyrations up and down are not as important. The same holds true for transaction costs.

"It's like a stock portfolio. If there are lots of transactions, it adds costs. One of the reasons people think real estate is safe and stocks are not, is they hold real estate for 10 or 15 years," Mr. Rechtshaffen says. "If your plan is to be there for two years, there are a lot of transaction costs to cover."

The days of flipping a cond are long over, if they ever truly existed in this cycle. Once you figure land transfer costs, real estate commissions, lawyer fees and the cost of mortgage insurance, a condo is really like any other housing stock, just cheaper.

 

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Post-baby wage losses for women gradually recede: Study

Motherhood carries "substantial" financial penalties for women in the workforce that gradually dissipate as their children grow, newly published Canadian research shows, but women who return to the same employer after giving birth see their earnings recover much more rapidly.


The Statistics Canada research, published in the December issue of the Journal of Family Issues, finds that women face a 40-per-cent hit on average to their earnings the year they have a baby, a 30-per-cent dip the following year and a seven-per-cent dent the year after that. But the gap closes after their child's seventh birthday.


But those drops in earnings don't include employment insurance maternity benefits; with those benefits taken into account, the gap amounts to 16 and 15 per cent, respectively.


"Mother earnings losses were significant, not ignorable," says Xuelin Zhang, a senior research analyst at Statistics Canada. "It's not limited to the year of childbirth; it also lasts for several years after childbirth. The good news is it declines over time, it does not last forever."


And mothers who return to the same employer after taking maternity leave recover their earnings much more quickly — within two years — he says.


According to Zhang, this suggests new mothers who return to their employers benefit from "firm-specific human capital," or knowledge and skills for their particular job and company.


The study included data from 1983 to 2004 gleaned from Statistics Canada's Longitudinal Worker File, including 7,086 women who gave birth to a total of 10,458 babies between 1991 and 2000.


The sample includes women with "strong labour market attachment" because those who aren't working for long periods of time are more difficult to track, meaning that the true financial penalty of motherhood may be higher.


"If we take all mothers into consideration, the actual loss could be larger than I found," Zhang says.


Ottawa resident Melany Gallant returned to her marketing communications job in July after a year-long maternity leave following the birth of her first child, 15-month-old Alison. She was fortunate to be offered a raise when she returned to work, but she says a year without maternity-leave top-ups still strains the family budget.


"That whole starting and stopping of your career each time you have a child because you have to put it on hold, it's just the way it is," she says. "I can see how your pace of career development may be slower than your colleague who's child-free and can just grab opportunities as they come."


Gallant, 37, says she waited to have children because, like many other women, she wanted to establish her career first.


While she's passionate about her job, parenthood instantly pushed family to the top of her priority list. Her husband works near their daughter's daycare and picks Alison up every evening, but Gallant believes lingering social expectations influence the financial price women in general pay for motherhood.


"I think, in a lot of ways, the burden is put on the mom because it's just a gender expectation that she'll be the one that will take the time off and take the earnings cut and the slow growth to her career because that's somewhat what's expected," she says.


"Maybe over time, we'll see that become less and less important and the value of parenting from both contributors perceived as a much greater priority."



A breakdown of the average hit to women's income — not including EI maternity benefits — for each year following the birth of a baby:


Year of birth: 39.7 per cent


One year after: 29.6 per cent


Two years after: 7.6 per cent


Three years after: 6.9 per cent


Four years after: 6.4 per cent


Five years after: 5.1 per cent


Six years after: 4.6 per cent


Seven years after: 3.0 per cent


Eight years after: 0.7 per cent

 

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Immigration board loses bid to stop inquiry into hiring practices

OTTAWA — The Immigration and Refugee Board has lost a legal bid to shut down investigations into a dozen appointments to its permanent staff.


Federal Court Judge Anne Mactavish ruled the board failed to establish that its reputation would suffer "irreparable harm" if the investigations continued.


Those investigations are being conducted by the Public Service Commission, the agency responsible for protecting the integrity of the public service staffing process.


The probes were launched in the wake of a commission audit, which found that 33 of 54 appointments made by the board during a three-year period did not meet federal hiring guidelines.


The commission decided to formally investigate 13 of those hirings to determine whether the appointments were based on merit or involved favouritism.


Board executives did not like the procedure used by the first commission investigator to complete a report. In particular, they objected to the fact that they weren't allowed to review and comment on the investigator's report before it was finalized.


That report concluded the hiring of a staff member, identified only as J.L., was not made on the basis of merit.


In June, the investigator found that, although no favouritism was involved, J.L. did not meet all of the "essential qualifications" for the position. The board subsequently applied to the Federal Court of Canada for judicial review of the investigator's report.


The board contends the investigation was unfair and has asked the court to order the commission to change its approach. The board also asked for an injunction to stay the commission's decision in the J.L. case and to halt the other 12 probes until a ruling is made on the fairness of the investigative procedure.


In an affidavit, Immigration and Refugee Board executive director Simon Coakeley argued that faulty investigations could produce negative findings that could raise suspicions about the board's hiring and integrity.


But the federal court judge dismissed Coakeley's assertions as unfounded and ordered the board to pay $2,000 in costs.


The Immigration and Refugee Board is Canada's largest independent administrative tribunal. With an annual budget of $113 million, it delivers more than 47,000 decisions on refugee protection and immigration matters every year.


Public servants make decisions about immigration files, but political appointees decide appeals and refugee protection cases.


The Public Service Commission audit raised concern that the board was hiring former political appointees to staff positions.

 

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TSX, Dow hit pre-Lehman highs following Fed announcement

Global markets rallied on Thursday, with the TSX and the Dow Jones industrial average both hitting two-year highs following Wednesday's announcement from the U.S. Federal Reserve that it would inject an extra $600 billion U.S. into the economy.


On the Toronto Stock Exchange, the benchmark S&P/TSX rose to 12,919 Thursday morning, a high not seen since before the Lehman Bros. collapse in September, 2008. It receded somewhat in later trading, to close at 12,878.79, a gain of 207.67 points or 1.64 per cent, led by index heavyweights energy, materials and financials as six of 10 sub-indexes advanced.


The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 11,434.84 on Thursday, with a gain of 219.71 points, or 1.96 per cent. The last time it saw a close in that range was on Sept. 12, 2008, when it ended the day at 11,421. The Nasdaq composite rose 37.07 points, or 1.46 per cent, to close at 2,577.34.


Canada's junior Venture exchange gained 45.82 points to close at 1,994.46, a gain of 2.35 per cent.


"This rally has a little different feel to it," Warren Koontz, chief investment officer for large-cap value stocks at Loomis Sayles & Co. in Boston, told Bloomberg. "It might have more staying power than the 'risk- on, risk-off' trade. We have additional stimulus to the economy. The pendulum is swinging back to people being comfortable with the idea that we're not going to see a double dip recession."


Positive performers on the Canadian market on Thursday included energy giant Suncor, and Manulife Financial Corp., which both posted big gains after reporting third-quarter earnings that beat analysts' estimates. Suncor rose 7.84 per cent to $35.48, while Manulife advanced 9.38 per cent to $14.11.


Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Ltd., on the other hand, closed at $141.43, a decline of 3.27 per cent, following the federal government's announcement Wednesday that it was blocking BHP Billiton's hostile takeover bid for the company.


That decision also had a negative impact on the Canadian dollar, which fell against many world currencies on Thursday even as it gained 44 basis points against its U.S. counterpart to close at 99.76 cents U.S..


"There's a bit of an overhang from the government decision that is causing the Canadian dollar to underperform," George Davis, chief technical analyst at Royal Bank of Canada's RBC Capital unit, told Bloomberg.


The price of crude oil rose $1.80 on the New York Mercantile Exchange to close at $86.49. Gold once again hit a record high as the U.S. dollar weakened, with a jump of $45.50 to $1,383.10.


Asian and European markets were also part of the global rally on Thursday.


"After some initial indecisiveness (Wednesday), it appears that the street decided overnight that the Fed's increased liquidity should at least be able to keep the U.S. out of recession," analyst Colin Cieszynski of CMC Markets wrote in an afternoon note. "(Thursday) morning, both the Bank of England and European Currency Board maintained their key interest rates as expected and decided not to join the Fed in new quantitative easing, which provides additional evidence to suggest that outside of the U.S., the world economy continues to steadily recover."

 

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Unemployment rate falls to 7.9% after small jobs gain

OTTAWA — There were 3,000 additional people employed across the country in October, Statistics Canada reported Friday, but the gain was well below what most analysts had expected for the month.


Still, the unemployment rate edged down to 7.9 per cent from eight per cent in September.


Economists were expecting job gains of 15,000 and the jobless rate to stay at eight per cent, coming off a loss of 6,600 jobs in September.


With changes of less than 10,000 positions, Statistics Canada considered the overall employment figures "virtually unchanged" for the second month in a row.


In the U.S., meanwhile, nonfarm payrolls advanced more than expected in October, up by 151,000 in October, more than double economists' expectations, a Labor Department report showed Friday.


On Canada's monthly fluctuations, Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist for BMO Capital Markets, said that "while the headline was sluggish, almost all of the details were upbeat."


There were gains of 47,000 full-time employees in October, almost entirely offset by 44,000 fewer part-time workers.


Private-sector employment was up 38,000, while there were 24,000 fewer people self-employed. The public-sector jobs market was flat.


Statistics Canada said employment has grown by 375,000 since October last year, with most of those gains concentrated in the first half of this year. In the year's first six months, employment growth has averaged 51,000 a month. In the last four months, that has dwindled to 5,700.


"(Friday's) soggy employment gain extends the broader theme of much more modest growth in Canada than seen in the opening months of the year," Porter added in a research note.


Demographically, there were gains in employment among people 55 and older, almost entirely with women. There were fewer people working between the ages of 25 and 54.


Industries that provided more employment to Canadians last month included information, culture recreation and recreation, construction and agriculture. Fewer jobs were seen in retail and wholesale.


Sylvain Schetagne, senior economist with the Canadian Labour Congress, found some troubling details in the data. There were more than 20,000 job gains in construction. However, Schetagne said much of this comes from government-stimulus spending, which is expected to end early in the new year. Given this aspect, he concluded that jobs gains seen in the private sector are not as sustainable as some might think.


"It's public spending going to private sector to stimulate the economy," he said. "That's good, but if we pull the plug on that, we would be in the negative."


Schetagne also said that the decline in the unemployment rate was largely the result of 4,300 fewer people in the labour force, many of them giving up hope of finding a job.


With 17,000 additional jobs, Alberta saw the strongest growth last month by province, while Nova Scotia had the biggest decline with 8,600 fewer people working.


Average hourly wages across the country were 2.1 per cent higher in October than a year earlier.


Unemployment rate by province:


Newfoundland and Labrador 13%


Prince Edward Island 12.9%


Nova Scotia 9.8%


New Brunswick 9.8%


Quebec 8%


Ontario 8.6%


Manitoba 5.2%


Saskatchewan 5.7%


Alberta 6%


British Columbia 7.4%


Overall 7.9%


Source: Statistics Canada

 

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October housing starts down more than expected

OTTAWA — Housing starts fell more than expected in October, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Monday.


The federal housing agency said there was an annualized rate of 167,900 starts last month, down 9.2 per cent from 185,000 in September. The September number was revised down from the previously reported 186,400.


"Housing starts moved lower in October due to a decrease in urban single starts in all regions, with the exception of Atlantic Canada," CMHC chief economist Bob Dugan said in a statement. "Both single-detached and multiple starts decreased last month."


Economists polled by Bloomberg expected a rate of home-building beginnings of 183,000 in October.


The rate of housing starts in Canada has generally been trending lower since reaching a level of 205,700 in April. But it has recovered significantly from the rate seen during the recession, bottoming out at an annualized rate of 112,000 in April 2009.


In October, housing starts in urban areas — those with populations of 10,000 or more - were down 12.3 per cent to an annualized rate of 142,400. On this basis, starts were down 24.5 per cent in Ontario, fallen 16.9 per cent in the Prairies, off 9.1 per cent in British Columbia, down 2.6 per cent in Quebec but up 32.9 per cent in Atlantic Canada.


In October, urban multiple starts were down 15 per cent, while singles were down eight per cent.


Pascal Gauthier, senior economist with TD Economics, noted that single-family starts have been markedly weaker since the spring, while gains in multiple-housing have made overall declines fairly modest.


"Up until October, headline housing starts figures showed very gradual cooling in activity over the pervious five months," he said in a research note. "But this masked a stark dichotomy in trends by unit type since the spring of 2009. Since then and up to September, starts of single-detached units had fallen by 39 per cent while multiple-unit starts had moved up by 29 per cent."


He added that "we maintain our forecast for continued weakness in overall home building through mid-2011 before a pickup in activity in 2012."

 

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Canadian mortgage holders in good shape: Survey

OTTAWA — Most Canadian mortgage holders are on solid financial ground and could withstand the extra expenses that might come with higher interest rates somewhere down the road, according to survey results released Monday.


The Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals said 84 per cent of those with mortgages could withstand paying an extra $300 or more on their monthly mortgage payments.


This leeway comes with most homeowners being in a good position in relation to the value of their home versus what they own on their mortgage, and in their ability to negotiate reasonable terms on their mortgages, the survey showed.


It was found that the average Canadian mortgage holder has home equity — the value of their home minus their owed mortgage debt — of $146,000, or 50 per cent of the value of their home.


It was also found that people who have arranged a mortgage in the last year had attained an average rate of 4.23 per cent a year on five-year, fixed mortgages, which is 1.42 points less than the normal posted rates over this time.


As well, the study found that 72 per cent of Canadian who have renegotiated a mortgage in the last year have been able to get a lower rate — 1.09 percentage points, or average.


"Canadians are being smart and responsible with their mortgages," Jim Murphy, president and CEO of CAAMP, said in a statement. "They are building equity in their homes and making informed, long-term mortgage decisions."


The results were based on web polls with more than 2,000 Canadians this fall, more than half being homeowners with mortgages. No margin of error was provided.

 

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Canadian mortgage debt tops $1 trillion

OTTAWA — Canadian mortgage debt has surpassed $1 trillion for the first time, according to results released Monday from an annual mortgage survey.

But the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals also found most Canadian mortgage holders are on solid financial ground and could withstand the extra expenses that might come with higher interest rates somewhere down the road.

The survey said 84 per cent of those with mortgages could withstand paying an extra $300 or more on their monthly mortgage payments.

This leeway comes with most homeowners being in a good position in relation to the value of their home versus what they own on their mortgage, and in their ability to negotiate reasonable terms on their mortgages, the results showed.

It was found that the average Canadian mortgage holder has home equity — the value of their home minus their owed mortgage debt — of $146,000, or 50 per cent of the value of their home.

It was also found that people who have arranged a mortgage in the last year had attained an average rate of 4.23 per cent a year on five-year, fixed mortgages, which is 1.42 points less than the normal posted rates over this time.

As well, the study found that 72 per cent of Canadian who have renegotiated a mortgage in the last year have been able to get a lower rate — 1.09 percentage points lower, on average.

“Canadians are being smart and responsible with their mortgages,” Jim Murphy, president and CEO of CAAMP, said in a statement. “They are building equity in their homes and making informed, long-term mortgage decisions.”

As of August 2010, there was $1.01 trillion in outstanding residential mortgage credit in Canada — an increase of 7.6 per cent from last year.

The results were based on web polls with more than 2,000 Canadians this fall, more than half being homeowners with mortgages. No margin of error was provided.