The Wednesday news briefing: An at-a-glance survey of some top stories

CONSUMER AGENCY LAUNCHES REVIEW OF BANKS: Canada’s financial consumer watchdog is launching a review of business practices among the major banks following reports citing unnamed employees who alleged the lenders were signing customers up for services without their consent. Lucie Tedesco, commissioner of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, said Wednesday she is concerned by the accusations and issued a statement reminding the lenders of their obligations to obtain prior consent before increasing credit limits and providing clients with new products. The review, which is set to begin next month, comes after the CBC reported that some employees from Canada’s five biggest banks alleged that they felt pressured to upsell, trick and even lie to customers to meet sales targets that were unrealistic. TD, the focus of early stories about the issue, has said it doesn’t believe the reports accurately reflect the bank’s workplace. The Canadian Bankers Association said its member banks will co-operate “fully and constructively” with the review.

———

CANADIAN HOUSEHOLD DEBT HITS ANOTHER RECORD: The amount Canadians owe compared with how much they earn hit another record high last year. Statistics Canada said the amount of household credit market debt rose to 167.3 per cent of adjusted household disposable income in the fourth quarter, up from 166.8 per cent in the third quarter. That means there was $1.67 in credit market debt for every dollar of adjusted household disposable income. “After slowing to a stable year-over-year pace by late-2013, growth in this debt ratio has since accelerated again alongside torrid gains in the Vancouver and Toronto housing markets,” said Robert Kavcic, BMO Capital Markets senior economist. Fuelled by mortgages and low interest rates, household debt has been climbing steadily in recent years. Policy-makers have raised concerns about household debt and see it as a key risk to the economy. While interest rates have been low for years, making borrowing money cheap for Canadians, some have expressed concerns about what could happen when rates rise or if there is a shock to the economy that results in a large number of job losses.

———

QUEBEC POUNDED BY WINTER STORM: Heavy snow continued to fall Wednesday as Quebec emergency crews struggled to cope with a fatal winter storm that paralyzed traffic and left hundreds of motorists stranded in their cars overnight. Environment Canada said southwestern, central and eastern Quebec remained under storm warnings after more than 35 centimetres of snow were dumped on Montreal by early Wednesday morning. Provincial police said two men died after spending more than eight hours in their snow-buried vehicle in the Chaudiere-Appalaches region near Quebec City. Most Montreal-area schools were shut Wednesday and the majority of flights out of Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport were cancelled. Premier Philippe Couillard acknowledged that emergency services were badly managed in the wake of the storm and called for a thorough analysis to ensure a better co-ordination and communication among emergency services. The accidents and highway chaos were blamed on the same storm that buried much of southern and eastern Ontario on Tuesday morning. In that province, one man died in a 30-vehicle pileup along Highway 401.

———

FEMINISM, FAMILY VALUES AT UN WOMEN’S MEETING: The contrast between the feminist brand of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is on display at a United Nations gathering on the rights of women and girls, where the Americans brought socially conservative organizations along for the talks. The U.S. State Department included the Center for Family and Human Rights — which opposes abortion and the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in human rights policies and laws — as part of its official delegation to the New York meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. It also brought the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank that has said any anti-discrimination laws meant to protect the LGBTQ community should also protect the right of those who do not believe in transgender identities or same-sex marriage to act on their convictions. A spokesman for Status of Women Minister Maryam Monsef, who led the Canadian delegation in New York, says the Liberal government has no control over who another country decides to invite to the meeting, but the minister made gender equality a key priority during her trip.

———

TRUMP BLASTS RELEASE OF 2005 TAX FORM: U.S. President Donald Trump earned $153 million and paid $36.5 million in income taxes in 2005, paying a roughly 25 per cent effective tax rate thanks to a tax he has since sought to eliminate, according to newly disclosed tax documents. The pages from Trump’s federal tax return show the real estate mogul also reported a business loss of $103 million that year, although the documents don’t provide detail. The forms show that Trump paid an effective tax rate of 24.5 per cent, a figure well above the roughly 10 per cent the average American taxpayer forks over each year, but below the 27.4 per cent that taxpayers earning $1 million a year average were paying at the time, according to data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. The tax form was obtained by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who runs the website DCReport.org, and reported on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Johnston said he received the documents in the mail, unsolicited. Trump took to Twitter Wednesday to cast doubt on Johnston’s account. “Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mailbox’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!” Johnston said it’s entirely possible that he received the returns from Trump himself or someone close to him, saying, “Donald has a long history of leaking things about himself.”

———

U.S. FED RAISES RATE AND SEE MORE HIKES AS ECONOMY IMPROVES: The U.S. Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate for the second time in three months and forecast two additional hikes this year. The move reflects a consistently solid U.S. economy and will likely mean higher rates on some consumer and business loans. The Fed’s key short-term rate is rising by a quarter-point to a still-low range of 0.75 per cent to one per cent. The central bank said in a statement that a strengthening job market and rising prices had moved it closer to its targets for employment and inflation. The message the Fed sent Wednesday is that nearly eight years after the Great Recession ended, the economy no longer needs the support of ultra-low borrowing rates and is healthy enough to withstand steadily tighter credit. The Fed’s forecast for future hikes, drawn from the views of 17 officials, still projects that it will raise rates three times this year, unchanged from the last forecast in December. But the number of Fed officials who think three rate hikes will be appropriate rose from six to nine.

———

STUDY URGES OTTAWA TO RETHINK PARENTAL LEAVE: A new study says the Liberal government should rethink federal parental benefits and overhaul a system that leaves out too many families and women, while ditching the idea of dedicated time off for new dads. As is, the study says, there is a cohort of new parents, particularly mothers, who don’t qualify for benefits because employment insurance rules require them to have worked a specific number of hours in the previous year. Other can’t qualify because they are self-employed or freelancers — a problem likely to increase with the widening of the “gig” economy. Self-employed parents can voluntarily opt-in to the employment insurance system in order to qualify for parental benefits, but the study says the take up is low. Looking even closer at the numbers, the study released Wednesday by the Institute for Research on Public Policy found that parents from lower and modest income homes — those the federal government would consider as hoping to join the middle class — don’t take benefits for a full year. The study’s author said it all leads to questions of how inclusive the parental leave system really is and whether a change in rules would mean parents aren’t forced back to work sooner than they are meant to in order to make ends meet.

———

MOST OF SYNCRUDE’S WORKFORCE RETURNS AFTER FIRE: Most of Syncrude’s workforce has returned to an oilsands mining complex in northern Alberta after an explosion and fire, a company spokesman said Wednesday. But Will Gibson couldn’t say whether production has been affected, a day after the blaze erupted at the Mildred Lake upgrader, 40 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. One worker was injured and taken to hospital in nearby Fort McMurray in serious but stable condition. Company crews had the fire, which started Tuesday at about 2 p.m. local time, under control that evening, Syncrude said. Gibson couldn’t say how or where the fire began. “I’m not in the position to confirm where the fire started,” he said an email. “We’re still making some basic assessments on damage and stabilizing the upgrading complex.” The Alberta Energy Regulator and the province’s Occupational Health and Safety division are investigating. The incident raises questions about Syncrude’s operational reliability after it posted some of the best results in its 40-year history last year. TD Securities analyst Menno Hulshof said in a note to investors that Syncrude averaged more than 98 per cent utilization in the second half of 2016, an improvement attributed by some to Suncor Energy increasing its stake in the ownership consortium from 12 per cent to 54 per cent through buyouts of two other partners.

———

FILM BLOCKED FROM NATIONAL PARK TO SHOOT IN B.C.: A movie denied permission to film in Alberta’s mountain national parks is now on location in British Columbia. “We have moved four to five days into B.C. for now,” said Mark Voyce, unit manager for the film “Hard Powder.” Voyce said staff for the movie are looking for extras for several days of filming in Fernie and Cranbrook. “Hard Powder” had originally applied to Parks Canada for permits to film in several parts of the Rocky Mountain national parks in Alberta, including Banff, the Lake Louise townsite and ski hill, and the Columbia Icefields. Weeks before the crew was scheduled to begin filming, Parks Canada turned them down. A letter from the agency listed eight deficiencies in their application, although staff with the production company said most of those questions had been answered in the original application. Parks Canada officials later acknowledged the film’s plot was a concern. Action star Liam Neeson is to play an honest snowplow driver whose son is murdered by a local drug kingpin. He then seeks to dismantle the cartel, but his efforts spark a turf war involving a First Nations gang boss, played by indigenous actor, musician and Order of Canada member Tom Jackson.

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

The Wednesday news briefing: An at-a-glance survey of some top stories

What's Happening