Tausi Insider

Defence lawyer Gary Martin, right, representing Yuesheng Wang, and Crown Prosecutor Marc Cigana leave after speaking to the media following a hearing at the courthouse in Longueuil, Que., on Nov. 15. Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press Wedged between farm fields and a highway on Montreal’s south shore near Varennes, Hydro-Québec’s Center of Excellence in Transportation Electrification and Energy Storage is, by many accounts, one of the province’s top research hubs. There, electrical engineers and chemists in white lab coats spend their days trying to unlock the keys to a revolution in battery technology. But for the better part of its five-year existence, this low-rise, concrete slab of a building was also the site of a major breach of Canada’s industrial brain power, according to police. At the centre of it: a researcher named Yuesheng Wang, who police say gathered trade secrets for the benefit of China. Mr. Wang was arrested by the RCMP Monday and appeared in a Longueuil, Que., court b...

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the annual pace of housing starts slowed in October from its high for the year reached in September. The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts in October was 267,055 units, down 11 per cent from 298,811 units in September. The annual pace of urban starts was down 11 per cent at 245,234 units in October as multi-unit urban starts fell 13 per cent to 188,189 units. Urban starts of single-detached homes dropped four per cent to 57,045 units. CMHC says the annual pace of starts was down in Toronto and Vancouver, however Montreal posted an increase. Rural starts were estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 21,821. The six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rate was 277,667 units in October, up 0.5 per cent from 276,374 in September. https://www.tausiinsider.com/annual-pace-of-housing-starts-in-canada-slowed-in-october/?feed_id=350691&_unique_id=648a5981c56e0

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tours the damage caused by post-tropical storm Fiona in Port aux Basques, N.L. on Sept. 28. Frank Gunn/CP Eric Bosco is executive director and Annie Levasseur is scientific director of the newly launched Circular-Built Infrastructure Institute at École de Technologie Supérieure. The message coming out of the latest UN Climate Change Conference is loud and clear: Climate change is no longer tomorrow’s problem. It’s happening now, with serious impact to our infrastructure, and the situation is only going to get worse before it gets better. We simply can’t afford to continue building infrastructure the same way we always have. You don’t have to look further than Hurricane Fiona to measure the significant economic and social impact increased severe weather events are having on infrastructure. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses throughout Atlantic Canada were without power for more than a week and the federal government’s fall economic forecast has ea...

Michel Leblanc, head of the Montreal Chamber of Commerce, in downtown Montreal on Nov. 17. Christinne Muschi/Tausi Insider For the past two years, Michel Leblanc was the guy in the tie trying to save downtown Montreal from pandemic-induced ruin – a fate the city centre avoided. Now comes the hard part: reviving its office culture. Mr. Leblanc is president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, a business group with outsized influence and a rich history of accomplishments. In its early days, merchant members organized the dredging of the St. Lawrence River so Montreal’s port could accommodate bigger ships. Later on, they pitched the creation of what is now the internationally renowned business school, École des Hautes Études Commerciales. So when the Quebec government opened its purse strings in March, 2021, to try to stimulate an economic recovery in Montreal’s financial centre after successive COVID-19 waves and work-from-home mandates, the Chamber of Commerce ...

Hybrid workplaces are now ubiquitous as a byproduct of the pandemic. KAITI SULLIVAN/The New York Times News Service Mary Ann Yule is the chief executive and president of HP Canada. When I was raising my two boys and trying to advance my career in tech, I often faced seemingly impossible choices. Trying to juggle drop-offs, school events, sports and other family activities with travel, meetings and work at the office – it seemed like I could never do enough. That level of pressure can take a heavy toll. I have seen women pass up projects and promotions and even leave promising careers because of the balancing act required. Today, though, hybrid workplaces are ubiquitous as a byproduct of the pandemic. More professional women have an opportunity to re-enter the workplace on their terms, while improving the balance between their work and home lives. As we continue to edge toward a new normal, some particularly loud voices in the tech industry have begun to call for a return to the offic...

Police officers patrol outside the Palais de Congres, during the opening of COP15 on Dec. 6, the two-week U.N. biodiversity summit in Montreal. CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/Reuters Delegates have reached the starting line for COP15 in Montreal, the 15th United Nations conference on biodiversity, where work on a new international agreement to protect nature is set to commence on Wednesday. But participants say the road ahead is already looking like a steep, uphill climb. For representatives from 196 countries who are party to the UN Convention on Biodiversity, the central purpose of the meeting is to hammer out a new framework under the convention, with agreed targets to be met by 2030. The previous framework expired in 2020 with none of its targets met. COP15 was initially intended to take place that year in China, but its completion has been delayed two years by the COVID-19 pandemic and the venue shifted to Montreal. The conference, taking place at Montreal’s Palais des congrès, is surrounded...

A person walks by a lit up sign during the COP15 conference in Montreal, on Dec. 7. ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP/Getty Images Canada’s negotiators at the COP15 conference say business groups and financial institutions have a role to play in preserving the planet’s biodiversity. Basile van Havre, co-chair of one of the Montreal conference’s working groups, says the private sector is looking for rules and certainty on the environmental effectiveness of its investments. He says it’s part of a larger push for performance standards that companies and investors can use to measure their activities against. The conference, which is bringing more than 190 nations together, is entering its second day of hard talks on hard targets for saving the world’s biodiversity. What’s on the agenda at the UN’s COP15 nature summit in Montreal? Negotiators hope to reach an agreement on how to protect 30 per cent of Earth’s land and water, as well as a deal on how to pay for that conservation. Van Havre says business g...

In Western Europe, airlines are losing the battle to preserve their lucrative short-haul routes. Soon, they may not legally be able to fly them. Their loss, unimaginable among U.S. and Canadian airlines, marks a rare victory for the planet. Take the route from Rome, where I live, to Milan. It never occurs to me to fly between the two cities, even though the distance between them is about 600 kilometres – the same distance as Toronto to Montreal. The Trenitalia site offers 42 high-speed departures from Rome on any weekday. Rival Italo – there is healthy rail competition in Italy – offers 33. Knowing a train leaves every few minutes for Milan, I never book ahead. I take the metro to Rome’s central train station, pop my credit card into a ticket machine and am rolling a few minutes later. The trains hit 300 kilometres an hour or more – almost turboprop speeds – which means I can be in central Milan in three hours. And, since the trains are electric, my travel is emission-free, as if I w...

Construction workers use a lift along a wall of bitcoin mining at Bitfarms in Saint Hyacinthe, Quebec. Bitcoin was born from the 2008 financial crisis. Now crypto has its own crisis. LARS HAGBERG/AFP/Getty Images There’s a certain irony in the saga of the FTX Trading Ltd. cryptocurrency exchange – an irony that, perhaps, might be a good thing for the industry. Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency and progenitor of the industry, was created in the wake of 2008 financial crisis. Its creation was fuelled by a disdain for what the banks did, their questionable accounting practices and rampant risk-taking that caused the crisis. Bitcoin, which envisions a currency system without intermediaries or overseers, had wanted to cut out the financial institutions, central banks and governments. The utopia promised was a world in which a financial crisis could not happen (and if one did, the ones responsible would not be rewarded with bailouts). Now, though, FTX, a leading institution in crypto, s...

People visit the immersive video experience hosted by the National Geographic Society at a press event during COP15 in Montreal on Dec. 7. ANDREJ IVANOV/Getty Images Anyone showing up to the United Nations biodiversity conference, known as COP15, will discover it takes time just getting in the door. Having first shown proof of vaccination in order to obtain a conference badge, the would-be attendee is then handed a box of KN95 masks and a two-week supply of COVID-19 test kits. The next stop is to show a negative result from a rapid test before being admitted. For the thousands of participants, it’s a fitting reminder that the pandemic is still with us – fitting because global pandemics are a risk we all face when wildlife is destroyed or harvested in ways that expose humans to the viruses of other species. But there is another way that the pandemic reveals what is at stake as countries work toward a pact to protect nature for future generations. At COP15, a movement grows to manage n...

Delegates walk in front of the Palais des Congres during the COP15 biodiversity conference in Montreal, on Dec. 13. ANDREJ IVANOV/AFP/Getty Images Developing countries have walked out of a global conference on conserving the world’s biodiversity over concerns that talks about how those efforts should be funded are lagging behind those on how much land and water should be set aside. “We feel that negotiations have not been moving at the same pace,” said a delegate from one of the countries that left the COP15 talks in Montreal at about 1 a.m. Wednesday. “We feel that resource mobilization has been left behind.” The delegate, who asked not to be named, said rich countries have been happy to talk about specific targets for conservation. The marquee goal of the conference is a deal on setting aside 30 per cent of the globe’s land and water. But he said those countries have not been so willing to come up with a number on how much they’re willing to pay. “Why are we discussing figures on t...

Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the annual pace of housing starts in November edged down 0.2 per cent compared with October. The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts in November was 264,159 units, down from 264,581 in October. The result came as the annual pace of urban starts was flat at 242,644 units as multi-unit urban starts rose two per cent to 190,415, but single-detached urban starts fell seven per cent to 52,229. The annual pace of starts in Toronto and Vancouver rose, but Montreal saw a drop. Rural starts were estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 21,515. The six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates of housing starts was 274,361 in November, down from 277,044 in October. https://www.tausiinsider.com/annual-pace-of-housing-starts-in-canada-edged-down-in-november-cmhc-says/?feed_id=328182&_unique_id=641c26e84861b

People run into Lake Ontario at Woodbine Beach in Toronto on Dec. 3 to raise funds for non-profit Jack.org at the annual Brainfreeze polar plunge fundraiser. Neil Osborne/Handout The organizers: More than 500 donors , volunteers and staff The pitch: Raising $167,000 The cause: To fund mental-health programs for young people As the COVID-19 pandemic recedes across Canada, it has left a lasting impact particularly on young people. A recent report by the charity Jack.org found that less than half – 40 per cent – of young people surveyed described their mental health as good. That compared with 60 per cent in a similar survey in 2019. “That’s a big drop in the quality of mental health of youth,” said Nimanthie Ariyasinghe, a spokesperson for the organization. Just because the pandemic has eased, she said, “things haven’t gotten better in the world.” The charity was set up by Eric Windeler and Sandra Hanington whose 18-year-old son Jack Windeler died by suicide in 2010 during his first ...

Michele Romanow is stepping down as CEO of Clearco and will become co-executive chair. STEVE JENNINGS/AFP/Getty Images Clearco and Thinkific Labs are very different Canadian technology companies: one advances cash online to e-commerce operators. The latter sells a platform used to create and run online courses. But they share one thing in common. Both were among the earlier companies last year to enact deep job cuts after tech valuations crashed and interest rates rose: Vancouver’s Thinkific cut 100 jobs, or 20 per cent of staff in March. Clearco (officially CFT Clear Finance Technology Corp.), based in Toronto, cut 125 jobs, or 25 per cent in July. Tech companies eventually laid off 154,000-plus workers globally in 2021. Now, the two have cut deeply again – putting them at the vanguard of tech companies enacting a second sweeping reduction. Thinkific last week cut 21 per cent of staff, or 76 jobs. On Monday, Clearco said 50 people, or 26 per cent, were laid off and chief executive o...