Tausi Insider

Two provincial privacy watchdogs say they have received data breach reports from Sobeys, which has been dealing with “IT system” issues for much of the past week affecting customers seeking prescriptions at some pharmacies it operates. Quebec’s access to information commission confirmed Thursday it received a declaration of a “confidentiality incident” from the grocer. It said confidentiality incidents occur when there is unauthorized access, use or loss of personal information or or any other breach of the protection of this information. Alberta’s privacy commission also confirmed that it has been notified by the company about the incident and is aware that it is being investigated. At the federal level, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada says it is in communication with the company to obtain more information and determine next steps. On Monday the parent company of Sobeys, Empire Company Ltd. EMP-A-T, released a statement on the issue, saying some pharmacies were havi...

Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. TRQ-T says if Rio Tinto’s RIO-N proposal to take the company private does not go ahead its immediate priority will be to address the company’s liquidity concerns. The company says it will implement all elements of its binding funding heads of agreement with Rio Tinto, which holds a majority stake in the company, to provide it with the needed liquidity and resources to meet its obligations as it works to expand its Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in Mongolia. Turquoise Hill, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, made the comments as it reported a profit of US$40-million or 23 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Sept. 30 compared with a profit of US$54.4-million or 28 cents per diluted share in the same quarter last year. Revenue for the quarter totalled US$391.1-million, down from US$662.1-million a year earlier. In its outlook, the company maintained its copper production guidance within a range of 110,000 to 150,000 tonnes, while it raised it...

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...

Rio Tinto PLC has been unable to reach an agreement with Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. about how to balance the preferential treatment it is extending to one set of minority shareholders over the rest in a multibillion-dollar takeover, and it has decided to revert back to its original takeover deal terms. Last week, Turquoise Hill said it was indefinitely postponing the shareholder vote on the proposed $4.2-billion takeover of the company by Rio Tinto as Quebec’s top securities regulator, the Autorité des marchés financier (AMF), studies whether a backdoor deal Rio cut with dissident shareholders is legal. Rio earlier reached an agreement with Pentwater Capital Management LP and SailingStone Capital Partners LLC, under which the two U.S. investors would be paid out 80 per cent of the $43-a-share takeover amount being offered to all Turquoise Hill shareholders and, after a ruling from an arbitrator, the remaining 20 per cent, plus interest, and potentially much more. The arrangement c...

Gordon Dean hands groceries to a customer (Will and his dog Sammi) in his store in Chesterville, Ont., on Nov. 10. Christinne Muschi/Tausi Insider At Gordon Dean’s small-town grocery stores in Ontario and Quebec, the rattle of coins in the checkout tills is a more infrequent sound than it used to be. The five stores in the Mike Dean Local Grocer chain are seeing customers pay with credit cards much more often. Before COVID-19, about 40 per cent of purchases were made in cash; these days, it’s closer to 18 per cent. And that has taken a bite out of the bottom line. “It’s chewed it up,” Mr. Dean said. “It basically increased our monthly processing-fee bill by 30 per cent.” Credit cards are the most common form of payment in Canada, and their use has skyrocketed during the pandemic. But how the credit-card system actually works is something most of us rarely think about – to the chagrin of some business owners, who subsidize the cost of that system. “Your travel points or your rebates –...

The Rio Tinto Fer et Titane (RTFT) plant is seen in Sorel, Quebec, Canada October 11, 2022. CHRISTINNE MUSCHI/Reuters The head of a hedge fund who complained to Quebec’s security regulator about Rio Tinto PLC’s preferential back door deal with two dissident shareholders pertaining to its pending takeover of Turquoise Hill Resources says he feels vindicated the giant miner has been forced to offer all minority shareholders the same deal. “The Quebec securities regulator, and any other regulator that was involved, should pat themselves on the back for a job well done,” Jeff Banfield, partner with Caravel Capital Investments Inc. said in an interview. “You literally saw a one hundred billion mining behemoth go, ‘Okay, okay, don’t get upset.” Last week, Turquoise Hill said that Quebec’s l’Autorité des marchés financier had “public interest concerns” about the preferential deal it negotiated with Pentwater Capital Management LP and SailingStone Capital Partners LLC, under which the pair w...

Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Shaw Communications Inc. SJR-B-T has not recouped the $4.5-billion it has invested in its wireless business since 2016, an executive for the Calgary-based telecom told a Competition Tribunal hearing into the proposed $26-billion merger of Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T and Shaw. Trevor English, chief financial and corporate development officer at Shaw, said the investment, which includes the $1.6-billion that Shaw paid to acquire wireless carrier Freedom Mobile, is “net negative” by about $3.3-billion. Shaw has also not generated any free cash flow from its wireless business, he noted. “We have not been able to increase our dividend since 2016 when we made the investment into Wind,” Mr. English said. (Shaw rebranded Wind Mobile to Freedom Mobile in late 2016.) As part of the proposed merger between Rogers and Shaw, the cable companies have agreed to divest Freedom, Canada’s fourth-largest wireless carrier, to Quebecor Inc.’s QBR-B-T telecom sub...

Financial services giant Desjardins Group has agreed to buy Guardian Capital Group Ltd.’s GCG-T insurance and wealth management operations, tripling its adviser network to more than 7,000 professionals across Canada. Desjardins – the second largest property and causality insurer in the country – announced on Wednesday it will pay $750-million to acquire three separate operations from Guardian Capital: IDC Worldsource Insurance Network Inc., a life-insurance advisory business; mutual-fund dealer Worldsource Financial Management Inc.; and Worldsource Securities Inc., a securities licensed investment company. Following the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2023, Montreal-based Desjardins will have more than $2-billion in life insurance premiums and $43-billion in assets in retail investment funds. Those assets include segregated funds – a type of insurance contract that allows investors to participate in markets. All three of the Guardian companies will continue ...

Canadian pension giant Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is raising its bet on construction company Pomerleau as the privately held builder pushes out from its home market in a bid to grab a bigger share of the country’s infrastructure spending pie. The Caisse is making a new $150-million equity investment in Saint-Georges, Que.-based Pomerleau to support its pan-Canadian growth plan, the two companies said in a statement Wednesday. Some of the money will be used to fund Pomerleau’s recently announced takeover of Vancouver-based ITC Construction Group, known for building dozens of residential towers making up the skylines in western cities such as Vancouver and Calgary. A portion will also be earmarked for other growth efforts as Pomerleau seeks to expand its work force of 4,000 employees and add to its current $4-billion in annual revenue. The new funds come on top of $50-million the Caisse injected into the company in 2018, bringing its total equity investment to $200-million ...

Delegates walk past a giant Jenga-style tower at the COP15 United Nations conference on biodiversity in Montreal, on Dec. 8. Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press A reporting system for business risks tied to land and water degradation, biodiversity loss and efforts to reverse them should start gaining traction globally in 2024 and achieve wide adoption relatively quickly, the co-chair of the task force developing it says. David Craig, co-chair of the new Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), said the urgency of protecting the world’s natural assets puts pressure on businesses to act to avoid financial and legal trouble. Companies face a host of risks as the natural systems degrade – shoreline loss, floods, deforestation, wildfires – all of which affect assets and markets. The TNFD aims to have its framework ready by next September, giving companies a new set of tools to assess and disclose their impact on nature and the risks they face in dealing with physical and pol...

Maurice Moreau, Glencore Canada Environmental Management Systems Lead for Ontario and Quebec, holds nickel samples at the Glencore facility at Quebec Port in Limoilou on Aug. 17. Stephanie Foden/Tausi Insider Ottawa is vowing to cut red tape in the mining sector in an attempt to move large resource projects along faster, after facing intense criticism that Canada risks being left behind in the global scramble to secure critical minerals. In the federal government’s long-awaited critical minerals strategy, unveiled on Friday, Ottawa acknowledged that getting a Canadian mine for the minerals into production can take up to 25 years. That is far slower than other international mining jurisdictions that Canada competes against, such as Australia, in which projects are developed in a fraction of that time. “We recognize that, although responsible regulations are vital, complex regulatory and permitting processes can hinder the economic competitiveness of the sector and increase investment ...

An electric vehicle charges in Ottawa, on July 13. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press One-fifth of all passenger cars, SUVs and trucks sold in Canada in 2026 will need to run on electricity under new regulations Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is proposing Wednesday. By 2030, the mandate will hit 60 per cent of all sales and by 2035, every passenger vehicle sold in Canada will need to be electric. Guilbeault’s parliamentary secretary Julie Dabrusin said during Wednesday’s announcement the new target is “about making sure that Canadians have access to the vehicles they want.” Manufacturers or importers who don’t meet the sales targets could face penalties under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act through a phased-in approach. Canada still has a long way to go before approaching the first target in 2026. In the first six months of this year, sales of fully-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles made up just 7.2 per cent of new car registrations. For all of 2021, the proporti...

Ottawa has announced sales targets for zero-emission vehicles, outlining proposed regulations that would make electric vehicles more readily available to Canadian consumers. DARRYL DYCK/Tausi Insider Ottawa has announced new sales mandates for zero-emission vehicles, saying the proposed regulations will make electric vehicles more available to consumers and help Canada hit its goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. The federal government said on Wednesday that the regulations would require at least 20 per cent of new vehicles sold in Canada to be zero emission by 2026, at least 60 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035. Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault had previously said that the government planned to introduce a zero-emission-vehicle (ZEV) mandate this year or next. Environmental and energy groups welcomed the news, with the Pembina Institute calling a sales mandate a game changer that would make electric vehicles more available and result in lower prices as manufact...

Galen Weston Jr., executive chairman of Loblaw, at a news conference in Toronto on July 15, 2013. Michelle Siu/The Canadian Press Sylvain Charlebois is professor of food distribution and policy and the director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. It all started with one reporter taking a simple, trivial photo of an overpriced pack of five boneless, skinless chicken breasts. The price was $37 – $26.87 a kilogram – a world-class sticker shocker. That’s at least double what one would expect to pay for chicken breasts. Within hours, the picture became the lightning rod for frustrated consumers on social media. Loblaw Cos. Ltd. L-T and Galen G. Weston – Loblaw executive chairman, president and well-known public persona of the company’s brand – became public enemy No. 1. Attacks were instant, and mostly vicious. On the surface, the collective uproar against Loblaw lacked any rational thinking. The chicken breasts in the picture were skinless, boneless, and free from hor...