Tausi Insider

Indigenous investors are lining up to bid on Canadian pipelines TC Energy Corp. put up for auction this week as part of a $5-billion asset sale program. On Wednesday, TC Energy chief executive François Poirier outlined plans to sell several projects by the end of 2023 to help fund the Calgary-based company’s expansion, which is projected to cost $34-billion. Along with raising cash, he said streamlining one of North America’s largest pipeline operators would drive “simplicity of corporate structure and the impact on our ability to achieve our sustainability goals.” While Mr. Poirier steered clear of naming specific pipelines, analysts said two Alberta oil sands projects are candidates for sale. In a report, analyst Robert Hope at Scotiabank predicted TC Energy will sell its 50-per-cent stake in the 460-kilometre Grand Rapids pipeline, which connects refineries near Edmonton to oil sands properties north of Fort McMurray, and the 72-kilometre White Spruce pipeline, which feeds into Gr...

This is the weekly Careers newsletter. Radhika Panjwani is a former journalist from Toronto and a blogger. Companies scrambling to attract and retain talent should review their total rewards strategy and move beyond the base salary, bonus and other average incentives, say experts. Instead, compensation packages must be creative, flexible and customized, says Anand Parsan, national practice leader for compensation consulting at consulting firm Eckler Ltd. “Things such as flexible work arrangement or work-life balance that were non-negotiable in the past are now becoming table stakes as organizations adopt a more holistic strategy to retain employees,” he said. Imagine for instance, offering some employees a number of rewards credits to pick, choose and use whichever way they want. Those with a spouse and children will likely spend it differently than employees who are single, Mr. Parsan said. Programs that allow workers to choose and spend the money where they see fit will go a long w...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Often new companies think about public relations at the moment of the launch and not much after that. However, PR is an ongoing effort that should always be kept alive. Public relations is not just about writing good press releases. It's about building and maintaining durable networks and relationships, providing value for your audience and telling your brand story in the best way possible. 1. Have a strategy beyond the launch The big launch is a big deal, and many new brands devote a lot of effort towards executing a great launch. However, not nearly enough effort is put towards sustaining the hype after the launch. A great PR agency is often more concerned with sustaining a groundswell of support and positively influencing consumer behavior through a steady stream of content and communication to the consumer and the media. This is why working with good PR agencies is essential to develop a soli...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. It's your employees' job to motivate buyers, but employees similarly need the right tools to succeed. In today's competitive environment, a well-written value proposition fills that need. What is your value proposition? A value proposition isn't just useless information about your company, products or services. It's a statement about what outcomes a person or group can expect when working with your company. A company's value proposition is at the core of its business model. It's a promise the organization makes to its customers regarding the value of its products and/or services. A value proposition should be simple, but powerful and clear. A compelling value proposition strategically examines the factors that influence customer focus, and overall business ambition and sets expectations. It serves both your customers and employees by setting up their expectations. Guiding ...

According to research conducted by Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services increased nearly 19 per cent in 2022. pcess609 Cloud services were originally billed as a more cost-effective way to manage information technology (IT). As a rising number of companies flock to them it’s becoming clearer that, left unchecked, cloud costs can accumulate quickly. According to research conducted by Gartner, worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services increased nearly 19 per cent in 2022, and it is projected to grow an additional 20.7 per cent in the year ahead. In another recent study from Toronto-based cloud-managed services provider Aptum, 73 per cent of IT decision makers said cloud computing has resulted in higher-than-expected costs, up from 57 per cent last year. Sixty-five per cent admit to having wasted money on cloud-related inefficiencies. “We are beginning to see the kickback, where customers are starting to say ‘wait, this isn’t working the way I thoug...

A man walks at automaker General Motors (GM) Brightdrop unit's CAMI EV Assembly, Canada's first full-scale electric vehicle manufacturing plant, in Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada December 5, 2022. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio CARLOS OSORIO/Reuters Robert Asselin is senior vice-president of policy at the Business Council of Canada and former policy adviser to two prime ministers. When he became a presidential candidate back in 2019, Joe Biden made it unambiguously clear that his administration would pursue an aggressive industrial strategy to ensure U.S. competitiveness vis-à-vis China in key advanced industries and technologies. The recent adoption by Congress of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the CHIPS and Science Act – which received broad bipartisan support – are the manifest incarnations of his long-stated policy objective . For Canada, though, it is still searching for its own industrial strategy. As far back as August, 2020, I’ve written that Canada would be ill-advised t...

Chinese President Xi Jinping confronts Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the G20 Leaders Summit in Bali, Indonesia. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Ian Bremmer is president and founder of Eurasia Group. Chinese President Xi Jinping has a habit of bullying small democracies. Politically unchallenged at home and increasingly assertive abroad, China’s strongman leader responds with threats and intimidation when less powerful countries have the nerve to upset Beijing. So when Mr. Xi confronted Justin Trudeau in full view of the world’s media at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, last month, he was making an example of Canada’s Prime Minister. Mr. Trudeau’s supposed offence? Briefing reporters that he had raised alleged Chinese interference in Canadian elections during a short bilateral meeting. Mr. Xi’s behaviour was revealing. You can bet he would never speak like that to the U.S. President. The episode – coming in the wake of China’s abduction of two Canadian citizens, Micha...

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said on Friday it is extending China “Section 301″ tariff exclusions for another nine months on 352 Chinese import product categories that were set to expire at the end of 2022. The tariff exclusions, which include industrial components such as pumps and electric motors, some car parts and chemicals, bicycles and vacuum cleaners, were reinstated in March by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai as part of her strategy to confront Chinese trade practices. USTR said the extension “will help align further consideration of these exclusions with the ongoing comprehensive four year review” of the Section 301 tariffs imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports. The trade office said it is collecting comments in the tariff review through Jan. 17, 2023. https://www.tausiinsider.com/u-s-extends-tariff-exclusions-on-352-chinese-import-categories-for-nine-months/?feed_id=327684&_unique_id=641714e63b...

If Canada needs to pivot from its dependent trade relationship with China, why not try the Americas? ANDRES VALLE/Getty Images Kevin Lynch was clerk of the Privy Council and vice-chair of BMO Financial Group. Paul Deegan was a public affairs executive at BMO and CN, and served in the Clinton White House. With China becoming increasingly a geopolitical and security concern, Canada’s release of an Indo-Pacific Strategy is timely. The strategy is primarily a reset of how Canada views China in the Xi Jinping era, pivoting away from what has become a dangerously dependent trade relationship. Worthy objectives, but it raises the question: Shouldn’t we have a comprehensive economic strategy for our own Western Hemisphere? The unequivocal answer is yes. The geopolitical calculus is twofold, not only in diversifying away from China but also in helping others in such diversification. Over the past two decades, China has emerged as a much bigger player in Latin America and the Caribbean, courti...

A view of part of the development laboratory of Toronto-based tech company Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc. on May 30, 2022. Galit Rodan/Tausi Insider Ottawa has unveiled its plan for spending $360-million on a national strategy to prepare for and profit from a coming revolution in quantum technology. While the early reviews are positive, leaders in the field say there is no time to lose as new developments in the field inch ever closer to upending key aspects of the computer industry, with game-changing implications for the entire economy. The federal government first allocated the money in 2021 to be spent over seven years. “Top to bottom there’s been a lot of movement,” said Stephanie Simmons, a researcher at Simon Fraser University and founder of the B.C.-based quantum technology company Photonic Inc. “The hardware is making progress, the software is making progress, the user cases are being developed.” Dr. Simmons was among those standing alongside federal Innovation, Science an...

Singapore's trade minister Chan Chun Sing, speaks next to his Canadian counterpart, James Carr, during a meeting of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, in Santiago, Chile, Thursday, May 16, 2019. Esteban Felix/The Associated Press Carlo Dade is the director of the Trade and Investment Centre at the Canada West Foundation. There are more questions than answers in the federal government’s developing Indo-Pacific strategy, which is designed to help Canada navigate a world where China is a dominant economic force. For Canadian businesses, the most puzzling question is probably why Ottawa is not aggressively pursuing the country’s only real competitive advantage in the region: the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The CPTTP is one of the very few areas where Canadian businesses are on par with its competitors in the Pacific Rim and ahead of U.S. companies that want but cannot have a real trade agreement in th...

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office said on Friday it is extending China “Section 301″ tariff exclusions for another nine months on 352 Chinese import product categories that were set to expire at the end of 2022. The tariff exclusions, which include industrial components such as pumps and electric motors, some car parts and chemicals, bicycles and vacuum cleaners, were reinstated in March by U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai as part of her strategy to confront Chinese trade practices. USTR said the extension “will help align further consideration of these exclusions with the ongoing comprehensive four year review” of the Section 301 tariffs imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump on some $370 billion worth of Chinese imports. The trade office said it is collecting comments in the tariff review through Jan. 17, 2023. https://www.tausiinsider.com/u-s-extends-tariff-exclusions-on-352-chinese-import-categories-for-nine-months/?feed_id=321847&_unique_id=63a7ed1f75...