Tausi Insider

Pete Ryan/Tausi Insider On a warm night this past July, Bay Street finally came back out to play. Over a glittering view of Toronto’s entertainment district from the rooftop terrace of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, 300 guests — including lawyers, students, clients, bankers and businesspeople —enjoyed mini Jamaican patties, jerk shrimp, rum punch and ginger beer, while a steel-pan band and dancers in traditional Caribbean dress entertained the crowd. Caribbean Fête, hosted annually since 2018 by the Caribbean Practice Group at WeirFoulds LLP, made its long-awaited return after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus. “We had people constantly asking us, when is this thing coming back? Are you guys ever going to do this party again?” says partner Kayla Theeuwen, who barely had a chance to enjoy the food and drink, flitting about as the consummate host and reconnecting with her network. Indeed, WeirFoulds had been trying to get this popular shindig going again since it was last held in February 2020, to m...

The low-interest-rate era was supported by the disinflationary force of globalization that shifted production to lower-cost parts of the world that, in turn, reduced consumer prices. Those days are now over. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Craig Alexander has served as chief economist at Deloitte Canada, the Conference Board of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank. The Bank of Canada is struggling to get inflation back under control. Since it adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s, the central bank has been remarkably successful at keeping inflation within its 1-per-cent to 3-per-cent-target band. Indeed, the average pace of inflation over the decades has been almost bang on the 2-per-cent midpoint target. However, the inflationary pressures from the contraction in global supply during the pandemic and the surge in demand as government restrictions lifted caught the Bank of Canada and many other central banks flat-footed. The current inflation shock shows Canadians just how cr...