Tausi Insider

Freight cars wait to be hauled out of the Norfolk Southern Conway Terminal, in Conway, Pa., on Sept. 15. Gene J. Puskar/The Associated Press More than 400 groups on Monday called on Congress to intervene in an ongoing railroad labor standoff that threatens to idle shipments of food and fuel and strand rail travelers while inflicting billions of dollars of economic damage. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, National Retail Federation, American Petroleum Institute, National Restaurant Association, American Trucking Associations, American Farm Bureau Federation and other groups warned impacts of a potential strike could be felt as soon as Dec. 5. Workers in four unions have rejected a tentative contract deal announced in September, while eight approved it. “The risks to our nation’s economy and communities simply make a national rail strike unacceptable,” says the letter to congressional leaders seen by Reuters. “Therefore, absent a voluntary agreement,...

Indigenous communities on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border are trying to build an alliance with U.S. Congress and the Biden administration in hopes of pressuring Ottawa into a bipartisan effort to confront toxic trans-border mining runoff. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press In a city of pinstripes and partisan power brokers, Mike Allison sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s in the wrong place – and he knows it. “I shouldn’t be here,” the denim-clad Indigenous elder suddenly says, fighting tears beneath the brim of his trademark cowboy hat. “I should be out on the land, working with my kids, teaching them values. I should be teaching them kids how to work with the environment, not fight for it.” Instead, the Upper Similkameen Indian Band councillor is in a downtown D.C. boardroom, gearing up for a second day of meetings with State Department officials, bureaucrats, diplomats and members of Congress. Fighting for the environment is exactly what Allison, whose British Columbia First Nat...

People shop in the produce area at a Loblaws store in Toronto on May 3, 2018. Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press Shoplifting has surged to an alarming level across Canada, industry insiders say, with inflation and labour shortages cited as major factors behind the increase. The uptick has triggered concern among Canadian grocers even as the rise in food prices helps pad their bottom lines. Grocery prices were up 11 per cent year-over-year in October and they’re not expected to ease any time soon. The total cost of groceries for a family of four is expected to be $1,065 more than it was this year, according to the most recent edition of Canada’s Food Price Report. Inflation in food prices is one of the main drivers pushing more people to steal, says Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “There is a correlation between the two, absolutely. Theft is an ongoing issue. But the intensity actually does increase when food prices...

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has expanded a recall for alpha brand plant-based products because they contain milk that is not listed on the label. The original recall for alpha brand Plant-Based Breakfast Sandwich – meatless sausage has now been expanded to include Plant-based Breakfast Sandwich – Meatless Chorizo, Plant-based Breakfast Burrito – Meatless Sausage Scramble and Plant-based Burrito – Mexicali. The sandwiches and Meatless Sausage Scramble burrito were sold in 156g packages and the Mexicali burrito was sold in 142g packages. All were sold across Canada. There have been no reports of any illnesses linked to the product. Customers are being told to either throw the products out or return it to where it was purchased. https://www.tausiinsider.com/alpha-brand-plant-based-breakfast-sandwiches-burritos-recalled-over-undeclared-milk/?feed_id=326622&_unique_id=6406fd9006824

A City National Bank office in Los Angeles, Calif., on Jan. 22, 2015. Lucy Nicholson/Reuters The U.S. Justice Department accused Los Angeles-based City National Bank on Thursday of discrimination by refusing to underwrite mortgages in predominately Black and Latino communities, requiring the bank to pay more than US$31-million in the largest redlining settlement in department history. City National, which is owned by Royal Bank of Canada RY-T, is the latest bank in the past several years to be found systematically avoiding lending to racial and ethnic minorities, a practice that the Biden administration has set up its own task force to combat. The Justice Department says that between 2017 and 2020, City National avoided marketing and underwriting mortgages in majority Black and Latino neighbourhoods in Los Angeles County. Other banks operating in those neighbourhoods received six times the number of mortgage applications that City National did, according to federal officials. The Jus...

Mariano Abarca is shown in this still image taken from 2009 video in Chicomuselo, Chiapas. Dominique Jarry-Shore/The Canadian Press The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal from family and supporters of a Mexican activist who was killed after opposing a Canadian company’s mining project. The applicants had asked the top court to review a federal ombudsman’s decision not to investigate the matter. The case stretches back to 2007 when Calgary-based Blackfire Exploration Ltd. opened a barite mine in Chiapas, Mexico, prompting local opposition, demonstrations and a blockade of a route to the project. After being beaten and threatened with death for leading protests over the mine’s environmental and social effects, activist Mariano Abarca was fatally shot outside his home in November 2009. Members of Abarca’s family and organizations concerned with mining abuses asked the public sector integrity commissioner in 2018 to probe whether there was wrongdoing by members of the Canadi...

A British Columbia First Nation is celebrating a deal with a coal company that gives it veto power over a proposed mine on its land. “It’s a new and, I want to say, better way of relationship-building with First Nations,” said Chief Heidi Gravelle of the Tobacco Plains First Nation in southeast B.C. Tobacco Plains has signed an agreement with NWP Coal Canada Ltd. over that company’s Crown Mountain coal proposal that sets the band up as the project’s environmental reviewer and regulator. The company, based in New Zealand and Australia, has agreed it won’t go ahead unless the band gives its OK. “We were brave enough to say we believe we can earn your ‘yes’ and we’re willing to take your ‘no’ as a real no,” said David Baines, NWP’s director of project development. “If we can’t earn a yes from them we don’t have a good enough proposal.” Crown Mountain, located near Sparwood, B.C., has been before federal and provincial regulators since 2014. It’s one of a number of steelmaking coal proje...

Cenovus CEO Alex Pourbaix announces a multi-year initiative focused on Indigenous communities near the company's oil sands operations in northern Alberta, at a news conference in Calgary, on Jan. 30, 2020. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press The CEOs of some of the biggest oil sands companies in Alberta say transitioning their work force for a net-zero emissions future isn’t about cutting jobs, but is about creating them. Cenovus CEO Alex Pourbaix CVE-T says the consortium of oil sands behind an alliance to decarbonize their companies estimates that reaching their goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 will create 35,000 jobs. Derek Evans, CEO of MEG Energy MEG-T, says he is actually worried that Canada doesn’t have the labour force needed to get the decarbonizing job done. Their comments in an interview with The Canadian Press this week come as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is pushing back against Ottawa’s plans to introduce “just transition” legislation to oversee the move to cut car...

B.C. Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman speaks during an announcement at Burns Bog, in Delta, B.C., on June 29, 2020. DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press A British Columbia judge has tossed out a lawsuit that accused the B.C. government of violating its own rules to account for greenhouse gas emission targets. In dismissing the lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club of British Columbia, Justice Jasvinder Basran finds the environment and climate change minister has “reasonably complied” with the Climate Change Accountability Act. It requires the government to publish annual reports outlining progress toward emissions targets for 2025, 2040 and 2050, but the Sierra Club alleged both the 2021 report and the oil and gas sector target for 2030 didn’t include that data. Basran agrees the case represents “an appropriate legal question” because wording of the act indicates the legislature “intended for these reporting obligations to be enforceable by the courts,” but he says...

The real estate photography firm that posted the tour of Moffy Yu’s apartment online did not respond to an email. Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press The professional photographs posted on a property tour website last year show Moffy Yu’s condo in downtown Toronto, a light-filled two-bedroom home with floor-to-ceiling windows framing sweeping views from the tallest residential tower in Canada. Documents provided by Yu show the home was listed for $978,000 last May 11, then sold for $970,000 nine days later, near the height of the pandemic property boom. Ontario land title documents show ownership was transferred for that sum on June 15 to a new buyer who took out a mortgage with the Bank of Montreal. But Yu, a former international student who now lives in China’s Hubei province, said she never put her home in the Aura skyscraper on Yonge Street up for sale. Instead, she said, it was stolen. The property was listed by an impersonator who gained access to the vacant home, staged the photo sh...

People shop in the produce area at a Loblaws store in Toronto on May 3, 2018. Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press Shoplifting has surged to an alarming level across Canada, industry insiders say, with inflation and labour shortages cited as major factors behind the increase. The uptick has triggered concern among Canadian grocers even as the rise in food prices helps pad their bottom lines. Grocery prices were up 11 per cent year-over-year in October and they’re not expected to ease any time soon. The total cost of groceries for a family of four is expected to be $1,065 more than it was this year, according to the most recent edition of Canada’s Food Price Report. Inflation in food prices is one of the main drivers pushing more people to steal, says Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “There is a correlation between the two, absolutely. Theft is an ongoing issue. But the intensity actually does increase when food prices...