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The parent company of Tim Hortons' is offering its new executive chair a package of stock options and shares that could potentially be worth nearly US$400-million. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press I ate at a Burger King in rural Montana earlier this fall. The wait to order was long. My burger was overcooked. My mother got the wrong order, and it was cold as well. It was, she says, the worst fast-food meal she’d ever had. I don’t blame the workers; the restaurant was understaffed, and they are underpaid. Yet those front-line workers at Burger King, Tim Horton’s, and all the other chains in the Restaurant Brands International Inc. QSR-T portfolio are the most important driver of customer happiness. Yet once again, the company is going to give a gargantuan pay package to its executive class, leaving crumbs for the underpaid and overworked people who serve us. Not even the common shareholders of the company are benefiting from the largesse. RBI said Wednesday it has lured Patrick D...

The produce area at a Loblaws store in Toronto on May 3, 2018. Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press Industry players say there has been “remarkable” headway toward a self-regulatory code of conduct for Canada’s grocery sector, but a key aspect is still a work in progress: a mechanism for enforcing the rules and arbitrating disputes. The steering committee of industry groups developing the code has drafted “provisions” for the behaviour of both retailers and their suppliers – a breakthrough in discussions that had dragged on for months, with warnings about a failure to reach a consensus as recently as this past summer. However, a recent draft discussion document obtained by The Globe notes that dispute-resolution mechanisms “are still under development.” The document states that these will include a range of options, “from informal discussion through to some type of formal arbitration,” but does not lay out who would act as arbitrator or how such a system would function. The committee is...

New orders for U.S.-manufactured goods increased more than expected in October amid strong gains in demand for machinery and a range of other goods, which could allay concerns of a sharp slowdown in manufacturing. The Commerce Department said on Monday that factory orders jumped 1.0 per cent after rising 0.3 per cent in September. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast orders advancing 0.7 per cent. Orders shot up 12.8 per cent on a year-on-year basis in October. The Federal Reserve’s fastest rate-hiking cycle since the 1980s as it battles inflation is dampening demand for goods, undercutting manufacturing, which is also being squeezed by the rotation of spending back to services. An Institute for Supply Management survey last week showed its measure of the nation’s factory activity contracted in November for the first time in 2-1/2 years. Manufacturing accounts for 11.3 per cent of the U.S. economy. October’s jump in factory orders was driven by a 2.2 per cent rise in bookings fo...

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Sean Fraser speaks in the House of Commons, in Ottawa, on Nov. 17. Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press The federal government says that in order to address major labour shortages in health care, it will put $90-million toward projects that remove barriers preventing qualified new Canadians from working in their field. Minister of Immigration Sean Fraser says the federal government is calling for proposals for projects that offer Canadian work experience for internationally trained health professionals or streamline the process that recognizes international medical credentials. Fraser says these proposals are expected to come from provincial and municipal governments, non-profit organizations, unions, hospitals and other organizations. Fraser, who took part virtually in a news conference in Charlottetown today, says there is a critical need for more health-care staff, particularly in Atlantic Canada. The minister says immigrants make up about ...

Canada’s most prominent banks and insurers say they are sticking with the virtual or hybrid annual general meetings they adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic for another year. The group of 12 banks and insurers say they recently obtained a court order allowing them to hold the meetings in these formats again. Though they acknowledge the COVID-19 situation has improved this year, they say they want to use virtual and hybrid meetings because the virus is so “unpredictable.” They add that using the formats will also allow them to respect protocols recommended by public health authorities. The group, which includes Royal Bank of Canada, TD Bank Group, Sun Life Financial Inc. and Manulife Financial Corp., were granted a similar order in March 2020, December 2020 and December 2021. Rounding out the group are Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Canadian Western Bank, Laurentian Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, National Bank, Great-West Lifeco and Canada Life. https://www.ta...

Pakistan’s Supreme Court endorsed on Friday a settlement for Barrick Gold ABX-T to resume mining at the Reko Diq project, one of the world’s largest underdeveloped sites of copper and gold deposits, it said in an order. The endorsement was a condition of the settlement for Barrick to resume work on the project in the southwestern province of Balochistan, bordering Afghanistan and Iran, in which it will invest $10 billion. Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial, the head of a five-judge panel, read out the operative part of the brief order in court. “The agreements … have not been found by us to be unconstitutional or illegal on the parameters and grounds spelt out,” read the order seen by Reuters. President Arif Alvi had asked the court to review the deal. In an out of court agreement this year, Barrick Gold ended a long-running dispute with Pakistan, and agreed to restart development. Under the deal, the company withdrew its case in an international arbitration court, which had slapped a pe...

The Biden administration on Friday said it was ordering Mastercard Inc MA-N to stop blocking the use of competing networks to process debit payments. Under a proposed order, Mastercard would have to start providing competing payment networks with the customer account information they need to process payments, the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces competition laws, said in a statement. “This is a victory for consumers and the merchants who rely on debit card payments to operate their businesses,” Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said in a statement. In a statement, Mastercard said it had reached an agreement with the commission on the routing of certain debit card transations, adding that it believes its current practices are “lawful” and that it provides options to merchants. “We will continue the work to update our processes to comply with the consent order and provide even greater choice,” the company said. https://www.tausiinsider.com/u-s-orde...

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has filed an unfair labour practices complaint against the union representing taxation employees, claiming it is not bargaining in good faith. The Public Service Alliance of Canada – Union of Taxation Employees (PSAC-UTE) left the bargaining table on Sept. 1, declaring an impasse in negotiations, then withdrew from mediation on Dec. 20. On Friday the CRA filed the complaint with the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board, asking it to make the union return to the bargaining table before being allowed to declare or authorize a strike. Three days earlier, the union announced it would be launching strike votes for about 35,000 workers to be conducted from Jan. 31 to April 7, during which time the union and the CRA will also be engaging in Public Interest Commission hearings recommended by the labour board on Jan. 27 and Feb. 20. The union says it withdrew from mediation because the Treasury Board announced a return-to-work order for a...