Tausi Insider

Ian Scott, Chair and CEO of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, during his keynote speech at the 2019 Canadian Telecom Summit, on June 2, 2019. Fred Lum/Tausi Insider Ian Scott says he never really considers the legacy he will leave after departing as leader of Canada’s telecom regulator. Soon, the industry will do it for him. Mr. Scott is almost certainly entering the final weeks of his five-year term as the chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission – the chief watchdog for the broadcasting and telecom industries. According to the commission, Mr. Scott’s term will end Jan. 4, 2023, but a new chair has yet to be announced. His initial term was already extended four months. As with each chair before him, Mr. Scott was faced with numerous competing demands: calls for greater competition; investment in physical networks; and support for smaller and regional telecoms fighting the industry incumbents for market share. All this...

A home for sale in the Rosedale neighbourhood in Toronto on June 21, 2012. Fred Lum/Tausi Insider The share of mortgages with ultralong amortization periods has rapidly increased to about 30 per cent of home loans at some of Canada’s biggest banks, another sign borrowers are struggling with higher interest rates. At Bank of Montreal, the proportion of residential mortgages with amortization periods longer than 30 years reached 31.3 per cent last month. At Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce the share was 30 per cent and at Royal Bank of Canada it was 27 per cent, according to the three lenders’ latest quarterly results, released this week. That is up from the end of July, when 30-year-plus mortgages accounted for one quarter of each of the three banks’ residential mortgage portfolios. And the July numbers were a significant increase from the end of April, when those loans made up 10.6 per cent of BMO’s portfolio and 12 per cent of mortgages at RBC and CIBC. In October, 2021, before t...

It’s been a tense year for homeowners in floating-rate mortgages. They’ve watched their interest rates catapult 400 basis points in just nine months. DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press Mortgage rates are getting closer to a turning point based on Wednesday’s Bank of Canada announcement, which signalled that its rate-hike campaign may be nearing an end. Variable-rate borrowers shouldn’t plan on rate cuts for at least 12 to 18 months from today. If it happens sooner, borrowers should consider themselves lucky – very lucky. Default-insured borrowers saw fixed rates sink as much as 30 basis points on some terms this week. The lowest rates on one-year to five-year insured terms are now all below 5 per cent again, thanks partly to competitive discounters such as QuestMortgage. Unfortunately, the news was less cheery for uninsured borrowers. Unlike insured rates, which benefit from liquid government-backed securitization, uninsured rates are dominated by big deposit-taking lenders – mostly larg...

Since the peak one month ago, the lowest nationally advertised five-year fixed has dropped 30 bps to 5.14 per cent (uninsured). On a standard mortgage, that saves $1,445 of interest over five years, per $100,000 borrowed. JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images Christmas ‘rate sale’ in progress All right, it’s not exactly a fire sale, but we are indeed getting some Yuletide rate relief. Since the peak one month ago, the lowest nationally advertised five-year fixed has dropped 30 bps to 5.14 per cent (uninsured). On a standard mortgage, that saves $1,445 of interest over five years, per $100,000 borrowed. McLister: Where could mortgage rates - fixed and variable - head in 2023? See how rising interest rates will affect the cost of your mortgage Compared with the lowest uninsured variable at 5.90 per cent, a 5.14 per cent five-year fixed might not seem so bad. But it’s literally the fourth-worst term you could take if you’re well qualified and risk tolerant. The worst, second-worst and third-worst...

Boards of directors and their compensation committees have long rewarded executives for financial achievements. Now, companies that do not include ESG goals in performance-based incentives could soon find themselves taking heat from investors. Getty Images/iStockphoto A majority of Canada’s biggest public companies, including its largest emitters, now tie some portion of executive pay to achieving environmental, social and governance targets, but some industries are embracing the practice more than others, a study by the law firm Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP has found. The survey revealed that 68 per cent of companies in the S&P/TSX 60 Index of large corporations offer chief executives and other top brass incentives at least partly based on meeting ESG objectives. Some of those companies are also among 40 high emitters chosen by the institutional investors group Climate Engagement Canada (CEC) as targets to push for tougher emission-reduction goals. Of that list, four-fifths lin...

The Bank of Canada has appointed HEC Montréal economics professor Nicolas Vincent to its governing council, where he will serve a two-year term as the central bank’s first non-executive deputy governor. The governing council is responsible for setting Canadian interest rates and overseeing the bank’s financial system stability efforts. Mr. Vincent’s appointment brings the six-person group back to full strength, following the retirement of long-serving deputy governor Tim Lane in September. Mr. Vincent will start on March 13. The non-executive role was created last year. Unlike the Governor, senior deputy governor and three other deputy governors, the position is part-time and has a shorter two-year term, with the possibility of a one-year extension. When the central bank announced the change last year, it said that it was looking to bring “fresh and diverse perspectives” to the governing council, and that it would consider candidates from “a broad range of disciplines and backgrounds...