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There’s a price shocker coming at the pumps.
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Global supply chain Bottlenecks are not easing as quickly as expected, meaning inflation in Canada and among IMF members will probably take a little longer to come down, the governor of the Bank of Canada said on Thursday.
Those issues will weigh on Canada‘s near-term economic recovery, meaning it is reasonable to expect that an expected rebound will not be as fast as the central bank forecast in July, Tiff Macklem told reporters after attending International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington.
“These bottlenecks are not easing as quickly as expected. And there was certainly a strong consensus these issues warrant continued attention and they are going to take some time to work through,” Macklem said of his talks with central bankers.
“What this all means, in all our countries, is that inflation – measures of inflation – are probably going to take a little longer to come back down,” he continued.
The concern now, he said, was that bottlenecks looked to be more complicated and persistent than previously thought, although they continue to be viewed as transitory.
Macklem also looked to quell public criticism over the bank’s stance that high inflation is temporary. Canada‘s inflation rate accelerated to 4.1% in August, well above the 2% midpoint of the bank’s 1-3% control range.
“Our job … is to make sure that these one-off price increases don’t become ongoing inflation. We think there’s good reasons to believe that these are one-off price increases. They won’t create ongoing inflation,” he said.
Macklem also said slack remained in Canada‘s labor market, despite employment returning to its pre-pandemic level in September.
“It is an important milestone, but it’s not the destination,” he said. “We’ve had growth in our labor force … so slack in the labor market remains.”
Pointing to young people and women, he said: “Job growth has been particularly concentrated in the areas that needed it most.” But low-wage worker employment is still well below pre-pandemic levels, he added.
(Reporting by Julie Gordon and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Premier Doug Ford lashed out at the gas companies for the double-digit overnight increase in the price of gas across the GTA, calling it unacceptable and disgusting.
Speaking at an unrelated announcement in Oakville, Ont., on Thursday, Ford took a moment to vent on behalf of “16 million people” across the province.
“You go out last night and you’re sitting there for 20 minutes in the lineup to get gas. It’s unacceptable,” said Ford. “Everywhere I was going it was a $1.59. You wake up this morning and it’s $1.80. It’s absolutely disgusting.”
Prices at the pumps surged 14 cents overnight to 178.9 cents/litre at most GTA stations. Analysts attribute the increase to the annual changeover from winter gas to summer gas.
“That is why prices are going up so significantly all at once is essentially we’re seeing discounts on winter gasoline to get rid of it but now that we’ve made the jump, summer gasoline inventories are much lower and thus a much higher price,” Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at Gas Buddy tells CityNews.
That explanation, Ford said, was simply a way for the gas companies to gouge people.
“It’s absolutely disgusting what the oil companies are doing,” said an agitated Ford as he questioned whether the gas companies are waiting for the tanks to drain at gas stations before filling them up with the new summer formulation. “Or are you using the old gas and charging the higher cost.”
“I have my opinion that it’s not physically possible to drain every single gas station to put the fresh stuff in. So either you’re putting the fresh stuff in last month or you’re gouging the people right now.”
Ford went on to say that after consulting with some friends in the United States, he found that gas prices were trending around $3.80 per gallon. “Folks, let’s do the math – it’s a $1.80 (a litre) that’s $7.20 (a US gallon).”
Mike Eppel, 680 News Radio Toronto Senior Business Editor, says it also comes down to a refining capacity issue in this country.
“So there’s lots of oil, that’s not the issue – oil supplies are high. It’s the refining capacity. We haven’t had a refinery built in eastern Canada since whenever – you can’t get a pipeline built. And anytime there is any disruption in the system, up goes the price for gas.”
Ford did not limit his anger on rising gas prices to just the oil companies, closing his rant by taking a shot at the federal government’s carbon tax, which took effect on April 1 and pushed gas prices up three cents a litre.
“This goes back to the federal government sticking their hands in the people’s pockets, they don’t care that we have some of the highest prices in North America on the carbon tax, they jack it up 17.5 per cent,” explained Ford. “And then of course the oil companies thought they’d hop on board, no one’s going to notice, because if I remember … just a few months ago I remember filling up for $1.30 to $1.34. Did the barrel of oil go up 30 per cent? The answer is no. So where is the 30 per cent.”
While the price of gas is expected to fall by four cents/litre on Friday, prices will continue to fluctuate with no real relief in sight until June or July.
Google has fired 28 employees after a number of staffers protested the company’s cloud contract with the Israeli government.
The workers were terminated after staging protests inside Google’s offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, per CNN.
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In a statement, Google’s parent company Alphabet said that “physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior.”
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The protests were organized by the No Tech For Apartheid campaign and protesters held signs that read “No More Genocide For Profit” and “We Stand with Palestinian, Arab and Muslim Googlers.”
The company said it would continue to investigate and take action as needed, reports The Guardian.
The protesters say that Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract granted to Google and Amazon.com in 2021, provides cloud services to the Israeli government and aids in the creation of military applications.
A form letter on the campaign’s website demands that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian “end all ties with Israeli apartheid and cut the Project Nimbus contract.”
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Google says the Nimbus contract “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.” It added that Google Cloud “supports numerous governments around the world, including the Israeli government.”
“We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.”
The No Tech for Apartheid campaign called the firings a “flagrant act of retaliation” and a “clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers.”
The campaign added that some of the individuals fired did not directly participate in the protests.
Despite what its critics allege, Israel has attempted to warn and shield civilians as the IDF hunts the Hamas terrorists who hid themselves among Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure after the group’s October 7 attack. As well, critics who call Israel an apartheid state ignore the freedoms enjoyed by the democratic country’s Arab citizens, who play major roles in business, the judiciary and even the Knesset.
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Gas prices have not been this high since August 2022
There’s a price shocker coming at the pumps.
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Gas in Ontario, including the GTA, will go up 14 cents a litre overnight for customers filling up on Thursday, says Dan McTeague, the president of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
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“So going from $1.65.9 (per litre) going to $1.79.9,” said McTeague adding the increase will affect the entire province except for northwestern Ontario, which gets its prices from the prairies market.
“That’s the highest level since August, 2022, almost two years ago,” he added.
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McTeague said the reason for the price hike is that stations are switching over to summer-blend gasoline.
“Around this time of year prices go up to reflect the new blend of gasoline, which is more expensive to make,” he explained. “Butane is used in the winter, for gasoline, whereas in the summer it’s alkyaltes. Alkyaltes are extremely expensive.”
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“In the winter you want your ignition to start quickly in cold temperatures, you uses volatile butane. You take that out in the summer. That’s a big difference. This is going to be around for awhile and it could get higher,” McTeague said.
McTeague also blamed the rise in gas prices in Canada on the carbon tax increase, the rising price of oil, and the weak Canadian dollar.
“It just makes a bad situation worse,” he said. “It’s just another brick in the wall, another load on the camel’s bank. The cost of denying our resources, blocking pipelines, is one of the most significant reasons why the Canadian dollar is so weak.”
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