Canada earns five speedskating medals at Four Continents championships

TORONTO – The latest inflation reading due out Tuesday from Statistics Canada is expected to show a slight uptick for the month of October — but economists say the measure is still on a longer-term downward trend.

Economists polled by Reuters expect the consumer price index to come in at 1.9 per cent for October, up from 1.6 per cent in September which was the lowest inflation reading since February 2021.

The price of gasoline was a key reason the September number came in so low, as oil dropped to a low of around US$65 per barrel at one point. It’s also expected to be a driver for the increase in October, when it crested US$75 per barrel.

“We’re expecting headline to go back up to two per cent, but just like how it dropped down to 1.6 per cent, it’s mostly an energy story,” said RBC economist Claire Fan.

The expected inflation increase is in part based on shifts in last year’s baseline and shouldn’t be seen as a move away from progress on getting the measure down, she said.

“The broad story really is that this low inflation, or progressively easing inflation pressure, it’s still very much the trend,” Fan said.

Excluding the volatile measures of energy and food — which Fan expects to remain steady at 2.8 per cent — core inflation should tick lower to 2.2 per cent in Octoberfrom 2.4 per cent in September, she said.

BMO Capital Markets sees headline inflation coming in at 1.9 per cent and core inflation at 2.4 or 2.5 per cent, said Benjamin Reitzes, its managing director of Canadian rates & macro strategist, in a note.

“October looks to be a bump in the road for the downward trend in inflation. Prices didn’t exactly surge in the month, but base effects are challenging, suggesting that headline and core inflation will accelerate modestly.”

Along with a mild increase in gasoline prices, he expects surging property taxes to be a key driver for the increase. Rising taxes will help push up shelter costs, but it will be offset from a smaller increase in mortgage interest costs after the Bank of Canada cut interest rates again in October.

High mortgage payments due to interest rates and a wave of mortgage renewals have been putting upward pressure on shelter inflation, but the downward trend in rates should start to relieve pressure on shelter inflation, said Fan.

“On a month-over-month basis, I think we are, if anything, very close to an inflection point.”

The Bank of Canada lowered its key rate by half a percentage point in October to 3.75 per cent, the fourth drop since June.

On the rental side, Desjardins economist Maëlle Boulais-Préseault said in a note last week that rental inflation averaged 8.3 per cent in the third quarter, the highest pace since the 1980s.

That’s in contrast to owned accommodation price growth, which decelerated to 5.5 per cent as borrowing costs continued to come down, she said.

Rent inflation, which aims to measure what Canadians actually pay in rent rather than just the cost of new rentals, is expected to come down, but not in a hurry.

“Our outlook is for a slowdown in the pace of rent inflation over the next few years, in line with a rising unemployment rate and weaker population growth,” said Boulais-Préseault.

The softening of the labour market is also expected to help reduce pressure on inflation, said Fan.

That’s in contrast to the U.S., where inflation rose 2.6 per cent in October from a year earlier, compared with 2.4 per cent in September, as higher government spending and a robust labour market are making inflation reductions a challenge.

The two countries are diverging on a range of key economic measures, including real GDP per capita that is the broadest spread on record, said Fan. In Canada, the measure is three per cent below where it was in 2019, while it’s eight per cent higher in the U.S.

As the two economies diverge, the Canadian dollar has been under pressure, trading at lows not seen since 2020.

The weaker loonie, a possible upward revision of GDP, and the slight increase in October inflation all leads BMO’s Reitzes to expect the Bank of Canada to opt for a milder quarter-percentage-point cut in the key rate at its Dec. 11 meeting.

RBC however is expecting another half-point cut from the central bank, given the struggling economy and the time lag for rates to have an effect.

“Given how weak current conditions are, and given the fact that even if you cut rates today, it won’t help with things until probably at least a couple quarters down the road, they really want to front load any amount of easing,” said Fan.

“If they think the economy needs the support, they want to do it as quickly as possible.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 17, 2024.

OTTAWA – The CRTC is looking at how to redefine Canadian content, launching a new consultation on the question with plans to hold a public hearing in the spring.

Scott Shortliffe, the CRTC’s executive director of broadcasting, said Friday the regulator hopes to get robust public participation on the new definition.

The consultation is part of the CRTC’s implementation of the Online Streaming Act, which updated broadcasting laws to capture online platforms. Part of that effort involves looking to ensure Canadian content is visible and easily discoverable on streaming services.

The CRTC has issued a preliminary position suggesting it keep the points system that has long been used to determine whether content is considered Canadian. It is considering expanding that to allow more creative positions to count toward the points total.

“Canadian producers and entities are used to a points system … switching to a different system would be a great dislocation,” Shortliffe said.

The regulator also wants input on questions including whether artificial intelligence-created video can be considered Cancon.

While the Online Streaming Act was passed just last year, Shortliffe noted “it did not mention artificial intelligence because very honestly, that was an emerging issue.”

“In the time since it’s passed, the commission has become convinced that this is an issue that we must take into account,” he said.

Shortliffe said that includes questions about whether AI can be considered Canadian content, and if so, under what circumstances.

The regulator already held consultations with hundreds of stakeholders to discuss redefining Canadian content. Shortliffe said Canadian producers, writers and directors were “of course, extremely well represented.”

“We are very pleased that foreign streamers did take part. I would suspect that the foreign streamers possibly felt outnumbered at some of the sessions, but they had an important voice too.”

The consultation launched Friday applies to video content like television, not radio and streaming audio.

The CRTC is already facing a court challenge over its efforts to bring online platforms under regulation.

Global streaming services such as Netflix and Disney Plus are fighting an earlier directive the CRTC made under the Online Streaming Act requiring them to contribute money to Canada’s broadcast sector.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2024.

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TORONTO – The shine on CanLit’s glitziest night has dulled, at least according to some, amid sustained backlash against the Giller Foundation for maintaining ties with lead sponsor Scotiabank and other funders linked to Israel.

Monday’s Giller Prize gala is set to take a slightly different shape this year after pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted the ceremony last November.

It brought the televised event to a brief halt — not a risk this year as the CBC won’t be broadcasting live. Instead, the event will be taped and air hours later.

Neither the Giller Foundation nor the TV network connected the change to the protests when asked, and noted they’ve made the same move for other awards shows in recent years.

But the demonstrations and calls to action continue to ripple through the world of Canadian literature. The protesters were arrested that night, and soon after hundreds of people signed a letter calling for the charges against them to be dropped, many of them authors with ties to the award.

“There isn’t really a way I can rationalize my way out of this if I feel that what’s happening is a genocide and I feel that it’s wrong,” said Thea Lim, a past Giller finalist who signed the letter early on and has continued to align with advocacy group No Arms in the Arts.

It became a question for her of “sway,” Lim said. Her lofty position in the CanLit scene — one she still credits in part to the spot of her debut novel “An Ocean of Minutes” on the Giller short list in 2018 — meant she might have some influence on an issue she cared deeply about.

“It also gave me a feeling of having created a space for other authors to be able to do that,” Lim said.

“Because there’s a lot of risk and I think we’re seeing that very clearly,” she said.

Lim and others are protesting the Giller Foundation’s funders, in particular Scotiabank, due to its stake in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. No Arms in the Arts is also protesting funders Indigo and the Azrieli Foundation — the former for its CEO’s charity that supports Israeli Defense Force officers from abroad, and the latter in part for its link to Israeli real estate company Azrieli Group.

Dozens of authors pulled their books from consideration for this year’s Giller Prize, including some who went on to nab spots on other notable short lists such as the Writers’ Trust fiction prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award.

Meanwhile, CanLit Responds has strengthened its calls for action against the Giller, urging all members of the Canadian literary scene to boycott the event. The letter had more than 200 signatories as of Saturday, who pledged to abstain from submitting works to the prize or participating in any events related to it — “for as long as it takes until our demands are met.”

To Lim, the collective action seems to be paying off. While the Giller Foundation hasn’t cut ties with the big bank altogether, it did remove Scotiabank from the name of its prize.

Giller executive director Elana Rabinovitch, whose late father founded the award some 30 years ago to honour his deceased wife, said in a statement at the time that the foundation was still grateful for the bank’s support but that the prize was not political.

Rabinovitch said in an email Saturday, after declining interview requests, that the Giller’s contract with Scotiabank expires at the end of next year and that the organization would announce the next steps when it’s ready.

Rabinovitch also said that while she supports the authors’ right to protest, she questions their methods.

“Nobody could take issue with writers saying what they think, writing what they believe and protesting what they might see as unfair,” she said. “But boycotting, censoring, and blacklisting writers seems to me antithetical to the spirit of what great literature is all about.”

For their part, some of this year’s shortlisted authors have said they’re still working through how to communicate their feelings on the boycott.

“I can say that I’ve been thinking about it non-stop and writing about it every day for weeks now, because what has to be said has to be said so meticulously, because it matters so much, and so I’m not ready yet to talk about it,” said Anne Michaels, a finalist for her novel “Held.”

Similarly, Anne Fleming, whose novel “Curiosities” made the list, said she didn’t “want to wade into it.”

“I think it’s a complicated situation,” Fleming said in the hours after she was shortlisted. “I think what I do feel comfortable saying is I think that, broadly speaking, as a culture, we’re in the middle of an important shake up about where funding for the arts comes from. It’s not just the Giller. It extends far beyond that, and it’s not just here.”

Lim and many of the other authors who have spoken out against the sponsorship feel it’s notable that Scotiabank’s subsidiary sold some of its stake in Elbit Systems.

Securities filings show the bank’s 1832 Asset Management had about 642,000 shares in Elbit at the end of the second quarter of this year, worth about US$113 million. That’s down from about 2,237,000 shares worth US$467.4 million a year earlier.

Scotiabank has denied the protests had anything to do with that change, saying the calls were based on “investment merit” and were made independently of the bank itself. But Israeli business publication Globes reported Elbit’s CEO attributed the partial divestment — and a correlated temporary drop in share price — to antiwar pressure in Canada.

Scotiabank has declined to comment on the protests.

Lim said the partial divestment is a partial win.

She said taking a stand on this issue has also made room for something new to grow.

“For me, it has recast the way that I think about connections, the way that I think about cultural capital, and how much I’d be willing to give up of, not necessarily dollars, because everyone knows there’s not a lot of money in Canadian publishing, but out of prestige and fame,” Lim said.

While she’s no longer rubbing elbows with wealthy benefactors, Lim said the No Arms in the Arts movement has led to other opportunities, including four book club events featuring authors who withdrew their books from Giller contention. There, the authors read from their books and discuss ways the literary community can create change.

The winner of the Giller will receive $100,000, while the finalists receive $10,000. For translated works, the money is split, with 70 per cent going to the author and 30 per cent to the translator.

Other shortlisted writers this year include Conor Kerr for “Prairie Edge,” Deepa Rajagopalan for the short story collection “Peacocks of Instagram” and Eric Chacour for his novel “What I Know About You,” translated from the original French by Pablo Strauss.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 17, 2024.