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Canadian National Railway said on Wednesday it would divest Kansas City Southern’s 70-mile rail line between New Orleans and Baton Rouge to eliminate the only overlap between the two railroad operators.
The line is less than 0.7% of the about 27,000 route-miles the two companies operate, the Canadian operator said.
“Our early commitment to eliminating the minimal rail overlap and to laying out the case for a CN-KCS combination should allow the STB (Surface Transportation Board) to approve our voting trust,” Canadian National Chief Executive Officer Jean-Jacques Ruest said.
“A trust is an essential step so KCS shareholders can receive the full value of their shares.”
Canadian National and Kansas City said they have together filed a renewed motion for approval of their voting trust with the STB to advance the merger deal.
The U.S. railroad earlier this month accepted Canadian National’s $33.6 billion offer, upending a $29 billion deal with its competitor Canadian Pacific, and last week reiterated that Canadian National Railway’s offer was “superior.”
The deal will create the first railway spanning the United States, Mexico and Canada, as the companies stand to benefit from a recent pick up in trade.
(Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru;Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)
HIGHLIGHTS:
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s fourth budget delivers a big-ticket housing program for millennials and Generation Z voters — a multi-billion dollar commitment to be paid for in part with a tax hike on the rich and corporate Canada.
Freeland’s document calls for about $52.9 billion in new spending over the next five years — a significant jump over what Ottawa had said it would spend in the fall economic statement released just a few months ago.
To offset some of that new spending, Freeland is pitching policy changes the government says will generate roughly $21.9 billion in new revenue. That money is to come in part from higher capital gains taxes and a hike to excise taxes on cigarettes and vaping products.
“We are making Canada’s tax system more fair by ensuring that the very wealthiest pay their fair share,” Freeland said Tuesday after tabling her budget in Parliament.
“We are doing this because a fair chance to build a good, middle class life — to do as well as your parents, and grandparents, or better — has always been the promise of Canada.”
The result is a projected budget deficit of about $40 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year — roughly what Freeland had predicted.
While the government is spending more overall, it says that better-than-expected economic growth and higher taxes will keep the deficit under control.
The Liberal government’s preferred “fiscal anchor” — the budget benchmark that guides its decisions — has long been to keep the net debt-to-GDP ratio on a declining trend, with debt levels closely tracking the overall size of the economy.
The budget document says the government must meet that benchmark in the years ahead to retain Canada’s triple-A credit rating.
Deficits eventually roll over into long-term debt. The cost to finance Canada’s growing debt pile — which has more than doubled over the last nine years to $1.4 trillion — is eating up more and more taxpayer dollars as the government is forced to refinance its borrowing at higher rates.
Public debt charges will cost $2 billion more this year than the forecast in November as the Bank of Canada keeps rates relatively high to tame inflation — which has shown signs of slowing down.
With interest rates at a 20-year high, Ottawa’s cost to borrow has spiked from $20.3 billion in 2020-21 to $54.1 billion in 2024-25.
That means Ottawa will spend more to service its debt than it will on health care this year — and the debt charges will march even higher in the years ahead.
Carrying the debt is expected to cost the federal treasury $64.3 billion in 2028-29 — more than double what Ottawa sends to the provinces through equalization payments.
“The interest rates are hurting the government just as much as they’re hurting us consumers,” said Sahir Khan, a former deputy parliamentary budget officer and the executive vice-president of the uOttawa Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy.
“It’s now a meaningful amount relative to other spending pressures and it’s going to start squeezing other programs. The government built up a stock of debt subject to prevailing interest rates and that creates a risk.”
The budget allocates $8.5 billion more to housing to help alleviate a crisis that has locked a generation of young people out of the dream of home ownership. The government maintains its housing measures will drive the creation of roughly four million more homes by 2031.
Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said this year’s federal budget will pave the way for Canada to build more homes at a pace not seen since the Second World War. The new investment and changes to funding models will also cut through red tape and break down zoning barriers for people who want to build homes faster, she said
Freeland has freed up money to send more cash to municipalities through the Housing Accelerator Fund, build more homes on underused public lands and at Canada Post outlets, cut cheques for new water and solid waste infrastructure in growing communities, offer tens of billions of dollars in loans to spur new rental construction and secondary suites, and help non-profits acquire existing rental homes and keep them affordable.
“We are moving with purpose to help build more homes, faster. We are making life cost less,” Freeland said. “Millennial and Gen Z Canadians, we want them to look forward to the future with a sense of anticipation, not angst.”
The government also has committed to maintaining the already well-subscribed tax-free savings account, extending mortgage amortization terms and increasing the RRSP withdrawal limit for some first-home buyers, among other measures.
The housing program is a “home run,” said Armine Yalnizyan, a progressive economist and the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers.
Yalnizyan said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s early focus on housing hurt the Liberals’ standing among some millennial voters.
Now, the Liberals are trying to reclaim some of those votes with an ambitious program which, if it’s carried out as planned, will meaningfully increase the country’s housing supply, she said.
“It’s really an attempt to stop the Conservatives from eating their lunch,” she said.
As Ottawa moves to remake the housing landscape, roll out a national dental care program and launch pharmacare, Freeland’s budget includes a number of targeted tax hikes that it says will yield some $21.9 billion in new revenue over the next five years.
The biggest windfall will come from an increase to the capital gains inclusion rate.
Under the current regime, only 50 per cent of capital gains are taxable. If a taxpayer sells an asset like a cottage, an investment property, a stock or mutual fund for $100,000 more than they paid, they are taxed only on $50,000 of that profit.
With this new budget, the “inclusion rate” will increase from one-half to two-thirds on capital gains above $250,000 per year for individuals, and on all capital gains realized by corporations and trusts.
The move is likely to be seen by business-friendly groups as an attack on the people and businesses that create jobs.
Freeland said she anticipates some blowback.
“I know there will be many voices raised in protest. No one likes paying more tax, even — or perhaps particularly — those who can afford it the most,” she said.
“Tax policy is not only, or chiefly, the province of accountants or economists. It belongs to all of us because it is how we decide what kind of country we want to live in and what kind of country we want to build.”
The NDP — the government’s partner in the supply-and-confidence agreement — likely will welcome the change; party leader Jagmeet Singh has said the wealthy and big corporations should shoulder more of the country’s tax burden.
“We are asking the wealthiest Canadians to contribute a bit more, so that we can make investments to ensure a fair chance for every generation,” the budget document says. “Canada’s tax system can be more fair.”
The change will not apply to any capital gains from the sale of a primary residence. Investment income earned in an RRSP or TFSA, including capital gains, also will not be taxed.
According to government data, only 0.13 per cent of Canadians — people with an average income of about $1.4 million a year — are expected to pay more in personal income tax on their capital gains as a result of this change.
Jimmy Jean, an economist at Desjardins who tracks Ottawa’s spending, said the federal government’s goal of collecting about $19 billion from the capital gains measure may be difficult to achieve.
“The jury’s out on whether they can get that much,” Jean said.
“Targeting the income and wealth of the wealthy — it’s difficult because it’s more mobile, they can move it around. I’m skeptical.”
Other new revenue-generating measures in the budget include a promise to crack down on bankruptcy fraud and tackle “aggressive tax planning schemes.”
Beyond housing, there’s also a promise to top up the incentives for zero-emission vehicles, deliver a new carbon tax rebate for small businesses, stand up an $800-million energy efficiency retrofit program, increase student grants, create a $500-million fund for youth mental health, launch a $6 billion Canada Disability Benefit, fund a $1 billion national school food program and deliver a $900-million top-up to the Indigenous infrastructure program.
CBC/Radio-Canada will get a one-off $42 million budget boost for news and entertainment programming — a cash injection that will help the company avoid some of the previously announced layoffs.
VIA Rail Canada stands to gain about $400 million over the next few years to turn the dream of high-frequency rail in central Canada into a reality.
CBC News breaks down the biggest items in the new federal budget — and how the government is planning to pay for billions in new spending.
Poilievre pilloried the budget and said his party would vote against it.
Speaking in the House of Commons, the Conservative leader said the Liberal government has never presented a balanced budget in all the years it’s been in office and the promised $40 billion in new spending will drive inflation higher.
“This is the ninth deficit. The ninth deficit after the prime minister promised the budget would balance itself and what did he do with the money? Everything he spent it on has become more expensive,” Poilievre said.
“This is like a pyromaniac spraying gas on the inflationary fire that he lit. It is getting too hot and too expensive for Canadians and that’s why we need a carbon tax election to replace him with a common sense Conservative government.”
Responding to Tuesday’s budget by the federal Liberals, opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre says Conservatives will vote against the financial plan, and renewed his call for ‘a carbon tax election’ to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Singh, meanwhile, said it’s too early to say if his party will support the budget.
While he praised some measures he said his party forced the government to include, such as dental care, pharmacare and a national school food program, Singh said he wants to meet with Trudeau to raise some other “concerns” before making a final decision.
Singh said he’s not onside with a plan to cut about 5,000 public servants through attrition — the federal bureaucracy has grown to about 357,247 workers under Trudeau — and he said there’s inadequate funding for Indigenous peoples.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says while he is glad to see some measures in the 2024 budget like protections for renters and the national school food program, he believes the Liberals could have done more to bring grocery, internet and housing prices down.
If Singh and his NDP MPs withhold their votes, the minority government could lose the confidence of the House of Commons, tipping the country into an early election.
While the capital gains tax increase will cost the country’s big businesses billions more than what they pay now, Singh said “the Liberals ignored the opportunity to take on corporate greed.”
Singh said the companies he blames for inflation — grocery store chains, telecommunications companies and “housing and corporate landlords” — should have faced tax hikes.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said her caucus will vote against Freeland’s budget.
She said the government’s planned disability benefit, which amounts to about $200 a month for eligible Canadians, is too low.
May also said there’s not enough money earmarked for social housing — just more loans for developers to build more affordable homes.
“The budget falls far short of our hopes,” May said. “It’s not meeting the moment. We need dramatic, transformative changes to our society to be able to afford the things we need.”
A technical error by Tim Hortons led coffee drinkers across Canada to falsely believe they had won a $55,000 boat as part of the franchise’s Roll Up To Win promotion.
It’s unclear how many people were impacted, but the chain told CBC Hamilton in an email it was an “unfortunate error” and some customers were sent an email with incorrect information.
Darren Stewart-Jones of Hamilton said he opened an email on Wednesday morning from Tim Hortons that recapped all the prizes he won this year and it included one he didn’t recognize: a 2024 Tracker Targa 18 WT boat and trailer, which retails for $39,995 US (about $55,000 Cdn) — the only one available to participants.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this could be really awesome,'” Stewart-Jones told CBC News in a phone interview.
But his initial burst of excitement turned into questions as he scrolled through his emails to find out when he’d won the boat.
He said he’d always received emails after winning past prizes.
Within an hour, he got a call from a friend in Brampton, Ont., who said she also won a boat.
“That’s when I clued in and thought, ‘I think this is a huge mess-up,'” Stewart-Jones said.
Chris Rivet, from Edmonton, had the same experience.
“I went from being a winner to a loser,” Rivet said.
Alanna O’Hoski of Hamilton said she received the email and spent part of the day on hold waiting for an answer from Tim Hortons.
“With how tight things are nowadays, it was definitely a gut punch,” she said in a message to CBC News. “A lot of people, myself included… thought they won something of potential life-changing value.”
Tim Hortons sent customers an email with instructions to “disregard” the recap email they received, saying “technical errors” may have allowed for some prizes they didn’t win to end up in the recap email.
“We apologize for the frustration this has caused and for not living up to our high standards of providing an exceptional guest experience,” read the letter, which Tim Hortons shared with CBC.
Rivet said he has filed a complaint with the Competition Bureau of Canada and is considering filing a lawsuit.
On Wednesday afternoon, a Facebook group formed with over 200 people expressing outrage about the mistake and threatening to file lawsuits.
“NOPE, Not taking this as an answer!! Two words: CLASS ACTION,” read a post from Christiane Marie.
“I want my boat!” read another post, from Beau Johnson.
Just over a year ago, the Tim Hortons app mistakenly informed users they’d won $10,000.
“This is a repeated pattern of behaviour and simply saying it’s a technical issue just goes to show Tim Hortons didn’t do its due diligence,” Rivet said.
“It doesn’t exclude them from the harm they’ve caused.”
After the last mishap, Hamed Aghakhani, associate professor of marketing at Dalhousie University’s Rowe School of Business, told CBC News the coffee chain’s terms and conditions likely protect the company in case of an issue like this.
But he also said if the issue remains unresolved, it would erode the public’s confidence in the brand over time.
The gold has likely all been melted down, reforged into other forms, and made its way into local or international markets
Author of the article:
Published Apr 17, 2024 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 8 minute read
The Toronto Pearson airport gold heist was such an inside job that the Air Canada manager who gave police investigators a tour of the crime scene at the cargo warehouse from where it was stolen is now wanted for the $24 million theft, along with another Air Canada employee who has been arrested.
Precisely one year after the brazen and baffling theft, Peel Regional Police announced nine arrest warrants as part of the gold heist.
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Five of the accused were arrested in Canada and have already been released from custody on conditions pending trial.
Four more are wanted in Canada, although one, the alleged driver of the truck used to cart off the gold from the airport, is in custody in the United States, where he was arrested after police stopped a car in Pennsylvania with 65 handguns in the trunk that were allegedly being smuggled into Canada.
Authorities said a portion of the proceeds from the stolen gold was used to fund a cross-border gun running plot, leading the chair of the Peel Police Services Board, Nando Iannicca, to say the case was about “reverse alchemy … how gold becomes guns.”
The gold has likely all been melted down, reforged into other forms, and made its way into local or international markets.
A tiny portion of what police believed is gold from the heist has been recovered. It had been forged into six crudely made gold bracelets, mimicking the look of cheap bangles. With the purity of the gold, they are worth about $90,000. Police seized smelting pots, casts, and metal molds believed to have been used to transform the missing gold.
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As well, $430,000 in Canadian currency, believed to be some of the profit from the sale of the gold, was recovered by police. The white five-ton truck allegedly used in the heist has also been seized and provided the backdrop for the police announcement, Wednesday, in Brampton.
Peel police officials outlined the heist and their investigation, a 17-person team codenamed Project 24K, the measurement for nearly pure gold.
The size of the heist plot is suggested by two versions of a “debt list” found by police during two different raids; police believe they outline those who received or were owed a portion of profits from the job. One was for $9,943,000 and the other for $10,023,000. It suggests the thieves sold the gold at half price.
There appears to be 18 names on both lists. The names are the same between the two, police said.
“We are working hard to identify each of these individuals,” said Detective Sergeant Mike Mavity, major case manager for Project 24K.
The lists allocate money for supplies, travel and personal items, he said.
Among those allegedly involved are two who were Air Canada employees at the time of the heist, and a jewelry store owner.
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Mavity said it was an inside job: “Because of their position within Air Canada in my opinion, yeh, they needed people inside Air Canada to facilitate this stuff.”
Intimate inside knowledge of Air Canada cargo operations, and access to Air Canada’s equipment to print a duplicate shipping waybill, made the heist seem absurdly easy.
That inside action, however, also tipped police off to possible suspects early in the investigation, police said.
Mavity said they learned that an Air Canada cargo manager, who had earlier given investigators a tour of the crime scene, was resigning. That’s one clue of a possible insider. When investigators went to speak with him, he had disappeared, another strong clue.
“He resigned in the summer of last year. And then we have not been able to locate him since. We have an idea of where he is,” Mavity said.
Although it seemed an easy score, Nishan Duraiappah, Peel police chief, said the job was carefully planned and orchestrated by a large group of criminals.
Mavity summarized the investigation.
A shipping container filled with 6,600 variously sized bars of almost pure gold, weighing 400.19 kilograms, from a refinery in Zurich, Switzerland, arrived aboard a daily Air Canada flight to Toronto at 3:56 p.m., on April 17, 2023.
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The gold was valued at the time at more than $20 million. The shipping container also contained foreign currency worth about $2.5 million. The contents were being delivered by Brink’s on behalf of two clients.
It was taken to Air Canada’s cargo facility.
At 6:32 p.m., a man arrived at the warehouse driving a white, five-ton truck, reversed it into one of the many loading docks and went inside to talk to Air Canada warehouse staff. He had a waybill.
It was a real Air Canada waybill, but for a legitimate shipment of seafood that had been picked up the day before. The duplicate waybill was printed off within the Air Canada cargo facility, Mavity said.
“Once inside the warehouse, the suspect then provided it to an Air Canada cargo warehouse attendant. A short time later a forklift arrived with a container of gold and foreign currency and loaded it into the rear of the suspect’s truck.”
He then drove away.
It wasn’t until 9:30 p.m. that evening that Brink’s security personnel arrived expecting to collect the valuable container. Air Canada employees couldn’t find it, realized it was missing, and began an internal investigation, Mavity said.
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At 2:43 a.m., on April 18, 2023, Peel police were called and told of the theft.
Each gold bar had individual serial numbers.
Peel investigators went door-to-door over four weeks seeking video surveillance images to help track the truck, starting from the warehouse. The area around the airport is thick with businesses small and large.
Mavity said his team managed to track the truck leaving through Peel region onto Highway 401, heading west. It exited the highway at Bronte Road and headed north on Bronte, in Oakville.
Once the truck reached Milton, the area becomes more rural with little video coverage.
“We lose sight of the truck,” he said but it was later recovered.
Over the year, Project 24K investigators executed 37 search warrants, 70 production orders, and interviewed more than 50 people.
One of the first on their radar was the alleged driver, Durante King-Mclean, 25, of Brampton.
“Through a forensic identification and other police techniques we identified King-Mclean as the driver early in the investigation,” Mavity said.
For months police quietly searched but couldn’t find him. They didn’t know he was in the United States.
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As luck would have it, on Sept. 2, 2023, a Pennsylvania state trooper pulled over the driver of a Nissan Sentra that seemed to be driving erratically and had windshields tinted too dark, near the town of Shippensburg, about 150 kilometres northwest of Washington, D.C.
Police say the driver ran away but was arrested shortly after. He appeared to be illegally in the United States. When they checked him on the police database, it flagged him as wanted by Peel police.
When troopers opened the Nissan’s trunk, they didn’t find gold bars, but 65 guns instead, that were destined to be smuggled into Canada, an indictment filed in the U.S. alleges. Two were fully automatic, 11 had been stolen, and one had an obliterated serial number, U.S. officials said.
U.S. investigators say they found messages between King-Mclean and another man from Brampton, Prasath Paramalingam, 35, from about a week or so after the gold heist discussing King-Mclean illegally crossing the border to get guns and bring them back to Canada. They used Threema, an encrypted messaging app, and Instagram.
Paramalingam told King-Mclean he is going to leave Portugal early to get cash for him. The next day he sent King-Mclean a photograph of large amounts of Canadian currency wrapped in stacks with rubber bands, the indictment says.
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Paramalingam and another unnamed person from Toronto flew from Toronto to New York City to deliver money to King-Mclean. Five days later, Paramalingam flew back to Toronto via Miami.
While King-Mclean stayed at an Airbnb in Fort Lauderdale, he allegedly took several photos with his phone of guns and large amounts of U.S. currency. He left Florida in August 2023 in a rental vehicle and drove north.
That’s when he was stopped by state troopers.
Nine people have been identified or charged in their probe.
The five arrested in Canada are: Parmpal Sidhu, 54, of Brampton who was named as an Air Canada employee. He is charged with theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence; Amit Jalota, 40, from Oakville, charged with possession of property obtained by crime, theft over $5,000, and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence; Ammad Chaudhary, 43, from Georgetown, charged with accessory after the fact; Ali Raza, a 37-year-old jewelry store owner from Toronto, charged with possession of property obtained by crime; and Paramalingam, charged with accessory after the fact.
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Paramalingam also faces charges in the United States of conspiracy to traffic in firearms and attempting to unlawfully export firearms. The United States is seeking his extradition, said Ben Benson with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, known as the ATF.
King-Mclean, the alleged driver, is formally listed as wanted by Peel police, although he is in custody in the United States.
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Peel police are also searching for three other men.
– Simran Preet Panesar, a 31-year-old Brampton man who was an Air Canada employee at the time of the theft but resigned after the heist. He is wanted for theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.
– Archit Grover, 36, from Brampton who is considered a fugitive in Canada and the United States. In Canada he is wanted for theft over $5,000 and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. In the U.S. he is accused of helping King-Mclean after his roadside arrest and hindering the investigation, including removing possible evidence from the Airbnb that King-Mclean stayed at and arranging a $1,000 payment to the car rental agency for an amended rental agreement.
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– Arsalan Chaudhary, 42, from Mississauga, wanted for theft over $5,000, possession of property obtained by crime and conspiracy to commit and indictable offence.
Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for Air Canada confirmed that two of those suspected in the heist worked for Air Canada’s cargo division at the time.
“One left the company prior to the arrests announced today and the second has been suspended,” he said. “We thank the police for their diligent efforts in investigating this matter. As this is now before the courts, we are limited in our ability to comment further.”
Kelly McNeff, a spokeswoman for Brink’s, said the company wouldn’t comment on the alleged inside job at Air Canada because Brink’s is suing the airline for negligence in the theft.
“We are pleased to know the identities and to hear of the arrests of the individuals,” she said. She thanked police for their diligence and said the company would continue to cooperate in any investigation.
Police said the investigation continues.
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