Cold case arrest: Nunavut RCMP charge man with murder in 1986 death of teenage girl

RED DEER, Alta. – Alberta municipal leaders are calling for the provincial government to reverse its ban on vote counting machines, saying it’s more costly and time-consuming to count by hand.

However, Premier Danielle Smith told reporters at the Alberta Municipalities convention in Red Deer on Thursday that electronic tabulators have failed to produce faster results and confidence in them.

“We’re going to go back to doing things the old-fashioned way, and we’ll see how it works,” said Smith.

The premier said the province has asked municipalities for a tally of the costs so it can help cover them, and estimated about 30 municipalities use tabulators.

Last year, members of Smith’s United Conservative Party voted overwhelmingly to ban ballot-counting machines in provincial elections, citing security concerns.

But a Thursday resolution from the City of St. Albert calling for the government to change course passed in an 85.8 per cent vote.

“We’re not always going to agree with the municipalities,” said Smith, adding they are creatures of the provincial government.

“As a provincial government, we have heard that people want to go back to paper ballots,” she said.

St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron told The Canadian Press she’s not hearing any demands from residents concerned about vote tabulators.

“I think (United Conservatives) feel like they have to honour a couple of (party resolutions) just to keep their base happy, and they chose this one because it doesn’t hurt them — but it does hurt us,” she said.

The prohibition came as part of a bill passed in the spring that will also allow political parties to run on municipal ballots in Edmonton and Calgary, and give Smith’s cabinet the power to repeal some municipal bylaws and fire councillors if it deems it to be “in the public interest.”

Edmonton has estimated it will cost $2.6 million to revert to hand-counting, a cost Mayor Amarjeet Sohi said will need to be paid by municipal property owners.

“That is not fair to them,” he said.

Sohi said the city has used electronic tabulators for two decades with no problems.

Red Deer has estimated it will cost more than three times the amount of past elections to hire extra staff.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said it appears it could cost at least $1.3 million to implement the province’s new rules for the next municipal election in 2025.

“There is a lot of mythology out there around tabulators, but the actual science tells you that they are more reliable, more certain, and predictable than doing hand counts,” Gondek told reporters.

Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi said if the province wants to force hand-counting, it should pay for it.

Nenshi said it will also take much longer to actually get the results on election night.

“(Smith’s) listening to conspiracy theorists from the U.S. who think that somehow vote tabulators can be hacked,” he said. “Here’s the thing: the vote tabulators are not connected to a network — all they do is count.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

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TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index closed above 24,000 for the first time Thursday as strength in base metals and other sectors outweighed losses in energy, while U.S. markets also rose and the S&P 500 notched another record as well.

“Another day, another record,” said Angelo Kourkafas, senior investment strategist at Edward Jones.

“The path of least resistance continues to be higher.”

The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 127.95 points at 24,033.83.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 260.36 points at 42,175.11. The S&P 500 index was up 23.11 points at 5,745.37, while the Nasdaq composite was up 108.09 points at 18,190.29.

Markets continue to be optimistic about an economic soft landing, said Kourkafas, after the U.S. Federal Reserve last week announced an outsized cut to its key interest rate following months of speculation about when it would start easing policy.

Economic data Thursday added to the story that the U.S. economy remains resilient despite higher rates, said Kourkafas.

The U.S. economy grew at a three-per-cent annual rate in the second quarter, one report said, picking up from the first quarter of the year. Another report showed fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week.

The data shows “the economy remains on strong footing while the Fed is pivoting now in a decisive way towards an easier policy,” said Kourkafas.

The Fed’s decisive move gave investors more reason to believe that a soft landing is still the “base case scenario,” he said, “and likely reduces the downside risks for a recession by having the Fed moving too late or falling behind the curve.”

North of the border, the TSX usually gets a boost from Wall St. strength, said Kourkafas, but on Thursday the index also reflected some optimism of its own as the Bank of Canada has already cut rates three times to address weakening in the economy.

“The Bank of Canada likely now will be emboldened by the Fed,” he said.

“They didn’t want to move too far ahead of the Fed, and now that the Fed moved in a bigger-than-expected way, that provides more room for the Bank of Canada to cut as aggressively as needed to support the economy, given that inflation is within the target range.”

The TSX has also been benefiting from strength in materials after China’s central bank announced several measures meant to support the company’s economy, said Kourkafas.

However, energy stocks dragged on the Canadian index as oil prices fell Thursday following a report that Saudi Arabia was preparing to abandon its unofficial US$100-per-barrel price target for crude as it prepares to increase its output.

The Canadian dollar traded for 74.22 cents US compared with 74.28 cents US on Wednesday.

The November crude oil contract was down US$2.02 at US$67.67 per barrel and the November natural gas contract was down seven cents at US$2.75 per mmBTU.

The December gold contract was up US$10.20 at US$2,694.90 an ounce and the December copper contract was up 15 cents at US$4.64 a pound.

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD)

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BlackBerry Ltd. executives said the company has made good progress in its efforts to cut costs as it reported a slimmer loss in its latest quarter than the prior year.

“This was a good quarter for BlackBerry,” said CEO John Giamatteo on a call with analysts.

“The hard work that the team has done with managing costs is really paying off, with operating expenses now significantly lower than prior year.”

BlackBerry reported a net loss of US$19 million in its second quarter, compared with a US$42-million net loss a year earlier.

The Waterloo, Ont.-headquartered company says revenue for the quarter ended Aug. 31 was US$145 million, up from US$132 million during the same quarter last year.

The company says revenue for both its cybersecurity and Internet of Things divisions grew by double digits year over year. Revenue for the cybersecurity division was US$87 million, while the Internet of Things division brought in US$55 million.

BlackBerry has been working on splitting the two divisions. It announced the planned split last October, saying it intended to pursue a subsidiary public offering for the Internet of Things business after evaluating a range of strategic alternatives for the company.

The company made “tremendous progress” on the split during the quarter, said Giamatteo, with much of the “low-hanging fruit” out of the way.However, he said the company is trying to strike the right balance as it tackles some of the more complicated parts of the split.

“Some of these things are naturally a little bit more intertwined,” he said.

This past quarter, BlackBerry said its adjusted operating expenses came in at US$99 million, down from US$114 million a year earlier.

In February this year, BlackBerry announced it was cutting 200 jobs and exiting six of its 36 global office locations.

“Cost remains a key focus going into the second half, and during September, we announced a number of further back-office headcount reductions and facilities closures as we continued to streamline operations,” said Tim Foote, the company’s new chief financial officer, on the call.

“The new management team at BlackBerry has managed to thread the needle of significantly reducing costs, while at the same time managing to stabilize the top line and even drive growth,” Foote said.

Foote’s appointment was announced near the end of July, succeeding Steve Rai. He was most recently the CFO for BlackBerry’s cybersecurity division.

The company raised the bottom end of its full-year guidance for its Internet of Things division.

Diluted loss per share came in at three cents US, compared with seven cents US last year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BB)

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version has the incorrect revenue number for BlackBerry’s second quarter in the previous year.

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