News
How Flight PS752's black boxes may piece together details around the downed plane – CBC.ca
While Iran continues to deny evidence cited by Canada and the U.S. that a surface-to-air missile downed Flight PS752, the Ukrainian aircraft’s black boxes could still provide some crucial clues around the cause of the crash.
An aircraft’s black boxes includes two components: the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
Iranian state television showed footage on Friday purportedly of the two black boxes recovered from the crashed Ukrainian airliner, Reuters reported.
The footage, posted online by state TV, showed two devices inside a wooden crate which commentary said were the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.
Both black boxes are damaged but their memory can be downloaded and examined, the commentary said.
The wooden crate was opened at the Iran Civil Aviation Organization, the commentary said.
WATCH: Iran TV purportedly shows Ukraine airliner’s black boxes
The flight data recorder tracks measurements like air speed, altitude, heading (bearing) and engine thrust, while the cockpit voice recorder records all the communication between crew members, as well as between the crew and air traffic control, and the ambient sound in the cockpit.
“If it’s an operational-type accident — operational meaning pilot issues and so on, nothing wrong with the aircraft — then the flight recorders are very, very good at telling you exactly what happened,” said Mike Poole, a former investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and an expert on flight recorders.
“If it’s a technical problem with the aircraft, then the flight recorder is [also] very good at telling you there’s a technical problem,” he said. “But pinpointing it usually requires the physical wreckage.”
And when it comes to figuring out whether a plane was downed by an outside force, such as a projectile, the recorders can further offer some indirect evidence.
Signature of a perfectly functioning airplane
“If you’re shot down, the signature is typically a perfectly functioning airplane and perfectly normal operations that all of a sudden stops,” Poole said. “That doesn’t necessarily [mean] it was shot down, but it says whatever happened was instantaneous.”
Of the 176 victims killed on board the Ukraine International Airlines flight after it crashed Wednesday shortly after takeoff from Tehran, 63 were Canadian citizens and a total of 138 were ultimately bound for Canada.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that intelligence from multiple sources, including Canada, has indicated Flight PS752 was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air-missile, perhaps unintentionally.
Iran has denied the allegations.
If true, it would mean the plane met the same fate as Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which was shot down over territory held by pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine in July 2014, killing 296 people, including one Canadian.
In its report into that crash, the Dutch Safety Board concluded the plane was downed by the detonation of a warhead launched by a surface-to-air missile system. While forensic chemical analysis on the wreckage helped make that determination, investigators also used some of the evidence gathered from the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
One piece of evidence that came from the cockpit voice recorder was a 2.3 millisecond sound peak — a noise, it was concluded, that originated from outside the airplane.
“Normally when an aircraft is hit by a projectile like that … it can even be heard, because there’s a sudden decompression, and most of that is captured in the cockpit voice recorder,” said Daniel Adjekum, an assistant professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota.
No alerts or warnings
Investigators also found the MH17 data recorders had stopped abruptly — and they confirmed the normal functioning of the airplane’s engines and systems before the crash; no warning failures or discrepancies were recorded.
Nor were there any alerts or warnings of system malfunction heard in MH17’s cockpit voice recorders; communication between flight crew members gave no indication of any malfunction or emergency prior to the crash.
“This will be clues to the investigators that whatever happened was sudden — it was instantaneous in a way that their recordings were abruptly stopped,” Adjekum said. “Those are clues that, most likely, it was hit by a projectile.”
Questions have already been raised over potential access to the black boxes of Flight PS752.
Based on international aviation regulations, Iran has authority over the crash probe since it occurred in their territory.
While representatives of the plane’s manufacturer are often involved in the investigation of the crash and analysis of the flight recorders, in this case, the plane was manufactured by U.S.-based Boeing. But with the ongoing standoff between the U.S. and Iran, the country’s aviation authority has said it would not send the black boxes to the American company.
(Iran has said that Ukranian officials can be present, however, as well as Canadians, albeit in a limited capacity.)
It is unlikely that Iran has the technology needed to access the information from the black boxes, with officials already saying they may need to outsource the recorders to outside experts.
Adjekum believes the best way forward is to get a third-party country involved — one that has relations with Iran and the U.S., as well as the technical capability to retrieve the data.
“France might be my best bet,” he said. “Send it out to France. [American] NTSB investigators can also travel to France, a third-party country, and they can all be there when the data … is read out.
“And it will satisfy everybody in terms of transparency and openness.”
WATCH: Ukraine mourns, sends investigators to Iran
More money will land in the pockets of Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit (CCB) installment.
The federal government program helps low and middle-income families struggling with the soaring cost of raising a child.
Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or refugees who are the primary caregivers for children under 18 years old are eligible for the program, introduced in 2016.
The non-taxable monthly payments are based on a family’s net income and how many children they have. Families that have an adjusted net income under $34,863 will receive the maximum amount per child.
For a child under six years old, an applicant can annually receive up to $7,437 per child, and up to $6,275 per child for kids between the ages of six through 17.
That translates to up to $619.75 per month for the younger cohort and $522.91 per month for the older group.
The benefit is recalculated every July and most recently increased 6.3 per cent in order to adjust to the rate of inflation, and cost of living.
To apply, an applicant can submit through a child’s birth registration, complete an online form or mail in an application to a tax centre.
The next payment date will take place on May 17.
News
Capital gains tax change draws ire from some Canadian entrepreneurs worried it will worsen brain drain – CBC.ca
A chorus of Canadian entrepreneurs and investors is blasting the federal government’s budget for expanding a tax on the rich. They say it will lead to brain drain and further degrade Canada’s already poor productivity.
In the 2024 budget unveiled Tuesday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government would increase the inclusion rate of the capital gains tax from 50 per cent to 67 per cent for businesses and trusts, generating an estimated $19 billion in new revenue.
Capital gains are the profits that individuals or businesses make from selling an asset — like a stock or a second home. Individuals are subject to the new changes on any profits over $250,000.
The government estimates that the changes would impact 40,000 individuals (or 0.13 per cent of Canadians in any given year) and 307,000 companies in Canada.
However, some members of the business community say that expanding the taxable amount will devastate productivity, investment and entrepreneurship in Canada, and might even compel some of the country’s talent and startups to take their business elsewhere.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland unveiled the government’s 2024 federal budget, with spending targeted at young voters and a plan to raise capital gains taxes for some of the wealthiest Canadians.
Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), said the capital gains tax has overshadowed parts of the federal budget that the business community would otherwise be excited about.
“There were definitely some other stars in the budget that were interesting,” he said. “However, the … capital gains piece really is the sun, and it’s daylight. So this is really the only thing that innovators can see.”
The CCI has written and is circulating an open letter signed by more than 1,000 people in the Canadian business community to Trudeau’s government asking it to scrap the tax change.
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and president Harley Finkelstein also weighed in on the proposed hike on X, formerly known as Twitter.
We need to be doing everything we can to turn Canada into the best place for entrepreneurs to build 🇨🇦<br><br>What’s proposed in the federal budget will do the complete opposite. Innovators and entrepreneurs will suffer and their success will be penalized — this is not a wealth tax,…
—@harleyf
Former finance minister Bill Morneau said his successor’s budget disincentivizes businesses from investing in the country’s innovation sector: “It’s probably very troubling for many investors.”
Canada’s productivity — a measure that compares economic output to hours worked — has been relatively poor for decades. It underperforms against the OECD average and against several other G7 countries, including the U.S., Germany, U.K. and Japan, on the measure.
Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers sounded the alarm on Canada’s lagging productivity in a speech last month, saying the country’s need to increase the rate had reached emergency levels, following one of the weakest years for the economy in recent memory.
The government said it was proposing the tax change to make life more affordable for younger generations and fund efforts to boost housing supply — and that it would support productivity growth.
A challenge for investors, founders and workers
The change could have a chilling effect for several reasons, with companies already struggling to access funding in a high interest rate environment, said Bergen.
He questioned whether investors will want to fund Canadian companies if the government’s taxation policies make it difficult for those firms to grow — and whether founders might just pack up.
The expanded inclusion rate “is just one of the other potential concerns that firms are going to have as they’re looking to grow their companies.”
He said the rejigged tax is also an affront to high-skilled workers from low-innovation sectors who might have taken the risk of joining a startup for the opportunity, even taking a lower wage on the chance that a firm’s stock options grow in value.
But Lindsay Tedds, an associate economics professor at the University of Calgary, said the tax change is one of the most misunderstood parts of the federal budget — and that its impact on the country’s talent has been overstated.
“This is not a major innovation-biting tax change treatment,” Tedds said. “In fact, when you talk to real grassroots entrepreneurs that are setting up businesses, tax rates do not come into their decision.”
As for productivity, Tedds said Canadians might see improvements in the long run “to the degree that some of our productivity problems are driven by stresses like housing affordability, access to child care, things like that.”
‘One foot on the gas, one foot on the brake’
Some say the government is sending mixed messages to entrepreneurs by touting tailored tax breaks — like the Canada Entrepreneurs’ Incentive, which reduces the capital gains inclusion rate to 33 per cent on a lifetime maximum of $2 million — while introducing measures they say would dampen investment and innovation.
“They seem to have one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake on the very same file,” said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Some business groups are worried that new capital gains tax changes could hurt economic growth. But according to Small Business Minister Rechie Valdez, most Canadians won’t be impacted by that change — and it’s a move to create fairness.
A founder may be able to sell their successful company with a lower capital gains treatment than otherwise possible, he said.
“At the same time, though, big chunks of it may be subject to a higher rate of capital gains inclusion.”
Selling a company can fund an individual’s retirement, he said, which is why it’s one of the first things founders consider when they think about capital gains.
Mainstreet NS7:03Ottawa is proposing a hike to capital gains tax. What does that mean?
Tuesday’s federal budget includes nearly $53 billion in new spending over the next five years with a clear focus on affordability and housing. To help pay for some of that new spending, Ottawa is proposing a hike to the capital gains tax. Moshe Lander, an economics lecturer at Concordia University, joins host Jeff Douglas to explain.
Dennis Darby, president and CEO of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, says he was disappointed by the change — and that it sends the wrong message to Canadian industries like his own.
He wants to see the government commit to more tax credit proposals like the Canada Carbon Rebate for Small Businesses, which he said would incentivize business owners to stay and help make Canada competitive with the U.S.
“We’ve had a lot of difficulties attracting investment over the years. I don’t think this will make it any better.”
Tech titan says change will only impact richest of the rich
Toronto tech entrepreneur Ali Asaria will be one of those subject to the expanded capital gains inclusion rate — but he says it’s only fair.
“It’s going to really affect the richest of the rich people,” Asaria, CEO of open source platform Transformer Lab and founder of well.ca, told CBC News.
“The capital gains exemption is probably the largest tax break that I’ve ever received in my life,” he said. “So I know a lot about what that benefit can look like, but I’ve also always felt like it was probably one of the most unfair parts of the tax code today.”
While Asaria said Canada needs to continue encouraging talent to take risks and build companies in the country, taxation policies aren’t the most major problem.
“I think that the biggest central issue to the reason why people will leave Canada is bigger issues, like housing,” he said.
“How do we make it easier to live in Canada so that we can all invest in ourselves and invest in our companies? That’s a more important question than, ‘How do we help the top 0.13 per cent of Canadians make more money?'”
More money will land in the pockets of Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit (CCB) installment.
The federal government program helps low and middle-income families struggling with the soaring cost of raising a child.
Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or refugees who are the primary caregivers for children under 18 years old are eligible for the program, introduced in 2016.
The non-taxable monthly payments are based on a family’s net income and how many children they have. Families that have an adjusted net income under $34,863 will receive the maximum amount per child.
For a child under six years old, an applicant can annually receive up to $7,437 per child, and up to $6,275 per child for kids between the ages of six through 17.
That translates to up to $619.75 per month for the younger cohort and $522.91 per month for the older group.
The benefit is recalculated every July and most recently increased 6.3 per cent in order to adjust to the rate of inflation, and cost of living.
To apply, an applicant can submit through a child’s birth registration, complete an online form or mail in an application to a tax centre.
The next payment date will take place on May 17.
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