Pete McMartin: Historic human tsunami likely in Canada's future - Vancouver Sun

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Pete McMartin: Historic human tsunami likely in Canada's future – Vancouver Sun

Published

2 years ago

August 21, 2021

Megan Johnson

There will be climate refugees in the millions — if not the hundreds of millions — fleeing to countries where life is still tolerable.

Author of the article:

Pete McMartin

Publishing date:

Aug 20, 2021 • 10 hours ago • 4 minute read • 27 Comments

A flood of refugees arrive at Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Photo by GEOFF ROBINS /AFP/Getty Images

In December 2020, The New York Times ran a piece headlined, “How Russia Wins The Climate Crisis.” Its theme was stark, as apocalyptic visions usually are.

The Times foresaw a future in which climate change will remake the world’s geopolitics as well as its environments. There will be climate refugees in the millions — if not the hundreds of millions — fleeing to countries where life is still tolerable.

Like, for instance, here.

“Take, for example, Canada,” the Times article suggested. “It is flush with land as well as timber, oil, gas and hydropower, and it has access to 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water. It has a stable, incorrupt democracy. And as the climate warms, Canada will move into the ecological sweet spot for civilization, benefiting from new Arctic transportation routes as well as an expanded capacity for farming. But there are only 38 million people in Canada, and Canadians are dying at a faster rate than they are being born.

“This is why a group of Canadian business executives and academics have called on their government to turn the country’s immigration system into a magnet for the planet’s most talented people, hoping to nearly triple Canada’s population by 2100.”

That is, in 80 short years, there is a plan to expand Canada’s population to over 100 million people. For most Canadians, who identify with the country’s pristine and sparsely populated vastness, the thought of those millions flowing into Canada would constitute not just another wave of immigration, but a human tsunami that would inundate the idea of Canada itself.

The group of Canadian business executives and academics to which the Times story refers are known as the Century Initiative, whose 34 members are some of the smartest and most accomplished people in Canada.

On the group’s website, each member’s curriculum vitae groans under the weight of myriad university degrees, visiting professorships and charity work. Its membership also appears to have been designed by demographic woke-ness, divided as it is almost evenly between men and women, the requisite number of Indigenous representatives and people of colour. There are CEOs. There are lawyers. There are quasi-government operatives whose appointments to multiple federal and provincial committees make it difficult to decide exactly what it is they do. There is a senator and a former ambassador, but there is, significantly, not a single elected politician among them. I could not tell if this was by design — so as to maintain the image of nonpartisanship — or by distaste.

The group’s vision, it argues, is mathematically irrefutable: For Canada to maintain its prosperity and place in the world, it will have to increase its population significantly to “reduce the burden on government revenues to fund health care, old age security, and other services. It would also mean more skilled workers, innovation, and dynamism in the Canadian economy.”

The bulk of those 100-million-plus citizens would live in, as they see it, a circuit of interconnected urban mega-regions. By 2100, Toronto would grow to 33.5 million. The Calgary-Edmonton corridor would grow to 15.5 million. Vancouver would grow to just under 12 million. In Vancouver’s case, confined as it is by geography, one wonders where all these new citizens will live, and the answer, of course, is in little boxes stacked on top of each other — while, presumably, more spacious private reserves will be set aside for the likes of the members of the Century Initiative in West Vancouver, Whistler and possibly a space station orbiting safely above the rabble.

I jest. Sort of. But I do agree with the alphas of the Century Initiative that significant, historic population increase will be in Canada’s near future.

Unlike the Century Initiative, however, I don’t foresee that this growth will be managed or planned for.

Climate change will drive a huge increase in our population, and this increase will consist not of immigrants, at least in the way we used to identify immigrants, but of refugees.

The estimates of the number of refugees that climate change will produce vary widely, but all of the estimates are alarming. In 2018, the World Bank forecast that desertification in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia will generate 143 million more climate refugees by 2050. The United Nations International Organization for Migration predicted there could be as many as one billion environmental migrants by 2050, although the most cited figure in studies was 200 million.

And last April, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office released data showing that since 2010, 21.5 million people had been displaced by climate-related disasters. With future sea rise, habitat loss and higher temperatures, that number can only grow.

Think of the humanitarian pressure, not to mention the diplomatic and military stresses, put on Canada to harbour those refugees.

There are, for example, almost 40 million people in California, more than the entire population of Canada. Where do we expect many of those 40 million to go once temperatures threaten crops and water supplies (as they already are), or when sea rise threatens its coastal cities, or when pressure from climate refugees along its own southern border reaches a breaking point? Many will go north, as I expect many Americans along the entire length of the Canada-U.S. border will. Some, the wealthy, will buy their way in — as they already are — and some will be recruited for their skills. The majority will be driven by desperation, and there will be expectations among the global community that it will be the duty of Canada — as one of the world’s larger lifeboats — to accept them.

And therein lies the tension between what I see as Canada’s two possible futures — the tension between allowing the world in or keeping it at arm’s length.

Either way, we may not have a say in the matter.

Pete McMartin is a former Vancouver Sun columnist.

mcmartincharles@gmail.com

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The close: TSX notches biggest gain of 2023 as stocks rally on U.S. jobs data, debt default deal

Published

5 hours ago

June 2, 2023

Megan Johnson

U.S. and Canadian stocks closed higher on Friday after a labour market report showing moderating wage growth in May indicated the Federal Reserve may skip a rate hike in two weeks, while investors welcomed a Washington deal that avoided a catastrophic debt default. It was the biggest gain in seven months for the TSX, with energy and financial shares among the biggest winners in a broad-based rally.

Bond yields spiked as a risk-on tone to markets had investors shunning the bond market.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq index surged to a 13-month intraday high and posted its sixth-straight week of gains that mark its best winning streak since January 2020.

U.S. job growth accelerated in May but a surge in the unemployment rate to a seven-month high of 3.7% as more people looked for employment indicated labour market conditions were easing.

The jump in the unemployment rate from a 53-year low of 3.4% in April reflected a drop in household employment and a rise in the overall workforce. A bigger labour pool is easing pressure on businesses to raise wages and helping decelerate inflation.

Average hourly earnings climbed 0.3% after rising 0.4% in April. That lowered the year-on-year increase in wages to 4.3% after an advance of 4.4% in April. Annual wage growth averaged about 2.8% prior to the pandemic.

“While it appears to be a hot number on the actual number of people employed, the wage rate is not increasing as fast,” said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners in Pittsburgh. “That is a softening effect and is this the mythical soft landing? Looks like that.”

The data brought relief to investors who mostly expect the Fed to pause hiking rates at its policy meeting on June 13-14. It would be the first halt since the Fed started its aggressive anti-inflation policy tightening more than a year ago.

But some pointed to the much hotter-than-expected jobs data as a sign the Fed still has not yet tamed inflation.

“Our view is and has been that the market is completely wrong on assessing what the Federal Reserve is doing,” said Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Hermes in New York.

“The market’s perception is that this economy was going to cool, inflation was going to collapse and the Fed was going to turn around and start cutting interest rates. That’s wrong.”

Fed funds futures showed a 66.6% probability that the Fed will hold rates steady in two weeks, down from 79.6% on Thursday, according to CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.

The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury climbed to 3.70% from 3.60% late Thursday. The two-year Treasury yield, which moves more on expectations for Fed action, jumped to 4.52% from 4.34%. Canadian bonds saw a similar jump in yields.

Markets now await data on key consumer prices a day before the Fed’s rate decision.

The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index ended up 352.38 points, or 1.8%, at 20,024.63, its biggest advance since November 2022. For the week, it was up 0.5%.

“It is all these little factors that the market is holding on to, looking for any reason to be bullish and they’re finding it,” said Philip Petursson, chief investment strategist at IG Wealth Management. “It’s definitely risk-on today.”

The TSX energy sector rallied 2.8% as oil settled 2.3% higher at US$71.74 a barrel ahead of a meeting of OPEC and its allies this weekend.

Suncor Energy Inc was up 3.2% after the company told employees it plans to cut 1,500 jobs this year.

“It appears that some activist investors are trying to make Suncor more efficient over the long term by getting them to cut costs and that’s good to see for investors,” said Greg Taylor, chief investment officer at Purpose Investments.

Heavily-weighted financials rose 2.1% and industrials were up 2.2%.

The real estate sector also advanced 2.2% as data showed home prices in the Greater Toronto Area increased in May from April and sales rose sharply.

In contrast, shares of Canaccord Genuity Group Inc fell 6.8% after a management-led consortium said its C$1.13 billion take-private offer may not result in a deal.

In the U.S., the Senate passing a bill late on Thursday to lift the government’s US$31.4 trillion debt ceiling avoided what would have been a catastrophic, first-ever default.

Passage of the vote eased investor concerns as Wall Street’s fear gauge, the CBOE volatility index, fell to its lowest since November 2021, down 1.1 points at 14.6 points.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 701.19 points, or 2.12%, to 33,762.76, the S&P 500 gained 61.35 points, or 1.45%, to 4,282.37 and the Nasdaq Composite added 139.78 points, or 1.07%, to 13,240.77.

Shares of Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Inc and T-Mobile US Inc declined after a report said Amazon.com Inc was in talks with the U.S. telecoms to offer low-cost wireless services to its Prime members.

Verizon slid 3.2%, while AT&T and T-Mobile declined 3.8% and 5.6%, respectively; Amazon gained 1.2%.

All 11 S&P 500 sectors advanced, with the materials index leading, up 3.4%, and the consumer discretionary sector, housing Amazon, close behind, rising 2.2%.

Nvidia Corp slid 1.1% for a second day of declines after briefly entering on Wednesday the elite club of megacap stocks valued at $1 trillion or more on hopes artificial intelligence will deliver significant future returns.

But Nvidia’s almost 170% rise year to date highlights investors face of a market dominated by the out-performance of megacaps while most other companies tread water.

“Nobody’s really explained to me how they’re going to make any money from it,” said Michael Landsberg, chief investment officer at Landsberg Bennett Private Wealth Management in Punta Gorda, Florida. “A company like Nvidia going up so much in such a short period of time, that doesn’t make any rational sense.”

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 4.75-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.73-to-1 ratio favored advancers. The S&P 500 posted 15 new 52-week highs and two new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 74 new highs and 40 new lows. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 11.05 billion shares, compared with about 10.58 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Reuters, Globe staff

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Gold prices struggling as 339K jobs created in May but unemployment rate rises to 3.7% – Kitco NEWS

Published

6 hours ago

June 2, 2023

Megan Johnson

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(Kitco News) – The gold market is trying to hold its ground within striking distance of $2,000 but could face an uphill battle as the U.S. labor market remains healthy and robust.

U.S. nonfarm payrolls rose by 339,000 last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The monthly figure was significantly above the market consensus estimate of 193,000. April’s employment data was revised up to 294,000 jobs.

However, looking past the headline number, the report said the unemployment rate rose sharply to 3.7% missing market consensus calls of 3.5% for May. The unemployment rate it at its highest level since December 2022.

The gold market is seeing some selling pressure in initial reaction to the latest employment data. August gold futures last traded at $1,993.90 an ounce, down 0.08% on the day.

The report also said that wage growth rose in line with expectations, rising by 11 cents or 0.3% to 33.44 in May.

“Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 4.3 percent,” the report said.

While the gold market is seeing rising selling pressure, the latest employment data is not having much impact on interest rate expectations. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, markets still see a more than 65% chance that the central bank leaves interest rates unchanged when it meets later this month.

However, according to some analysts, the robust employment data indicates that while the central bank could pause, it has not yet finished raising interest rates. Some analysts have that this this longer-term shift in rate expectations could weigh on gold.

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One-quarter of Air Canada flights delayed Friday as schedule recovers from IT issue – Yahoo Canada Finance

Published

7 hours ago

June 2, 2023

Megan Johnson

More than one-quarter of Air Canada flights experienced delays on Friday as the airline worked to return service to normal following a technical malfunction the previous day.

Air Canada had warned travellers early Friday morning they should be prepared for further flight disruptions. In its daily travel outlook, the carrier said that while its IT system was stable, flights may be affected at nine of Canada’s busiest airports, including Toronto’s Pearson, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.

Thursday’s outage led to more than 500 flights — over three quarters of its trips — to be delayed or cancelled on the day, creating what the airline said were “rollover effects” just prior to the weekend.

A total of 144 Air Canada flights, or 27 per cent of the airline’s scheduled load, had been delayed Friday as of around 4:30 p.m. EDT, along with 33 cancellations, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.

An additional 56 flights with Air Canada Rouge saw delays, one-third of its daily load, plus 23 cancellations.

“Air Canada has stabilized its communicator system and it is functioning normally. However, due to the effects of Thursday’s IT issues on our schedule, some flights may be delayed this morning as we reposition aircraft and crew,” it said in an emailed statement.

“Customers are advised to check the status of their flight before going to the airport. Our flexible travel policy remains in effect for customers to change their travel plans at no charge.”

The airline did not clarify when it expected its flight schedule to fully return to normal.

Thursday’s disruption, sourced to the system used by the airline to communicate with aircraft and monitor their performance, came one week after Air Canada grounded its planes for about an hour when the same system experienced a separate issue.

That day, 241 Air Canada flights — 46 per cent of its trips — were delayed, according to FlightAware. Another 19 flights were also cancelled.

Air Canada said it has been in the process of upgrading the communicator system.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2023.

Companies in this story: (TSX:AC)

Sammy Hudes, The Canadian Press

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