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

Published

3 years ago

August 21, 2021

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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Japan’s SoftBank returns to profit after gains at Vision Fund and other investments

Published

8 hours ago

November 12, 2024

Anne Joseph

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.

Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.

Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).

SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.

The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.

WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.

SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.

SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.

SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.

The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.

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Business

Trump campaign promises unlikely to harm entrepreneurship: Shopify CFO

Published

8 hours ago

November 12, 2024

Anne Joseph

Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.

“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.

“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”

Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.

On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.

If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.

These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.

If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.

However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.

He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.

“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.

Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.

The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.

Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.

Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.

Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.

Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.

Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”

In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.

“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)

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RioCan cuts nearly 10 per cent staff in efficiency push as condo market slows

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8 hours ago

November 12, 2024

Anne Joseph

TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.

The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.

The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.

RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.

The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.

RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:REI.UN)

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