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Teenager abandoned by airline; Canadian plastic bags littering India: CBC's Marketplace cheat sheet – CBC News
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Her daughter is only 14. But Air Canada still left her to fend for herself at the airport
Diomerys O’Leary was already nervous about letting her daughter fly alone, but she never imagined Air Canada would abandon the girl in Canada’s biggest airport after cancelling the last leg of her trip home.
An email on Jan. 18 notified O’Leary that her daughter Eva’s flight from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport to St. John’s was cancelled due to a labour disruption at the Newfoundland and Labrador airport, and rescheduled for two days later.
Then came the flood of texts from her panicked daughter, saying Air Canada told her she was on her own to find a place to sleep, food and transportation.
“She was crying and desperate, asking me ‘What do I do?’ … I just couldn’t believe it,” O’Leary told Go Public.
Like other airlines — WestJet and Air Transat among them — Air Canada offers a for-fee service subject to certain conditions, where staff help kids flying on their own. But that service is not available for multi-leg trips such as Eva’s.
That meant O’Leary was forced to try to get Eva’s travel plans sorted remotely, as her daughter worried about where she would stay that night, how she would afford dinner, and when she would be able to get home.
But even though her daughter’s now back home in St. John’s, O’Leary said she still isn’t satisfied.
After hearing from Go Public, Air Canada offered her a $500 travel coupon “as a goodwill gesture,” which O’Leary says she declined, saying, “it was never about the money.” Read more
Why are plastic bags from Canada ending up as litter in India?
A new investigation by Radio-Canada’s Enquête shows that while Canada has become one of the biggest exporters of recyclable paper to India, that’s not all we’re sending there.
Journalists found that much of what is supposed to be paper being sent to the country actually contains tonnes of plastic bags, some of which litter the Indian landscape. They are often burned as a fuel source.
The city of Montreal is considered among the worst offenders when it comes to shipping off contaminated bales of paper. Read more
Back in 2019, Marketplace traveled overseas and found that some Canadian plastic recycling was being dumped and burned in Malaysia, polluting rivers and sometimes creating toxic byproducts that people say are making them sick.
Much ado about mittens as Team Canada fans call out high prices for Lululemon’s Olympic gear
A pair of red mittens emblazoned with the letters CAN over the fingers selling for $68 is drawing ire from some Canadians who are upset about the high cost of official Olympic merchandise at Lululemon.
The company purchased the exclusive rights to sell the official swag last fall, but many Canadians have taken their griping online, complaining the prices are well above what average Canadians can afford.
The mittens in particular are drawing unfavourable comparisons with the iconic red and white maple leaf mittens that were a runaway hit for previous Olympic sponsor HBC. They sold for $10 a pair during the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
In a statement, Lululemon told CBC News the higher prices are due to their commitment to making the “highest-quality products.” Read more
What else is going on?
Convoy protest could change the way money is monitored, says watchdog agency
The use of American fundraising sites to support the anti-vaccine mandate convoy protest could lead to changes in the way financial transactions are monitored.
WestJet cuts 20 per cent of flights in March, calls for reopening timeline
February schedule cuts extended amid ongoing COVID-19 restrictions and uncertainty.
Finally ready to travel abroad? Returning home can get complicated
Travellers may face difficulty securing a PCR test, or proving that they recently recovered from COVID-19.
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Catch up on past episodes of Marketplace anytime on CBC Gem.
Tesla has promised to start selling cheaper models next year, days after a Reuters report revealed that the company had shelved its plans for an all-new Tesla that would cost only $25,000.
The news that Tesla was scrapping the Model 2 came amid a drop in sales and profits, and a decision to slash a tenth of the company’s global workforce. Reuters also noted increased competition from Chinese EV makers.
Tesla’s deliveries slumped in the first quarter for the first annual drop since the start of the pandemic in 2020, missing analyst forecasts by a mile in a sign that even price cuts haven’t been able to stave off an increasingly heated competition on the EV market.
Profits dropped by 50%, disappointing investors and leading to a slump in the company’s share prices, which made any good news urgently needed. Tesla delivered: it said it would bring forward the date for the release of new, lower-cost models. These would be produced on its existing platform and rolled out in the second half of 2025, per the BBC.
Reuters cited the company as warning that this change of plans could “result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected,” however. This suggests the price tag of the new models is unlikely to be as small as the $25,000 promised for the Model 2.
The decision is based on a substantially reduced risk appetite in Tesla’s management, likely affected by the recent financial results and the intensifying competition with Chinese EV makers. Shelving the Model 2 and opting instead for cars to be produced on existing manufacturing lines is the safer move in these “uncertain times”, per the company.
Tesla is also cutting prices, as many other EV makers are doing amid a palpable decline in sales in key markets such as Europe, where the phaseout of subsidies has hit demand for EVs seriously. The cut is of about $2,000 on all models that Tesla currently sells.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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Divisions within the Bank of Canada over the timing of a much-anticipated cut to its key overnight interest rate stem from concerns of some members of the central bank’s governing council that progress on taming inflation could stall in the face of stronger domestic demand — or even pick up again in the event of “new surprises.”
“Some members emphasized that, with the economy performing well, the risk had diminished that restrictive monetary policy would slow the economy more than necessary to return inflation to target,” according to a summary of deliberations for the April 10 rate decision that were published Wednesday. “They felt more reassurance was needed to reduce the risk that the downward progress on core inflation would stall, and to avoid jeopardizing the progress made thus far.”
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Others argued that there were additional risks from keeping monetary policy too tight in light of progress already made to tame inflation, which had come down “significantly” across most goods and services.
Some pointed out that the distribution of inflation rates across components of the consumer price index had approached normal, despite outsized price increases and decreases in certain components.
“Coupled with indicators that the economy was in excess supply and with a base case projection showing the output gap starting to close only next year, they felt there was a risk of keeping monetary policy more restrictive than needed.”
In the end, though, the central bankers agreed to hold the rate at five per cent because inflation remained too high and there were still upside risks to the outlook, albeit “less acute” than in the past couple of years.
Despite the “diversity of views” about when conditions will warrant cutting the interest rate, central bank officials agreed that monetary policy easing would probably be gradual, given risks to the outlook and the slow path for returning inflation to target, according to the summary of deliberations.
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They considered a number of potential risks to the outlook for economic growth and inflation, including housing and immigration, according to summary of deliberations.
The central bankers discussed the risk that housing market activity could accelerate and further boost shelter prices and acknowledged that easing monetary policy could increase the likelihood of this risk materializing. They concluded that their focus on measures such as CPI-trim, which strips out extreme movements in price changes, allowed them to effectively look through mortgage interest costs while capturing other shelter prices such as rent that are more reflective of supply and demand in housing.
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They also agreed to keep a close eye on immigration in the coming quarters due to uncertainty around recent announcements by the federal government.
“The projection incorporated continued strong population growth in the first half of 2024 followed by much softer growth, in line with the federal government’s target for reducing the share of non-permanent residents,” the summary said. “But details of how these plans will be implemented had not been announced. Governing council recognized that there was some uncertainty about future population growth and agreed it would be important to update the population forecast each quarter.”
• Email: bshecter@nationalpost.com
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Shares in US tech giant Meta have sunk in US after-hours trading despite better-than-expected earnings.
The Facebook and Instagram owner said expenses would be higher this year as it spends heavily on artificial intelligence (AI).
Its shares fell more than 15% after it said it expected to spend billions of dollars more than it had previously predicted in 2024.
Meta has been updating its ad-buying products with AI tools to boost earnings growth.
It has also been introducing more AI features on its social media platforms such as chat assistants.
The firm said it now expected to spend between $35bn and $40bn, (£28bn-32bn) in 2024, up from an earlier prediction of $30-$37bn.
Its shares fell despite it beating expectations on its earnings.
First quarter revenue rose 27% to $36.46bn, while analysts had expected earnings of $36.16bn.
Sophie Lund-Yates, lead equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said its spending plans were “aggressive”.
She said Meta’s “substantial investment” in AI has helped it get people to spend time on its platforms, so advertisers are willing to spend more money “in a time when digital advertising uncertainty remains rife”.
More than 50 countries are due to have elections this year, she said, “which hugely increases uncertainty” and can spook advertisers.
She added that Meta’s “fortunes are probably also being bolstered by TikTok’s uncertain future in the US”.
Meta’s rival has said it will fight an “unconstitutional” law that could result in TikTok being sold or banned in the US.
President Biden has signed into law a bill which gives the social media platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to sell off the app or it will be blocked in the US.
Ms Lund-Yates said that “looking further ahead, the biggest risk [for Meta] remains regulatory”.
Last year, Meta was fined €1.2bn (£1bn) by Ireland’s data authorities for mishandling people’s data when transferring it between Europe and the US.
And in February of this year, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg faced blistering criticism from US lawmakers and was pushed to apologise to families of victims of child sexual exploitation.
Ms Lund-Yates added that the firm has “more than enough resources to throw at legal challenges, but that doesn’t rule out the risks of ups and downs in market sentiment”.
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