Thousands of people in Canada were still without electricity or facing travel headaches on Tuesday, days after fierce winter storms struck right before Christmas.
The storms have wreaked havoc with electric grids and travel plans for the last four days.
While the outage numbers have dropped significantly, tens of thousands of people remained without power Tuesday as crews continued the work to repair lines brought down by strong winds and fallen trees, complicated by heavy snow hindering access to some sites.
Quebec remains the biggest trouble spot, with about 32,000 homes and businesses without power. Hydro-Quebéc said the Capitale-Nationale, Laurentides and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean are among the hardest-hit regions.
Hydro-Québec said it can’t give a restoration timeline for all customers because trees and other objects are keeping crews from accessing already difficult-to-reach areas. The company said it’s using about 1,200 hydro crews from across the province, and 10 helicopters to clear paths and complete repair work.
About 16,000 homes and businesses still without power are in Ontario, a large majority of them in the Georgian Bay region north of Toronto, Hydro One said as its fourth day of storm restoration continued.
Another hard-hit area was Fort Erie, Ont., where about 4,300 customers were still in the dark on Monday, with power knocked out by fallen trees and broken telephone poles. According to a tweet on Monday night from Canadian Niagara Power, electricity was restored to more than 4,000 of affected customers.
Chatham-Kent, a municipality in southwestern, Ontario, was pummelled by a blizzard that saw hundreds of vehicles stranded last weekend. This photo was taken by someone who had to spend the night in the local Walmart. (Heather Nickoli)
The Niagara region, where Fort Erie is located, declared a state of emergency on Saturday.
Chatham-Kent, about 300 kilometres to the west on the shore of Lake Erie, also declared a state of emergency on Saturday due to heavy snow and high winds, but lifted it around 2 p.m. ET Monday.
Hydro One crews in ‘final stretch’ of restoring power in Ontario
Despite access being hindered by snow and ice-encased equipment, crews working to restore power for remaining customers across Ontario, Hydro One spokesperson Tiziana Baccega Rosa says.
Hydro One said it hopes to have power restored to the bulk of affected customers by the end of the day — and harder-to-reach cottages “in the coming days,” said spokesperson Tiziana Baccega Rosa.
She said weather conditions have prevented the utility from getting helicopters and boats into the water in order to reach seasonal properties on islands or with water access only.
On Tuesday morning, New Brunswick Power had reconnected almost everyone who had lost power. It reported just under 400 customers still in the dark.
U.S. storm death toll rises
South of the border, storm-battered Buffalo, N.Y., braced for fresh snow on Tuesday while still striving to recover from an epic blizzard that killed at least 34 people in the region.
Mayor Byron Brown’s office announced seven additional storm-related deaths on Tuesday, bringing the total in Buffalo to 27, along with at least seven suburban fatalities.
State and military police were being sent to enforce a ban on driving on snow-choked streets. County Executive Mark Poloncarz said police would be positioned at entrances to Buffalo and at major intersections.
Mike Gippon plows snow in the driveway outside his home in Buffalo, N.Y.’s Elmwood Village on Monday. (Joseph Cooke/Buffalo News/The Associated Press)
The U.S. National Weather Service predicted as much as five centimetres of snow could fall in Erie County, which includes Buffalo.
While that’s a relatively small amount, it’s expected to hinder the removal of the 1.25 metres of snow that fell in some places, starting on Christmas Eve. Officials said the city’s airport will be shut through Wednesday morning.
The rest of the United States is also still reeling from the ferocious storm, with at least an additional two dozen deaths reported in other parts of the country, and power outages in communities from Maine to Washington state. The storm claimed 57 lives, over half in western New York, officials said on Monday.
In British Columbia, crews were making progress in restoring power after the winter wallop on the West Coast. BC Hydro said fewer than 1,000 customers, mostly in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island, remained without electricity, down considerably from the height of the storm.
Flood watch in B.C.
Despite BC Hydro’s progress, people in southwest B.C. were bracing Tuesday for possible flooding.
Rainfall warnings and flood watches remained in effect Tuesday as two successive storms were forecast to bring 60 to 120 millimetres of rain by late Tuesday night, according to Environment Canada.
Coastal flooding near the Strait of Georgia was expected around the high tide on Tuesday morning, the agency said. Vancouver was bracing for an elevated risk of flooding due to a storm surge with high winds and a high tide.
The province urged people to stay away from fast-flowing rivers and unstable riverbanks.
People in B.C. are also still dealing with the aftermath of a deadly Christmas Eve highway bus crash that police suspect may have been caused by icy weather. Four people died and dozens of others were injured in the Ebus crash east of Merritt near the Loon Lake exit.
Trains, planes and baggage
Hundreds of Canadians have been stranded for days in Mexico after Sunwing cancelled their flights home, with many accusing the airline of “abandoning” them by not rebooking them on new flights or failing to make it clear where they will stay while they wait to leave.
“A number of return flights continue to be impacted by delays due to displaced crew and aircraft, resulting from the aftermath of severe weather disruptions across Canada,” the company said in a statement released on Tuesday.
Passengers are seen early into Christmas Day as they await transport at the airport in Cancun, Mexico, after their delayed flight home to Canada was cancelled. (Hina Itsaso/The Canadian Press)
Sunwing said it’s working “around the clock” to get passengers home.
“We have completed two recovery flights so far this week, have planned another eight recovery flights which are scheduled to depart up to and including Dec. 30, 2022, and are currently finalizing recovery plans for our remaining passengers in destination,” the company said.
For southbound flights, Sunwing announced on Monday afternoon, via Twitter, that the baggage belt at Pearson International Airport’s Terminal 3 was not working, and as a result, it couldn’t guarantee that customers’ checked baggage would accompany them on aircraft leaving Toronto.
I’ve never seen anything like this at Pearson Airport in Toronto. <br><br>A mass of humanity and luggage upon arrival. <a href=”https://t.co/VfOOYxSoWA”>pic.twitter.com/VfOOYxSoWA</a>
Early Tuesday, the airport tweeted that the baggage belt in question was operational again.
However, due to a high volume of passengers and staffing issues, the airport is still dealing with delays in getting arriving passengers their baggage, Tori Gass, a Greater Toronto Airports Authority spokesperson, told CBC News on Tuesday.
“We have brought in staff from elsewhere in the airport, as many as we can, to help the airlines out and to put more bodies into the baggage halls,” Gass said.
Pearson airport brings in staff to help airlines minimize further delays
Spokesperson Tori Gass says the Greater Toronto Airport Authority has been working ‘behind the scenes’ to support airlines as they work to resolve delays and disruptions caused by winter storms.
For train travellers, Via Rail planned to have trains running again on Tuesday from Toronto to Ottawa, as well as Ottawa to Montreal. Via said trips from Toronto to Montreal will run on a “modified schedule,” but has warned of possible delays.
Service was cancelled for Christmas Day and Boxing Day because of a CN train derailment on Saturday near Grafton, Ont. The accident shut down a stretch of track and left passengers trapped aboard trains for hours on the weekend.
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.
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.
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.
