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Yellowknifers beyond despair after six outages in a day – Cabin Radio

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If the credit card machines at hardware stores had any power right now, Yellowknifers would be buying pitchforks.

By 5:10pm on Sunday, the city’s residents had been plunged into at least six separate power outages in one 24-hour span. In Behchokǫ̀, which is on the same hydro system, residents reported a similar fate.

(Yes, we’re editing the number of outages and the time as we go. It could be a long night.)

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Neither the NWT Power Corporation, which generates power for Yellowknife, nor Northland Utilities, which distributes it, had any firm answers regarding what was happening.

“We are continuing to investigate the cause of the outages,” a power corporation spokesperson wrote in a Facebook comment shortly before 5:30pm. “A fallen tree or branch on the transmission line from Snare Hydro is one of the possible causes into which we are looking but we have yet to confirm whether this is the case.”

The North Slave region was experiencing a windy weekend, leading some residents to speculate that gusts of up to 60 km/h may have downed trees and interfered with supply.

The Snare hydro system provides electricity to both Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀. The two each exist in their own miniature grid, an island of intermittent electricity ordinarily backstopped by diesel generation that seemed conspicuous by its absence on Sunday. Unlike southern Canada, the North Slave can’t rely on power from anywhere else if hydro and diesel both go down.

On Sunday, an outage beginning shortly after 11:30am lasted for more than an hour, punctuated by the briefest of restorations for some customers at around 12:10pm before resuming.

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Power began returning for some Yellowknife customers at 12:40pm, only to disappear again at 1:05pm, amounting to a fourth separate outage since the opening blackout, which came on Saturday evening.

The fifth came after 4pm and the sixth an hour later, turning what had been a murmur of online grumpiness into a torrent that might have powered the city, if only NTPC could dam it. Dammit.

“Seriously, again?” one resident wrote. Others wept for Sunday muffins and pies that would have been more thoroughly baked had they been left in a cupboard.

“Come on now. My cabbage rolls are on the line here,” another resident tweeted.

Beyond the culinary consequences, anyone with sensitive electronic equipment (or, say, a radio station to operate) would be understandably concerned about the impact of multiple blackouts.

Will Gagnon, who left a climate science role at the NWT’s Department of Infrastructure earlier this year, tweeted: “More than 4 power outages in less than 24h. Maybe it’s time we pressure @NTPC_News to innovate?”

Earlier on Sunday afternoon, the power corporation said “efforts to restore stable power are being hampered by several factors” and an investigation had begun into both the outages and the delayed restoration of power. Of particular interest will be what happened to Yellowknife’s Jackfish diesel power plant, which usually restores power in a matter of minutes when hydro transmission fails.

In a tweet, Northland Utilities said Sunday’s citywide outage was due to a “loss of generation supply” from the power corporation, but did not elaborate.

At least one store, Yellowknife’s Book Cellar, gave up.

By 6:30pm, Yellowknife’s Capitol Theatre had also called it a day, abandoning stop-start film screenings and citing a danger of damage to its equipment.

The loss of power simultaneously in Yellowknife and Behchokǫ̀ could suggest a broader problem with the transmission of power from the Snare hydro network, which supplies both communities, though ordinarily diesel generators are available to swiftly kick in.

A small area of downtown Yellowknife had already been earmarked for a Sunday morning power outage to allow Northland to carry out some work, though the only notification for any businesses in the area appeared to have been a tweet on Thursday.

The outages come as the power corporation seeks to increase power rates in many areas of the territory, including a rate increase in Yellowknife – forecast at around 3.5 percent over two years – that would first affect distributor Northland but would then almost certainly be passed on to Northland’s customers in the city.

On one hand, customers point to service interruptions like the weekend’s outages and ask how price increases can possibly be justified. On the other, the power corporation has long argued that the outages are in part a consequence of ageing infrastructure and a lack of cash to perform urgently needed upgrades and replacements.

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

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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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Yuri Kageyama is on X:

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Trump campaign promises unlikely to harm entrepreneurship: Shopify CFO

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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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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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