Canada

Canada’s national office vacancy rate hits all-time high – Business News

2 years ago
BusinessL

[ad_1]

The Canadian Press – | Story: 419519

CBRE says Canada’s national office vacancy rate hit an all-time high in the first quarter of the year.

The real estate firm says the country’s overall office vacancy rate amounted to 17.7 per cent, while downtown office vacancies sat at 18.4 per cent and the suburban rate landed at 16.8 per cent.

Toronto’s downtown office vacancy rate reached 15.3 per cent, the highest level Canada’s largest office market has seen since 1995.

Vancouver’s downtown office vacancy rate rose to 10.4 per cent, the highest it’s been since 2004.

Ottawa and Montreal both recorded their all-time highest downtown office vacancy rates at 13.2 per cent and 16.5 per cent, respectively.

CBRE says tech companies rightsizing their businesses and rethinking their spaces are to blame for many of the vacancy rate increases.

risks and opportunities ” that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence development pose for individual users and national security.

The White House said the Democratic president would use the AI meeting to “discuss the importance of protecting rights and safety to ensure responsible innovation and appropriate safeguards” and to reiterate his call for Congress to pass legislation to protect children and curtail data collection by technology companies.

Artificial intelligence burst to the forefront in the national conversation after the release of the popular ChatGPT AI chatbot, which helped spark a race among tech giants to unveil similar tools, while raising ethical and societal concerns from the powerful technology.

The council, known as PCAST, is composed of science, engineering, technology and medical experts and is co-chaired by the Cabinet-ranked director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Arati Prabhakar.

The Canadian Press – Apr 4, 2023 / 6:18 am | Story: 419504

The head of Rogers Communications Inc. pledged to lower costs for customers and brushed aside competition concerns after the company closed its $26-billion purchase of Shaw Communications Inc. on Monday.

“What we want to make sure we get right is all the things for our customers, and in particular, affordability,” Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri said in an interview.

“One of the key pluses of this is that competition is going up, especially in the west, and prices are going to come down.”

The deal, which was first announced in March 2021, cleared its final regulatory hurdle last week after Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne agreed to the transfer of Shaw-owned Freedom Mobile’s wireless licences to Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron.

But though he signed off on the deal, Champagne issued a stern warning to the companies involved as he announced 21 “enforceable” conditions that Rogers and Videotron must adhere to, aimed at bolstering competition and reducing costs for customers.

Staffieri noted that the conditions formalized many of the commitments Rogers had made in the two years leading up to Ottawa’s approval, including the establishment of a second headquarters in Calgary and adding 3,000 new jobs based in Western Canada.

Rogers must also spend $5.5 billion to expand 5G coverage and additional network services, as well as a further $1 billion to connect rural, remote and Indigenous communities.

In addition to the creation of digital and technology positions focused on “building networks,” Staffieri said Rogers also plans to add more “customer-facing” jobs. He said those should be expected “rather quickly,” though when pressed on a timeline he pointed to the five-year timeline set out in the agreement.

The CEO said he planned to fly to Western Canada on Tuesday morning, where he will make stops in Vancouver and Calgary, to get the ball rolling.

“We fully expect Canadians to hold us accountable to do all the things we said we were going to do and we’re very proud to do it,” Staffieri said.

In an attempt to ease competition concerns raised by the original proposal, Rogers and Shaw agreed in June 2022 to sell Shaw’s Freedom Mobile business to Videotron for $2.85 billion. Freedom’s sale was also finalized on Monday.

As part of Videotron’s conditions, the company must offer plans that are at least 20 per cent lower than its competitors and spend $150 million over the next two years to upgrade Freedom Mobile’s network.

If Rogers breaches its conditions, it must pay up to $1 billion in damages. Videotron would potentially be subject to $200 million in penalties if it fails to meet its commitments.

“We are very pleased to be closing the acquisition of Freedom Mobile today, bringing its Canadian footprint as well as the expertise and experience of its employees into our fold,” said Quebecor president and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau in a news release.

“The alliance of Freedom and Videotron will permanently transform Canada’s wireless market for the benefit of consumers and create a new competitive environment that delivers innovative products and services at better prices.”

Champagne also announced his department would not allow any further transfers of wireless spectrum until it completes a review of Canada’s spectrum transfer framework.

Staffieri disputed some critics’ characterization that the takeover would harm competition in Canada’s telecommunications sector. He said Rogers looks forward to competing with the revamped Videotron.

“This whole transaction has always been about increasing competition and ultimately, that’s what the federal courts found — that the series of transactions, namely us buying Shaw and Quebecor buying Freedom, was going to increase competition in the marketplace,” he said.

“If we were to look to south of the border, there you’ll see a market size 10 times that of Canada, and they have three players. So in fact, we have even more players in the telecom space than you would see in the U.S., and if you compare it to others in the world, we have amongst the most competition in all of our markets.”

governments are increasingly concerned about risks that the app poses to data privacy and cybersecurity.

The British watchdog said TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children in the U.K. under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite the platform’s own rules prohibiting children that young from setting up accounts.

TikTok didn’t adequately identify and remove children under 13 from the platform, the watchdog said. And even though it knew younger children were using its platform, TikTok failed to get consent from their parents to process their data, as required by Britain’s data protection laws, the agency said.

“TikTok should have known better. TikTok should have done better,“ Information Commissioner John Edwards said in a press release. The fine “reflects the serious impact their failures may have had. They did not do enough to check who was using their platform or take sufficient action to remove the underage children that were using their platform.”

The company said it disagreed with the watchdog’s decision.

“We invest heavily to help keep under 13s off the platform and our 40,000-strong safety team works around the clock to help keep the platform safe for our community,” TikTok said in statement. “We will continue to review the decision and are considering next steps.”

laid off most of its staff on Friday and told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in a filing Monday that it was looking to sell its assets.

Virgin Orbit said that it has secured $31.6 million in debtor-in-possession financing from Branson’s Virgin Investments Ltd.

Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said that once the financing is approved by the bankruptcy court, the funds are expected to provide Virgin Orbit with the necessary liquidity to continue operating as it attempts to sell the company.

“While we have taken great efforts to address our financial position and secure additional financing, we ultimately must do what is best for the business,” Hart said.

The Long Beach, California, company said in its bankruptcy filing that it has between 200 and 999 estimated creditors. It had approximately $243 million in total assets and $153.5 million in total liabilities as of Sept. 30, according to a regulatory filing.

Last week Virgin Orbit said that it was cutting 675 jobs, about 85% of its workforce. Shortly before the announcement, the company said that it was pausing all operations amid reports of possible job cuts. At the time Virgin Orbit confirmed that it was putting all work on hold, but didn’t say for how long.

In January, a mission by Virgin Orbit to launch the first satellites into orbit from Europe failed after a rocket’s upper stage prematurely shut down. It was a setback in the United Kingdom which had hoped that the launch from Cornwall in southwest England would mark the beginning of more commercial opportunities for the U.K. space industry.

The company said in February that an investigation found that its rocket’s fuel filter had become dislodged, causing an engine to become overheated and other components to malfunction over the Atlantic Ocean.

Virgin Orbit, which is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, was founded in 2017 by British billionaire Branson to target the market for launching small satellites into space. Its LauncherOne rockets are launched from the air from modified Virgin passenger planes, allowing the company to operate more flexibly than using fixed launch sites.

Shares of Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc., which traded above $10 about two years ago, tumbled 24% before the opening bell Tuesday, to about 15 cents.

buying a monthly subscription to the social media service.

Musk’s goal was to shove the advertising-dependent platform he bought for $44 billion last year into a pay-to-play model — and maybe antagonize some enemies and fellow elites in the process.

But the Saturday deadline passed and the blue checks are still there, many with a new disclaimer explaining they might have been paid for or they might not have been paid for — nobody but Twitter really knows. The company didn’t return a request to clarify its changing policies Monday.

DOES A BLUE CHECK MATTER?

Matt Darling has been on Twitter for about 15 years and never cared about not having a blue check, though he’d get a kick out of whenever a verified account of “some real-world importance” started following him.

“People on Twitter will joke about blue checks like they’re the aristocracy but I don’t think anyone actually thought that,” except for Musk, Darling said.

Now, Darling finally got a blue check after paying $11 last month to try out some of the features that come with a Twitter Blue subscription. But seeing it becoming more of a “scarlet letter” under Musk than a symbol of credibility, he used a technique to scrub the blue tick from his profile.

“Now it’s a signal of you’re a person who’s not making good tweets so you have to pay for engagement,” said Darling, an economist at the center-right Niskanen Center.

Musk has said that starting April 15, only verified accounts will appear in Twitter’s For You feed that recommends what tweets people see. Darling is planning to drop the subscription — it had too many glitches, and he’s not looking for more online clout.

“I don’t want Twitter to be pay-for-play. I want it to be a place where people writing interesting tweets are getting the engagement,” he said.

HYBRID MODEL

Instead of taking away the blue check marks, Twitter on Sunday began appending a new message to profiles: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter blue or is a legacy verified account.”

In other words, singer Dionne Warwick and other high-profile verified users still have their blue checks. But so does anyone who pays between $8 and $11 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription — and there’s no way to tell the difference. (Warwick, for her part, made clear she won’t be paying for a blue check because that money will “be going towards my extra hot lattes.”)

That hybrid solution was good enough for Star Trek actor William Shatner, who earlier balked at signing up for a subscription but on Sunday tweeted to Musk: “I can live with this. This is a good compromise”. But it’s not clear if it is a temporary or permanent measure.

THE EXCEPTION

Twitter did take away at least one verified check over the weekend: from the main account of the New York Times. The account, which has 55 million followers, had previously been marked with a gold-colored check for verified organizations.

But a user pointed out to Musk over the weekend that the newspaper had said publicly it wouldn’t be paying a monthly fee for check-mark status, so Musk said he would remove the mark and also disparaged the newspaper’s reporting.

cutting supplies of crude — again. This time, the decision was a surprise and is underlining worries about where the global economy might be headed.

Russia is joining in by extending its own cuts for the rest of the year. In theory, less oil flowing to refineries should mean higher gasoline prices for drivers and could boost the inflation hitting the U.S. and Europe. And that may also help Russia weather Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine at the expense of the U.S.

The decision by oil producers, many of them in the OPEC oil cartel, to cut production by more than 1 million barrels a day comes after prices for international benchmark crude slumped amid a slowing global economy that needs less fuel for travel and industry.

It adds to a cut of 2 million barrels per day announced in October. Between the two cuts, that’s about 3% of the world’s oil supply.

Here are key things to know about the cutbacks:

WHY ARE OIL PRODUCERS CUTTING BACK?

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s dominant member, said Sunday that the move is “precautionary” to avoid a deeper slide in oil prices.

Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman has consistently taken a cautious approach to future demand and favored being proactive in adjusting supply ahead of a possible downturn in oil needs.

That stance seemed to be borne out as oil prices fell from highs of over $120 per barrel last summer to $73 last month. Prices jumped after Sunday’s announcement, with international benchmark Brent crude trading at about $85 on Monday, up 6%.

With fears of a U.S. recession exacerbated by bank collapses, a lack of European economic growth and China’s rebound from COVID-19 taking longer than many expected, oil producers are wary of a sudden collapse in prices like during the pandemic and the global financial crisis in 2008-2009.

Capital markets analyst Mohammed Ali Yasin said most people had been waiting for the June 4 meeting of the OPEC+ alliance of OPEC members and allied producers, most prominently Russia. The decision underlined the urgency felt by producers.

“It was a surprise to all, I think, watchers and the market followers,” he said. “The swiftness of the move, the timing of the move and the size of the move were all significant.”

The aim now is to ward off “a continous slide of the oil price” to levels below $70 per barrel, which would be “very negative” for producer economies, Yasin said.

Part of the October cut of 2 millions barrels per day was on paper only as some OPEC+ countries aren’t able to produce their share. The new cut of 1.15 million barrels per day is distributed among countries that are hitting their quotas — so it amounts to roughly the same size cut as in October.

Governments announced the decision outside the usual OPEC+ framework. The Saudis are taking the lead with 500,000 barrels per day, with the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Algeria and Kazakhstan contributing smaller cuts.

WILL THE PRODUCTION CUT MAKE INFLATION WORSE?

It certainly could. Analysts say supply and demand are relatively well balanced, which means production cuts could push prices higher in coming months.

The refineries that turn crude into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel are getting ready for their summer production surge to meet the annual increase in travel demand.

In the U.S., gasoline prices are highly dependent on crude, which makes up about half of the price per gallon. Lower oil prices have meant U.S. drivers have seen the average price fall from records of over $5 per gallon in mid-2022 to $3.50 per gallon this week, according to motor club AAA.

The cuts, if fully implemented, “would further tighten an already fundamentally tight oil market,” Jorge Leon, senior vice president at Rystad Energy, said in a research note. The cut could boost oil prices by around $10 per barrel and push international Brent to around $110 per barrel by this summer.

Those higher prices could fuel global inflation in a cycle that forces central banks to keep hiking interest rates, which crimp economic growth, he said.

Given the fears about the overall economy, “the market may interpret the cuts as a vote of no confidence in the recovery of oil demand and could even carry a downside price risk — but that will only be for the very short term,” Leon said.

WHAT WILL THIS MEAN FOR RUSSIA?

Moscow says it will extend a cut of 500,000 barrels per day through the rest of the year. It needs oil revenue to support its economy and state budget hit by wide-ranging sanctions from the U.S., European Union and other allies of Ukraine.

Analysts think, however, that Russia’s cut may simply be putting the best face on reduced demand for its oil. The West shunned Russian barrels even before sanctions were imposed, with Moscow managing to reroute much of its oil to India, China and Turkey.

But the Group of Seven major democracies imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel on Russian shipments, enforced by bans on Western companies that dominate shipping or insurance. Russia is selling oil at a discount, with revenue sagging at the start of this year.

WHAT DOES THE WHITE HOUSE SAY?

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “We don’t think that production cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty, and we made that clear.”

But he insisted that the oil market is in a different place from last year when prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We’re focused on prices, we’re not focused on barrels,” he told reporters Monday, adding that the U.S. was given a heads-up before the announcement.

The White House response was milder than in October, when cuts came on the eve of U.S. midterm elections where soaring gas prices were a major issue. President Joe Biden vowed at the time that there would be “consequences,” and Democratic lawmakers called for freezing cooperation with the Saudis.

Caroline Bain, chief commodities economist at Capital Economics, said the cutback shows “the group’s support for Russia and flies in the face of the Biden administration’s efforts to lower oil prices.”

in other sectors as well.

Yet most of those job cuts are at corporate offices. There are still shortages of workers to fill service jobs, such as those at McDonald’s restaurants.

Policymakers at the Federal Reserve have forecast the unemployment rate may rise to 4.6% by the end of this year, a sizable increase historically associated with recessions.

McDonald’s has more than 150,000 employees in corporate roles and in company-owned restaurants. About 70% of those employees are based outside the United States.

The company reported its global sales rose nearly 11% in 2022, while sales in the U.S. climbed almost 6%. Total restaurant margins rose 5%. In its latest annual report, it cited difficulties in adequately staffing some of its outlets.

McDonald’s had warned employees in January that layoffs would be coming as the company tried to get more nimble, innovate more quickly and break down walls between its global markets. In a January memo to employees, McDonald’s President and CEO Chris Kempczinski said the company was evaluating roles and staffing levels in various parts of the company.

“We have historically been very decentralized in some areas where we reinvent the wheel way too often,” Kempczinski said during a January conference call with investors. “And I think the other thing I’ve seen is we haven’t been as sharp around our global priorities, and so there’s been proliferation of priorities.”

In one market, Kempczinski said he had recently discovered a list of 300 separate priorities.

The Canadian Press – Apr 3, 2023 / 9:20 am | Story: 419352

When Jamie Robinson thinks about the number of properties available in and around Alberta’s mountain mecca Banff, one word comes to mind: “horrendous.”

“Basically, anything that’s for sale at this moment is selling fairly quickly, and so supply is definitely an issue,” said the real estate agent.

Cities close to the mountains, beach or lake have long had hot real estate markets.

But Robinson and other real estate agents say the ability to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and a wave of people taking up outdoor hobbies have supercharged demand for recreational homes — and supply isn’t keeping up.

“It’s going to get busier, it’s going to get bigger, it’s going to get more expensive,” Robinson said.

As the heart of the spring market nears and the summer sun seems closer than ever, he’s noticed desirable properties in Canmore, 20 minutes from Banff, being snatched up within 72 hours.

Many are flocking to the area because it sits just outside the gates of Banff National Park, where Parks Canada has restricted home ownership to people who live in the area to ensure housing is available to community members and isn’t swallowed up vacationers or second-home owners.

Robinson’s clients tend to live in Calgary and Edmonton but want a second place to serve as a mountain retreat now that they are permanently working from home or heading to the office only a few days a week.

Others are fleeing Toronto and Vancouver’s elevated prices or hoping to pad their incomes with a rental property in the shadow of the Rockies.

Such buyers have driven the aggregate price of a single-family home in Alberta’s recreational markets up 13.3 per cent year over year to $1,165,500 last year, according to Royal LePage. Condos in those areas were up 17.7 per cent to $646,000 over the same time period.

While the aggregate price of single-family waterfront properties dropped five per cent to $641,900 since last year, a Royal LePage survey of 202 brokers in March found 59 per cent of Alberta respondents reported less inventory this year. About 71 noted even less inventory than there was pre-pandemic.

The report added the aggregate price of a single-family home in the national recreational property market increased 11.7 per cent year-over-year to $619,900 in 2022. More than half of the real estate representatives surveyed reported lower inventory than last year in their respective regions, and 65 per cent have seen inventory reduced from pre-pandemic levels.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated supply issues because people no longer had to visit a workplace and were thus looking to be “right on the doorstep of the mountains,” Robinson said.

They’re being joined by a wave of immigrants and others seeking affordable homes.

“I talked to a gentleman from Toronto looking around here and he was like, Jamie, I can sell my bungalow in Toronto for $2 million, $2.5 million, come to Canmore and pick up a really nice house for about $1 million, $1.5 million and still have some money left over,” said Robinson.

“So even though our prices are fairly high, especially in the Canmore area, if you compare it to Toronto or Vancouver, we’re actually a bargain.”

The Canadian Real Estate Association found February’s average Greater Toronto Area home price was $1,095,637, while the Greater Vancouver Area hit $1,219,919.

Two hours north of Toronto in Muskoka, where model Cindy Crawford and actors Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell are rumoured to own cottages, prices are even steeper.

Statistics broker Kelly Fallis crunched from her local real estate board’s data and the Information Technology Systems Ontario platform show the average price of a waterfront Muskoka property is now just shy of $1.5 million.

Waterfront homes in Ontario’s recreational markets climbed 8.9 per cent to $1,006,600 between 2021 and 2022, Royal LePage said.

However, the firm forecast the national average home price in recreational regions will decrease 4.5 per cent in 2023 to $592,005 as “Canada’s recreational real estate rush comes to a close.’

Fallis, a 45-year cottager, scoffs at the thought of Muskoka seeing a price drop.

“It’s really bloody expensive and it’s just happened so quickly,” she said.

“One of my clients was telling me it’s appreciated faster than secondary homes in the south of France…That’s wild.”

Part of the blame for prices lies in the lack of waterfront property around lakes Muskoka, Rosseau and Joseph, where she said the average price is now just shy of $3.5 million.

“You can’t make any more inventory because it’s around a pond,” Fallis said.

Homeowners on the lakes rarely relinquish their homes and those that do often pass their cottages down to family members. Fallis’s data shows 123 waterfront properties on the three lakes traded hands last year.

She is convinced the pandemic only exacerbated demand, pushing some to act on long-held dreams of cottage life and others to uncover the joys of life on a lake for the first time.

Few are relinquishing their pandemic discoveries either.

“I think the tagline is: Once discovered, never forgotten, or something,” Fallis said.

Mary Jane Webster, a real estate agent in Charlottetown has similarly noticed the pandemic driving people to buy year-round and second homes near Prince Edward Island’s sandy beaches.

“If they’re able to do a hybrid model of working, it really makes a lot of sense for them, rather than to drive an hour each day to commute an hour and a half by airplane every second week,” she said.

The influx in such buyers has pushed up prices. A cottage in the area now sells for $260,000, Webster said.

“We’ve seen our prices grow in the last three years more than we see them grow in the last 20 years,” she said.

“We historically have never outpaced inflation, but in the last couple of years for the first time we’ve done that.”

A succession of interest rate hikes and climbing mortgage rates will likely temper that pace of growth, but Webster feels demand will still be high.

“We’re just not going see the 20 per cent year-over-year growth again for a little bit and that’s OK. We’re overdue for a little plateau.”

More Business News

[ad_2]

Source link

Related Posts

Canada

Sucro Ltd. plans new refinery in Hamilton to take on Canada’s sugar duopoly

11 months ago
BusinessL
Canada

IPOs in Canada: Getting Ready to Go Public

11 months ago
BusinessL
Canada

Up to 13K small businesses in Atlantic Canada unlikely to meet CEBA loan repayment deadline: CFIB

11 months ago
BusinessL
Canada

Food prices in Canada rose in December. Here’s what cost you more

11 months ago
BusinessL

You Missed

Business Line

What is Employee Sentiment Analysis?

6 months ago
xtw183877bca
Business Line

Exploring Amazon’s New AI Chatbot: How Rufus is Changing the Shopping Experience

6 months ago
xtw183877bca
Business Line

Rezolve AI Partners with ePages to Bring AI Powered Conversational Commerce to over 100,000 Merchants Globally RZLV Stock News

6 months ago
xtw183877bca

Has Sweden got its coronavirus science right? – BBC News

7 months ago
BusinessL