[ad_1]
Mark Nielsen / Prince George Citizen – Jan 3, 2023 / 6:49 pm | Story: 404411
Photo: via Canfor/Facebook.
Canfor Corporation said Tuesday it is extending production curtailments at “select” B.C. sawmills for a further two weeks.
The expected restart date for the company’s Prince George Sawmill and its Plateau sawmill in Vanderhoof is now January 30 and for its Chetwynd and Houston operations, January 23.
Four-week curtailments for Prince George Sawmill and Plateau sawmill in Vanderhoof had been invoked starting December 19 while the Polar operation at Bear Lake was subjected to a three-week curtailment.
A four-week curtailment at Canfor’s Intercontinental Pulp Mill was subsequently imposed due to the lack of available economic fibre as a result of sawmill curtailments.
In a statement, the company cited “ongoing weak market conditions and the lack of available economic fibre” for the most-recent move.
As of the week ending December 9, the price of western spruce, pine and fir stood at $390 per thousand board feet, according to Madison’s Lumber Reporter. Analysts say $500 is the break even point.
Canfor’s sawmills in Alberta were not included in the extension.
In December, analyst Russ Taylor noted that Canfor said it anticipates the majority of its B.C. sawmills will operate below full capacity in the new year, indicating its Alberta operations will be back to running at current levels by early 2023 while those in this province will not.
He said that’s a function of the difference in the way stumpage works in the two provinces. Whereas it’s adjusted on a monthly basis in Alberta, it’s updated annually and quarterly in B.C., creating a lag effect.
As a consequence, he said Canfor made “outrageous profit” when the price of lumber was high and stumpage low, only to then endure stumpage that is too high relative to the market.
However, Taylor doubts the system used in B.C. will be changed anytime soon.
“It’s been this way since 2004 when the whole formula was devised around the U.S. softwood lumber deal,” he said. “This formula is tied to the Americans overseeing our forest policy and our stumpage formula so, no chance.”
The curtailment will reduce production by about 21 million board feet in addition to the 150 million board feet that was part of the previous curtailment.
Canfor “will continue to adjust operating rates to align with market conditions and the available supply of economically viable timber,” the company said in the statement.
Graeme Wood / Business in Vancouver – Jan 3, 2023 / 4:21 pm | Story: 404394
Photo: Photo: Rob Kruyt.
The commission issued a new notice against G2 Energy on Dec. 19, 2022
A seventh B.C. company, originally associated in an alleged illegal consulting scheme connected to Vancouver financial services firm BridgeMark Financial Corp., has been issued a hearing notice for issuing misrepresentations to investors.
The B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC) alleges G2 Energy Corp., formerly known as Green 2 Blue Energy Corp., issued two news releases in April 2018 that contained misrepresentations.
G2 Energy is one of 11 Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE)-listed companies named in a November 2018 hearing notice that’s since been amended, resulting in a pending hearing for illegal insider trading and market misconduct by four local stock promoters and their consulting companies. Meanwhile, dozens of alleged co-participants were dropped from the once extraordinary hearing notice.
G2 Energy was among the dozens of participants dropped from the original November 2018 hearing notice, which alleged a fraudulent exchange of pre-paid consulting fees and free-trading shares between the 11 companies and a group of consultants and company directors of the so-called Bridgemark Group.
The commission issued the new notice against G2 Energy on Dec. 19, 2022. The notice is similar to those of six other companies once involved in the Bridgemark Group.
Three companies and/or their directors have since admitted to “conduct abusive to the capital markets” and/or misrepresentations to investors. Another three have hearings scheduled this year.
The commission will set a hearing date for G2 Energy Corp. on Feb. 7, 2023.
“In the first news release, Green 2 Blue announced a financing but did not disclose its intention to spend most of the funds on consultants. In the second, Green 2 Blue announced the amount raised in the financing but did not disclose that it spent most of the funds on consultants,” the commission alleges.
The notice names three former directors, who face the same allegations as the company: president and CEO Slawomir Smulewicz of West Vancouver; CFO Michael Louis Young of Vancouver; and director Glenn Albert Little of Langley.
The company had raised $4.28 million. CSE trading records showed all the funds came from the consultants, who went on to sell the shares to retail investors for a loss. However, the consulting fees they charged the companies more than covered those losses.
“Green 2 Blue stated that the proceeds would be used to complete facility upgrades, equipment purchases and for general working capital. Green 2 Blue did not disclose that it would only retain $556,340, or about 13%, of the amount raised because it spent $3,723,660 on consulting fees,” the notice states.
“Green 2 Blue made a statement to investors it knew, or ought reasonably to have known, was a misrepresentation contrary” to the B.C. Securities Act.
The commission alleges little or no consulting was actually done, as part of the arrangements. Over $50 million was raised across the 11 companies, according to the commission’s original allegations.
This is the latest in a long list of hearing notices, trade orders, amended orders, court challenges and lawsuits — including a class-action lawsuit that’s already resulted in a $2.4 million from one of the companies.
Vancouver-area residents (and their respective companies) Anthony Kevin Jackson (BridgeMark Financial Corp. and Jackson & Company Professional Corp.), Justin Edgar Liu (Lukor Capital Corp. and Asiatic Management Consultants Ltd.), Robert John Lawrence (Tavistock Capital Corp.) and Cameron Robert Paddock (Rockshore Advisors Ltd.) are now alleged, in an amended hearing notice, to have conducted themselves contrary to the public interest as company directors and (with the exception of Lawrence) performed illegal insider trading.
“The Scheme and the conduct contrary to the public interest that are alleged in the amended [notice of hearing] remain largely unchanged from the allegations made in the original [notice of hearing],” BCSC executive director Peter Brady has noted.
Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press – Jan 3, 2023 / 3:20 pm | Story: 404380
Photo: The Canadian Press
A sign at Twitter headquarters is shown in San Francisco, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Elon Musk is trying to slash expenses at Twitter as close to zero as possible while his personal wealth shrinks — and this apparently has included falling behind on rent payments at the company’s offices.
Twitter owes $136,260 in overdue rent on its offices on the 30th floor of a building in downtown in San Francisco, according to a lawsuit filed by the building’s landlord last week.
The landlord at 650 California St., which is not Twitter’s main San Francisco headquarters, served a notice to the social media company on Dec. 16 informing it that it would be in default if it didn’t pay within five days. The five days elapsed without payment, according to the lawsuit.
The landlord, Columbia REIT 650 California LLC, is seeking damages totaling the back rent, as well as attorney fees and other expenses. Twitter signed a seven-year lease for the offices in 2017. The monthly rent was $107,526.50 in the first full year and increase gradually to $128,397 per month in the seventh year.
Twitter did not respond to a message for comment. The company no longer has a media relations department.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October and the company is on the hook for about $1 billion a year in interest payments from the deal. Most of Musk’s wealth is tied to his ownership of Tesla shares, which have lost more than half of their value since he took ownership of Twitter. He has sold nearly $23 billion worth of the electric vehicle company’s stock to fund the purchase since April, when he started building a position in Twitter. He’s even lost the top spot for the world’s wealthiest person, according to Forbes.
Musk defended his extreme cost cutting measures last month in a late night Twitter Spaces call.
“This company is like, basically, you’re in a plane that is headed towards the ground at high speed with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work,” Musk said on Dec. 21.
The company’s headquarters are located at another San Francisco address, 1355 Market St., where Twitter has also reportedly fallen behind on rent, according to The New York Times.
In addition to not paying rent and laying off workers, Musk’s Twitter is also auctioning off high-end office furniture, kitchen equipment and other relics the past, when Twitter had over 7,500 full-time workers around the world, and free lunch and other office perks were common. Some three-quarters of Twitter’s employee base are expected to have left the company, either because they were laid off, fired or quit.
Among the items Twitter is auctioning off are a pizza oven, 40-quart commercial kitchen floor mixer (retails for around $18,000; bidding starts at $25), high-end designer furniture such as Eames chairs from Herman Miller and Knoll Diamond chairs that retail in the thousands.
Even a Twitter bird statue (bidding starts at $25) and a neon Twitter bird light display (bidding starts at $50) are up for grabs in this fire sale-style auction reminiscent of the dot-com bust of the early 2000s when failed tech startups were selling off their decadent office wares.
Matt O’brien, The Associated Press – Jan 3, 2023 / 2:11 pm | Story: 404364
Photo: The Canadian Press
FILE – The Microsoft logo is pictured outside the headquarters in Paris, Jan. 8, 2021. A group of video game testers is forming Microsoft’s first labor union in the U.S. and the largest in the video game industry. Communications Workers of America said Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, that about 300 quality assurance workers at Microsoft video game subsidiary ZeniMax Studios have voted to join the union. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
A group of video game testers has formed Microsoft’s first labor union in the U.S., which will also be the largest in the video game industry.
The Communications Workers of America said Tuesday that a majority of about 300 quality-assurance workers at Microsoft video game subsidiary ZeniMax Studios has voted to join the union.
Microsoft already told the CWA it would accept the formation of the union at its Maryland-based video game subsidiary, fulfilling a promise it made to try to build public support for its $68.7 billion acquisition of another big game company, Activision Blizzard.
Microsoft bought ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021, giving the Xbox-maker control of ZeniMax’s well-known game publishing division Bethesda Softworks and popular game franchises such as The Elder Scrolls, Doom and Fallout.
Senior game tester Wayne Dayberry said in an interview with The Associated Press that the unionization campaign began before Microsoft took over and reflected workplace concerns that are common at video game companies.
“Throughout the industry, the quality assurance departments are treated poorly, paid very little, and treated as replaceable cogs,” said Dayberry, who has worked for five years at ZeniMax’s Rockville, Maryland headquarters on games such as Fallout, Prey and The Evil Within.
“There’s not a lot of dignity involved in it,” he said. “That’s something we’re hoping to show people in the industry who are in like situations, that if we can do it, they can do it as well.”
The unionization campaign accelerated thanks to Microsoft’s ongoing bid to buy California-based game giant Activision Blizzard. Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Washington, made a June pact with the CWA union to stay neutral if Activision Blizzard workers sought to form a union.
The worker-friendly pledge sought to appeal to U.S. regulator concerns under President Joe Biden about the labor implications of massive business mergers, though it didn’t stop the Federal Trade Commission from suing last month to block Microsoft’s planned Activision Blizzard acquisition. The antitrust case had its first hearing Tuesday and could drag on for months.
Two small units of Activision Blizzard workers were the first to certify unions last year in Middleton, Wisconsin and Albany, New York. A third, Boston-based Activision Blizzard subsidiary Proletariat, filed a Dec. 27 petition with the National Labor Relations Board to unionize its 57 workers.
Microsoft’s legally binding neutrality agreement specifically applied to Activision Blizzard workers after the closing of the merger. But it also reflects Microsoft’s broader principles on handling unionization, which is still uncommon in the tech and gaming industries.
Dayberry said Microsoft’s neutrality promise gave workers confidence that there wouldn’t be any “retaliation or union-busting, which there has been none of.”
Microsoft’s green light allowed the ZeniMax union certification to go through a third-party arbitrator rather than the lengthier process typically overseen by the NLRB. A weekslong election period ended on Dec. 31 and was formally certified Tuesday. Microsoft said in a statement that it recognizes the union.
“They have definitely stood by their word all along,” said CWA spokesperson Beth Allen. “It’s pretty momentous. Microsoft is an outlier in the way tech companies have been behaving.”
The unionizing workers are based in Hunt Valley and Rockville, Maryland, as well as the Texas cities of Austin and Dallas.
Glen Korstrom / Business in Vancouver – Jan 3, 2023 / 12:41 pm | Story: 404342
Photo: @CoastHotels / Twitter
The Coast Hotels banner is on 38 hotels, including this one in Prince George
Vancouver-based Coast Hotels Ltd. has expanded to the U.S. by spending an undisclosed amount to buy a master franchise agreement that includes nine American hotels.
Years ago, Coast Hotels allowed a separate ownership group to own a master franchise agreement and start franchising the Coast Hotels banner in the U.S. That group, named Coast Hotels USA, signed nine franchise agreements with various operators to run four hotels in the state of Washington, one hotel in Hawaii, three hotels in California and one hotel in Alaska, Coast Hotels’ vice-president of revenue, strategies and communication, Brigitte Diem-Guy explained to BIV.
Owning that master franchise agreement enables Coast Hotels Ltd. to also open its own hotels south of the border – something that it previously would have been unable to do.
“I can’t tell you how many [new hotels] we’re expecting to open but definitely our plan is to have an acquisition in in the Seattle area, and to kind of build a second headquarters for the U.S.,” Diem-Guy said. “We are actively looking.”
Coast Hotels Ltd. currently owns and manages six hotels (four in B.C. and two in Alberta), manages three other hotels that it does not own (two in Alberta and one in B.C.) and has franchise agreements with operators of 20 other hotels across B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Yukon.
All of those hotels use Coast Hotels Ltd.’s booking system, and the company also does marketing that benefits all hotels that have the Coast Hotels banner.
While Coast Hotels is headquartered in Vancouver, it has long been owned by Tokyo, Japan-based APA Hotels through its APA Hotel Canada Inc. subsidiary.
Nelson Bennett / Business in Vancouver – Jan 3, 2023 / 11:36 am | Story: 404331
Photo: Artemis Gold.
Work camp to be expanded to accommodate 475 workers.
Construction of B.C.’s newest gold mine – the Blackwater mine 110 kilometres south of Vanderhoof — is expected to begin in earnest in the first quarter this year, despite a delay in permitting.
Artemis Gold (TSX-V: ARTG) had expected a Mines Act permit to be in hand in the fall of 2022, but now expects to get the permit in the first quarter of 2023.
“While we are disappointed that we did not receive the BC Mines Act permits as planned in Fall 2022, they are well advanced and are expected to be finalized in the coming weeks,” Artemis CEO Steven Dean said in a project update.
“The Blackwater construction team has made significant progress in Q4 2022, with Blackwater on-site activities progressing on schedule. The construction camp and process plant area preparation and bulk earthworks are on track to be completed prior to the start of major works.”
Early works already underway include logging and site clearing, expansion of a work camp and installation of a waste water treatment plant. About 100 workers have been employed in early works activities since September.
The company expects major works construction to start early in 2023. The work includes expansion of a work camp to accommodate up to 475 workers and construction of a new 133 kilometre transmission line.
The Canadian Press – Jan 3, 2023 / 10:51 am | Story: 404322
Photo: The Canadian Press
Travellers wait in line at a Sunwing Airlines check-in desk at Trudeau Airport in Montreal, Wednesday, April 20, 2022. The federal transport minister’s office says issues being faced by Sunwing travellers from Saskatchewan are unacceptable. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Sunwing says it has completed all of its scheduled recovery flights to bring home passengers stranded in Mexico after winter storms disrupted its operations during the holidays.
The travel company says in a statement that its teams have worked around the clock to return its affected customers home.
Some travellers from Saskatchewan say the airline has left them at airports in other provinces, while one says her flight from Mexico made it to Regina with dozens of empty seats.
Sunwing announced last week that it was suspending flights from the Saskatoon and Regina airports for a month due to extenuating circumstances.
The federal transport minister’s office says issues faced by Sunwing customers are unacceptable.
Valérie Glazer, a spokeswoman for Transport Minister Omar Alghabra’s office, says in a statement that the government understands the delays and cancellations have been frustrating for travellers.
Glazer says passengers have rights that must be respected by airlines.
“As of Sept. 8, new regulations are in effect under the Air Passenger Protection Regulations,” the statement said. “They apply to flights that are cancelled or delayed for reasons beyond the air carrier’s control, such as major weather events or pandemics.”
She said Transport Canada and the minister’s office have been in contact with the airline and continue to work with airports to ensure people can travel safely and securely.
“Canadians can be assured that we are doing everything we can to support them during this difficult time,” said the statement.
Sunwing said passengers who were affected by the delays can submit a claim for compensation or a refund through its website.
The Associated Press – Jan 3, 2023 / 7:08 am | Story: 404290
Photo: The Canadian Press
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is escorted out of Magistrate Court following a hearing in Nassau, Bahamas, on Dec. 19.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried will be arraigned in a Manhattan federal court Tuesday on charges that he cheated investors and looted customer deposits on his cryptocurrency trading platform.
Bankman-Fried, 30, was accused of illegally diverting massive sums of customer money from FTX to make lavish real estate purchases, donate money to politicians and make risky trades at Alameda Research, his cryptocurrency hedge fund trading firm.
He is expected to plead not guilty before Judge Lewis A. Kaplan before the judge and lawyers discuss a schedule for proceeding toward a trial.
Carolyn Ellison, 28, who ran Alameda, and Gary Wang, 29, who co-founded FTX, have pleaded guilty to fraud charges and are cooperating with prosecutors in a bid for leniency. Both are free on bail.
Their pleas were kept secret until Bankman-Fried was in the air after his extradition from the Bahamas, where FTX is based, due to fears that he might flee.
Bankman-Fried, 30, was released from custody on a $250 million personal recognizance bond with electronic monitoring about two weeks ago on the condition that he await trial at his parents’ house in Palo Alto, California.
The Canadian Press – Jan 3, 2023 / 6:17 am | Story: 404278
Photo: The Canadian Press
The Competition Bureau is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to set aside a decision by the Competition Tribunal dismissing its case against Rogers Communications Inc.’s $26-billion takeover of Shaw Communications Inc.
The federal competition regulator says the tribunal made a mistake in how it assessed the deal and the proposal that would see Quebecor Inc.’s Videotron acquire Shaw’s Freedom Mobile business.
In seeking its appeal, the regulator says the tribunal made fundamental errors of law.
In its ruling last week, the tribunal said the merger was not likely to result in higher prices for wireless customers and that it was satisfied the plan to sell Freedom Mobile was adequate to ensure competition isn’t substantially reduced.
The bureau says the Federal Court of Appeal has issued a temporary suspension of the tribunal decision until the regulator’s application for a stay and an injunction can be heard.
The bureau had argued that the merger of the two telecommunications companies would lessen competition, trigger higher prices and lead to a worsening of service.
The Associated Press – Jan 3, 2023 / 6:10 am | Story: 404277
Photo: The Canadian Press
CES, the annual tech industry event formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show, is returning to Las Vegas this week with the hope that it looks more like it did before the coronavirus pandemic.
Media previews start Tuesday and Wednesday, with the show opening Thursday and continuing through Sunday.
The show changed its name to CES several years ago to better reflect the changing industry and the event, which had expanded beyond audio and video to include automotive, digital health, smart phones, wearables and other technologies.
Companies and startups will showcase innovations in virtual reality, robotics and consumer tech items to the media and others in the tech industry. The show is not open to the general public.
Organizers say their goal is to draw 100,000 attendees. That would be a marked contrast with the look and feel of the past two shows — the last of which saw a 70% drop in in-person attendance amid the spread of the Omicron variant. The one before that was held virtually, replacing in-person displays and meet and greets with video streams and chats.
Even if organizers reach their goal, it would still represent a 41% dip in attendance compared to the in-person show held in early 2020, before the pandemic consumed much of everyday life.
Kinsey Fabrizio, senior vice president at the trade group Consumer Technology Association, said roughly 3,000 companies have signed up to attend the event.
They include many startups and routine visitors like Amazon and Facebook parent Meta, both of which have recently cut jobs and implemented hiring freezes after beefing up their staff during the pandemic. Other tech companies have also been tightening their belts and laying off workers amid concerns about the economic environment.
The Associated Press spoke with Fabrizio about CES and what consumers should expect at the show. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: The tech industry has been going through a rough time in the past few months. How do you expect that to impact the show?
A: Yeah, for the last two years, the tech industry was booming. We’re seeing a recalibration now and as part of the recalibration, there are layoffs. But in terms of CES, the companies are coming big. And they’re going to be showcasing some of these solutions that were critical during the pandemic, and a lot of the solutions that have continued to change the way consumers live and behave. The momentum and excitement we’re seeing for the show hasn’t been impacted.
Q: Are most of the exhibitors startups?
A: We have a lot of startups and new companies. Over 1,000 new exhibitors for CES this year, which is on par with prior years. There will be some repeat customers in Eureka Park, where our startups are primarily stationed. They can be there for up to two years. But we will also have a lot of companies who’ve been at CES for a while.
Q: The theme for the show is human security. How did you land on that?
A: We were approached by The World Academy of Art and Science, which has been working with the United Nations for a long time on human security. You can think of it as basic human rights — access to food, health care, etc. And they wanted CES to really use this theme because our exhibitors are showcasing how they’re solving some of these big global challenges with technology.
Q: Historically, CES has been more focused on convenience and personal tech. So this is going to be a shift.
A: This is the shift. We’ve talked about how tech solves challenges in the world. But we’ve never had a theme at CES before. It’s always been about innovation and great products for the consumer. But for this show, you will be able to see the theme on the show floor and other places. For example, John Deere is showcasing some of their agricultural technology that really contributes to sustainability and access to food. Another company created a secure voting technology on the blockchain, which aligns with the U.N. theme of political security.
Q: The metaverse is going to be another big topic. A lot of companies are investing in it. What can visitors expect to see at the show?
A: The metaverse is a key theme. We’ll have a dedicated part of the show floor for Web3 technology. There’s also going to be shared and immersive virtual experiences. Automaker Stellantis and Microsoft have a partnership to create a showroom in the metaverse. There’s a company called OVR that has created a solution where you can smell in the metaverse. People are talking about unique ways to reach their customers, and different experiences people can have there. So that will be a big theme among both big and small exhibitors.
The Associated Press – Jan 3, 2023 / 6:07 am | Story: 404276
Photo: The Canadian Press
Ukrainian soldiers launch a drone at Russian positions near Bakhmut in December.
Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare.
The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without help from humans, according to military analysts, combatants and artificial intelligence researchers.
That would mark a revolution in military technology as profound as the introduction of the machine gun. Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI. Russia also claims to possess AI weaponry, though the claims are unproven. But there are no confirmed instances of a nation putting into combat robots that have killed entirely on their own.
Experts say it may be only a matter of time before either Russia or Ukraine, or both, deploy them. The sense of inevitability extends to activists, who have tried for years to ban killer drones but now believe they must settle for trying to restrict the weapons’ offensive use.
Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, agrees that fully autonomous killer drones are “a logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. He said Ukraine has been doing “a lot of R&D in this direction.”
“I think that the potential for this is great in the next six months,” Fedorov told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Ukrainian Lt. Col. Yaroslav Honchar, co-founder of the combat drone innovation nonprofit Aerorozvidka, said in a recent interview near the front that human war fighters simply cannot process information and make decisions as quickly as machines.
Ukrainian military leaders currently prohibit the use of fully independent lethal weapons, although that could change, he said.
“We have not crossed this line yet – and I say ‘yet’ because I don’t know what will happen in the future.” said Honchar, whose group has spearheaded drone innovation in Ukraine, converting cheap commercial drones into lethal weapons.
Russia could obtain autonomous AI from Iran or elsewhere. The long-range Shahed-136 exploding drones supplied by Iran have crippled Ukrainian power plants and terrorized civilians but are not especially smart. Iran has other drones in its evolving arsenal that it says feature AI.
Without a great deal of trouble, Ukraine could make its semi-autonomous weaponized drones fully independent in order to better survive battlefield jamming, their Western manufacturers say.
Those drones include the U.S.-made Switchblade 600 and the Polish Warmate, which both currently require a human to choose targets over a live video feed. AI finishes the job. The drones, technically known as “loitering munitions,” can hover for minutes over a target, awaiting a clean shot.
“The technology to achieve a fully autonomous mission with Switchblade pretty much exists today,” said Wahid Nawabi, CEO of AeroVironment, its maker. That will require a policy change — to remove the human from the decision-making loop — that he estimates is three years away.
Drones can already recognize targets such as armored vehicles using cataloged images. But there is disagreement over whether the technology is reliable enough to ensure that the machines don’t err and take the lives of noncombatants.
The AP asked the defense ministries of Ukraine and Russia if they have used autonomous weapons offensively – and whether they would agree not to use them if the other side similarly agreed. Neither responded.
If either side were to go on the attack with full AI, it might not even be a first.
An inconclusive U.N. report last year suggested that killer robots debuted in Libya’s internecine conflict in 2020, when Turkish-made Kargu-2 drones in full-automatic mode killed an unspecified number of combatants.
A spokesman for STM, the manufacturer, said the report was based on “speculative, unverified” information and “should not be taken seriously.” He told the AP the Kargu-2 cannot attack a target until the operator tells it to do so.
Honchar believes Russia, whose attacks on Ukrainian civilians have shown little regard for international law, would have used killer autonomous drones by now if the Kremlin had them.
“I don’t think they’d have any scruples,” agreed Adam Bartosiewicz, vice president of WB Group, which makes the Warmate.
AI is a priority for Russia. President Vladimir Putin said in 2017 that whoever dominates that technology will rule the world. In a Dec. 21 speech, he expressed confidence in the Russian arms industry’s ability to embed AI in war machines, stressing that “the most effective weapons systems are those that operate quickly and practically in an automatic mode.” Russian officials already claim their Lancet drone can operate with full autonomy.
An effort to lay international ground rules for military drones has so far been fruitless. Nine years of informal United Nations talks in Geneva made little headway, with major powers including the United States and Russia opposing a ban. The last session, in December, ended with no new round scheduled.
Toby Walsh, an Australian academic who campaigns against killer robots, hopes to achieve a consensus on some limits, including a ban on systems that use facial recognition and other data to identify or attack individuals or categories of people.
“If we are not careful, they are going to proliferate much more easily than nuclear weapons,” said Walsh, author of “Machines Behaving Badly.” “If you can get a robot to kill one person, you can get it to kill a thousand.”
The global public is concerned. An Ipsos survey done for Human Rights Watch in 2019 found that 61% of adults across 26 countries oppose the use of lethal autonomous weapons systems.
Multiple countries, and every branch of the U.S. military, are developing drones that can attack in deadly synchronized swarms, according to Zachary Kallenborn, a George Mason University weapons innovation analyst.
So will future wars become a fight to the last drone?
That’s what Putin predicted in a 2017 televised chat with engineering students: “When one party’s drones are destroyed by drones of another, it will have no other choice but to surrender.”
The Canadian Press – Jan 3, 2023 / 6:00 am | Story: 404273
Photo: The Canadian Press
Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs made an average of $14.3 million in 2021, smashing the previous record of $11.8 million set in 2018, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Report author and CCPA senior economist David Macdonald said that the 100 CEOS, who are mostly men, made 243 times the average Canadian worker in 2021, again beating 2018’s record of 227 times.
Most of the money these CEOs made was not from their salary, but from so-called variable compensation, which includes bonuses, stock options and shares. That ratio has been climbing over the years, with 83 per cent of CEOs’ total pay in 2021 made up of variable compensation compared with 69 per cent in 2008, according to the report.
“The last two years really exemplify everything that’s wrong with CEO pay,” said Macdonald, calling it a “pay-for-luck scheme.”
Variable compensation is intended to be tied to company performance, he said, but the pandemic showed that’s not always the case.
When companies fall on hard economic times, like during 2020, they often tweak compensation rules to ensure executive pay doesn’t suffer too much, he said; and when companies do well, like during high inflation, executives rake it in.
“In 2020, you have half of the CEOs on the list receiving government support, and/or changing their bonus formulas to exclude the negative impact of the pandemic on their pay,” he said. “And then the following year is record inflation, which drives record profits, which drives record CEO compensation.”
“They’re cushioned from the bad, but when things are good, then the sky’s the limit.”
The CEO pay trends of 2021 are likely to have continued into 2022 as they were driven by historically high profits and historically high inflation, said Macdonald, which of course continued over the past year despite the Bank of Canada’s efforts to quell inflation with — again, historic — interest rate hikes.
“It’s unlikely that we’ll go back to the level that we saw pre-pandemic, it’s likely they’ll continue at much higher pay levels in 2022,” he said.
“Inflation is bad for households. It’s bad for workers, generally. But it’s been great for the corporate sector, and it’s been great for CEO pay.”
The report offers four policy proposals for governments, with one being the introduction of a wealth tax and another being the implementation of higher top marginal tax brackets. There’s also a suggested limit on the corporate deductibility of compensation over $1 million, which Macdonald said could yield almost $200 million in federal corporate income tax revenue; and a proposal to raise the capital gains inclusion rate to 100 per cent, which would mean taxing capital gains like regular employment income, while currently only 50 per cent of capital gains are considered income for tax purposes.
Previous reports had recommended getting rid of the so-called stock option deduction, where people receiving stock options as compensation would only pay tax on 50 per cent of the value of the stock options. In July 2021, a new law came into effect capping that deduction at $200,000 worth of shares, though Macdonald said it could take a few years to see the impact of this change.
Macdonald said he thinks critical services like long-term care or health care could be better funded with more tax revenue from the highest earners in the country.
The highest-paid CEOs “boys’ club” continued in 2021, noted Macdonald, with more men named Mark on the top 100 list (four) than there were women (three).
The highest-paid CEO in 2021 was Nuvei chair and CEO Philip Fayer, who made almost $141 million in 2021 despite having an annual salary under a million dollars. The number-two spot was held by GFL Environmental Inc. president and CEO Patrick Dovigi, who made more than $43 million in 2021.
The list’s floor has been rising as average CEO pay gets higher, said Macdonald; this year the lowest-paid CEO on the list was Cameco Corp.’s Tim Gitzel, at $6.7 million.
[ad_2]
Source link