Fired BlackRock executive Mark Wiseman named chair of AIMCo by Kevin Orland, Bloomberg News, June 20, 2020
Alberta Investment Management Corp. named Mark Wiseman, a BlackRock Inc. executive who was ousted for violating the company’s relationships policy, as its new chairman.
Wiseman’s appointment is effective July 1, Edmonton-based AIMCo said Friday. He replaces Richard Bird, who will have served two three-year terms.
There’s a little more info about this on the forum.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced his recovery plan for the province last Monday. He says it’s bold and ambitious but it includes doubling down on fossil fuel development, money for infrastructure and jobs, as well as lowering the tax rate for corporate businesses. He has also promised to put $500 million into health care. Perhaps he’s going in circles — he just got through trashing health care in the province. He and others have already proven that lowering the tax rate doesn’t create jobs, but in the same tired rhetoric of old, he promised 50,000 new jobs. If this all seems a little incredible, that’s because it is.
Setting tax rates like they were twenty years ago isn’t going to work. You can’t shift all the burden to the working class when a lot of them are either looking for work, or working a job that only pays half of what it used to. There have been a lot of personal bankruptcies over the last few years and people have lost their jobs, families and homes. Staggering into a hotel drunk and throwing money on the floor while screaming at people to get to work isn’t any good. Trying to prevent all the creeps and bums from coming to Alberta to drain its’ resources can’t be solved by buying these folks a one-way ticket to British Columbia. Waiting for the next oil boom to kick in, isn’t the long term plan we need for this province.
There was a downturn of oil in the 90’s. Premier Ralph Klein worked with the federal government to devise ways to make the industry more viable. He never once inferred he was going to set up shop in Ottawa and wait for the government to notice him. He wasn’t waiting for the government to give him some money so he would get out of town. When he stepped down in 2006, one of the reasons was the party’s concern that Albertans were not getting enough money for their resources. Greed had taken over.
Some could argue the party hasn’t changed much except that some of its wealth is coming from cutting health care, firing nurses and teachers’ aids, plus making it harder for anyone smarter than him to get an education in the province. That’s a shame. It isn’t oil that’s going to save the province.
Bankruptcies rose by 50% this year over last year in Canada and the United States. In Canada there have been a lot. Here is a partial list:
There could be more in the near future. Here’s a list, of all companies that have been granted protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) since 2009 in Canada. Currently it has 391 entries. With these lists of insolvency and those granted protection it makes it hard to believe the Alberta government is expecting most of it’s revenue, over the next three years, to come from oil and gas.
On April 14, 2020 the Rabble reported, “High production costs have stymied bitumen expansion for now, and probably as long at it takes for the world to run down known conventional oil and gas reserves, which could be as much as 50 years.
“On a recent visit to Washington, Kenney lashed out at U.S. Democratic party presidential hopefuls for favouring oil imports from Middle Eastern dictatorships, and blocking pipeline access to the U.S. from Canada, its liberal democratic neighbour and long-time ally.
“No amount of name calling and finger pointing by Jason Kenney will make bitumen production competitive against low-cost producers determined to price competitors out of the market. That low pricing was a business decision, made in a competitive market.”
Joe Biden’s campaign promised to put an end to Keystone XL. Mr. Kenny might as well have kept his finger at home or found another use for it.
Three of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies are planning to become net-zero carbon emitters by 2050. And, as Energy Intelligence noted recently in an industry analysis, there are only two ways to attain the net-zero state: reduce the production of oil and gas, and capture the already emitted carbon dioxide.
When three of the biggest oil and gas companies see the change coming the Alberta government doesn’t see, the future looks worrisome. It’s already causing some uneasiness in certain sectors, including the Canadian banks that are still investing in the industry.
Jason Kenney reaches for economic heights with a race to the bottom – Macleans.ca
Kenney seemed most animated about his new rescue plan for his
province’s recessionary economy when he was talking about his pitch to
steal financial firms away from Toronto. As of Wednesday, Alberta’s
corporate tax rate will fall to eight per cent, down three points from
the current rate and 3.5 percentage points below Ontario’s.
The effectiveness of contact tracing apps is limited. Over ninety percent of the people in Canada who have died from the coronavirus are over sixty. They are the group who is less likely to carry and use a smartphone. Those that do, are more likely to have trouble working with apps. This causes concern about the government push to adopt this type of technology.
The Minneapolis Public Safety Commissioner suggested that protesters upset over the killing of George Floyd were going to be tracked down through a process described as a contact tracing app. It seems that the data collected by the smartphone app can pass information along that would help police identify users. It’s doubtful that many of these people would be over sixty but it shed some light on why the government encourages the public to download it. Although participants are told their privacy will be protected, it doesn’t mean it is.
In Canada, the recipients of the data could be violating your privacy according to the Charter of Rights. Then again, in Alberta, the UCP government will be going to court to defend Bill 1, which has also been accused of violating the charter of rights.
Amnesty International points out:
Not only can government intervention and the suspension of regular policies and practices create new injustices, but they can also often make the crisis itself disproportionately worse for some. And some governments use crises as an opportunity to overreach in their actions, using the crisis as justification for human rights violations.
There are a lot of apps that track people now. Two years ago Google was taken to court in a class action suit. It isn’t just Google. There are over five-thousand apps that track users locations. It isn’t only apps. There are a lot of cameras throughout cities, and facial recognition technology. Although reportedly to be accurate, it makes mistakes too.
This type of tracking happens every day. Regardless of whether it is a privacy violation, most people have become accustomed to understand it happens with or without their consent. To a lot of people it doesn’t matter. However, it becomes a bigger concern for those who get charged $25,000 for protesting, even though the right to protest is written into the charter of rights. This could very likely happen with the UCP’s Bill 1. Authorities could use the contact tracking app to help identify those who attended these protests.
An article in the New York Times, ‘Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy’ says, “Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
We are coming into an era where we are being controlled by the government through the devices we own.
Nigel Smart, a Belgian professor who has been a key figure in pushing Europe towards decentralized contact tracing protocols says, “Making people think that contact tracing could also be used for political or law enforcement may make people less likely to engage with contact tracing during an epidemic. Which will then lead to unnecessary loss of life.”
Yes, you could even be made to feel guilty by not letting the government track you. Blaming the further loss of life on your selfishness by refusing to share your exact location at all times is an excellent motivator.
If you give into the guilt, there is more to worry about then having your privacy invaded. With so many millions of people expected to download these apps, it makes them a prime target for hackers.
One such example happened just recently in Canada. On the same day that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a voluntary nationwide contact tracing app, hackers compiled a ransomware app known as CryCryptor. The Android app encrypts important user files on a device and gives instructions on how to undo the encryption by paying the hackers.
Luckily, the security research team at ESET figured out the scheme. While CryCryptor may not be too prevalent a threat at the moment, that doesn’t mean ransomware of this type won’t be a big problem. You should learn about how this was done so you can avoid it happening to you.
Contact tracing apps are of little value to the majority of people who could benefit by them, and more valuable to other services and organizations other than the people who download and use them.
“This is pure cruelty,” Sarah Hoffman, NDP Opposition Critic for Education said in a statement. “Jason Kenney is doing harm to students with complex needs, their families, and to tens of thousands of Alberta workers.” The NDP said this announcement comes just days after the UCP’s austerity budget would be cutting funds to post-secondary schools and municipalities in the province, resulting in thousands of layoffs: “Instead of standing by these hardworking Albertans, as he has asked private employers to do, Jason Kenney is pushing thousands of people onto a massively overwhelmed federal program.” They will also lose their benefits and salaries if they are laid off.