Finance
“Cap-and-trade” permitting schemes and taxes on greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions are widely recognized as key to addressing climate change, because they establish a visible price for emissions. But the prospect of new taxes or new regulatory limits will seem a depressing backward step to many in the private sector.
The first time I laid eyes on Jezebel, she was in the company of one of my best friends. She looked a little rough around the edges, but she was a beauty, even beneath her factory-installed vinyl roof and clumsy after-market paint job. She may have been a bit worn out, but still, I wouldn’t have thrown her out of the garage for leaking a bit of oil, transmission lubricant or brake cylinder fluid. I was in love.
Patricia Croft, chief economist for Vancouver-based Phillips, Hager & North Investment Management Ltd., has just returned to Toronto. She’s seen once again for herself the visible proof of what the statistics say is true, and she isn’t mincing words: it’s boom times on the West Coast.
It initially launched in 1996 to explore fuel-cell technology but changed direction and, in 2004, landed a potentially lucrative contract with ExxonMobile Research and Engineering Co. to develop large purification and recovery systems for oil-refining and petrochemical markets. Exxon provided...
What I never expected to find was that one of Canada’s wealthiest provinces, literally dripping in natural abundance, home to one of its leading cities and blessed with a natural bridge to the rest of the world, would be the...
The really zealous ones will quote the media and echo something to the effect that “controlled inflation” and “modest interest rates” are “driving forces behind our robust economy.” Inevitably, someone will allude to the proliferation of towering cranes that are...
Has the bull market run its course? Does the recent tax legislation mean it’s time to dump income trusts? Investors enter this RRSP season with more than the usual dose of nerves as they ponder their investment options. For advice, BCBusiness met with two experts who spend their days making...
If someone suggested that you should invest in a business based on the production of spider-silk proteins by transgenic goats, you might feel that they were weaving a bit of a tangled web themselves. In fact, such a company did exist.
But not to fear. Here in B.C., at least, rumours of the death of the long-running bull are greatly exaggerated. Far from a decline in GDP, economists are predicting continued boom times in 2007, with economic growth continuing unabated. Canada is now a country with two economies. Central Canada, with...
The contrast couldn’t be more telling. In Calgary, energy giant EnCana plans to build a spectacular $1-billion, 59-storey office tower headquarters that will be the second highest in Canada. That’s assuming Imperial Oil, not yet out of the starting gate...