business

Saturday November 12, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 12, 2022

Exodus continues at Twitter as Elon Musk hints at possible bankruptcy

As Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter entered its third week, and following mass layoffs, the billionaire laid bare a delicate financial future for the social media platform, amid an exodus of top privacy and security executives.

April 12, 2017

Yoel Roth, the head of safety and integrity who had been deputized to publicly address concerns advertisers and users had about the platform, is reportedly the latest to leave the company.

The departures began on the same day Elon Musk addressed employees for the first time, saying that “bankruptcy isn’t out of the question”, according to multiple reports.

The day began with the resignation of three top security officials – chief information security officer Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty – prompting warnings from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). (Twitter reached a settlement over privacy issues with the FTC in May.) Following those departures, Roth and Twitter’s head of client solutions, Robin Wheeler, also left the company.

June 12, 2019

In an email to employees and a subsequent staff meeting, Musk did little to inspire confidence in the company’s future. In one email, Musk described the dire economic circumstances the company was in and how important he believed its subscription service, Twitter Blue, was to its future.

“Without significant subscription revenue, there is a good chance Twitter will not survive the upcoming economic downturn,” Musk said in the email. “We need roughly half of our revenue to be subscription.”

One employee also said at the staff meeting that Musk appeared to downplay employee concerns about how a pared-back Twitter workforce was handling its obligations to maintain privacy and data security standards.

Musk’s memo and staff meeting echoed a livestreamed conversation on Wednesday in which he tried to assuage the concerns of major advertisers and made his most expansive public comments about Twitter’s direction since he closed the $44bn deal to buy the platform late last month and dismissed its top executives.

June 26, 2019

The departures compound the issues plaguing the social media platform since Musk bought it. Musk’s takeover and the resultant confusing back-and-forth on product launches and content moderation policies have led many brands including General Mills to pause ad buys on Twitter – a development the billionaire attempted to rectify in the live stream for advertisers. The duo leading the live stream, Roth and Wheeler, have now both left the company.

“So the two people Elon brought forward to talk with advertisers in an attempt to convince them to keep partnering with the company just quit,” tweeted Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change. “Companies that stay with Twitter at this point will be tied to these dangerous and unhinged policy changes.” (The Guardian) 

From sketch to finish, see the current way Graeme completes an editorial cartoon using an iPencil, the Procreate app, and a couple of cheats on an iPad Pro … These sped up clips are posted to encourage others to be creative, to take advantage of the technology many of us already have and to use it to produce satire. Comfort the afflicted. Afflict the comforted.

Tuesday July 12, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday July 12, 2022

Rogers outage won’t ‘sink’ $26-billion deal to buy Shaw, competition expert says

March 19, 2021

As the fallout from the Rogers Communications Inc. service outage continues to play out, one competition expert says she doesn’t think it will “sink” the telecom giant’s proposed $26-billion takeover of Shaw Communications Inc., but believes it will make everyone pay closer attention to the deal.

In an interview on Monday, University of Ottawa professor Jennifer Quaid said the only way the outage would have a negative impact on the deal would be if there was any evidence showing Rogers displayed a lack of thoroughness in reporting the circumstances due to limited competition in the market.

Quaid also said that there is now a bigger opportunity for regulators to take a closer look at cost savings from the proposed deal and whether those savings would come from eliminating redundancy systems and reducing technical staff.

Telecom researcher Ben Klass said the outage shows that further consolidation and concentration of power in the market is “a bad idea” for Canada.

“We are used to hearing that ‘bigger is better’ when it comes to telecommunication and technology companies, but last weekend’s outage shows that there are also significant risks associated with putting too many eggs in one basket,” he said. “There is strength and value in diversity and decentralization.”

Edward Jones analyst David Heger said the network outage is an additional risk factor for the Rogers-Shaw transaction, but doesn’t believe it will actually hurt it.

“Regulators may point to the outage as another reason why the merger concentrates too much customer traffic with one operator,” he said. “However, I still believe that the proposed sale of Shaw’s Freedom Mobile wireless operations to Quebecor (Inc.) should address this concern.”

The deadline for Rogers, Shaw and Quebecor to reach a definitive agreement on the sale of Freedom is July 15. (Yahoo Finance) 

 

Thursday December 2, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday December 2, 2021

Sweet vindication for Chapman’s Ice Cream

If you have the good fortune to visit Markdale, Ont., you will appreciate just how different Grey County is when compared to Ontario’s hectic urban environment overall. It’s a slower, gentle, more tranquil pace and place.

September 15, 2021

How odd, then, that the community — home to the admirably benevolent Chapman’s Ice Cream, purveyor of soothing frozen treats since 1973 — has emerged as an unlikely, though certainly flavourful, flashpoint of the COVID-19 civil war.

The family-run Chapman’s, one of Canada’s largest ice-cream producers, an employer of about 850 people, recently took the praiseworthy step of rewarding its vaccinated workers with a $1-an-hour pay raise.

This was not the first time the company had supported the local community in the battle against COVID-19.

At the end of 2020, when it became known that the first vaccines developed against coronavirus required sub-zero storage, Chapman’s was quick to offer up two medical-grade deep freezers.

It turns out the Markdale mainstay — which has donated millions of dollars to local hospitals, schools and sports facilities — had been approached decades earlier about emergency use of its cold-storage facilities in case of a public-health emergency and it was more than ready when the call came.

And grit? You want to see grit?

October 28, 2021

In 2009, the company’s century-old wooden creamery building was destroyed after a spark from welding work caught in the rafters.

Where some might have called it quits, Chapman’s built back, recovered and expanded to employ about twice the workers it once did.

This is not an age, however, in which decades of reputation, generosity, local history or context won’t be incinerated in a firestorm of toxic online recrimination.

After the raise became public, when a photo of the bulletin announcing it was posted online, Chapman’s became the target of chronically aggrieved anti-vaccine groups who were outraged at the very thought.

Local divisions of the small and tattered anti-vax army were inflamed at this outrageous assault by Chapman’s on their right to be fools and mounted an online campaign to boycott the company’s products.

The company said it received 1,000 or more emails and attacks on its Facebook group. Much of it was despicable. Inevitably, absurd analogies to Naziism were tossed about.

July 3, 2021

But, in addition to being rather stoutly anti-science, it appears the anti-vaxxers have no particular flair for numeracy or imagination.

A quick glance at public-opinion surveys or published vaccination rates should have made clear that in the boycott battle they would be hugely outnumbered and were charging off to near-certain defeat.

At Chapman’s itself, fewer than a dozen employees had chosen to remain unvaccinated and been required to go on unpaid leave.

Well, the entirely predictable result soon came to pass.

Voices of reason pushed back, lavishly praising and thanking the company, which saw sales jump and inquiries arrive from far and wide as to where its ice cream could be purchased.

The hashtag #IStandWithChapmans became the call to arms, and seldom was such a thing so delicious.

On its website, Chapman’s is now promoting its “Holiday Moments Collection,” urging the sweet-toothed to “Enjoy a taste of the holiday in each and every bite.”

So, let’s add a tip of the old double-scoop ice-cream cone — waffle, if you please — to Chapman’s for its good corporate citizenship, community-minded initiatives and delightful products.

Long may you prosper. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Wednesday October 19, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 19, 2021

With election looming, Doug Ford’s PCs pitch themselves as a party on the side of workers

With Ontario’s provincial election looming next spring, Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives are presenting themselves as a party that is on the side of workers. 

September 5, 2020

It’s a political makeover that will likely to be a tough sell for Ford and his PCs. 

Ford came to power in 2018 on a crusade to make Ontario “open for business.” One of his government’s first bills froze the minimum wage, scrapped a requirement that employers give all staff at least two paid sick days and ended measures that made it easier for some workers to join a union. 

But now Ford is clearly making a fresh pitch to win favour with workers. 

“We’ve always been for the front-line hard-working union people,” Ford told a news conference in Windsor on Monday. “I will break a brick wall down to support them.”

April 23, 2021

Ford’s Minister of Labour, Training and Skills Development, Monte McNaughton, also aimed for a pro-worker tone in a recent speech to the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council, an umbrella group of unions representing plumbers, electricians, bricklayers and other skilled tradespeople.  

“We’re on your side,” McNaughton told the gathering of about 300 union officials in Toronto last Thursday. “There’s no bigger champion out there for tradespeople than Premier Ford.” 

McNaughton went on to voice concern for “workers in Ontario being taken advantage of by some bad actors and bad corporations.” He talked of the plight of workers “making well below the minimum wage without pay stubs or transparency on how their work is assigned.”

August 20, 2012

Conservative governments “got it wrong” for decades with their approach to the labour movement, he said in the speech. 

“We’re taking a different path,” McNaughton said. “Not every conservative agrees with me, but we’re not going to slow down.” 

The idea of Ford’s party standing up for workers against big business is being met with skepticism by the PCs’ political opponents.

“They can kiss up to the unions if they want, but it’s their actions that make a difference,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath told reporters on Monday at Queen’s Park. 

February 4, 2020

“Actions speak louder than words, and we’ve seen this government have a very anti-worker agenda all the way along.” 

Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca similarly questioned whether the Conservatives will back up what they say with meaningful action. 

Patty Coates, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, which represents more than one million unionized workers, dismisses what the PCs are saying as empty platitudes. 

“It’s election time,” said Coates in an interview, adding that Ford is “rebranding himself as a friend of labour, and he believes that people will forget.” (CBC)  

 

Thursday April 1, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 1, 2021

Ontario reports more than 2300 new COVID-19 cases as ICU numbers reach record high

Ontario health officials reported more than 2,300 new cases of COVID-19 as the province reached a record high number of people battling the disease in its intensive care units.

January 16, 2021

The province confirmed 2,333 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday. Daily case numbers have remained above the 2,000 mark for seven straight days.

The province’s seven-day average for number of cases recorded is now 2,316, up from 1,676 one week ago.

With 52,532 tests processed in the last 24 hours, the province says its COVID-19 positivity rate dropped to 4.8 per cent after two days above the six per cent mark.

The latest Critical Care Services Ontario report, obtained by CTV News Toronto on Wednesday morning, shows there are currently 421 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) across the province with COVID-19.

The total marks the highest number of COVID-19 patients in critical care at one time since the pandemic began. The last time the ICU admission total surpassed 400 was in January during the height of the pandemic’s second wave.

July 27, 2019

“We’re in a critical spot today,” Dr. Michael Warner, medical director of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital, said on Wednesday.

“This is a train heading down the tracks and it’s going to take a while to slow it down. So even if we implement significant public health measures today, we could see ICU numbers hit 500, but if we don’t, that’s when things could really get bad.”

Meanwhile, CTV News Toronto has learned the Ontario government will announce Thursday that it will force the province into a month-long shutdown.

November 5, 2020

According to the government’s guidelines, a shutdown—indicated as a sixth tier in the government’s framework—is similar to the old grey zone rules in which retail is allowed to open with strict capacity limits, indoor dining remains closed and gyms are shuttered.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday that he was prepared to act swiftly.

“I’m very, very concerned to see the cases go up. I’m very concerned to see the ICU capacity and we all have to be vigilant,” he said. “I’m just asking people don’t gather in large groups, don’t have big, big gatherings and follow the protocols.”

Warner said the province must focus on implementing public health restrictions as the COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues.

“We need to protect the health and safety of people, set economic interests aside for now, and get some control over what’s happening to all of us right now,” he said. (CTV)