Alex_YYC
Senior Member
Would work really well for people travelling from Japan through to Europe or vice versa.
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- Thread starter Oddball
- Start date
trtcttc
Active Member
This may be getting a bit off topic but I hope so as well. Westjet has been pretty stale in their product since being bought by Onex. Not sure if that's cost-cutting led by the PE firm but they've cut back on their Dreamliner order, not expanded or invested in their lounge, have one of the worst frequent flyer programs and the cabin/onboard experience has been the same for a while.
We were just discussing this in the airport thread. It looks like the cost of the flight doesn't change much if you have a stopover in Calgary or transfer and carry on.
I think after cutting back the Europe flights from Toronto, there wasn't as much a need for the rest of the Dreamliner order. As for the other stuff, it could be related to Onex and the way they do business. In this video by local vlogger Alex Praglowski, he mentions a noticeable lack of fanfare on Westjet's inaugural Tokyo flight.
Mountain Man
Senior Member
Looks like some sort of production is setting up to film by Pumphouse Park this morning, anyone know what it is?
Chowda7
Active Member
Calgary-based geothermal company Eavor receives $90M from feds to scale operations
The federal government announced on Wednesday major funding for the Canadian geothermal company, allowing it to scale up operations.
calgaryherald.com
Calgary’s economy expected to fare better than rest of Canada, with some headwinds - Calgary | Globalnews.ca
Stephen Poloz, former governor of the Bank of Canada and one of the speakers at Wednesday’s announcement, warned against being overconfident with the projections.
globalnews.ca
Not a bad outlook. Important to be cautious, but overall, looks decent.
DougB
Active Member
So Alberta's per capita GDP is shrinking at a lower rate than is that for the country as a whole - great news!Calgary’s economy expected to fare better than rest of Canada, with some headwinds - Calgary | Globalnews.ca
Stephen Poloz, former governor of the Bank of Canada and one of the speakers at Wednesday’s announcement, warned against being overconfident with the projections.
Not a bad outlook. Important to be cautious, but overall, looks decent.
darwink
Senior Member
Depends what population figure you use. I wouldn't include international students just as I wouldn't include tourists.
Gotta be cognizant that productivity is also dropping due to COVID. Who knew that adding a week of downtown for the average worker a year would reduce output?
Gotta be cognizant that productivity is also dropping due to COVID. Who knew that adding a week of downtown for the average worker a year would reduce output?
DougB
Active Member
AB's population is growing at 4.x % and I highly doubt subtracting out international students would bring it down to the 2.x% real GDP growth rate.
US GDP (2.1% in Q2 and 4.9% in Q3) growth isn't taking a hit from COVID, so why is that an excuse for Canada:
US GDP (2.1% in Q2 and 4.9% in Q3) growth isn't taking a hit from COVID, so why is that an excuse for Canada:
trtcttc
Active Member
For a resource rich area like Alberta, GDP per capita will likely decrease with increased population, because the resource is finite. The new workers will find it hard to match the productivity of existing workers. It's why Wyoming has the 14th highest GDP per capita in the States, above Michigan, Oregan, Virginia and Texas to name a few. Calgary is diversifying its economy and non resource related growth will come in time, but that won't happen in a couple years. If young people in Canada continue to be priced out of the GTA and GVA, Calgary will grow because the talent and workers are moving there. Not to mention skilled immigrant families are increasingly choosing Calgary over Vancouver and Toronto.
It's also important to not always look at GDP numbers only. As an average citizen, there's a lot more that affects your daily life. I think most people would prefer to live in the other states with lower GDP per capita than Wyoming. California has the highest GDP per capita but they have a severe homelessness issue and housing is incredibly expensive. Growth is obviously important but it's also important to look at where that growth is coming from.
darwink
Senior Member
USA is borrowing a lot more to finance continued tax cuts, business subsidies, and infrastructure spending. About 2% of GDP is the Trump era tax cuts & spending alone. In 2022 the USA federal deficit was 5.4% of GDP, in Canada it was 1.5% (including the provinces there was a surplus in 2022 of 0.4% of GDP as revenue surged due to inflation and GDP growth but expenses were restrained).
darwink
Senior Member
A hard one to account for is Ukrainians. They are all on temporary status with no convertibility. TFWs of various sorts, some have a path to PR and some do not.
Maybe the answer is we've made the system too complex, and it is time for simplification instead of adding rules to try to solve issues.
artvandelay
Active Member
Who knew that starving key wealth creating sectors of capital investment and centering the economy on real estate development was a bad idea?
The divergence between Canada and the US tells all you need to know. I think they might have had Covid over there too!
I guess this is what happens when nobody in the PMO has ever taken a finance class.
darwink
Senior Member
When municipal government rationing causes outsized returns on an asset class, I am not sure what an acceptable policy response from the feds should have been.Who knew that starving key wealth creating sectors of capital investment and centering the economy on real estate development was a bad idea?
The divergence between Canada and the US tells all you need to know. I think they might have had Covid over there too!
I guess this is what happens when nobody in the PMO has ever taken a finance class.
I guess they could have got rid of the capital gains exception for primary residences?
There was already plenty of complaints when they started tracking who owned which residences when they were claiming expenses for tax purposes--aimed to force people not to claim the exemption when they hadn't been living there.
trtcttc
Active Member
While I'm no fan of our federal government, what this chart shows is that we are fundamentally a resource country and our economy is now fundamentally different from the US. Our GDP spikes when energy prices are high because productivity is much more a function of market prices than the actual skills of the workers. I'm not saying they are not skilled but that when prices rise 20%, the workers is not the source of that value, but rather the global supply/demand.
The US has become an energy powerhouse through fracking but also has some of the largest tech and biotech companies that make up an outsized amount of growth and investment. Their investment rates are high because those are the cutting edge companies that growth through R&D. Our largest components are stable companies like financials, energy and utilities, which don't require a lot of investments. There is no magic bullet for this and the US has many things we don't have, such as the scale of their market, the education sector, and relatively lax regulatory environment. It is difficult to match that for any country of our size that prioritizes more equality and more government services. If you look at Europe, Australia, and East Asia it's very much the same story. East Asia has an industrial edge due to high labour availability and lower wages but in a couple decades that will move to South Asia/Africa. Innovation is hard and even harder when you are located next to the most innovative country on the planet. If the US had our immigration policies, their growth would be even higher.
There are things we can do though, number one in my mind is to not fall into the Europe trap and over-regulate while providing minimal incentive for innovation. Europe is stifling their economy through over-regulation (like the usb type c connector on the new iPhones, which is not bad but just unnecessary for a gov to regulate), extensive carbon pricing and restrictions while there is no global consensus and agreement on carbon pricing schemes. There will be no meaningful reduction in global emissions, while jobs and companies just move away to go emit somewhere else.
Visualization of the rise of tech in the US