Birds December 12th

Dan Kenelly – Opened with news on Grizzly oil sands project for Teck Coal. IF it goes ahead (snowflakes are on the March), it will be great news for the industry. TC Pipeline work has started, and business in general is slowly starting to pick up.

Brett Bain – Threw this conversational hand grenade out: I question the return on value for the energy war room set up by the UCP. Responses flowed sporadically throughout and are below.

Dwayne Vinck – speech from Michelle Rempel – decisions made in parliament have more of an effect than a lot of other factors when it comes the capital fleeing Alberta. I’ve misplaced the link to the speech if Dwayne and I exchanged it, but I do have a link to her reaction to the Throne Speech here: https://youtu.be/bJ1-s7XRrOk. At least for her first response, she seems genuinely despondent on behalf of her constituents and her sincerity is unquestionable.

Dwayne also warned of ONE MORE email scam we should be on the lookout for, one from a party purporting to be a Junior mining company asking for bank details. Just. Don’t.

Gord Forsyth – First of a few responses to Brett’s verbal grenade: He was at a reception last night (Dec 11th), and the feeling there was that the war room is *already* doing a bit of the intended good, making some green opponents fearful for their funding. The war room hasn’t actually *done* anything yet, and the snowflakes are lining up their snowflake lawyers to legally obstruct it in any way possible.

George Doherty – George gets the flu shot every year and highly recommends it to everyone this year. It’s a bad flu this year and the flu season is off to an early (and strange) start. Here’s a piece from a site called Live Science: https://www.livescience.com/flu-season-weird-start.html , and in Canada, your tax dollars at work are supporting this (actually useful) page: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/flu-influenza/influenza-surveillance/weekly-influenza-reports.html.

Matt Litke – 6 days away from due date to number 1 child on December 12th (so, by the time you read this…). Ashley was still working (her last day was last Thursday).

Matt announced that he intended to take the take the next year off from Birds and miscellaneous other commitments as he concentrated on being a new dad, a sleepless husband (always useful after childbirth), and his NEW JOB. He received the promotion he’d been working hard to achieve and qualify for: Financial Planner.

Mel Gibson – Naturally Mel pays attention to industry news, but he has an especially sharp eye for when underwriters, particularly travel insurance underwriters, decline claims.

Recently a young Canadian guy in Thailand was denied a claim to return home via Air Ambulance by Global Allianz after doctors there discovered a malignant brain tumour. First, this classy organization, Global Allianz in case you missed it, initially denied the claim to bring home their client via air ambulance, then followed that up by quoting them $265,000 for one…then finally coughed up thanks to public pressure. He’s still in hospital (August event). Mel’s advice – be diligent going over the fine print on policies, always. There’s one version of the story from an insurance perspective here that echoes Mel’s advice and provides more details: https://stlawyers.ca/blog-news/canadian-with-brain-tumour-in-thailand-has-travel-insurance-denied/.

Mel also mentioned that it may serve you to join an organization like AirMed to supplement your insurance in case of things like this.

Here’s a link to get more information about AirMed: https://airmed.com/.

JD MacDonald – Enjoying some lovely family time and school plays. Maybe those seem better when you have a bit more distance from them. ????

On the work front, the ongoing story is many quotes, work being deferred, and certainly most work quoted on in early December has been deferred to 2020.

Tony Fisher – Tony saw Paul Brandt at Bella concert hall. Great facility and sound. First class. Parking easy too. it’s definitely worth looking up exactly where to park before you go. it’ll save you a long-ish walk.

Dave Hicks – Dave was in Edmonton last week- fire alarm training upgrade and training course. Dave has his Master Electrician designation, and brought up a concern that was discussed during the course. Outside of Master Electricians, there’s not a lot of upgrading imposed on the 80,000 electricians in Canada. Once you’ve got your papers, you’re good.

Naturally that means that even with constant building and electrical code changes, ONLY your master electricians are likely “current” in their knowledge (and even that is mandated provincially as opposed to federally). There are 4,000-ish master electricians in Alberta, but only 2,000 of them active. Tip : deal with a master electrician.

Social tip – while in Edmonton he and his colleagues found Woodwork – good cocktail bar in Edmonton. Recommended.

Andy Lockhart – Will sadly be missing the Birds Christmas event this week (met with groans over the lack of Andy’s masterful contribution to the Christmas exchange. Somewhere, Dave Reid laughed.). Don’t mourn for Andy, Argentina; he’ll be in Hawaii.

Pretty funny how this trip came about. Mid to late summer his son and wife discussed planning a trip to Hawaii. Then two weeks later, his daughter and her kids decided they were going to be going too. Sue asked what do you think of us going? Andy’s “inner kilt” flounced (do kilts flounce?) as he thought: “The kids are paying their own way. We only have to pay for us!” so they’re going. Wished everyone a merry Christmas.

Tip : Don’t Christmas shop at Costco. Parking is, um, not good. People are literally lining up to park

Finally, Andy endorsed Gord’s take on energy war room. 

Brad Pachal – Brad and Paul Boucher are offering similar early January discounts to their clients to attempt to mitigate the post-Christmas/post-holiday slow period common to both of their businesses. JD mentioned Son-Rise Plumbing is also offering incentives to clients.

Brad also warned about a rash of car thefts, and these were new models with key fobs. Interesting article here from December 3 about the most stolen vehicles in Alberta. All but TWO are Ford pickups. The warning about key fobs and how to prevent car thefts in a newer model cars comes via the Calgary Police Service: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/most-stolen-vehicle-insurance-bureau-canada-ford-f350-1.5383065.

Paul Boucher – Among others to hire him for his narration services this year, he can point to CN. If you’d like to see a quick 2 minute sample of narration in English about their Life Critical Rules, feel free to watch the video below. Just for interest’s sake, the French version is just below that. Hey, it’s a living. Done for CN via another Calgary company, Freshwater Creative (owners Jennifer and Neil Devine).

Bob Wiggins – Bob passed on how much the web site updates are appreciated by Birds who can’t attend, or who are no longer attending (the Catholic guilt thing worked, I’m typing the minutes out aren’t I? ????).

In any case, for any Bird alumni wondering about Roger Jarvis and Doug Parkin, Bob passed on that both are doing fine and pass along their best.

He then added further fuel to the travel insurance fire by echoing Mel’s comments to read the whole policy. In particular, he noted to pay attention to a term in many policies called “health stability” along with the already well-known “preexisting conditions”. There’s a pretty good article on what the insurance companies refer to as “stability clauses” in the link to come, but the gist of it is this: “

Bob mentioned that AMA has a great policy for travel. That link to that “stability clause” article is: https://www.snowbirdadvisorinsurance.ca/travel/personalized-travel-medical-plans-snowbirds-and-seniors

Sean Baylis – Lots of news this week. Among the nuggets: 256k new jobs in the US, Canada lost 77K. The Loonie dropped immediately on the news There’s some speculation that Canada will drop interest rates in 2020 to keep up with the US economy. Speaking of our favourite ally…Sean mentioned the great Saturday Night Live skit lampooning Trudeau and Macron making fun of Donald Trump. This link is to the entire 8-minute piece…although you might have to suffer through an ad – and remember to turn on the volume: https://globalnews.ca/video/6269362/snl-cold-open-parodies-relationships-among-major-world-leaders-in-nato-cafeteria.

In trade news, the new NAFTA will now be signed in 2020 instead of this year. Keep an eye on Mexico who’ve stated repeatedly in the past week that they will not accept US “inspectors” checking up on labour conditions as Canada and the US force Mexico to upgrade their labour standards to match their northern neighbours. This thing going into force is STILL not a foregone conclusion.

Trump is actively trying to rack up one success after another despite the impeachment proceedings – including a semi-bogus (*my words, not Sean’s) deal with China. Semi bogus will do, however and trade fears have calmed. 

Westjet was bought by Onex. Westjet employees appear excited about possible new benefits plans.  The business view is that Onex ownership will make Westjet competitive and more profitable, but sadly, likely at our (the customers) expense. Nickel and dime travel charges, here we come.

Stock tips : Starbucks dividend grower, reasonably recession proof. MacDonalds – again recession “proof” to some extent. Costco too. There’s apparently a new MacDonald’s menu coming to keep things fresh.
 
Tax tips – charitable giving season. If you have appreciated securities, you can donate them and duck capital gains, biggest bang for your donation buck.

Don Davis – Passed on second thoughts for Matt re: leaving, even temporarily. He recounted how even when he was “commuting” back and forth between Toronto and couldn’t attend as often, the club and its members provided irreplaceable value. He also loves keeping up via minutes.

Matt Dart – Busy at work, despite market, BUT not getting a lot of new business. Multi family residential is the most active sector. Building permits for the past 10 months, down 15% from 2018. Naturally, head office expects 15% GROWTH from them despite that.

Matt also relayed a very sad story about a 20 year employee finally being let go after many years of declining performance due to alcoholism. Sadly not long after being let go, he took his own life. They have another long time employee with erratic performance for various substance reasons and at the moment, the company is being VERY cautious and is approaching the whole issue with kid gloves despite the clear problems this employee poses.

Don Doolan – Don piggy-backed on Dave’s comments about electricians and qualifications. he agreed the lack of recertification and requalifying was a problem. Master Electricians and trade bodies need to push the province to make certification and education mandatory.

Don also noted with interest Strategic Group and all-round nice guy (not!) Ryan Mamdani requesting and receiving court-ordered creditor protection for over 50 of their properties in Calgary. The Herald story is here: https://calgaryherald.com/business/commercial-real-estate/strategic-group-granted-creditor-protection-for-56-properties-citing-poor-economy.

Don figures that true to form, Mamdani will come back after declaring bankruptcy and pick up every one of those properties for pennies on the dollar. Scam in progress.

Final note from Dwayne Vinck regarding a company he’s involved with called Proton Energy. They have technology that promises to make hydrogen a viable alternative to other fuel options (including electric vehicles). Head over to their web site to explore it. The first thing that’ll happen when you click on this link is that a quick video investor pitch will pop up, but it gives you the Reader’s Digest summary if nothing else: http://proton.energy/. They’re getting a lot of press and they’re definitely worth keeping an eye on.