Birds Feb 20, 2020

Dan Kennelly – was in Vancouver last week at least partially on business. A number of people and shops they deal with out there are busy. One welding shop out there with 140 welders is keeping every welder occupied. Trans Am looking to supply materials to some of those shops, but it’s mostly marine, which is totally different than their regular line of work.

From the Squamish area – Squamish is growing fast! Lots of condos in particular. Dan heard that at least some of that growth is due to Whistler simply being too $$$.

He had another quick note on Whistler. It’s been bought out by Vail, and apparently, the service has taken a nosedive. There are actually petitions being signed to try to force them to improve their service. He’s also heard rumours of lift tickets being charged in USD ($189 USD for a day of skiing to be specific which merits a WTH!).

Final resource note from Dan: The inside take on the Coastal Gas Link project and LNG is that it’s supported by the vast majority of First Nations and the rest of the population that live up there. The conflict in Wet’suwet’en First Nation is an internal one. The growing feeling is that this isn’t a national issue, but that the conflict should be resolved there, and the project should go ahead while they work out their differences. 

Tony Fisher – thanks to Andy for a book rack. Hilarity ensued as Andy shot down the quality of work and Tony nixed plans to sell it. ???? Maybe you had to be there…

Brad Pachal – related quite a story he received this week from his neighbours. I hope I remember this all correctly. His neighbours are of Chinese origin. They’ve been his neighbours for 10 years. They’re both successful in the community and their daughter is a lawyer in TO. In any case, their family originates in Guangdong province. The wife is over visiting.

If you remember, last week, Ross mentioned the Chinese government is rationing masks – and they’re hard to find here as well. Brad’s neighbours reached out to him to request he send a care package with masks, hand sanitizer, etc….to China! “Hi, we have a “pandemic-in-a-box kit”. From Canada.” ????

I guess she’d reached out to her husband to find masks and other supplies and he looked as afar as Olds and Sundre – and couldn’t find ANY. (* Side note: autocorrect thinks Sundre should be “sundress”. Huh.)

Other Brad news: he’s into the final phase a large reno project. It should be about 5 weeks remaining for tiling and other finishing.

Dan – chimed back in at this point with an additional comment on masks. While he was Vancouver, his anecdotal observation was that it was only folks of Asian descent wearing masks. No one else.

Ian Campbell – was saying how his family likes to go somewhere for Family Day each year. This year, his wife decided that “somewhere” should be -18 degree, windy and freezing Halifax. ????

There was actually a family reason: they wanted to watch their son play in his final volleyball games of the year.

Ian made a point of saying that business is generally good, although after the exceptional year they had last year, year over year, things are a *bit* slower this year so far. Ian travels between shops a lot, and he noted that one of the upsides of the economic difficulties in the city is that there are no traffic jams in Calgary anymore.

Ian’s final comment revolved around everyone’s favourite city councilor, Joe Magliocca. He noted the way that council and his purpleness seem to be prepared to spend many, MANY thousands of dollars to explore a $6800 expense claim. That led to….

Dwayne Vinck – commenting as an auditor that this seems to be a clear case of petty fraud, not a “mistake”. If you happen to spot Joe – or any councilor other than Jeromy Farkas, perhaps you can pass this on to them:

Dwayne explained that one of the tactics of auditing is to examine something like this, a relatively *small* thing, to point to how an organization handles the *big* things. This is likely (he was being diplomatic) symptomatic of larger accountability issues. He wouldn’t want to be Joe as the council perhaps suddenly develops a conscience about taxpayer $$. 

Dan K. then complemented Dwayne’s notes by noting that one of the large problems contributing to the lack of accountability is that there’s no penalty in place. Where’s the consequence?

At which point Andy dotted the “i” in the conversation citing Warren Buffet:

Sean Baylis – talked about moving into the last couple of weeks of RRSP season.

Then, moving to the investment side he noted that the markets hit an all-time high again yesterday. That’s partly on the fundamental strength in the US economy, good news on COVID-19 ( what they’re now calling the Coronavirus ), which was that the number of cases dropped.

The cautionary note though is that first-quarter earnings will be impacted, so that will be interesting to see.

Sean added that it’s a good time to take profit before earnings come out since they anticipate relatively bad news. Once those earnings are released, that’s when you’ll see a market pullback.

Despite the strength in the US economy, some forecasters foresee a stimulus plan coming in the US. There’s definitely going to be one in China. Some reports have growth in the Chinese economy slumping to 3.5%, which would be an AWESOME figure for Canada, and even the US, but is less than HALF the usual for China.

Having said that, the markets are a bit surprised at possible interest cuts in the US this early in the year, and in an election year.

The final note from Sean was a wry appreciation of his father-in-law’s latest attempts to “culture” a family that spends most of its time in a hockey rink. He’d bought the family tickets to the Tony-award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen which was put on at the Jubilee Auditorium this past weekend. Sean withstood a few hockey elbows from his wife Dianna when he and the kids reacted in a less “cultured” way than expected. He occasionally would glance over at the kids to see if they were “in”. His daughter, in particular, seemed to enjoy various aspects of the live musical.

Matt Dart – had two quick notes. He was in Tampa on business recently. Some of the workers at the factory he was visiting got to enjoy a hockey game that Matt paid for (for the wrong date). Matt DID get to see the Tampa Pittsburgh game. His observation on that was that Crosby didn’t look great while Eugeny Malkin did.

Matt’s second note was that business has been really slow. He was speaking to a rep who said says he’d never seen it this bad. The eye-opening stat that underlined the feeling was that divisional sales are normally around 2 million dollars a month. Right now, the business is suffering through a 300K month. Not its first one either.

Brett Bain – noted that OSI is persevering through a government-induced educational slowdown. There’s so much uncertainty about what the AB Government might do with educational spending that some of their biggest clients, including the Calgary Board of Education has completely frozen spending, particularly in regards to IT. Other customers still committed to spending are pushing back on everything.

Brett is also missing a few shoes. He’s been throwing them at the TV when Trudeau does his impression of leadership with his “Platitudes ‘r Us” schtick. At least he’s not wearing a Sari. Justin, that is.

Ross Mikkelsen – started with more news from China. He’s been receiving emails from some suppliers in China who say that people have started to trickle back into work. The reports say they’re at about 50% capacity. It’ll take a while before things back to normal.

Ross figures that unlike the market predictors that Sean mentioned, the impact won’t necessarily be felt as much in Q1 as Q2.  Many shops have their inventory for the next quarter, but inventories will go off a cliff in Q2 as supply chains are operating at 50% at best as China recovers.

Ross noted that he can’t help but notice the differences when you juxtapose a country that can do what China’s done (take complete control of *everything*: shut down borders, essentially quarantine a country, control the back to work process, build 1,000 patient hospitals like LEGO buildings) with Canada…where a few hundred people can shut down the economy.

Ross also talked about Weber. They’ve jumped on the wood pellet bandwagon as a latecomer both with pellets and barbecues. They’ve been ripped to pieces on social media. The lesson here is if you’re going to come out with something, and it’s not perfect, just… don’t . Everything is under a microscope these days.

Ross’ final item today concerned the round of phone calls that he makes annually to reconnect with staff who’ve been off for the winter. Every single person they reached out to return said yes. He’s been doing this for a lotta years and never seen that. It means they’ll have a great team. Hopefully, the customers follow.

Michael McLennan – was celebrating. Maria had her 6th and last surgery post breast cancer. His tip: remind the women in your life to get tested and make sure they’re supported in every way possible. 

Dan added at this point that men get breast cancer – so don’t ignore weird pains. This was first hand knowledge – not himself, but someone he knew.

Michael’s next contribution was that CRA seems to be on the hunt for subcontractors via auditing companies. They just survived a GST audit that was seemingly done at random and it was evident to him that “subs” were what they were on the lookout for. Auditing mid-size companies seems like a good way for CRA to generate leads, or to put it another way, next year’s hit list.

Mel Gibson – chimed in on the blockades but from an insurance perspective. This is part of the potential ripple effect that no one sees until after the fact. One thing the industry is on the lookout for is a potential flood of business interruption claims. However, there has to be damage to property or assets before claiming against those policies successfully. ( *Editor’s note: If Morneau Shepell were in the insurance business, do you think this would be over already? )

Andy Lockhart – leftover from last week – one other thing about time in Arizona recently: there was time to read by the pool. He had two recommendations:

Memoirs – David Rockefeller – Among other things Andy enjoyed was this insight: Rockefeller’s kids were growing up and university age during the Vietnam War. That’s where his kids got radicalized. That’s why the foundation run by the Rockefeller kids has taken their positions on climate change among other issues, etc.

Here’s a blurb on the book from the Pages bookstore in Kensington (figured we could shop local):

The other book was The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell . The premise is: “Suppose that there was some kind of event (pandemic, asteroid, whatever). 95% of the population is wiped out. How do the other 5% rebuild society? This isn’t a post-apocalyptic adventure with zombies or Jennifer Lawrence in Lulu Lemon Armour (sadly). It IS, however, all of this:

The final note from Andy started with “…I’m not sure how I got roped into this…”. He continued on to explain that he’s the “volunteer” working on the application for SAWS (Southern Alberta Woodworking Society) to register as a charitable organization. The short version of the longer story is what he figured would be 10 minutes work ended up taking two hours thanks to a combination of rural internet speed, CRA web site, and who knows what other gremlins. In any case, if you hear screaming from the Priddis area…it’s likely Andy NOT throwing things at his computer with the CRA site on the screen.

Paul Boucher – relearned a valuable lesson last night. The lesson is to reconnect with past business contacts as part of his prospecting along with reaching out for the equivalent of the cold call. Out of 8 former connections that he collaborated with closely at his biggest client’s shop over the years, 8 replied with varying degrees of value from a prospecting standpoint. One, in fact, led to Paul subscribing to the City of Calgary’s external contractor jobs database: https://www.calgary.merx.com/.

If you know contractors actively looking for a new source of work, this is worth passing on to them. For example, last week Michael McLennan shared the name of the kennel maker for his dogs. As it happened, while Paul was on the site today he saw that the city is looking for a contractor to make aluminum kennels for city trucks. The information has been relayed through Michael.

Jim Bladon – had a note on the blockades no one had heard yet. Greta Thunberg tweeted her unequivocal support. If you’re a bit chilly and you’d like your temperature to go up a few degrees, you can get the rest of that bul…I mean, story, here: https://www.narcity.com/news/ca/wetsuweten-solidarity-protests-have-officially-got-greta-thunbergs-support.

Jim added that the Edmonton blockades were down in 4 minutes with citizens taking things into their own hands and that protesters in Ontario referred to themselves as “cuzzins” of the Wet’suwet’en. I looked to see if there was some Urban Dictionary definition behind that spelling, but no, whoever the protester was was just illiterate.

File this under “further consequences”: Ag people can’t move their grain despite lower than usual shipments of oil by rail. Unfortunately, when the blockades are lifted, the “catch-up backlog will mean that farmers will again have problems moving their grain to market.

A final tip from Jim this week. He’s spent some quality time with a Netflix documentary called The Pharmacist. In short strokes, this man set out to solve the murder of his son who died in a crack deal. Police figured his son was just another scumbag, BUT during his investigation (spoiler: he solves the murder without police help), he uncovers the root of the American opiate crisis perpetrated by (among others) the makers of Oxycontin, Purdue Pharma. Needless to say, the forces aligned against him as he lit the trail back to Purdue were a bit more significant than the forces resisting his investigation into a single murder.

The trailer is below. Jim thought the pharmacist was a great example of resilience and perseverance in the face of nearly insurmountable odds.

JD MacDonald – like Brad Pachal, also has neighbours of Chinese origin. They’re two doors down. JD does their walk to help them and another older couple just past them down the street. The other day, she ran out “all masked up”, and went OFF. She’s a bit hard to get away from at the best of times. She was in a bit of a lather that day.

First, she asked JD where HIS mask was and why he wasn’t wearing one ! She works at a medical clinic but she said she’s not going back to work! She’s asked for 3 months off! She won’t even stop at the T and T market anymore: everyone there is ASIAN!! (exclamation points hers)

JD added that you can’t even get through her doorway. There are multiple locks on the door. They’re turning into panic-filled hermits.

Then JD went to supplement Michael’s celebration with a celebratory note of his own. Phyllis is now 16 years cancer-free. He reflected that the first 18 months after diagnosis and during treatment were nothing short of hellish.

Phyllis almost feels “survivor’s guilt” – not uncommon in cancer survivors. She often asks why she survived and others haven’t. JD looked back on all the work she’s done mentoring other patients/survivors and together with a nod to their faith, he figured that her work there is the reason she’s still here.

Surprisingly – he ALSO had a male acquaintance who had and survived breast cancer. If you feel pain in your chest that you can’t account for, don’t let pride prevent you from getting checked.

The last note from JD was that after essentially two months on call and getting some tough jobs…middle of the night, middle ‘o the weekend, etc. – he’s taking March off “on-call” duty and letting the young guns take over for a bit. Haha.

Andy – is working on a special project out at the Priddis golf course with his son. A huge storm last year felled a number of trees. Rather than get rid of the wood, or recycle it in the usual way, a project was struck up that will see Andy and his son morph those old trees into benches for the tee boxes at the golf course. There could be as many as 50 benches by the time they’re all done! There’s no word on whether Dave Reid will be allowed on the course to claim one

Dan – added another note from his swing out to the coast. In the False Creek area, near Kitsilano beach, the water there is terribly polluted from our environmental “cuzzins” dumping sewage from their boats and yachts because they don’t want to pay to do it properly. It’s so bad that the local authorities have started to offer “free” dumping to prevent further contamination. These are no doubt the same people concerned about “all those extra tankers….”

Unrelated to that, but perhaps prompted by memories of the port, Dan added this note about inventories and logistics chains. Trans Am Pipe’s inventories are pretty good now, BUT they have containers originating from Europe sitting in Eastern Canada. With rail traffic halted or compromised, it’s possible their stock and service could be affected.

PARTING SHOT – Brett Bain : “What’s 20 feet long and smells of urine?

A line dance at a seniors’ home.

Thank you and good night! He’s here all week!