Early Birds, March 30, 2023
Early Birds, March 30th, 2023
Dan Kennelly – Trans Am Pipe is steady at work. They are working with Suncor on internal supply chain issues and helping their operational and maintenance sides. Positive so far. Mind-boggling the number of POs they write to internal vendors every month. Trans Am can help them declutter.
LNG news: Two more LNG plants with indigenous stakeholders might go ahead. In Canada!
Both are potentially well situated to avoid transport snarls by going around the north of Vancouver island.
Dan again mourned the regulatory climate in Canada in particular. A refinery can take 8-20 years from conception to production here. Sites in China constructed by Saudi Arabia will take three years. Don't mind the residents.
Jim Bladon - not a whole lot except a few observations on the federal budget. On the whole, it was pretty uneventful. Well, except for adding $50 billion more in debt and hoping for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The government changed the plans for the liquor tax. The original increase would have wiped out close to 50% of craft breweries by some estimates.
Carbon pricing is a concern for the farming community. Huge input cost.
Saturday, expect the price of gas to go up north of 1.40. Retailers expecting a run on fuel before the carbon tax takes effect on Saturday had artificially jacked prices to an average of $1.40 around Calgary.
Finally – Jim circulated a report commissioned by Rachel Notley, authored by Todd Hirsch. Here's a link to the document.
Matt Dart – has eyes on various prizes for Johnson Controls, including Ronald Macdonald house building an extension and having the job up for tender.
Dwayne Vinck – looked askance at the Liberals once again spending not only your grandchildren's money but your great-great-grandchildren's dollars.
However, he did acknowledge a bit of jam in the critical minerals space. Tax credits once you're in production, but getting to that point is the biggest hurdle all companies face unless they're already well capitalized by revenue from other projects.
Don Davis – told of a friend celebrating his 81st birthday gentlemen in Toronto and, among other things getting a call from a neighbour about the fact there was 7 feet of snow in their driveway.
That friend also told Don about a cabin in the Muskokas North of Toronto for $38,000 a month – NOT a typo. It's also not the most you could pay. There was a five-bedroom cabin listing to rent for $66,000 for a month.
Ross Mikkelsen – budget-related comment on the fact that the Feds are forcing credit card fee reductions from the credit card companies. No specifics, so….he waits to see how it will play out.
Garry Friedrichsen – gave another lesson in critical thinking that could only come after the market "education" he received while working with Gillette and Procter and Gamble.
BMO's new platform includes ESG ratings you can consider when planning investments. Garry wondered where BMO was getting their ESG data from and the parameters for the data. It turns out that they're using MSCI, a colossal firm out of NY. There were so many assumptions to generate a firm's rating that it rendered the rating meaningless.
For example, on diversity, two things:
If a company had at least a certain number of women on the board, statistics seemed to show that those firms were marginally less productive than firms with no women on the board. The implication? Don't buy companies with women on the board. Or fire the female board members. There was so much wrong with that research, and what they took into account that it was simply useless text on a white background.
HOWEVER, if a company DIDN'T have women on the board, they'd get docked on the ESG rating (remember that last G stands for Governance). Soooo, don't buy companies with women on the board, but on the other hand, DO buy companies with women on the board if you like a higher ESG score.
The lesson – at least for me- is to be a critical thinker, and if you don't have the knowledge to assess something, look for a qualified expert – and don't overlook the resources at your fingertips. Like a fellow Early Bird. 😊
Tony Fisher – Federal budget-related note on travel costs. A hefty increase in security fees will affect the cost of every plane ticket coming soon. If I heard Tony right, the increase was 30%. If I didn't hear right, I guess I'll speak with our resident audiologist.
Rob Beasant – Calgary's real estate market is steady. Sales are not where they were last year, but not far. 40% of correctly priced listings are going over list price.
On a personal note, his daughter captured the Canadian National ski championship – and did it with a grade 3 tear in her ACL in her knee. So after a fall in the US championship round, dad persuaded her to stop and look after herself.
Afterward, they consulted with her sports physician on Monday. Wednesday, they spoke with a specialist. Surgery's been scheduled for the next two weeks, and a technique will be used to allow her to return to competition this fall. Rob's takeaway – the health care system is superb, but it comes down to "who you know!"
Joel Shapiro - old family business friend helping with onboarding new clients.
Joel is currently engaged with a leadership development project for Paramount.
Another of the family businesses Well Juicery, has become a juice supplier to Starbucks. You can order directly from Well Juicery here: https://www.drinkwell.ca/.
He also offered a leadership tip on feedback, which is necessary to help develop team members/employees. He used the terrible team player example. He commented that simply attacking the person would be counter-productive and induce the fight-flight or freeze response. That will lead to no further contribution from that employee.
His tip is instead to have a direct, objective-language, business-based conversation. That helps to take it out of the realm of the persona. It will more often lead to a productive outcome for your business and the employee.
Don Doolan – found it interesting the deputy of the Bank of Canada lifted his skirt this week and addressed the length of this period of quantitative tightening. 2025 seems to be the soonest we might hope for relief from higher interest rates.
Andy Lockhart - added to Rob's comment. His grandson and his team won his division in hockey championships last weekend.
Then, to Joel's leadership point, Andy's grandson was benched for a couple of third periods, and he doesn't know why. The coach seems to be a showcase for mismanagement.
Ian Campbell – revealed a new sign of Spring, the "block heater can come off" to feel the air on his bald head.
Another successful offspring story: Ian's daughter won the artistic swimming championships in Markham – the new name for Synchronized Swimming.
Sean Baylis – opened with a very technical statement on the market. Unfortunately, the market's feeling a little like Gwyneth Paltrow- a lot of hot air up asses.
First – the new budget impacted the wealth management world. In particular, the feds increased RESP and RDSP limits, which will benefit many Canadians.
There are also new tax credits for tech, green industries, and low-income earners.
Aside from the budget, the Canadian banking sector is still stable compared to the US market. The market as a whole is also slowly stabilizing as the banking sector has settled.
The final note from Sean is that he passed the marker to the "back nine" when he turned 50 on Monday.
SECOND ROUND NUGGET
Dwayne Vinck – added one last note on cutting one of the two landlines he still had. He inadvertently cut the phone link to their security system – suddenly, it didn't have a way to call resources. So if you cut landlines, be aware of those unintended effects.
