Canada Post presents new offer, rejects union request for bargaining pause
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Global News
20 minutes ago
- Global News
Canada Post strike ‘yo-yoing' has some businesses turning elsewhere: CFIB
As unionized postal workers vote on the latest and 'final' offers from Canada Post, it may be too little, too late for some businesses as a new survey suggests they are 'starting to leave for good.' The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) released the results of a survey conducted through June and July of 2025 on how businesses have responded to the service disruptions at Canada Post amid the roughly 18 months of union negotiations and strike action. 'Yo-yoing in and out of strike mandates is causing Canada's small businesses — one of Canada Post's last groups of profitable customers — to leave for good,' said president Dan Kelly at the CFIB. 'Small business owners and other consumers need certainty. Thirteen per cent of small businesses permanently dropped usage of Canada Post during the 2024 strike and every time Canada Post goes on strike, more and more businesses leave forever.' Story continues below advertisement According to the report, the CFIB estimates the 2024 strike cost small businesses between $75 million and $100 million each day. Most businesses (71 per cent) responded to the disruptions by encouraging customers to use digital options, nearly half (45 per cent) turned to private couriers, while 27 per cent delayed mail. 'The number one thing we're hearing from business owners is that we have tons of uncertainty already with the Canada-U.S. trading relationship, and then if we add to that ongoing uncertainty with respect to whether or not the postal service is going to work, it's a huge impact,' says Kelly. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy 'There are lots of small businesses that are starting to leave for good.' 5:58 CUPW urges members to reject Canada Post contract vote Where do things stand? Members of Canada Post's largest union of postal workers are currently voting on the latest and 'final' offers from the Crown corporation, which could bring an end to the uncertainty. Story continues below advertisement Although the company has described these offers as 'final,' and a smaller union of postal workers ratified their own deal, the larger Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has urged members to vote against it. If the deal is rejected by the workers it could prolong the negotiations and strike action. The voting period for the approximately 53,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers kicked off on Monday and will end on Aug. 1, with the offers from Canada Post including a wage increase, a signing bonus, and maintaining a defined benefit pension and job security. CUPW said on Monday that 'Canada Post's offers fall short of what postal workers have rightfully earned. They ignore the day-to-day realities we face on the work floor, fail to meet our key bargaining demands, and aim to weaken the protections we've fought hard to secure.' 0:44 Canada Post reaches deal with CPAA, its 2nd largest union Canada Post has been struggling financially for several years, with a recent report by the Industrial Inquiry Commission saying the company was 'effectively insolvent' as it loses market share to competition from private companies, including UPS, FedEx and Amazon, among others. Story continues below advertisement The report by the IIC found Canada Post lost $748 million in 2023, a 26-per cent increase from the $548 million lost a year prior.
CTV News
20 minutes ago
- CTV News
B.C. landlord must pay evicted tenants $65K, court rules
A B.C. landlord who sold a rental property failed to convince a judge the buyers – who never moved into the home – should be on the hook for compensating wrongfully evicted tenants, according to a recent decision. Justice Anita Chan ruled on the dispute Friday, upholding a decision of B.C.'s Residential Tenancy Branch awarding $65,000 in compensation to the former renters. In 2022, Mohan Sull, the landlord, was renting the North Vancouver home to Thomas and Rozette Trevitt for $5,650 a month, the court heard. Sull entered into an agreement to sell the property and served the tenants with a two-month notice of eviction because 'the buyers intended to occupy the property,' according to the decision. But the buyers never moved in. 'The buyers undertook extensive renovations. The city in March 2023 issued a stop-work order. The buyers did not obtain the proper permits until May 2024. I understand the property is still fully gutted with no one residing there currently,' the judge wrote. The ousted renters successfully challenged their eviction on the grounds that the 'stated purpose of the notice to end tenancy was not accomplished,' the decision said. Buyers were not 'purchasers;' sale was conditional Sull was seeking a judicial review of the arbitrator's decision on a number of grounds, including that it was the buyers – not him – who should have to pay. 'The buyers had possession of the property and did not occupy it. The landlord argues he has no control over the property and he ought not to be held liable,' Chan wrote, summarizing the crux of Sull's submission on that point. The judge's decision explained that the arbitrator had already considered and dismissed this argument, finding that the buyers did not 'meet the definition of purchasers' in the Residential Tenancy Act. The legislation defines a purchaser as someone who has agreed to purchase 'at least half of the full reversionary interest in the property' and the arbitrator found that criteria was not met in this case, according to the judgment. That was because the deal was a five-year 'option to purchase' agreement. The buyers put down $100,000 and agreed to pay a monthly interest fee of $5,800 for the next five years or until they decided to complete the purchase of the property. 'If there was an agreement to terminate the contract, the down payment and any additional payments were to be returned to the buyers,' the decision explained. Even if the buyers were 'purchasers,' the arbitrator found the landlord was not legally entitled to evict the tenants. A landlord who has sold a property can end a tenancy but only if 'all the conditions on which the sale depends have been satisfied,' the decision explained. Because of the nature of the agreement, the sale of the property was 'at its core' a conditional sale unless and until the option to purchase was exercised. 'The arbitrator emphasized that the wrongful act was not that the buyers had not occupied the property, but rather that the tenants ought not to have had their tenancy terminated in the first place,' the decision said. The judge agreed on this point. 'The landlord was not entitled to provide the two-month notice to end tenancy, as there was no unconditional sale of the property,' Chan wrote. Unenforceable clause Sull also argued to the arbitrator and again to the judge that the eviction was legal and justified because of a clause written into the lease that read 'tenant and owner both agree to give two full calendar months written notice, when they plan to end the lease.' The problem with that argument, the judge noted, was that it was an 'impermissible opting out of the mandatory provisions of the (Residential Tenancy Act) because 'a landlord cannot end a tenancy by providing two months' written notice for any reason.' The legislation lays out specific circumstances in which a landlord can end a tenancy and leases which 'attempt to avoid or contract out' of those legal obligations are 'of no effect,' according to the decision. 'The arbitrator found that (the) clause was an attempt by the parties to increase the circumstances by which the landlord can end the tenancy,' the decision said. The judge agreed with this assessment and found the arbitrator's decision, as a whole, was reasonable in the circumstances. Wrongfully evicted tenants in circumstances like these are generally entitled to compensation equivalent to 12 months of rent. In this case, that worked out to $67,800 but the judge noted an award of $65,000 as the maximum allowable for a dispute settled by the Residential Tenancy Branch.
Globe and Mail
20 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Contra Guys: It can be advantageous to cast a wide – and global
How much of your portfolio is invested overseas? This is an important question, especially in a year such as this one, when many European stock indexes are beating North American benchmarks, including the S&P/TSX Composite Index. Though many Canadians are overweight in Canadian stocks, we remain true to our contrary roots and try to avoid home-country bias. Investing in our home market can have certain tax advantages, and avoids foreign exchange rate volatility, but it can also reduce diversification, increase risk and impact returns. Ultimately, it is a big world out there, and it can be advantageous to cast a wide net. This is why we make a habit of investing in exchange-traded funds and equities that do business around the globe. One such ETF is the Global X MSCI Greece ETF GREK-A, which tracks the performance of the MSCI All Greece Select 25/50 Index. Here at Contra the Heard Investment Newsletter, we took a stake in GREK in October, 2015. Back then, the Greek financial crisis was rumbling into its seventh year and few investors wanted to touch the country. The government had just negotiated its third bailout package, introduced capital controls and then-Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had won a surprise re-election. These actions tempered the surging value of credit default swaps and yields on government debt, but the nation remained on the cusp of default. Gross domestic product had fallen from US$352.1-billion in 2008 to US$194.6-billion in 2015, the unemployment rate was around 25 per cent and the banking sector was on life support, as roughly 47 per cent of all loans were non-performing. To illustrate just how bad the Hellenic banking crisis was, during the peak of the 2008-09 U.S. financial crisis, America's non-performing loans were only 7.5 per cent. Amid these economic depression-like conditions, the Greek stock market sank to one of the cheapest in the world and we took a stake. Not only was it inexpensive, but we figured the Troika (a decision-making group composed of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) would not let Greece fail. The Troika had already bailed out the country three times and, within the context of the European Union, Greece was too big to fail. Once the ETF was in our portfolio, we practised patience. While corporate turnarounds take time, national ones can take even longer. In 2023, I wrote about the Greek ETF for The Globe and Mail. At the time, I argued the ETF was still cheap and the country was performing well thanks to a series of reforms that had cut the national debt, streamlined regulations, reduced tax avoidance, digitized government processes and put the banks back on their feet. Earlier: Greece's stock market is on a tear - and this ETF tracking it is poised for even more gains Fast forward to the present day and the turnaround has turned into a growth story. Greece regained an investment-grade credit rating in late 2023, the country's debt-to-GDP ratio has fallen from more than 200 per cent to 153.6 per cent and it produced a budgetary surplus of 1.3 per cent of GDP in 2024. By contrast, the euro zone average was a deficit of 3.1 per cent. The Greek government surplus is even more impressive given that most European countries have been spending just over 2 per cent of GDP on defence while Greece spent approximately 3.1 per cent last year. This should serve Greece well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance moves toward a new 5-per-cent target. Aside from government finances, the rest of Greece's economy is doing well too. The unemployment rate has fallen to under 8 per cent, the household-debt-to-GDP ratio has fallen from nearly 67 per cent to 39 per cent since the financial crisis and the financial sector's non-performing loan balance now stands at under 4 per cent. The banks have done so well that they now account for more than half of the GREK ETF versus around a quarter a decade ago. Despite all the success, Greece is not without risk. The debt-to-GDP ratio is still high, the nation continues to score poorly on the Corruption Perception Index despite recent advances and it has continuing problems with its neighbours in Turkey. The legal system is also a congested and inefficient mess. According to the EU Justice Scoreboard, it takes Greek courts over 600 days to conclude civil and commercial cases. By contrast, Denmark takes less than 20 days and most European countries take around 100 days. This means it can take years for a trial to reach a conclusion – assuming there is no appeal. These timelines slow down business, drive away foreign investment and leave parties impacted by court cases in a state of limbo. At its core, Greece faces poor demographics as well. The nation's fertility rate is roughly 1.3 births per woman, it suffered years of net emigration during the financial crisis and the median age, currently in the mid-40s, is climbing fast. This means that Greece's population, which peaked over a decade ago, is expected to fall in the decades ahead. Moreover, Greek society will get materially older; this will leave fewer working-age people to support retirees, health care infrastructure and pensions. All in all, however, Greece has more going for it than against it, and the turnaround over the past decade has been a resounding success. The outlook is positive and the GREK ETF could rally much further. We recently trimmed our position in GREK for a 109.2-per-cent gain. Locking in this profit recouped our initial investment but leaves plenty of skin in the game to benefit from future price appreciation. Today, GREK sports a yield of over 4 per cent and blends strong momentum with low stock valuations. These are excellent characteristics, especially when coupled with the underlying economic conditions. Our plan is to let the ETF run, look for valuations to increase further and sell the rest of our stake in slices. Once it is sold entirely, we will continue to avoid home-country bias, deploy the winnings in a new overseas investment and, with any luck, repeat the success. Philip MacKellar is the general manager at Contra the Heard Investment Newsletter.
