Canadian prices for a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 10.1 MP Digital Camera with 12x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom range between $385 (at a unknown store) and $429 (at Vistek). The price at Amazon.com is $271 US. Even with an 85 US cent Canadian dollar this is $318 Canadian.
Is Panasonic responsible for these prices or is it Canadian retailers?
As it comes to a completion Industry Canada's wireless spectrum auction has seen the possible emergence of a fourth independent national wireless carrier and the collection of $4.1 billion in bids. In his opinion piece in the National Post decrying this auction, Terence Corcoran states that the government of Canada should not be auctioning off parts of the wireless spectrum as it imposes costs on business. What he does not state is what is the alternative? Should it be user first-come-first-served? Or should the government just give it all to Rogers or maybe CanWest? The opinion piece does not provide an answer.
Edward Willett has posted the list of the winners and photos from the 2008 Prix Aurora Awards, announced Sunday 18 May 2008 at Keycon 25 in Winnipeg. Winners include:
The awards are given out by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association for the year's best work with voting by members of the yearly national Canadian SF&F Convention, in a manner similar to that of the Hugo Awards.
Via Locus Online.
The Canadian government has announced that Canada will not attend the United Nations conference on racism next year in Durban, South Africa as it's shaping up to be another anti-Semitic hate fest. Ynetnews.com has the details of the Canadian decision:
The so-called Durban II conference ''has gone completely off the rails'' and Canada wants no part of it, said Jason Kenney, Canada's secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity.
''Canada is interested in combating racism, not promoting it,'' Kenney said. ''We'll attend any conference that is opposed to racism and intolerance, not those that actually promote racism and intolerance.''
The 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban turned into ''a circus of intolerance,'' Kenney said, when Arab and Muslim countries criticized Israel. Israel and the United States walked out in protested, but the former Liberal Canadian government remained to speak up for Israel.
With Libya elected to chair the next gathering, Cuba appointed vice-chair, and anti-Israel rhetoric and actions building, Kenney said his government was left with no choice but to abandon the preparatory process for the followup meeting.
Hopefully the United States and more open European nations will follow in the decision.
The Canadian wireless industry got a shock Thursday when the federal government announced that in order to increase competition a portion of the wireless spectrum coming available for auction will be reserved for new entrants in the market. Of the 105 Megahertz being auctioned off, 40 MHz will be reserved for new entrants.
Globe and Mail columnist Derek DeCloet looks at how self-serving the wireless industry’s claims of adequate competition were. The market seems to agree – share of Rogers Communications Inc., BCE Inc. and Telus Corp all fell Thursday.
However entry into a market where the big three already have 19 million subscribers will not be easy or cheap, with one cost estimate being between $1.5-billion and $2-billion on spectrum, equipment and startup losses.
My view is thatthe quickest way for a new competitor to make a splash is to license the iPhone for Canada and provide a cheap data plan for it. Based on events in the US tens or hundreds of thousands of people will switch to the new company.
The Globe and Mail reports that nearly a decade after their first introduction in the United States Canadians will be able to buy authorized TiVo DVRs through Canadian retail outlets such as Future Shop. The devices being sold are standard definition 80 hour Series2 boxes for $199 plus a $12.95 monthly subscription fee. TiVo’s high definition DVRs use the CableCard interface that is not available in Canada and there will not be sold here.
Canadian cable and satellite companies have offered less advanced DVRs for several years.
While they don’t have extras such as recommendations they do allow users to record two shows at once and set up one time, daily and weekly recordings. It may be difficult for TiVo to compete in the Canadian market unless they deal directly with the cable and satellite companies.
In a posting yesterday I noted that it was unfortunate that the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is preventing foreign teams from competing in its Grand Challenges involving robotic vehicles. Today the Globe and Mail has an article noting that no less than 10 of the teams in next month urban driving challenge will be using navigational technology from Canadian company Applanix Corp. of Richmond Hill, Ontario.
Applanix technology uses GPS in conjunction with inertial systems such as gyroscopes to determine the vehicle’s position. Additional systems from other companies such as laser range finders are used to identify obstacles. The vehicle’s current position plus details of its surroundings are then analyzed in software to determine its movements, all done while the vehicle is moving at high speeds.
The Canadian government should sponsor a competition for Canadian teams – maybe seeing which university can build a car that can navigate the 401 during rush hour.
The Toronto Star has asked readers if the rise of the Canadian dollar from its all-time low of 62 cents US in early 2002 to 95 cents US has impacted the prices of goods they buy at stores. Many believe that prices have not dropped enough and Canadians are paying more than Americans for similar items and this view is now being shared by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who wants businesses to pass along savings from the higher Canadian dollar.
Change is still quite slow, it took until yesterday for Microsoft to somewhat realign the price of the Xbox 360 in Canada to better match those in the United States. Previously the 20 GB Premium console was $399 US for Americans but was $499 Canadian in Canada, much more than the $440 or so a comparable exchange rate would give. Now with an across the board price cut the prices are $349 US and $399 Canadian. The later Canadian price works out to $380 with a 95 cent dollar.
BTW, lower price or not it probably is best to wait to buy a 20 GB Xbox 360 Premium. Rumours are that cooler 65nm CPU versions with HDMI out may be available later this month.
Update: HDMI confirmed in the wild. Now somebody needs to open their new console up to check for 65nm chips. :)
Following a mistaken early announcement last week Google has introduced for real its Google Finance Canada site. With the ability to easily integrate data from the site into Google’s other tools this could be a strong competitor to the Globe and Mail’s GlobeInvestor.com site and other Canadian investment sites.
Among the measures in today’s Canadian federal budget are both levies on gas guzzlers and rebates for fuel efficient vehicles. Among gas guzzlers the government exempts trucks but classifies a H3 Hummers as a passenger vehicle to which the levy applies. Vehicles receiving rebates fall into two categories:
The Canadian Press reports that Canadian Leopard tanks from the Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians) armoured regiment based in Edmonton have conducted their first operations in around Kandahar, Afghanistan. The tanks become the first Canadian tanks deployed to combat operations since the Korean War. In total 15 tanks have been transported to Afghanistan at a cost of $1 million each plus several armoured recovery vehicles.
The first tank and armoured recovery vehicle were transported at the end of September to central Asia on commercial Antonov An-124 and then to Kandahar on separate flights of leased US Air Force C-17s. The Canadian American Strategic Review site has further pages on the threats to Canadian tanks in Afghanistan, which fortunately do not include the latest generation Russian anti-tank weapons that Iran and Syria supplied to Hezbollah.
CTV reported in October that the Canadian military is considering purchasing up to 100 surplus Leopard 2 tanks from the German and Swiss armies for an additional battle group.
Update: December 3, 2006
The tanks quickly saw action, firing shells at a mud walled abandoned grape drying hut, presumably from which Taliban fighters were firing.
The Globe and Mail, National Post and business groups expect a rough trading day tomorrow after Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hastily announced a new tax on income trust distributions. The tax, which would apply to new trusts in 2007 and existing trusts in 2011, is a bid to stem the growing number of companies that are converting to trusts. Trusts do not pay income tax, rather their unitholders pay taxes on the distributions they receive.
The corporate income tax rate will also be cut by one half a percent point as of January 2011 to further reduce the advantage of converting to trusts.
The rate of the tax on distributions was not announced but in his press conference Flaherty basically stated that by 2011 the tax advantages of income trusts would be eliminated. From a transcript:
Question: Could you explain a little bit more the distribution tax on distributions, what the rate will be and how it’s determined? I haven’t had a chance to look at the backgrounder. Hon. Jim Flaherty: No, and I’m not sure you’ll find all that in the backgrounder. You may have to speak to some of the Finance Department folks who are here specifically to give technical detail. But the plan is to go out five years and -- I’m sorry, after four full years so in year five we will have tax equity between corporations and income trusts. Corporations will continue to do business in Canada. Income trusts will continue to do business in Canada. One would hope that the tax reason for creating income trusts will no longer exist. That’s why we’ve designed the distribution tax in the way we’ve designed it and that’s also why we’re reducing the corporate income tax rate by another half a percent point four years out so that the corporate revenues, the revenues from business that the Government of Canada receives will not increase as a result of these tax measures. So, as I say, some businesses will choose to continue as income trusts. It may suit their business model and others may well not do so.
The Tories promised not to change the income trust tax structure prior to the last election in January and attacked the Liberals for suggesting that changes were needed.
Looks like the Telus and Bell trust conversions were the straw the broke the camel's back.
Sari Stein was live blogging the Dawson College shooting that left one woman dead and twenty more people injured, half in critical condition. The gunman was also killed. Unfortunately Montreal has been the scene of two other mass shootings in academic institutions, the Dec. 6, 1989 Marc Lépine attack on female engineering students that left 14 dead and the August 24, 1992 murder of four colleagues by a professor denied tenure.
During the 2000-2001 power crisis in California, energy utilities such as Enron were accused of manipulating the energy markets by actions such as deliberately shutting down some generating stations for unneeded “maintenance work” in order to cause power shortages, driving up the overall price of electricity.
Perhaps with this in mind Bruce Power LP, the operators of the 6,192 MW Bruce nuclear power plant in Ontario have announced that all of their operational units are in fact operating. Which was a good thing since Ontario used a record 27,005 megawatts of power this afternoon, beating the previous record of 26,160 megawatts set last July. The Globe and Mail notes that right now Ontario is maxed-out
The province's nuclear generation is operating at 99 per cent of its potential, while oil and gas is running at 100-per-cent capacity. The coal supply is operating at 89 per cent and hydroelectric at 88 per cent capacity.
The Independent Electricity System Operator has a page listing current and peak demand.
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