Here are five things you need to know this morning:
Vancouver grain worker strike
Grain workers at the port of Vancouver walked off the job yesterday, the culmination of a simmering dispute over working hours and pay. The Grain Workers Union Local 333 gave 72-hour notice of a strike by their 750-odd members on Saturday, a deadline that kicked in on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. local time. The disruption is devastating news for farmers, as the port handles more than half of Canada’s grain production just as many of this year’s harvests are ready to go. The impasse could cause as much as 100,000 metric tonnes of grain per day to start piling up, at a cost of about $35 million per day. The trade group the Grain Growers of Canada is calling for the federal government to step in.
FTX collaborator Caroline Ellison sentenced to two-years
Caroline Ellison, who contributed to the massive cryptocurrency fraud at FTX before co-operating with police to build the case against her former coworkers, was sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the debacle. At her sentencing hearing yesterday, the presiding judge gave Ellison credit for her “remarkable” testimony and collaboration but said that cannot mean she gets a “get out of jail free card.” She has been ordered to serve two years in prison, which will start when she surrenders to authorities on Nov. 7. Prosecution officials had even lobbied for her to be sentenced to three years of supervised probation without incarceration, but the judge opted for more. That’s a sign of what the penalties are likely to be when other FTX executives who co-operated are sentenced in the coming months. Sam Bankman-Fried, the mastermind of the fraud, is currently serving a 25-year sentence.
Canary in the coal mine of Canadian mortgages might be Scotiabank, Bloomberg says
If there is going to be a problem at the mortgage books of Canada’s big banks, it’s likely to show up first at Scotiabank, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Paul Gulberg says. In a new report, Gulberg and co-analyst Himanshu Bakshi write that Scotia has less exposure than some of its peers to Canadian mortgages, but a higher percentage of the loans are variable rate, which means those borrowers have been feeling the stress of higher payments for months now, unlike fixed-rate borrowers who won’t until they renew. Delinquency rates are still low in absolute terms, but at Scotiabank they have crept back up to 2019 levels. “Recent rate cuts will provide some relief to borrowers, but not immediate,” they write.
BOC needs to ‘stick the landing’ on rate cuts: Macklem
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem says he glad to see that Canada’s inflation rate has fallen to the bank’s two per cent goal, but the central bank now has to “stick the landing” and keep CPI around there. Macklem made the comments at a speech to a banking audience in Toronto yesterday, adding that it’s reasonable to expect more interest rate cuts, given the progress made on inflation. As things stand, the market is fully pricing in one 25-point rate cut at the next policy meeting in October, and there is roughly a 50-50 chance that the cut will be even bigger, at half a percentage point.
Canada added another 250,000 people last quarter
Statistics Canada released new population estimates this morning, numbers which showed that Canada’s population hit 41,288,599 people on Canada Day of this year. That’s an increase of more than a quarter of a million people, or 0.6 per cent quarterly growth. That’s a slowdown from the previous quarter’s pace of growth and the first time we’ve seen a slowdown since 2020. Almost half of the gain, or 118,000 people, were temporary residents, the data agency said.
