Category: Hicks on Biz columns from The Edmonton Sun
Hicks on Biz columns from The Edmonton Sun
Executive Vice Chairman of Canadian Natural Resources Steve Laut speaks at the TD Securities Calgary Energy Conference in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, July 9, 2019. REUTERS/Todd Korol ORG XMIT: GGG-CAL1O1TODD KOROL / REUTERS
Every Canadian teacher could do this country a huge favour by listening to most of a 36-minute podcast from the Arc Energy Research Institute.
Entitled “An Interview with Steve Laut”, and found on the internet at https://www.arcenergyinstitute.com/canadian-natural-resources-an-interview-with-steve-laut/, the podcast is a conversation between Canadian National Resources’ (CNRL) executive vice-chairman Laut and Calgary-based Arc Energy analysts Peter Tertzakian and Jackie Forrest.
Tertzakian and Forrest are two of the most knowledgeable and best communicators/analysts in Canada’s energy sector.
Laut, who heads up CNRL, is arguably the most influential executive in Canadian oil and gas.
Under Laut’s stewardship, CNRL has ...
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Former NAIT President Sam Shaw is applying his educational acumen to the furniture business. GRAHAM HICKS/EDMONTON SUN
By GRAHAM HICKS
The Energizer Bunny is back.
Sam Shaw made quite the name for himself and NAIT (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) when he headed up the educational institution for 13 years, from 1997 to 2010.
He was here, there and everywhere – running and modernizing Alberta’s biggest post-secondary school, chairing the city’s United Way campaign, being honourary colonel of the CFB Edmonton’s 408 Tactical Helicopter Squadron, chairing this committee, that committee, fund-raising for worthy causes.
His imprint on the community was such that in 2004, Venture business magazine named him Alberta’s Business Person of the Year.
Fast-forward nine years: Shaw had moved his family to Calgary after his NAIT days, where he was vice president of policy development with the Encana energy company.
But he now holds dual-city citizenship, for ...
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St. Albert Coun. Natalie Joly asked council to look at banning conversion therapy within its municipal boundaries.Shaughn Butts / Postmedia
By GRAHAM HICKS
A little bit of this, a little bit of that …
LET THE PROVINCE DEAL WITH SOCIAL ISSUES
Why is St. Albert City Council passing rhetorical, unenforceable bylaws on social issues way outside of its jurisdiction, i.e. a ban on conversion therapy?
It’s a fine sentiment . Nobody should be forcibly brainwashed into changing their sexual orientation. But it’s the wrong level of government.
In Alberta, municipalities are responsible for maintaining and building civic infrastructure, transit, public safety and providing recreation/leisure facilities for their citizens.
The province and the federal government are responsible for social issues. The creation and enforcement of laws dealing with discrimination, human rights (including sexual/gender preference and choice) and ethical decisions – such as legal suicide, or c ...
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Richard Sutton, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and distinguished research scientist with Google DeepMind and professor of computer science with Amii, speaking during AccelerateAB, an annual technology convention at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton on April 24, 2018.Ed Kaiser / Postmedia, file
By GRAHAM HICKS
I surrender. I capitulate.
For the past decade, I have been skeptical about this high-tech, innovation, disruption, knowledge-based business “eco-system” allegedly being built in Edmonton.
Show me the money! Show me the employment! Show me the University of Alberta computer science PhD students staying in Edmonton for career opportunities! Show me the office space leased to these companies!
Well, after a decade of incubators, accelerators, tax breaks, government grants, interest-free loans and wheel-spinning, it is finally happening.
In the last six months, some $40 million in venture capital from around the world has flowed into early-stage high-tech compan ...
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Welcome to Jasper sign is seen on the east entrance to the National Park town. File photoTom Braid / Tom Braid/Edmonton Sun/Postmedia
By GRAHAM HICKS
Does it matter who actually owns a well-known building, a shopping mall, a condo tower, a hotel?
Not really.
Usually it’s just Big Money being shuffled around – pension, insurance funds, major developers – buying and selling to each other.
Except for the exceptions.
Jasper’s hotel ownership has just gone through its biggest shake-up ever.
An entire culture is changing: Jasper’s Mountain Park Lodges (MPL) chain, owned by the same group of Edmonton families for the past 50 years, has sold controlling interest (60%) in its seven hotels to hospitality company Pursuit.
Pursuit, in turn, is a division of a global hotel/hospitality services company known as Viad Corporation, with $1.3 billion in revenues last year. Viad is a public company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Pursuit is actually a ...
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A rendering of the proposed solar farm at the E.L. Smith water treatment centre. This view is looking west from a recreational trail across the river.Supplied, Epcor
By GRAHAM HICKS
This past week, for two long afternoons, I was glued to my computer screen watching (at councilontheweb.edmonton.ca) Edmonton’s city council deal with Epcor’s application to build an enormous solar power farm, right beside its E.L. Smith water treatment plant in the river valley just north of the Henday Drive southwest bridge.
The rationale is to provide “sustainable” power for the treatment plant.
As a commentator, my own bias is clear. I deeply believe, as do most Edmontonians, that the river valley is a sacred public trust, a multi-kilometre stretch of uninterrupted, beautiful riverside parkland. No other city in the world has been so blessed.
Other than essential infrastructure (i.e. water and waste-water services, bridges) no further industrial development should ever be allowed in the riv ...
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Epcor's proposed solar farm at the E. L. Smith water treatment centre, a rendering from the perspective of someone standing on Anthony Henday Drive.Epcor / Supplied
By GRAHAM HICKS
I like Epcor.
I really do.
I like the notion of a city-owned company successfully competing in the free market, this year delivering a monstrous $171 million shareholder dividend to the city.
Epcor has been so good for the city.
A far-sighted decision to become a global water/sewage treatment company has paid off handsomely. At home Epcor provides excellent water (and power transmission) facilities for the City of Edmonton.
When Epcor opted for the water route, it bundled up its power-generation assets to create Capital Power. With 700 employees mostly in Edmonton, Capital Power has grown into another city-headquartered corporate powerhouse.
So I am even more baffled and dismayed at Epcor’s desire to industrialize and clutter up Edmonton’s pristine river valley with 45,000 solar panels, t ...
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One of the first cannabis crops at Freedom Cannabis is growing within strictly controlled circumstances. Graham Hicks / Postmedia
Don’t get carried away.
Despite much wishful thinking, Alberta’s brand-new legalized cannabis industry is NOT going to replace oil and gas.
Alberta produces and exports 3.7 million barrels of oil and diluted bitumen PER DAY – at roughly $50 Cdn. per barrel, that’s $185 million PER DAY, or $1.3 billion PER WEEK.
The federal government estimates total cannabis retail sales (legal) for all Canada this year will be around $726 million.
Even if we double that number, for spending on wholesale cannabis production, greenhouse construction, legal and accounting services, even if we add on the salaries of some 2,000 cannabis retail store employees and maybe 1,500 cannabis greenhouse workers … it’s the equivalent of – at most – two weeks of provincial oil and gas gross revenue.
That said, the emerging cannabi ...
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A new trade deal with China is good news for Alberta cattle producers.Postmedia
By GRAHAM HICKS
Why is beef so expensive, and pork so cheap?
A nice four-pound (two kilogram) pork tenderloin for the family’s Sunday get together clocks in at a reasonable $20. The equivalent prime rib beef roast – two kilograms – would cost about $80!
You can’t even buy a prime rib roast anymore! At the west-end Superstore earlier this week, all the roasts were cheaper cuts of beef – outside round for $13 a kilogram, blade roasts for $15 a kilogram. “We don’t make prime rib roasts anymore,” the meat counter clerk said. “They’re so expensive. People just don’t buy them.”
Do you not vaguely remember a time when a good roast of beef and a pork tenderloin cost about the same? When beef ribs, kilo for kilo, were close to pork chops in price? When a 16-ounce porterhouse or a t-bone steak in a good restaurant didn’t cost a jaw-dropping $40 to $50 ...
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The City of Beaumont unveiled ELAElectric Autonomous, the first Electric Autonomous Shuttle experience open to the community and will be free to ride, during a press conference in Beaumont, May 16, 2019. This will be Canada's first-ever pilot of an autonomous shuttle in mixed traffic use. Ed Kaiser/Postmedia
We’ve heard it so often, we’ve become numb.
Soon! Soon! Autonomous vehicles (AVs) will take over!
No more human-driven vehicles, no more individually owned vehicles.
We will all ride-share in a dial-a-bus-like municipal AV fleet. Soon!
Guess what?
Soon has become now!
Right now, a 12-person fully automated van – no driver, no driver’s compartment – is scurrying up and down the town of Beaumont’s main thoroughfare, sharing the road with regular traffic.
There’s plenty of leading-edge AVs out there – every major automaker has skin in this game. AV fleets are beginning to buzz around industrial sites, airports, golf courses, wherever there& ...
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