Canadian Current Events Magazine Produced by NAME

Career Prospects

This article describes the growing trend in the corporate world of eliminating performance reviews, which many find to be ineffective and even counterproductive. The article notes that workers and managers alike often feel that performance reviews do not measure what they are meant to measure, and that they fail to provide

Continued on New Mining Activity in Alberta

Career Prospects

Letters to the Editor

Interview with Financial Expert

Sports Section

Career Section

Economic Scorecard

Projected Growth in 2012

Labor Market

Signs of improvement in the labor market in the United States continue as the rate of people applying for unemployment benefits hit its lowest number since May of 2008, according to recent numbers released by the U.S.

Continued on

Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.

Former PM Pierre Trudeau

Economic Indicators

The 13.2% joblessness rate in Newfoundland is just one of many indicators that seriously problems exist or are looming in many regions of Canada and in the Canadian economy as a whole. The problem isn't that there aren't jobs, but that many jobs require a level of skill or expertise that is unavailable. Companies are having to hire from far away, and indicators of population movement and employment patterns suggest highly inefficient processes and structures at work -- Newfoundlanders go to Alberta for employment, while Newfoundland businesses must hire outside workers. These all indicate the possibility for a labor-driven downturn in the economy.

Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

Your previous article regarding bailing out financial institutions sent me into a fury. It seems hypocritical that an editor can sit in his leather chair and tell Canadians. The argument provided that workers must give concessions in order for companies to survive in these hard economic times is highly tenuous. If I remember correctly, Ottawa voted itself a raise last year, not to mention 30 new seats (14 million tax payer's dollars worth). At the same time, did not every teacher in all aspects of learning get a raise, policemen, firemen, city workers, government workers get a raise! How can this be? We are in fragile economic times? Yet you think it is all right for a company to cut its employee's wages in half or ask for concession after concessions as long as they do not work for a city or government. It seems the more concessions workers make for the company to survive the bigger the bonus is at the end of the year for management. When are we going to learn that Windsor (any city besides Ottawa) cannot survive with a small (any city besides Ottawa)

Interview with Financial Expert

Karl Smith

Not too long ago, the majority of the Canadian financial sector thought that the country would manage to navigate through the storms of the financial crisis without major damage. However, there has been a serious impact on the Canadian economy in the last few years. We sit down with a financial expert to discuss the recession and its impact on Canada and local companies.

You are a financial expert. How do you evaluate the current situation?

There is little doubt that the current financial crisis, which is now also a global economic crisis, is the most serious threat to economic stability since WWII. What we experience now is the undoing of a housing market-based financial bubble that was created over the last years on cheap, easily available credit and a consumer led economic boom.

Can you explain to us how the crisis could have happened?

Economic growth follows a cyclical pattern of increase and decreases, also referred to as "boom or bust"

Career continued from Pg. 1

motivation to employees, as well. Several alternatives to traditional performance reviews are described in varying degrees of detail, and also notes that not all movements away from traditional performance reviews have been effective or beneficial to the companies that have given them up. Re-imagining performance reviews from a different and less outcome-oriented perspective can actually be beneficial to all parties concerned, improving performance and honesty in the review process.

Labor Market continued from Pg. 2

government. The number of applicants is also nearing a lower-threshold level of 350,000; when numbers remain consistently below this level, it is generally seen as a sign that the labor market is able to effectively absorb any losses brought about by layoffs, rather than the current situation where the economy is still struggling with job loss and unemployment. Job growth has still been slow, however, and there are also many people whose unemployment benefits are set to expire of action is not taken.

Career...

The Manager must cre ate monthly financial reports and assist the outside auditor on the preparation of the audits.
Call [HIDDEN] if interested.Financial analysts, also called securities or investment analysts, examine financial information in order to make sound suggestions to businesses on how to invest money. Financial analysts often use statistical software and spreadsheets to analyze the facts they gather. Financial analysts then make reports to their employers on the results of their research. They work in banks, corporations, stock brokerages, insurance companies, and government agencies. Some analysts study worldwide money matters. Others advise corporations on ways to invest their pension funds. Many financial analysts specialize in determining the value of securities, such as stocks and bonds.

Financial analysts who work for stock brokerages pass their research findings on to the securities brokers. Analysts help brokers and their customers look for good investments and determine when a stock or bond should be bought or sold.

Canadian Economic Scorecard

Canada's overall had a strong performance last year in comparison with other comparable nations. However, it wasn't enough to displace Germany as the top country in the G7 industrial nations

The chartered bank's annual report card for economic performance puts Canada slightly ahead of where it stood on five benchmarks, including unemployment and deficits.

But the combined score of 81.6 is well back of Germany's 89.2 out of a maximum 100.

The scorecard suggests that the government's contention that Canada leads the G7 in economic performance is an exaggeration.

While Canada scores higher than the G7 average, exporting powerhouse Germany tops Canada in four of five major categories -- jobless rate, inflation, government fiscal health and the current account balance with the rest of the world.

In the fifth category -- credit rating -- Canada and Germany are tied with the top AAA grade.

percentage making millions of dollars! We need a large group of workers making a comfortable wage to live. Remember it is the middle class that pays for the teachers (in part), firemen, policemen, city workers, government workers. That is a lot of pressure to put on the middle class, now do it with half our wage and do not even bring up pensions.

Whitney Cushing, Windsor

Dear Editor:

I would like to make a comment about your article of the banks of Canada being the envy of the world. They may be that but only because of the way others have been allowed to manipulate the system. The only reason is because of the government constraints we have in place stem from their desire to be more globally competitive for years. After having the bank lose a check of six digits depositing it, [which is apparently lesson one in teller school] blame it on an unsupervised teller having a manager that hasn't the courage to call and personally apologize for their mistake.

Cycles. Cycles happen, because economic corrections tend to happen by over or under shooting and not in a continuous linear pattern. In this case, a period of "easy" money (2003-2008), which was the consequence of a previous recession/market collapse response (2000-2002), created a multi-year real estate and resource boom, which in turn fuelled a multi-year derivative-based boom of balance sheet leveraging.

How does this crisis affect Canada, especially Canada's employment figures?

This crisis has its epicenter in the United States and because the U.S. is Canada's major trading partner, be it for manufactured goods or for resources, any economic change south of the border leaves a massive footprint on our economy. In this case the impact has been severe, across all sectors of the economy. As employment figures tend to be a lagging indicator, meaning that employment levels change late so an economic slow down or recession would only show reduced employment, when the recession is already upon us.

Government Agencies

The Aboriginal Affairs Ministry and several other federal and provincial government offices were able to move a longstanding issues off the books today. An agreement that had been reached regarding land claimed by the Fort Williams First Nation, and the agreement was officially signed today, closing a deal that includes over $150 million in payouts, mostly to the Ojibwa reserve with some to Ontario, as well, and with two islands transferring to the Fort William reserve. There is a long and complex history of land claims and disputes regarding these islands,…