It is very obvious with their pricing structure, and the cities that they are in that they are strictly trying to wipe out Wind Mobile and/or Mobilicity off the face of the planet. What’s hilarious is that Wind Mobile has no spectrum license in Quebec (other than the Ottawa-Gatineau area), and Rogers/Chatr’s service offerings are identical to the locations offered by Wind Mobile – Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa. On Montreal, they stated:

“We’re working out some translation issues in Montreal, but it will very soon be our sixth market,” Chatr’s senior vice-president Garrick Tiplady said in an interview.

Translation issues indeed! More like “There’s no rush since our competition isn’t there!”

You can be sure as Wind Mobile expands to other cities and/or expands their coverage in their existing cities, that Chatr will come up with “service enhancements” to incorporate those areas into their own “home network” as well.

Their pricing plan is, for the most part, identical to Wind Mobile’s structure, with the most notable exception that on Rogers/Chatr’s $35 plan, they charge 25 cents to recover your voicemail, and they charge for incoming text messages.

Since the coverage areas between Chatr and Wind is nearly identical, I have no idea who would sign up to them.

As I stated in a previous post, the new entrants to the Canadian wireless market are not going to be making any money. The only reason why Rogers is doing any of this is to bankrupt Wind Mobile and Mobilicity – Rogers/Chatr’s offering adds absolutely no value whatsoever to the Canadian mobile marketplace other than wasting consumer’s time as they have yet another offering to review.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Filed under category Commentary.

The numbers, when you dig into them, are what I consider to be “50% partisan”, mainly that partisan affiliation is only partially and not fully correlated to whether you support the government’s decision.

One question that I think the survey should have asked, but they didn’t, is asking whether the person answering the poll in question has written the long form census, or not, instead of asking for political affiliation. It would be interesting to see what people filling in the long form census think of this question.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Politics.

0. The sunny, but not overwhelmingly hot weather in Vancouver is really, really nice. There is also a nice breeze.

1. Translink day-passes are $9 and is a good bargain for those that do not extensively use the transit system. A couple one-zone passes are $2.50 and two-zoners are $3.75 so it doesn’t take long to make the day pass worthwhile.

2. I was having coffee with a friend in downtown near the waterfront station and when we were sitting on one of those cement chairs around a dry fountain, a seagull pooped from up above, narrowly missing my friend and myself. He got a little bit of white splatter on the top of his hand, which was nothing compared to the brown soupy goo that was on the concrete below us. Probably the closest “bird strike” call I’ve had in my life.

3. Mobile technology is interesting – for example, I am writing this from a Starbucks near the Olympic Village Canada Line station. I was intending on doing some much-needed park board work, but the weather and environment make it far too distracting to get anything real done. This location, in particular, has really good natural light coming in and by virtue of its sub-optimal location, is not too densely populated.

4. I went to the Lonsdale Quay and resisted the myriad of goodies that were on sale there (especially the bakery – I love bakeries). I picked up some Tuscan soup thingy and it came with a bun. I forgot what the soup place was called at the Quay but it was quite tasty soup. The soup chef there said he has been making soup for 15 years. I am starting to restrain myself from eating excessive amounts of goodies since my metabolism is no longer as effective at shedding the calories, but man, looking at the stuff is mouth watering.

5. I walked around Ambleside park. Lots of dogs there. I noticed how they divided the park into an off-leash area and a leashed area. Very smart of them.

6. Park Royal South, what was interesting was that three tables in the mall had people playing chess against each other. Otherwise the air-conditioned mall felt quite sterile. The entire corridor between the Quay and Park Royal is being “spruced up”, I hardly recognize it anymore – not that go to North or West Vancouver very often.

7. The bus from West Vancouver to downtown Vancouver was much quicker getting through traffic than the cars, by virtue of having the bus lane bypass. There is so much of a crunch of cars trying to get on the Lion’s Gate Bridge – it makes you wonder if the city planners that originally conceived of the bridge would still think over 70 years later that it would be handling much, much, much more traffic but still have three lanes.

8. The Canada Line at the downtown Vancouver location headed south was packed. It is clear that they are going to have to figure out a way to increase rush hour capacity.

9. They were giving out free samples at Starbucks of their sandwiches, and they were very recently heated up. I took two samples, and they were quite good. While I wouldn’t go out of my way to order them, I could see why others would – they had the right amount of “crunch” and taste.

Now back to my boring work!

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

Apparently Elizabeth May is trying to get this requirement changed, but there are party members that are disagreeing with this and want to replace May.

I will say this (March 2009) and say it again (August 2009): As long as Elizabeth May is leader, the Green Party of Canada will never win a seat in Parliament.

Bernard Schulmann and Greg Morrow have some further thoughts on the issue – especially the Morrow article, which explains all of the mass resignations and staffing changes that have gone on in the party over the past bit. It has long since been clear that Elizabeth May is driving the party into the ground and that the only way that the party will continue receiving votes in elections is just through sheer inertia of the “Green” name as opposed to anything the organization is doing to attract voters.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Politics.

However, I also do not like the argument of the other side that claims that a mandatory census form would result in reliable information. For example, nothing prevents people from just entering in bogus information in an attempt to retain their confidentiality. I am sure people that don’t like intrusive government questions will just give what they believe to be the most politically correct answer, or an answer that is most to be expected of them when they mail in, as opposed to getting truly reliable answers.

In today’s age, I don’t think anybody believes that the government can keep information secure, so expecting a government agency to keep your census return secure for 90 years is not a reasonable expectation. I am not sure how confidential the census data truly is – if they treated the information just like the CRA treats a tax return then at least there is an audit trail for access to that information. Still, you hear occasionally a CRA employee getting fired or charged for improper access of information, so it makes you wonder how many of these cases were settled internally without it being elevated to the public domain.

As such, while the information is desirable to have, the ability to get that information reliably will continue to degrade over the next few decades.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Filed under category Commentary.

I find it interesting that a lot of people will not do long-distance driving at night. I find driving at night is always easier than driving in the day (as long as you are not doing it in winter) simply because you can drive a lot faster and not have to worry about passing the inevitable slow vehicles on the road.

Even though Google said that the trip from St. Albert to where I live in Chilliwack is 13 hours and 15 minutes, I managed to do the drive in 10 hours and 40 minutes, even including three stops along the way (two for gas and one for bathroom).

At around Blue River, BC it was very cold at night and there was frost on some of the trees. It was also very foggy in certain areas, so much that you could only see three or four strips of yellow line in the middle of the road, so if a moose or something was on the road at the time you had no chance even at a reduced speed.

There was also an impressive lightning storm around Mount Robson Provincial Park.

There was also a deer crossing the street at the junction of Highway 16 and Highway 5 in Jasper National Park. Other than this it was an unremarkable drive.

Now what is rather eerie is that there is an elderly couple that lived in the suburb of Edmonton that we went to and they went for a trip to Chilliwack, but apparently never made it (credits to 89.5 Hawk FM News):

Alberta RCMP are asking for help in finding an elderly couple who left their home in St. Albert for a B.C. vacation

They left July 3 and haven’t been seen since.

Lyle Thomas McCann, 78, Marie Ann McCann, 77, were driving a 1999 green and white Gulf Stream Sun Voyager motorhome and towing a light green Hyundai Tucson.

They were headed for Chilliwack to meet a family member on July 10 but never showed.

Police say their motorhome was last seen in the Edson area on July 5.

The motorhome’ s Alberta licence plate is NBZ 836 while the trailer’s plate is ZPK 289.

… today, this was updated to:

Almost 3,800 people have joined a Facebook group to help an Alberta family find their missing parents.

Marie Ann and Lyle McCann, both in their late 70s, have been missing since July 3rd.

They were driving to Chilliwack to meet up with family members.

Mounties say their disappearance is ”extremely suspicious.”

The burned remains of the couple’s motorhome was found in a remote area near Edmonton, but the SUV they were towing is missing.

The Mounties are conducting an air and ground search.

My hopes that it ends well for this couple, but given the fact that there is a lot of “remote area” near Edmonton it looks like they were robbed.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Travel.

I know there are some new features in version 3.0 that I would like to implement on some of my other websites. I haven’t substantially changed the interface on Double Blind since its inception 7 years ago, and I plan to keep things that way. In particular, the black background and white font can only be pried away from my cold dead hands!

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Site Admin.

There has been so much spin about the HST. My post comes from both an accounting background and a physics background (two professions that might seem quite distant have a lot in common). I am also very well versed with income tax legislation and government policy concerning finance in general.

Both sides of the HST debate have spun the facts so hard that it is difficult to get legitimate analysis on it. The following is an attempt at clarifying the HST, as I see it.

Q: Who wins with the HST?
A: Businesses that have high amounts of inputs that they previously would have paid PST for – they can claim these as input credits with HST. Generally, this applies for businesses that deal with products as opposed to services. So industrial companies, or manufacturing companies would be a significant winner with the HST.

Q: Who loses with the HST?
A: On the business side, any businesses that have their costs dominated by labour and/or non-PSTable items. Examples include restaurants and consultants. Individually, almost everybody is going to end up paying more in consumption taxes than before the HST implementation. It is impossible to conceive of a scenario where ordinary middle-aged working individuals will pay less tax with the HST, even when factoring in the increase in the basic exemption (the amount of income you can earn without paying provincial income taxes).

Q: Will prices drop as a result of HST?
A: Only in those industries that have significant amounts of PST on their business inputs. It is also unlikely these price increases will be seen immediately – it will be subtle and impossible to measure, although in theory competitive industries should realize some price decreases in the medium and long term had HST not been implemented. The real strategic issue is that the HST benefits manufacturing, and manufacturing has been consistently been outsourced across the Pacific (to countries like China, India, Thailand, etc.) – HST will clearly enable us to be more competitive with manufacturing, but since labour costs are also a significant cost input, I haven’t seen any clear analysis to establish that we will be able to draw in more manufacturing capital. A lot of the theory behind the positive aspects of HST depends on capital asset purchases being a detriment to manufacturing, as opposed to high labour costs (which the HST does not address at all).

Q: Will HST increase my wages?
A: Very, very, very indirectly. The theory is that with increased investment, you will have demand for labour, and with labour demand, this will result in increased expectations for wages. The answer to this question is much closer to “no” than it is to “yes” and to claim that HST will result in increased wages is simply not true – doubly so if you work in a service industry.

Q: What products will cost less after HST?
A: Children’s disposable diapers. Before, they were subject to 12% (GST+PST), but they will receive a provincial exclusion on HST. The tax on a hotel room was 13% (8% provincial, 5% GST), which will be 12% after HST. Other than that, I don’t know of anything that will become cheaper. A side note is that liquor (beer, wine, spirits) should, in theory, have been cheaper (10% liquor tax plus 5% GST applied, 12% HST after), but the BC Liquor distribution branch is pocketing the extra 3% differential after July 1. (Update: A voice out there pointed out that if you drank the liquor from a restaurant it would be subject to 12%, while previously it would be subject to 15%; it should also be said, liquor is probably one of the only input credits available on non-capital expenditures in a restaurant, and the liquor would have to go through the LDB anyway, so presumably the 3% price increase is being passed on – the net result is that liquor will cost less for restaurants to purchase because they get an input tax credit on the entire tax amount, but patrons should experience the same price.)

Q: What services will cost the same after HST, and what will change?
A: Legal bills, auto mechanic bills, cell phone, “special” cable service, long distance calls, and internet are the significant services that were subject to PST and thus will not change after HST. All other services that were not subject to PST will now have the full 12% HST applied and will cost more.

Q: Explain the impact on my condominium/townhouse strata fees.
A: Although the fees themselves will not be subject to any consumption taxes, embedded within the strata fees are services (e.g. maintenance contracts, gardening, alarm security, etc.) that will likely be subject to HST when they were not subject to PST previously. Since GST/HST is not refundable to a strata, it is very likely that residents will pay more upon the implementation of HST – given the strata statements I’ve analyzed, I would guess you would see roughly a 4-5% increase in your strata fee.

Q: What about me going to McDonalds/Tim Hortons/Starbucks?
A: Other than relatively minor recoveries on capital equipment, it is unlikely the restaurant industry will decrease prices simply because they don’t stand to gain much with HST – in fact, because the bottom-line price is higher due to HST, they will witness some degree of demand destruction – take the example of a $1.30 coffee at McDonalds, your $20 bill could buy 14 coffees. With HST, that goes down to 13 coffees – although this is a very subtle change, the fact remains that you will be able to buy 7% less coffee with the same amount of money. Subconsciously, since it is unlikely you will change your coffee habits, something else in your budget will have to change as a result – or if nothing else changes, it will eat into your net savings. One thing that can be promised, however, is that the price of coffee will not go down by 7% after the HST is implemented.

Q: What about the tax credit for lower income earners for HST?
A: This affects single people making less than $20,000 a year and couples earning $25,000 or less a year. This is a political payoff mainly to retired seniors. It will not affect most ordinary middle-aged working British Columbians. In particular, this spin by Colin Hansen was particularly reprehensible since not only was he re-hashing previously revealed facts about the HST implementation, but he’s expounding on a federal benefit (the GST/HST credit) that the provincial government has nothing to do with. Whoever wrote this press release should be given a 10/10 for spin, but a 0/10 for ethics.

Q: What is the best case you can make that the HST is good for individuals?
A: HST will reduce costs for “product-heavy” industries, making BC more cost competitive. In theory this should increase investment and with investment comes tax revenues for government, and in some cases, employment. The HST will also promote specialization and horizontally-integrated (as opposed to vertically integrated) companies in various industries (as there is no longer a PST penalty to pay for inventory transfers). The benefits of HST are very indirect to measure, and very uncertain to measure as it is not entirely clear that these benefits will be realized.

Q: Aren’t consumption taxes “better” than income taxes?
A: Not necessarily. The argument is that consumption taxes represent a choice – you can choose to avoid consuming in order to avoid paying a higher tax. However, this argument falls flat when you consider that many necessary items in life require the payment of HST, such as toiletries (e.g. toothpaste). In theory, this model could work if the government purely taxed consumption instead of income, but no government will ever do this since income taxes represent such an ‘easy’ source of income.

Q: Who is this economist Jack Mintz the government always quotes, what was his research?
A: The government has always been quoting this study by Jack Mintz. Unfortunately for Mr. Mintz, the government focused on a single paragraph in the report, when Mintz was comparing the effects of both corporate tax decreases and the harmonized sales tax on capital investment – the only issue is that capital investment is not operational cost savings. Previous experience in the Atlantic provinces would suggest that the positive effects of harmonization are significantly less than advertised. It should be noted that other economists have been quite silent about this issue, probably both for political reasons and policy reasons.

Q: What about the $1.6 billion the provincial government received?
A: This reflects about $350 per British Columbian, but the government is going to eventually spend it. The government’s primary budget issue is not one of revenue, rather it is one of trying to figure out how to cap spending on healthcare and education without killing themselves politically. The money is a nice bonus for the government, but should have factored little into the decision to get into the HST.

Q: Didn’t they say the HST revenues goes directly into healthcare?
A: About half of the province’s expenditures go into health services. So yes, you could say half the revenues do go into healthcare. To say the HST is ‘dedicated’ to healthcare, however, is not true.

Q: What should have the provincial government done instead, politically speaking, if they had to do implementing something like the HST?
A: The best interim measure the government should (and could!) have taken is to introduce the concept of input tax credits on the provincial sales tax. This would have likely caused much less uproar than harmonizing the sales tax. The disadvantage of this is that you still have to retain government staff on the revenue collection side (especially for compliance since abusing input tax credits is the most common fraud for GST/HST processing), and not obtain the $1.6 billion offer from the federal government. Another option would have been to have a significant increase in the basic exemption while implementing the HST – basically a shift from income to consumption taxes. However, the government failed to do either. There are also other minor issues I have with various HST exemptions.

Q: What was the biggest flaw of the Fight HST campaign?
A: Their attached legislation to the initiative petition, the HST Extingushment Act, is very poorly written. It is so poorly written that the people that drafted and reviewed it should be embarrassed – it is like reading a grade 7 essay when it should be graduate level caliber piece of legislation. They also were very over-zealous on the spin (not nearly as bad as the government side) concerning issues such as the government’s list of “before and after HST” price changes, and overplaying their hands concerning use of the media.

Would you like some more questions answered? If so, comment below.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Filed under category Commentary.

1. Although it may seem like a stereotype, I am always impressed whenever I go to Richmond I can witness some flagrant act of bad driving.

2. HST comes in two days. The only item that I can think of that you can buy after July 1st that will become cheaper are kids’ diapers. Previously they are subject to GST and PST, while after the HST implementation, they receive an exemption for the provincial component of HST. Almost everything else that was GST-eligible will now have an extra 7% tacked on and this will cost a significant amount of money based on my spending habits. Included in this is the cost of restaurant meals, which will piss off every British Columbian every time they stop off at Tim Hortons for a coffee.

3. A (large) bag of pine nuts now costs $40 at Superstore. Normally it is around $15. Apparently there was some sort of large crop failure in China which has caused a massive price spike until the next harvest season, which will be this autumn. You can also see some other food prices edge up in general; I memorize the prices for an array of staple goods (e.g. pastas, cereals, canned goods, beverages, fruits/veggies, etc.), and a lot of the grain-type products are definitely higher priced.

4. Getting away from the computer and not checking email or the news for a couple days is something I should do a lot more often. The only problem is that it causes some mental atrophy for no apparent benefit other than enjoying the time off.

5. The June 25th Lotto Max was finally won by two parties. Despite having a $105 million prize pool instead of $95 million in the previous draw, the number of tickets sold was still around 24.7 million – on June 18th the number was roughly 24.5 million. This shows that there is a saturation point concerning this particular lottery – it was likely that it was reached on June 18th. Future lottery studiers should note this for future designs – does a higher prize (at ever-increasingly low probabilities) cause more tickets to be sold? By comparison, a typical Lotto 6/49 draw for a non-special prize has about 10 million tickets sold, twice a week. The Lotto Max, on a glance, cannibalized about 20% of the 6/49′s player base.

6. G8/G20: What a seemingly useless conference. Does any policy of any real substance ever get created from these things? They do release a statement on how they plan on solving the world’s problems, but a week after the fact, it’s in one ear and out the other.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Commentary.

The political calculus in Canada is quite interesting for the second half.

The Conservatives only want an election if they have a reasonable chance of a majority government; otherwise status quo is good enough. Polling would indicate that a majority government is unlikely.

The Bloc Quebecois are always ready to fight, and don’t stand to gain or lose much in a federal election. They will be seen as opposing the Conservatives no matter what, so they are the most predictable force in the House of Commons.

The NDP are gearing up for an autumn campaign. Despite supporting the government in 2009′s summer debacle where the Liberals proclaimed “Harper, your time is up”, the NDP saved the country from another election – this was even despite the fact that their own messaging before this event was roughly “We are the real opposition and the only party to vote against the Conservatives”. NDP polling numbers have edged up slightly, but seemingly not enough to make a “breakthrough” into serious opposition territory – roughly 60 seats needed from their 37 present before they can even consider getting into official opposition. The NDP’s only issue is that a good chunk of these seats are in Conservative territory, except in Montreal, which makes the NDP’s only real viable expansion in Montreal.

The Liberals are in the grey zone. Their polling is quite weak except in the usual territories (Toronto, Montreal) although they seemed to have bottomed out in their core Central Canada urban constituencies. Ignatieff knows that if he doesn’t “win” the election (i.e. forming government) he is likely on his way out as party leader. So in the meantime, it is in his best interests to stall, although the rest of the party is negotiating behind his back various scenarios, including a coalition with the NDP.

Inevitably, an election for the second half of this year is up to the Liberals. It is unlikely the NDP will back down from a non-confidence motion in the house, unlike their very hypocritical move in 2009.

A Double Blind post, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Filed under category Politics.