Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for the ‘Ontario Government’ Category

A preliminary report from the City of Ottawa garbage folks has floated the idea of removing the Garbage Collection portion of the City Taxes and turn it into a user fee. With this move City Taxes will drop by $86 which sounds like a nice idea, however, the User Fee for Garbage is slated to be $195 per household which is about a 115% increase in the cost of paying for Garbage in Ottawa.

How is this possible? Let’s look a little closer:

• $86 is our original garbage fee, so we’ll keep that
• $41 fee for the black and blue box program in place (say that 5 times fast)
• $68 for the new Green Bin program for organics and compost and such

Now that is an expensive program. If you are a rural Ottawa person you won’t have to pay for the Green Bins, since you won’t have them, but you’ll still have your garbage fee go up by around 50%.

My suspicion is that garbage collection will become more like water and sewers and will become a bi-monthly billed program, which will then spiral in price to match the cost of garbage collection.

Do I have any other options here? No, I can’t opt out, I can’t claim I don’t use the service, so I must pay, as must my neighbours.

Care to complain? November 10th is your day.  Read the briefing notes, very interesting accounting discussions there.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

For those with any UK heritage it is, in fact, Guy Fawkes day today. Hopefully there aren’t any more gunpowder plots out there!

No LCBO Strike

The LCBO and their union decided not to turn off the liquor spigot, and thus the mad rush on Tuesday simply meant that the shelves on Wednesday needed a lot of restocking (and lots of profits for the LCBO as well). For those who rushed out, guess you can have a BIG party for Canada Day, or you can keep your stockpile, for another holiday? There is a tentative deal in place and now we can all look forward to a boozy summer (whoo hoo!).

Unfortunately for Toronto their strike continues on and their garbage continues to stack up. With the heat this week, might make for some very aromatic issues in Toronto.

U.S. Interest Rates Stay the Same

Interest rates in the U.S. will stay the same for now, said the Federal Reserve on Wednesday.

The prices of energy and other commodities have risen of late. However, substantial resource slack is likely to dampen cost pressures, and the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some time.

Good to hear, but energy prices going back up is going to whiplash on food prices as well, so inflation being low may be wishful thinking on their part.

LCBO Strike?

With the LCBO employees about to go on strike, Ontarians have been buying booze like prohibition was about to break out (however the Beer stores will be open). The strike should make for a drier summer if it comes to pass, but again it is a question of the use of “casual” employees (i.e. employees that can’t work enough hours to qualify for benefits). Given this government run monopoly seems to be entrenching to prove a point, looks to be a dry summer in Ontario (well drier any how).

Not sure why folks in Ottawa are that excited, Gatineau is not that far away, and they even have sales for their liquor. Looks like sales at the SAQ is going to go up in Gatineau this summer.

No Nortel on TSX

Nortel delisted on Monday, and thus another sorry Canadian story ends with a whimper and not a bang. Nortel the company will not be back, as it was (it may return much like Mitel did, much smaller and weaker) but maybe that is a good thing. Hopefully the remaining employees will mostly keep their jobs, but for those who have had their pensions torn apart, their severance lost and their savings decimated, not much else can be said either.

Canada is Growing 33,592,686 Strong!

Stats Canada says that in the first quarter of 2009.

Canada’s population increased by 0.26% in the first quarter of 2009, the fastest first-quarter growth rate since 2001.

Cool! Ontario’s population is over 13,000,000 , which is also interested, but I am interested to see where these people moved into, large urban centers would be my guess.

With Summer coming very soon (on Sunday in fact), and Father’s Day on the same day this weekend looks to be an eventful one for us all.

Financially the week has seen the Nortel CEO Mike Z. standing in front of a group of Canadian politicians and saying, “It simply wasn’t feasible to pay severance,” , you have to respect his chutzpah, but when he started saying he might not get his sweetheart pension, I think he lost all credibility. With the CPI at 0.1% we are in interesting areas where allegedly our prices are not rising, yet the price of food is up 7.1% over 12 months, so the numbers are actually hiding a big issue (i.e. the poor and fixed income folks dealing with huge food price increases).  Evidently this means our interest rates may stay as low as they are for a while longer, which is just wild (IMHO).

Financial Blogging Views

Some interesting posts from my regular reads on the Financial blogging front:

• Techcrunch talks about the new Apple iPhone 3GS which is out today, will this entice more Canadians to sign up with Fido and Rogers (and their ridiculously expensive data plans)? I’m sticking with my iPod touch, thanks.
• Ellen Roseman has a little Fun and Games with her students at U of T’s continuing ed program, with Ellen Degenerates Share Club, she wins the funniest one liner of the week.
• Michael James points out that the CRA No Longer Taxing Loyalty Programs, with a few caveats added on. I wonder if my PC Points fit this new rule?
• The Canadian Capitalist points out that ‘Simply Save’ with TD Bank might be a no-brainer to sign up for, for someone like me who already does his banking with TD.
• Preet from WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo points out that the Ultimate W Expert Challenge (which he is a part of) starts this weekend on Sunday! Worthwhile just to see and hear what Preet sounds like (since you aren’t likely to see me on the big screen any time soon).
• Larry MacDonald points out that Ontario Savings Bonds are on Sale (for a few days more), but wonders if it might be better just to go with high yield bank accounts?
• Riscario muses about The Three Major Obstacles to Growth according to Brian Tracy, which is a very interesting read.
• The Four Pillars writes about Freegans, which shouldn’t be confused with Veegans, and sound like the same guys who take my crap from the bottom of my driveway.

Stay tuned this weekend, there may not be a video interlude, but there might be something even more interesting. Enjoy the start of summer and remember to call your Dad on Father’s Day!

You Guys are Bookies!

Given the upheavals in the financial world, now is the time to shuffle the deck, trade stock, buy new mutual funds, sell old ones and do lots more stuff that will incur you plenty of financial service charges, or at least that is what the financial services industry wants you to do. 

In the immortal words of Ray Valentine in one of my favorite Financial Movies, Trading Places, “… you guys are like bookies…”, when the evil Duke brothers explained how their commodities trading business works. The Financial services industry is just like bookies, they don’t make money if you make money, they make money if you use their services and incur their fees.

Transit Strike in Ottawa Over

However, that does not mean we have buses, oh no, we have to wait until February 9th to get those, we will have an O-Train, but not much else for a week. This strike (in my opinion) has killed all “good will” built up over the summer of ridiculous gas prices, that caused folks to start taking mass transit in Ottawa. The ridership may return slowly, but many people are now disillusioned and even more have found they can live without the bus for now.  This is bad for the Environment and for a lot of people’s finances, since some folks who shouldn’t buy cars, are going to (or already have), so I am displeased with this strike (and I blame both sides for it).

To attempt to lure some riders back, if you had a December bus pass, it will work for the month of February as well.

Lent is Coming

Remember Lent is coming folks and maybe it’s time to start thinking what you are going to do spiritually in this area, but also, you can use it for a Financial Period of Penance, Enlightenment, Learning or Cost Cutting. Keep this in mind Ash Wednesday is coming on February 25th, so keep that in mind. 

Some Ideas:

• You could cut out using Credit Cards, and see how your spending changes
• Use cash only, like Gail Vaz-Oxlade does on her program and see what happens
• You could take a course on the Stock Market or read to learn more about why you are investing where you are.
• Give up buying lunch and coffee at work, and save the money (or donate it to a worthy cause)

Just some ideas.