ETA Canada Travel Pass News

Air Canada is being looked down on for on-time flights. It seems to have continued since the pandemic, not once or twice.

The way to solve this is for the Federal Transportation Department to thoroughly discipline, until then travellers can refuse to board the airline. According to airline analytics firm, Air Canada had an on-time rate of just 51% last month, the lowest among 10 major North American airlines.

Another Canadian airline, West Jet, came in seventh with 62%, leaving both carriers at the bottom of the list. Last month, Air Canada operated a total of 36,017 passenger flights. Air Canada seemed to be in last place among nine North American airlines with only 52.5% in June. In addition, in the ‘punctuality’ survey recently conducted by the Korean government, Air Canada was the only airline to receive the lowest grade ‘D (insufficient)’ among 26 airlines.

If the on-time rate is low, the passengers using the airline are inevitably suffering. Passengers receive no compensation. An aviation expert who requested anonymity said, “Air Canada is operating its aircraft recklessly without preparing for unexpected situations. Bad weather and lack of controllers are also factors that lower the on-time flight rate.”

In comparison, Alaska Airlines of the United States, which operated 36,960 flights, ranked first with an on-time rate of 82%, followed by Delta Air Lines with 79%. The average performance of North American airlines was 66%, lower than those in Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Hyundai Motor Company and Kia announced on the 3rd that they recently invested US$50 million in Toronto-based artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor startup Tensorrent.

This is equivalent to 50% of Tenstorent’s recent investment of $100 million, with Hyundai Motors investing 30 million and Kia investing $20 million, respectively.

Jim Keller, who is called a ‘legend’ in the field of semiconductor design, is the CEO of Tenstorrent. It started as a fabless start-up specializing in semiconductor design, and since its establishment in 2016, it has held many AI-related intellectual property rights developed in-house.

Neural network processing unit (NPU) technology, which is essential for commercialization of autonomous driving technology, is a typical example.

Self-driving cars must interpret and judge numerous situations on the road by themselves, and for this, semiconductor technology that processes data in the order of input is required. This is different from the central processing unit (CPU). While CPUs are specialized in quickly processing serial operations, NPUs perform parallel operations that process multiple data at the same time and focus on cognitive and judgmental functions like the human brain.

CEO Keller led the design of high-performance semiconductors such as ‘A-Chip’ used in Apple’s iPhone and ‘Ryzen’, an AMD PC CPU, and led the design of self-driving semiconductors in Tesla, an electric car.

CEO Keller said, “I have been deeply impressed with Hyundai Motor Group, which has risen to become the world’s third-largest automaker by actively embracing cutting-edge technology.” he said.

Conflict between the US and Canada is deepening over taxation of information and communication (IT) companies operating worldwide, such as Google and Facebook.

From January 1 next year, Canada plans to impose a 3% tax on sales related to internet services to Canadian citizens or various data sources generated in Canada. It is retroactively applied to the sales of Internet companies such as Google and Meta until 2022. However, the problem is that negotiations on a multilateral treaty are currently underway to allow the country where the sales occurred to tax the income of multinational corporations internationally.

Governments around the world have stepped up to solve the problem that global conglomerates, such as Google, are making huge profits overseas but are not paying taxes using various tax avoidance methods. Canada has also pledged to join the multilateral treaty in 2021.

Canada, however, stipulated that it would levy its own digital services tax if the multilateral treaty did not come into effect by 2024. The current multilateral treaty is expected to be delayed by more than one year from 2024, which was the original goal, so the Canadian government’s position is that it will independently tax.

The US government strongly opposes the Canadian government’s move.

US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen recently warned in an interview with local media that “If Canada acts alone, the US government will have no choice but to take corresponding retaliatory measures in trade.”

A regulatory bill requiring the insertion of warnings on each cigarette will take effect on the 1st.

Cigarettes with warnings on the outer packaging are sold all over the world, but putting warnings on each cigarette is the first regulation in the world introduced by Canada.

As the regulation takes effect, cigarette manufacturers will have to put warnings such as ‘Poison in every puff’ on each cigarette in the future. However, regulations on retail sales will be applied in earnest from next year.

Retailers must prepare to sell king-size cigarettes with the new warning by the end of July next year. This means a grace period of one year.

Regular-size cigarettes with the new warnings must be ready for sale by the end of April 2025.

The Surrey RCMP (Federal Police) in British Columbia (BC) has issued an Amber Alert since July 19, claiming that two children from Surrey, BC, who were looking for their whereabouts, have been found in Alberta.

With the help of the Alberta RCMP, a 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl were safely taken into custody around 7:20 pm on the 30th and handed over to their father who was waiting in Alberta.

The three adults who were with the children, Verity Bolton, 45, and Abrazhas Glazov, 53, were also arrested, while the other was detained but not arrested. On Monday, Bolton was charged with two counts of kidnapping in violation of a custody order and Glazov was charged with two counts of kidnapping a child under the age of 14 and said he would appear in court in Alberta.

The five were said to be in a house in Edson, a town 200 kilometres east of Edmonton. The two children were last seen 700 kilometres from the town.

The Surrey RCMP announced that it had received 435 calls from citizens not only in BC but also in Alberta and as far away as New Brunswick, thanking the public, the media and other law enforcement agencies for their cooperation.

On July 30th, the child was safely protected, and the Amber Alert (Emergency Bulletin) was lifted, so the names and photos of the two have been removed from all articles to protect the privacy of the children. The name of the suspect has been released and announced by the police.

On the eastern Atlantic coast, heavy rains forced residents to evacuate and caused massive power outages.

In the eastern part of Nova Scotia, more than 200 mm of rain poured from the 21st to 8 am on the 22nd. As of the 23rd, 4 people have gone missing due to the heavy rain, and 1,150 residents have been evacuated. Two of the missing are children.

Some residents have been evacuated from their homes twice in two months, one in May due to a massive wildfire and this time due to flooding. CBC weather expert Ryan Snowdan said Halifax had the most rain since Hurricane Bass in 1971.

In flooded areas, 70,000 people once suffered power outages, and 10,000 people are suffering from power outages this afternoon. In northern Nova Scotia, floods raised the possibility that a dam could collapse, and the government ordered nearby residents to evacuate.

Environment Canada has predicted that rain will continue through the 23rd.

Statistics Canada released its consumer price index (CPI) for June on July 18.

Following a 3.4% rise in May, June rose 2.8% year-on-year. However, the rate of increase has slowed and is the lowest level since March 2021.

The declaration was broad-based, with lower gasoline prices leading to a slowdown in overall inflation, but ex-gasoline inflation rose 4.0% in June, following 4.4% in May.

Food and mortgage interest rates are driving inflation. Food prices rose 9.1% and mortgage rates rose 30.1% in June. Food prices were almost flat from May’s 9.0% increase but remained the highest of all items.

Among food items, the highest increases were meat (6.9%), bakery products (12.9%), dairy products (7.4%), and other prepared foods (10.2%). Fresh fruit prices rose 10.4% year-on-year, up from 5.7% in May. Eating out was 6.6%, slightly lower than May’s 6.8%, but still contributing to the rise in CPI.

Gasoline prices in June fell 21.6% year-on-year, surpassing the 18.3% drop seen in May. Besides petrol prices, mobile phone services fell 14.7%, down from 8.7% in May. This is largely due to price drops and promotions on data plans. Internet prices also fell 3.2%. We believe that promotions mainly in Ontario and Quebec are causing the price drop.

The increase in mortgage interest rates is largely due to the Bank of Canada’s policy interest rate hike. The Bank of Canada cut its policy rate to 5% this month and will raise interest rates 10 times from March 2022.

In British Columbia (BC), where drought continues, state government crisis management minister Bowin Marr urged residents to take voluntary measures to conserve water at a press conference on July 10.

Drought conditions in BC have worsened dramatically, the minister said. Currently, 17 of the state’s 34 districts have already reached level 4 of the 5 drought levels (5 being the worst). This is due to the low rainfall of the previous year.

The state government said it would continue to monitor the situation and make decisions, but similar restrictions would likely be imposed in other areas in the coming weeks.

But the state government is calling on all residents to “absolutely need” to use as little water as possible now, before official water restrictions are put into place. Examples include taking less showers, using full dishwashers and washing machines, not watering plants during hot weather, and not leaving the water running.

Premier David Evey on July 11 addresses raging wildfires and worsening drought conditions, as Canada faces its once-in-a-century wildfires B.C. is no exception, he said, adding that the road ahead is very challenging.

More than two-thirds of the 349 wildfires currently burning in B.C. are in northwestern B.C., according to a report released on July 13 by the BC Wildfire Service. Thunderstorms over the weekend have sparked fresh wildfires, prompting further evacuation orders and advisories in areas close to the wildfires.

As of Sunday afternoon, 150 people had left their homes and hundreds more had been advised to evacuate. The state government had earmarked $204 million in this year’s budget to fight the wildfires, but as of July 10, less than a month into the summer, it had already spent about $203 million.

Premier Evey thanked firefighters from the United States and Mexico who are fighting the fires on the ground. He said he expects more foreign aid and equipment to fight the fire, especially from the air.

Wildfire status for 2023 season released by BC Wildfire Service on July 13 Number of wildfires so far: 1,042 (2022: 272, 10-year average: 576) Area burned so far: 1,227,052 ha (2022: 8,894 ha, 10-year average: 76,008 ha) wildfires Causes: 33% human-caused, 6% spontaneous combustion, 61% currently unknown.

The Government of British Columbia (BC) today announced a new partnership with BC Hydro to provide air conditioning. With an investment of $10 million, 8,000 air conditioners will be provided free of charge to seniors, the physically vulnerable, and low-income people in three years.

In the context of the programme, Health Minister Adrian Dix said extreme temperature rises due to climate change will become more frequent in the future, with vulnerable groups being most affected.　Two years ago, at the end of June 2021, BC was hit by a heat dome and became extremely hot, killing 619 people.

A report from the BC coroner’s office found that 90% of those who died were over the age of 60 and more than half lived alone. And many reported having one or more chronic health conditions.

Applicants for free air conditioners will be assessed and referrals from health authorities and others will be accepted. In a related program, BC Hydro offers residential customers a rebate of $50 off the purchase of certain energy-saving air conditioners.

Chris O’Reilly, president of BC Hydro, said that air conditioning is no longer a ‘luxury’ item, citing May’s heat wave, which was 10 to 15 degrees Celsius warmer than normal.