Briefly:

Previous Brieflies this week: | MON | TUE | WED | THURS |

(March 12, 2007) Statistics Canada released its labour productivity report for 2006’s final quarter and found that productivity in Canadian businesses increased 0.3% between October and December. That raised the annual rate for 2006 to 1.2%, still lower than the 2.1% recorded in 2005.

StatsCan measures productivity by comparing hours worked to the GDP. Productivity improves when GDP increases more than hours. The slight increase in productivity for 2006 can largely be attributed to a slowdown in productivity growth in the goods sector, which was slightly offset by the services sector, which experienced more pronounced growth.

StatsCan also attributes some growth to the depreciation in the Canadian dollar; for the first time in six quarters, unit labour costs expressed in U.S. dollars were down in the fourth quarter. This allowed Canadian businesses to recover some of the competitiveness they had lost in relation to their U.S. counterparts beginning in the third quarter of 2005.

Growth in the U.S. and Canada was actually the same for the final quarter in 2006, although, StatsCan points out, this is the first since 2002 that the two countries have paralleled each other. Canadian growth has fluctuated up and down in that period, while U.S. growth has been on a steady decline since it reached a peak of 4.1% in 2002. This year, U.S. productivity growth was 1.7%.

• • •

Advisor accused of giving family client’s money

(March 12, 2007) The Investment Dealers Association of Canada announced Monday that a hearing will be held to address charges against a former Dundee Securities advisor in Quebec allegedly misappropriated $124,000 of a client’s money.

Orazio Petriello worked at the Pointe-Claire branch of IDA member Dundee Securities. It is alleged that between October 19, 2000, and August 19, 2002, he deposited six bank drafts totalling $124,000 purchased by a client into the accounts of the client’s father and spouse.

Petriello, who has not been an advisor with an IDA member since November 2, 2004, will face a hearing panel on March 29.

• • •

CRA expecting to be back online this week

(March 12, 2007) Blaming a malfunctioning software patch for its service interruption, the CRA has unveiled a timeline to get its online services up and running once again.

“We have begun to bring some of our systems into production,” said CRA commissioner Michel Dorais. “We expect to have all of our taxpayer services, including EFILE, NETFILE, Change My Address and return-processing back into full service no later than Thursday, March 15, 2007.”

In the meantime, the CRA will continue to rely on temporary employees to clear outstanding files.

• • •

(03/12/07)