Canada’s Economic Action Plan Improves Housing On-Reserve in Alberta

| Posted by admin
Oct 08 2009


Piikani Nation – News Report

According to a CMHC report, Canadian Funding Corporation says that the Government of Canada announced an investment of $3.7 million, as part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan (CEAP), to improve housing conditions for the Piikani Nation community.

Ted Menzies, MP for Macleod and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, on behalf of the Honourable Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, and Minister Responsible for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the Honourable Chuck Strahl, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, made the announcement along with members of the Piikani Nation community.

“Our Government recognizes that social housing on-reserve is getting older and a significant number of projects are in need of repairs and upgrading” said MP Menzies. “Through Canada’s Economic Action Plan, we are helping alleviate some of the pressing needs of members who live in the Piikani Nation community and we are also stimulating the local economy by creating jobs.”

Through CEAP, the Government of Canada has committed $400 million over the next two years to help First Nation communities build needed new housing, repair and remediate existing non-profit housing for their members, and complement housing programs offered by CMHC and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC). This investment will also provide an economic stimulus for many First Nations and surrounding areas by creating jobs.

The application calls for the new funding initiatives under CEAP were very successful and generated a large number of applications. As a result, both CMHC and INAC will be able to allocate the full $200 million available this year.

Of the funding announced today, CMHC will allocate more than $853,000 to retrofit 41 social housing units and INAC will allocate $2.9 million over a two-year period towards various housing initiatives, such as renovations and conversion to market based housing, for the Piikani Nation.

Additionally, other federal funding sources are being leveraged to assist the Piikani Nation in skills development for the overall maintenance of its housing program.

Through the CEAP, some $50 million in federal investments will be made available to First Nations in Alberta to address immediate housing needs and assist the transition to market-based housing.

“The Government is actively working with First Nations towards increasing the supply of safe and affordable housing,” said the Honorable Chuck Strahl. “Not only will these investments in housing directly affect the recipients, they will also serve as an economic stimulus for many First Nations and rural areas by generating employment, developing skilled trades and fostering small businesses.”

“CEAP has been instrumental in assisting the Piikani Nation establish long-term and sustainable working relationships with professional contractors and suppliers, train and employ up to 35 Piikani Nation members, kick-start our market housing strategy and most importantly improve our living conditions,” said Piikani Nation Chief Reg Crowshoe.

LEASED HEATING EQUIPMENT: CHATTEL OR FIXTURE?

| Posted by admin
Jul 17 2009

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently quoted with approval a decision of the House of Lords (Melluish). In this case, a company leased plant and machinery (including central heating equipment) to a housing authority for installation in its subsidized townhouses which were then leased to tenants.
The Court of Appeal considered this case when making its decision in the City of Mississauga v. GTAA.
The equipment leases between the company and the owner/landlord provided that the leased equipment would remain personal or moveable property that the company would continue to own it, notwithstanding that the equipment might have become affixed to any land or building. Apparently, the purpose of this specific statement was to ensure that the company could depreciate the equipment for tax purposes and could repossess the equipment, if required.
The House of Lords confirmed that the equipment had indeed become a fixture, and that the taxpayer company could not claim depreciation, because the equipment had become attached to the land and was therefore, in law, owned by the housing authority, notwithstanding any agreement between the parties to the contrary.
Lord Browne-Wilkinson held as follows:
• The equipment in these cases was attached to the land in such a manner that, to all outward appearance, it formed part of the land and was intended to do so.
• Such fixtures are, in law, owned by the owner of the land. It was suggested in argument that this result did not follow if it could be demonstrated that, as between the owner of the land and the person fixing the chattel to it, there was a common intention that the chattel should not belong to the owner of the land.
It was said that clause 3.10 of the master lease disclosed such an intention in the present cases…
• ….. the intention of the parties as to the ownership of the chattels fixed to the land is only material so far as such intention can be presumed from the degree and object of annexation.
• The terms expressly or implicitly agreed between the fixer of the chattel and the owner of the land cannot affect the determination of the question whether, in law, the chattel has become a fixture and therefore in law belongs to the owner of the soil….
• The terms of such agreement will regulate the contractual rights to sever the chattel from the land as between the parties to the contract and, where an equitable right is conferred by the contract, as against certain third parties.
• But such agreement cannot prevent the chattel, once fixed, becoming in law part of the land and as such owned by the owner of the land so long as it remains fixed.
The Courts in Canada have followed these same common law principles. If a chattel becomes a fixture by reason of its affixation or annexation to the lands, then it is to be treated by all third parties as a fixture. The third parties have no notice of the private deal between the landlord and tenant, and they don’t have to follow it.
As far as taxation, by-laws, bankruptcy and priorities, the law of real property will prevail. The lease is interesting but not relevant.
Brian Madigan LL.B., Realtor is an author and commentator on real estate matters, Coldwell Banker Innovators Realty

http://businessexchangeblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/leased-heating-equipment-chattel-or.html

reviewed by Alexander Moishe, CEO of  canadian funding corp

ALL BUSINESS: Troubled labor market threatens a significant turnaround in US economy

| Posted by admin
Jul 17 2009

All the talk about a “jobless recovery” being ahead for the economy misses the point. There won’t be much of a recovery at all if the labor market stays in such dire straits.

You don’t need to be an economist to understand why the nation’s joblessness is the biggest hurdle to reviving growth.

The official U.S. unemployment rate is at 9.5 percent and climbing, and it stands at a startling 16.5 percent when you add in discouraged Americans who have stopped looking for work and those who want to work full time but can only find part-time jobs. No wonder consumer spending has flatlined. That only perpetuates the crises in the housing and banking sectors.

“Everything that got us into this recession is made worse by weak job conditions and any hopes we have of climbing out of this recession will be hindered by the same,” said Niko Karvounis, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.

The deep recessions that started in 1973 and 1981 were followed by a burst of hiring about six months after the peak in job losses. That wasn’t the case in 1991 and 2001, when shallower recessions were followed by nearly two years of woes for workers.

The term “jobless recovery” grew from those latter experiences. Even though the economy was looking stronger, plenty of Americans didn’t feel much relief because they still didn’t have jobs.

Part of that shift in post-recession employment had to do with structural changes in the economy. The manufacturing sector lost prominence to the service sector over the years. The diminished role of unions also was a factor.

“Manufacturers tend to have a deeper job cuts in a downturn and they have a sharper upturn,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York. “The service sector does layoffs later but hires later, too.”

Many economists are forecasting a “jobless recovery” for the United States as it emerges from the recession that began in December 2007. That includes the Federal Reserve, which on Wednesday bolstered its outlook for economic growth. The central bank now predicts the economy will shrink between 1 percent and 1.5 percent this year, less than it had previously forecast. It also is predicting the economy will expand as much as 3.3 percent next year, a relatively weak showing coming out of a recession. One reason why: The Fed expects the unemployment rate to move above 10 percent this year and remain stuck in the high 9 percent range in 2010.

But can the economy really grow stronger in the face of such joblessness?

Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco have found that the current recession is much like its predecessors in the overall pace of job losses. But what is different is a historically low level of hiring this time around, which means many of the newly unemployed can’t find new jobs.

At the same time, there are high levels of involuntary part-time workers. The fraction of the labor force that is working part time for economic reasons has nearly doubled to 5.8 percent in June of this year from when this recession began in December 2007. More than half of such workers faced reductions of five hours or more per week, according to the Fed report.

To see that at work, look at the many private and public entities using job furloughs, or short-time hiatuses, to reduce costs. Just this week, US Airways asked 400 flight attendants to take furloughs in an effort to avoid layoffs in that group. Workers at Gannett Co., CSX Corp. and many others have also faced furloughs.

All this presents a problem for the U.S. government, which has been trying to bolster the economy through monetary and fiscal stimulus. The Fed has cut interest rates to near zero, while President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package reduced taxes and increased government spending after an earlier Bush administration plan to distribute $168 billion in cash through tax rebates had little lasting impact.

None of that has been “labor intensive enough,” argued economist Nouriel Roubini in a note to his clients at his economics analysis firm RGE Monitor. Roubini, who is also an economics professor at New York University, was ahead of the pack in 2006 when he forecast that the worst recession in four decades was on its way.

Deutsche Bank chief U.S. economist Joseph LaVorgna points out that the ratio of household debt to income now stands at 128 percent, much higher than in the final quarters of the last two recessions. That will inhibit consumers’ ability to take on debt again, which helped drive those previous recoveries.

It also amounts to another hurdle to a housing rebound. That will intensify the pressure on already battered bank balance sheets as mortgage and credit-card default rates rise — and make them think twice about boosting lending to both consumers and businesses.

Even though Congress and the Obama administration haven’t shown any inclination to push for another stimulus package, they may have to act again with a plan directly aimed at creating jobs if the unemployment rate stays stubbornly high.

They may want to look at the success in China, where second-quarter growth accelerated 7.9 percent from a year earlier on a stimulus-fed investment boom. That plan included big spending on construction of highways and other public works.

In the U.S., money could be pumped into industries to make them more productive or there could be a further ramping up of spending on infrastructure projects. It also could mean more targeted tax cuts, including some aimed at businesses.

None of that will be cheap. But something has to be done to bring jobs back, for the entire economy’s sake.

http://blog.taragana.com/n/all-business-troubled-labor-market-threatens-a-significant-turnaround-in-us-economy-112799/

reviewed by Moishe Alexander, CFC  canadian funding corp CEO