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Create AccountThis article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on February 9, 1998. Partner content is not updated.
When he arrived at his Calgary office last Nov. 11 after unveiling a plan to split Nova Corp.'s pipeline and petrochemical operations into separate companies, CEO Ted Newall received an urgent message from his counterpart at TransCanada PipeLines Ltd.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on April 29, 2002. Partner content is not updated.
In the Flower Power era of 1971, a bunch of University of British Columbia students, who'd rather have been playing outside, decided to start a business.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on March 10, 1997. Partner content is not updated.
This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on January 15, 1996. Partner content is not updated.
The discussion, says Berukoff, was not exclusively about business. But it is Berukoff's business in Cuba that makes him so intriguing.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on March 9, 1998. Partner content is not updated.
There were still three weeks remaining before budget day when Finance Minister Paul Martin sat down one afternoon for a strategy session in his fifth-floor office in the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings.This article was originally published in Maclean’s magazine on January 16, 1995. Partner content is not updated.
It may well go down as one of the rockiest product launches in the history of Canadian television. On Jan. 1, cable companies across the country began offering their 7.5 million subscribers seven new Canadian-owned specialty channels.The White Pass & Yukon Route railway was built to meet the demand for transportation to the gold fields of the Yukon River basin during the Klondike Gold Rush. Completed in 1900, it was a feat of engineering and one of the steepest railways in North America. It ran 177 km from Skagway, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon. Today, tourist rail excursions run on a portion of the original line.
Supply management is a system designed to control the supply — and thereby stabilize the price — of Canadian dairy, chicken, turkey and egg products (see Poultry Farming). It began in 1972 as a response to a series of crises that farmers faced due to decreasing prices for these products.
A bond is a tool that businesses, governments and other organizations use to borrow money. More specifically, it is a loan agreement through which the bond issuer (the borrower) agrees to pay the lender a specified amount by a certain date. Bond agreements generally also include interest payments. While the borrower usually pays the lender interest on the loan, bonds sometimes have negative interest, meaning the lender pays interest to hold the bond. Bonds and debt financing are important tools for funding large infrastructure projects and wars. (See Canada Savings Bonds; Victory Loans.)
Financial services, as the name implies, are finance-related services that businesses provide to clients. In a Canadian context, the best example relates to the country’s large banks. The World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s large banks as the safest on the planet following the 2008 financial crisis.
Food and beverage processing or manufacturing is one of Canada's major secondary industries and a vital component of the nation's overall AGRIBUSINESS system.
An eerie calm descended on the streets of Winnipeg on the morning of May 15, 1919. The street cars and delivery wagons lay idle. Some 50,000 tradesmen, labourers, city and provincial employees had walked off the job, leaving the city paralyzed. It was North America's first general strike.
The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), chartered 2 May 1670, is the oldest incorporated joint-stock merchandising company in the English-speaking world. HBC was a fur trading business for most of its history, a past that is entwined with the colonization of British North America and the development of Canada. The company now owns and operates nearly 250 department stores in Canada and the United States, including Hudson’s Bay, Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks OFF 5TH. Originally headquartered in London, England, its head offices are located in Brampton, Ontario. HBC is a private business owned by a holding company.
On 2 July 1992, the federal government banned cod fishing along Canada’s east coast. This moratorium ended nearly five centuries of cod fishing in Newfoundland and Labrador. Cod had played a central role in the province’s economy and culture.
The aim of the policy was to help restore cod stocks that had been depleted due to overfishing. Today, the cod population remains too low to support a full-scale fishery. For this reason, the ban is still largely in place.
Click here for definitions of key terms used in this article.
Ontario and Quebec constitute Central Canada, a region that accounts for over 58 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP). The economic history of the region begins with the hunting, farming and trading societies of the Indigenous peoples. Following the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century, the economy has undergone a series of seismic shifts, marked by the transcontinental fur trade, then rapid urbanization, industrialization and technological change.
Media convergence refers to the merging of previously distinct media technologies and platforms through digitization and computer networking. This is also known as technological convergence. Media convergence is also a business strategy whereby communications companies integrate their ownership of different media properties. This is also called media consolidation, media concentration or economic convergence. (See also Media Ownership.)
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was an economic free trade agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico. Designed to eliminate all trade and investment barriers between the three countries, the free trade agreement came into force on 1 January 1994. In addition to being one of the most ambitious trade agreements in history, NAFTA also created the world’s largest free trade area. It brought together two wealthy, developed countries (Canada and the United States) with a less developed state (Mexico). The agreement built on the earlier Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA), which came into effect on 1 January 1989. After NAFTA was signed, trade and investment relations between the three countries expanded rapidly, but political co-operation remained weak. NAFTA continued to be controversial, particularly in the United States. In 2017, US president Donald Trump threatened to renegotiate or cancel the deal. More than a year of negotiations produced a revised version of NAFTA called the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). CUSMA came into effect on 1 July 2020.
An asset is a useful and desirable thing or quality. The word is most often used in business, financial or accounting contexts. Canada has some of the world’s most impressive physical and natural resources. These resources may be viewed as “national assets.” The concept is also useful in personal finance, as housing is most Canadian families’ largest asset.
Sustainability is the ability of the biosphere, or of a certain resource or practice, to persist in a state of balance over the long term. The concept of sustainability also includes things humans can do to preserve such a balance. Sustainable development, for instance, pairs such actions with growth. It aims to meet the needs of the present while ensuring that future people will be able to meet their needs.
There are major economic differences among Canada’s four main geographic regions — Ontario, Quebec, the West and Atlantic Canada — each affected by its own history of economic development, industrial location, urbanization, land use and migration.
