Good evening, let’s start with today’s top stories:
The International Monetary Fund is calling on governments and central banks to keep their feet on the gas and extend their stimulus packages, despite growing evidence of a stock market bubble.
For now, the IMF believes the bubbles – particularly in the tech sector – aren’t a threat to global financial stability, and therefore fiscal and monetary economic support must continue.
Over the course of 2020, policy makers around the world unleashed what were once almost unimaginable levels of fiscal spending, and also authorized massive central bank asset purchases to help stabilize the global economy. For the most part, they’ve worked, and these policies continue to support economies even in the face of a second – and sometimes a third – wave of COVID-19.
Coronavirus vaccine hesitancy in France might be a bigger problem than its slow rollout
As of Wednesday, the French government had inoculated fewer than 1.2 million of its 67 million people, well behind the European Union average, according to a tracking site. While millions of people in France are upset that the rollout has been so slow, millions more don’t see the delay as a problem.
A December Ipsos-World Economic Forum poll found that just 40 per cent of French people want to be inoculated against COVID-19, a shockingly low number by European and global standards. In China it’s 80 per cent, in Britain 77 per cent. An Angus Reid poll found that 79 per cent of Canadians are willing to be vaccinated.
Vaccine hesitancy in France and a few other countries, especially in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, is worrying epidemiologists and microbiologists. As Globe and Mail European Bureau Chief Eric Reguly writes, France and other countries that remain hesitant about vaccines are in trouble if just 40 per cent – even 50, 60 or 70 per cent – of their populations are inoculated.
Home buyers may face higher costs owing to soaring fees on software used by real estate lawyers
Stock market darling Dye & Durham Ltd. is facing an outcry from Ontario lawyers after hiking prices charged to them by the Toronto technology company’s most recent acquisition. In December, D&D acquired DoProcess, Canada’s largest provider of real estate practice management software, from Teranet Inc. On Jan. 11, D&D informed real estate lawyers across Ontario it would raise prices a week later on a DoProcess program law firms use to process transactions, by more than 400 per cent – to $129 per deal, from $25.
That caused an immediate uproar. The Globe interviewed six industry participants who said the move would force higher costs on nearly every home buyer in the province.
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ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Canadian banks report disruptions as traders pile into BlackBerry, GameStop shares
Stock halts and trading platform outages disrupted markets as Canadian investors joined an internet-based frenzy and piled into stocks such as BlackBerry, GameStop and AMC Entertainment. rading in BlackBerry shares was halted twice Wednesday by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada as the Toronto-listed shares surged more than 40 per cent and recorded nearly three times its average volume.
Hassan Diab’s lawyer says French court’s order to stand trial in bombing case flies in face of evidence
A lawyer for Hassan Diab says a French appeal court’s order that the Ottawa sociology professor stand trial for a decades-old synagogue bombing is the latest misstep in a long odyssey of injustice. Donald Bayne tells a news conference the decision delivered Wednesday in Paris flies in the face of the evidence.
Toronto’s housing market so hot even the bully bidders are at war
In many years, the Toronto-area real estate landscape feels glacial in January, but this year, sellers are quick to list and bidding contests are flaring up in some spots. Buyers, it appears, are not shying away from competing for a house. Agents have been buzzing about the outlandish contests that kicked off 2021 – including one house in Mississauga that drew 70 offers.
Air Transat to suspend all flights from Toronto, some Montreal routes until April 30
Transat A.T. Inc. says it will suspend all Air Transat flights out of Toronto until April 30, effective tomorrow. Transat spokeswoman Debbie Cabana says the airline will also suspend some routes from Montreal for the same period. The travel company says Ottawa’s new and stricter border entry requirements caused a decline in bookings, forcing the airline to revise its flight schedule.
MARKET WATCH
Canada’s main stock index posted its largest daily loss in three months to wipe away the impressive gains that started 2021.
The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 354.98 points or two per cent to 17,424.43.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 633.87 points at 30,303.17. The S&P 500 index was down 98.85 points at 3,750.77, while the Nasdaq composite was down 355.46 points at 13,270.60.
The Canadian dollar traded for 78.28 cents US compared with 78.73 cents US on Tuesday.
The March crude oil contract was up 24 cents at US$52.85 per barrel and the March natural gas contract was up 6.6 cents at US$2.70 per mmBTU.
The February gold contract was down US$6 at US$1,844.90 an ounce and the March copper contract was down 6.2 cents at nearly US$3.56 a pound.
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TALKING POINTS
Institutional naiveté has been guiding Canada’s COVID-19 response
Robyn Urback: “Eight months later, Canada is now hoping that countries that have been manufacturing successful vaccines won’t stem the export of what is one of the most coveted items in the world amid a global shortage.”
Biden’s noble goals are already looking like a pipe dream
Lawrence Martin: “[Biden’s] clarion call to end the uncivil war in his much-lauded inauguration address has already been met with the jarring realities of the American political dynamic. Already it’s looking like a pipe dream. Republicans are signalling they have little or no interest in bipartisanship, in advancing his policy agenda.”
The return of a Nazi-looted painting highlights the problems with Canada’s art restitution policy
Sara Angel: “We allow our cultural institutions to act with the best intentions – but while overlooking vital evidence, a judicious process and an accurate account of the past.”
LIVING BETTER
Listen to Stress Test: Are your parents giving you money?
In the final episode of this season, we look at data showing the surprising extent to which parents are going to help their adult children financially, and how this assistance has become more common in the pandemic.
Cardamom knots are to lockdown 2.0 what sourdough and cinnamon buns were to our first confinement
Traditional Swedish cardamom sweet buns.Natasha Breen/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
We’re stuck at home again, except it feels less spirited than the first time around. And those online sourdough courses are feeling stale. But there’s one thing the internet is excited about: kardemummabullar, Sweden’s favourite sweet treat, cardamom buns. As Karen Burshtein writes, ”these buns are the fix we all need now.”
TODAY’S LONG READ
Playwright and author Carmen Aguirre calls for end to cancel culture in theatre community
Canadian playwright, author and actor Carmen Aguirre – in a frank video – is calling for an end to cancel culture in the theatre community. The provocative essay – originally produced for a Vancouver theatre event that was cancelled – calls on fellow artists to end what Aguirre calls “the great purge.”
It is a time, she says, “of cruelty and psychological violence” – when people can be publicly humiliated, shamed, mobbed on social media and fired from their jobs for expressing their beliefs, just because those beliefs might be offensive.
Read Marsha Lederman’s full story here
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