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There are those who have suffered during the pandemic. And there are the others… The Montreal company Medicom belongs to this second group.

• Also read: Medicom sets up a factory in Saint-Eustache

The Pointe-Claire-based manufacturer and distributor of infection prevention products used this turbulent time to experience the strongest growth spurt in its history.

Before the outbreak of Covid-19, the company had four factories. Six months later she already had ten! Ten factories, with three more to come by the end of next year…

High V speed

“We’ve had our feet and pedals on the ground since the pandemic began, the new president illustrates. Our growth has been absolutely phenomenal. »

In this context, which could easily be likened to the aftermath of a storm, Guillaume Laverdure took over the reins of the company, which until then had been managed by its founder Ronald Reuben.

Guillaume Laverdure
Medicom Managing Director

The latter had founded Medicom at the end of the 1980s – in the middle of the AIDS crisis – in order to meet the then urgent demand for gloves for medical staff.

Thirty years later, another urgent need – this time surgical masks and N95 – naturally allowed the company to double its activity, its teams and its turnover. Happily, his income today would exceed $1.5 billion.

A new reality

According to the new boss, such a company must take note of its new reality after “such a rapid upheaval” in order to be able to project itself better into the future.

For the latter, a company like Medicom, now with 2,000 employees in a dozen offices in as many countries, has to adapt its procedures. A change in organizational structure was required; a new global leadership has recently emerged.

Today, the Montreal company employs around 350 people, 200 more than before the pandemic. A significant part of this growth is due to the construction of a new mask factory in the Saint-Laurent district amid the pandemic.

manufacturing autonomy

On-site, the former 60,000 square foot warehouse houses 23 production lines. Almost 1.5 million surgical, pediatric and N95 masks are manufactured there every day. And since opening in July 2020, more than 525 million masks have been produced.

The example of such factories is in line with the recent desire of governments, but also of Medicom’s new CEO, to better control their fate and thus better manage their supply chain.

“Thanks to our long-standing relationships with our suppliers, we have never lacked for anything. But it was often tense,” admits Mr. Laverdure, referring to the outbidding movement that masks and sanitizers in particular were subjected to at the height of the pandemic.

The announcement this spring of the construction of a new $120 million nitrile glove factory in London, Ontario is a direct result of this renewed desire for manufacturing autonomy. The Ontario government is thus securing a privileged supply of 500 million gloves per year.

The same logic applies to the construction of a new $40 million production facility in Saint-Eustache for filter materials used in the composition of surgical masks and N95.

Of the G7 countries, only Canada does not have such a facility, explains Mr Laverdure, who believes this awareness by governments will benefit everyone.

MEDICOM COMING SOON

► Foundation, endowment : 1988

► Shareholders: Ronald Reuben, Founder, and Morris Goodman, Founder of Pharmascience.

► The headquarters : Pointe Claire, Quebec

► Number of employees : 2000, including 350 in Quebec

► His main trademarks: Medicom, Ritmed, Ocean Pacific, Hedy, Kolmi, Hopen

► Presence around the world: Canada, Australia, USA, France, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Ukraine, Netherlands.

Best Buy Co. has cut hundreds of in-store jobs to control costs in preparation for continued declines in electronics sales.

The job cuts come just weeks after the Richfield retailer lowered its sales forecast for the summer, citing inflation and slowing demand for electronics.

“We are constantly evaluating and developing our teams to ensure we are serving our customers,” the company said in a statement on Friday.

“In the face of an ever-changing macroeconomic environment, including customers shopping more digitally than ever, we have made adjustments to our teams, including the elimination of a small number of roles,” the statement said.

The cuts represent a small percentage of Best Buy’s approximately 105,000 employees, with the company still hiring for open positions on its field service teams.

Best Buy has cut its headcount the most since the pandemic began, laying off about 5,000 mostly full-time employees early last year.

Late last month, Best Buy executives said they expected comparable sales for stores open for at least a year to decline 13% in the May-July quarter. They had earlier expected an 8% drop.

In May, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry told analysts that she and other executives felt the company had the right number of employees for the most part, but said Best Buy will continue to adapt to changes in how customers shop .

“We have actively evolved the makeup of our teams over the past two years as customer behavior has changed and become even more digitally focused,” she said. “The result is that our total number of employees is actually lower than before the pandemic. … We will continue to learn, evaluate and evolve the model as business and shopping habits change.”

Best Buy is expected to report its quarterly results on August 30th.

If you don’t mind, thanks for letting me continue shelling the mail that I started yesterday, otherwise I won’t get through…

Hélène begins to lose patience.

His accountant filed his tax return on April 15th. She received her tax refund from Quebec long ago, but the one from Ottawa is long overdue. Every time she asks the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for an explanation, she gets a different, always unsatisfactory answer. When she looks at her file on the Canada Revenue Agency’s website (My Account), it says ‘pending’.

“Once I withdraw money once, I pay more in installments every month. If we owe them money, it doesn’t take long before we get the bill. What do you think I should do? »

No doubt something is wrong. If the declaration had been submitted electronically, the notice should have been issued two weeks later. By post, the treatment extends over eight weeks. Four months passed there.

According to accountant Simon Elliott, while such delays are not normal, they are not exceptional. They can be caused by several factors, for example, when claiming certain tax credits that require additional confirmation (disabled person’s tax credit, high medical expenses tax credit, etc.).

Installment payment in question

He suspects that our reader has a problem with installment payments.

“It is quite possible that the delay is caused by a discrepancy between the amount of the installments paid, which is stated in the statement, and the amount that appears on the CRA’s file,” explains the accountant, who pointed out an error indicates. Under these conditions, the file would be automatically blocked.

Simon Elliot recommends calling the Canadian tax authority back and asking for an expedited processing of the file.

“We’re off peak hours, it’s easier to speak to an agent. The CRA now provides real-time wait times on its website in the contact information section. »

Here is the address: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/organization/contact.html

Moral of the story: Don’t make more deposits than required.

Differences in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)

Yves recognized that Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) of the same market index can have different returns.

“An index fund should replicate the index. The return should therefore be similar from provider to provider,” concludes our reader.

However, by manipulating data on the Disnat platform, he found significant differences between funds tracking the US stock market’s main index, the S&P 500. Over a 10-year period, the latter increased by 201%. The iShare ETF (XSP) returned 185%, the BMO ETF (ZSP) returned 276% and the Horizons ETF (HXS) returned 351%!

what is the explanation

I asked the specialist on the subject Raymond Kerzérho.

“These are more different products than meets the eye,” begins the lead researcher at PWL Capital, a portfolio management firm.

iShare’s XSP Fund is a Canadian fund that invests in the S&P 500 on a currency-hedged basis. The ETF contains a mechanism that aims to smooth out fluctuations between the greenback and the loonie. “Converted to Canadian dollars, the return is largely wiped out by hedging,” explains Raymond Kerzérho.

BMO’s ZSP has no such coverage. The expert points out that the product hasn’t been around for 10 years, so you can’t rely on the 10-year performance shown.

Horizons’ HXS ETF is also unhedged, and its performance reflects the US dollar’s appreciation against the loonie. “According to my data, the S&P 500 is outperforming the HXS fund in Canadian dollars. The difference results from management fees,” says the expert.

In its flyer, Horizons states that it will capture the total return of the S&P 500 Index through the purchase of derivatives (“swap” contracts). I’ll spare you the details, but the company claims its method is tax-friendly and offers better returns. “Could that be the reason for this discrepancy? asks reader Yves.

Raymond Kerzérho insists the gains were inflated by the appreciation of the US dollar and not by the use of derivatives.

The Tree, the sequel

Earlier this summer, I shared with you the sadness my neighbors and I felt after the loss of a mature tree in the backyard of our Montreal duplex. I ended this column by inviting you to give us recommendations on how to replace our Manitoba maple. I mostly received emails to dissuade us from planting honey locusts, an idea I had mentioned. “Too much trouble! We then thought of a plastic Christmas tree.

In the end, we chose an essence that nobody offered us: an olive tree from Bohemia. It was my neighbor who found the best word to describe it: romantic.

Spend any amount of time in New York and you’ll feel it. Manhattan and Brooklyn are teeming with activity. It’s electrifying to be there after being relatively confined for years.

The question posed by the San Francisco Chronicle this week is why San Francisco isn’t recovering in the same way.

As reporter Roland Li writes, “There has always been a disconnect — New York has 10 times the population of San Francisco — but coastal tourism and economic hubs have diverged strikingly as they recover from the pandemic.”

Consider, Li writes, that construction of large commercial real estate projects in Manhattan has been completed during the pandemic — and while much of this new office space is almost fully leased — over in San Francisco, projects have stalled and existing buildings are struggling to find tenants because of the work-from-home policy.

One way to fill these buildings is to convert them into apartments. Wall Street, Li observes, has been doing just that for decades. But while there’s clear demand for housing in New York, and rents are already soaring to record highs, in San Francisco it’s not so clear that enough people would — for now — rent converted office space even if it were available.

Indeed, new telecommuting policies are clearly having a major impact on where people live, and many Bay Area workers who might be fleeing the area’s high prices have done so. (California — led by San Francisco and followed by Los Angeles — lost more than 352,000 residents between April 2020 and January 2022, according to California Treasury Department statistics.)

It might be time to consider whether these fully distributed plans still make sense. In his post, Li partially draws a line between the “staggering crowds” on the streets of New York and April last year, when then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that city employees would soon be returning to the office, a move quickly followed by private ones Company.

Called back by employers, New Yorkers who had left during the pandemic suddenly found themselves looking for new housing, if only to spend just two or three days in the office.

The gambit seems to continue to work. The Partnership for New York City, which says it surveyed more than 160 employers over a two-week period between late April and early May, found that 38% of its Manhattan workers are back in the office on an average weekday, while 28% % are completely remote. Meanwhile, the average attendance is expected to increase to 49% over the next month.

This does not mean that the employees are full-time again. They may never be, considering even the most vocal critics of remote work have been forced to soften their stance, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. As Bloomberg reported in May, Dimon told shareholders in an April letter that working from home “will become more permanent in American business,” and estimated that about 40% of its 270,000 employees would work on a hybrid model. Shortly after, a senior engineer at the bank told some teams that, based on internal feedback, they could spend two days in the office instead of three if they wanted.

Those two to three days a week could save New York, and it might be time more San Francisco employers, reluctant to make demands of their own employees, consider doing the same.

Small businesses in San Francisco are increasingly desperate for the economic activity that would bring office workers back; While civic duty may not be a priority for local tech companies, there’s still a strong argument that hybrid environments allow employees better work-life balance, more camaraderie with their peers, and even career advancement.

Many blame San Francisco’s inability to recover on a lack of affordable housing, and there’s no question that the city is self-sabotaging on that front. In San Francisco, “instead of clear rules where a developer knows I can build this, everything is negotiable and every project is ad hoc,” Jenny Schuetz, a housing economist at the Brookings Institution, told The Atlantic in May.

But abandoning plans to return to the office forever will not solve the problem. Meanwhile, two and a half years after the pandemic sent everyone home, and amid a slowing US economy that’s making it harder to change jobs (and newly relaxed CDC-COVID guidelines), it might be time for more outfits to embrace the Ask employees to come into the office two to three times a week and see what’s happening from there.

It is not the responsibility of employers to “fix” San Francisco. At the same time, if they wait too long, they may not have much left to go back to.

See what’s clicking on FoxBusiness.com.

Amusement park operator Six Flags has become a “teen daycare center” after offering too many discounts, according to its chief executive.

During an earnings call with analysts, Selim Bassoul – who took on the role in November – spoke about the company’s new strategy to prevent “rioting” teenagers from running amok. The plan involves raising prices and trying to attract a more affluent customer.

“Our aggressive strategic change is still in the works, but my first nine months at Six Flags as CEO of Six Flags has only reinforced my initial belief in Six Flags’ potential,” Bassoul said.

A roller coaster at the reopened Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio, Tex. (Photo by Lie Ma/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/via Getty Images/Getty Images)

In the second quarter, total attendance fell 22% year over year to 6.7 million guests, due in part to the elimination of free tickets and low-margin product offerings “coupled with increased prices in a market that had become accustomed to discounts.” is due to Six Flags CFO Gary Mick told analysts.

SIX FLAGS appoints new CEO as theme park attendance falls

The theme park operator is in an aggressive strategy shift after realizing it “had too much discount” and that “the philosophy of filling our parks” is not the right one, he added.

As a result, “we just got the discount store or we became a teen daycare,” Bassoul told analysts.

Part of the new strategy is introducing new pricing, which means catering to customers with families or young adults “who are willing to come and spend the money at our parks,” he added.

Six Flags Magic Mountain on May 22, 2008 in Valencia, California (Photo by Mathew Imaging/WireImage/Getty Images)

He said Six Flags has expanded its advertising to reach a broader market. In the past, the company has focused on past guests.

“Now we are changing that philosophy and going to a broader market. We’re going into what I call more affluent neighborhoods, where we want to get people from those neighborhoods to come to our park that have never been attacked,” Bassoul said.

CALIFORNIA THEME PARK ANNOUNCES CHAPERONE POLICIES AFTER TEEN FIGHTS FORCE EARLY CLOSURES

Though Six Flags has seen a drop in visitor numbers over the past three months, the company said it was able to offset much of the drop in revenue with higher guest spending.

Admission spending per capita increased 27% to $36.35 per person and in-park spending per capita increased 18% compared to the same period last year.

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The increase in admissions spending is “primarily due to higher realized ticket prices and a higher mix of single day tickets,” Mick added.

Heading into the fall, the company plans to add new offerings to drive traffic, such as: These include introducing a new menu, creating a larger Fright Fest with activities to attract more families, and introducing an Oktoberfest event.

Six Flags’ second-quarter revenue fell 5% to $435 million. Net income fell 36% to $45 million.

Six years after vowing never to return to the stage, the one and only Michel Courtemanche returned to the stage on Friday for the first gala of the 2022 edition of ComediHa! Firmly. And he did it like he never stopped.

• Also read: ComediHa! Fest-Québec: Michel Courtemanche, a clown doing good

And just to add a quirk, it’s been 30 years since he hosted a gala. And he did it like an adult too.

Courtemanche kept control with his own style, with his gestures and it was nice to see him on stage.

Before he took the stage, as the lights went down, the crowd that had filled the Capitol to capacity began chanting “Michel, Michel, Michel.” Jacket, sneakers, dark glasses and graying hair, people stood to applaud him.

“I am 57 years old. Felt 93. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? A lot has happened in 30 years,” he said, before discussing the sexless Mr. Potato Head and the violence we want to remove from cartoons, specifying that “cartoons,” It wasn’t true.

“It’s like, as an alcohol and poly-drug addict, I asked for the SAQ and SQDC to be shut down,” he said.

Courtemanche moments

Jean-François Mercier joined him on the boards to tell him that he had come to see his gala because he was convinced he would push the limits to give him a Will Smith-style slap in the face .

Exhausted and challenged by Mercier, Courtemanche decided to let go and say whatever he wanted, cursing.

The all-new GMC Canyon AT4X Edition 1 will be similar to the Chevrolet ZR2 Desert Boss.Photo: GMC

The 2023 GMC Canyon debuted just weeks after the release of the 2023 Chevrolet Colorado. The new GMC Canyon goes in the same direction as its Chevy twin with an emphasis on off-road capability. The new top-of-the-line model will be the GMC Canyon AT4X, which will cost $63,350 in a launch edition. Because recently even off-road driving with mid-size trucks is not exactly cheap.

However, that steep price tag applies to the 2023 GMC Canyon AT4X Edition 1, which will come with a few upgrades over the Canyon AT4X replacing the outgoing Canyon AT4 as top trim. But each new fairing also costs more than the discontinued ones. The fairings for the new Canyon are Elevation, Denali, AT4 and AT4X.

Photo: GMC

The new GMC Canyon trims start at around $40,000, with the older ones starting at $26,800. That’s a difference of $13,200, which is a lot. On the other hand, these marks are in light of the fact that major automakers are raising all prices in their lineups. So it makes sense that the all-terrain GMC Canyon AT4X would cost more than the older GMC Canyon AT4, which started at $38,400.

Think of the Canyon AT4X as GMC’s version of the Chevrolet Colorado ZR2. And the Edition 1 is something like GMC’s interpretation of the Desert Boss, although GMC says the Launch Edition model will be “extremely limited”, while Chevy’s Desert Boss package is expected to be available after 2023.

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Basics for the whole year

Uniqlo summer sale

Basics you don’t want to miss
Don’t miss Uniqlo’s summer sales. The whole sale is a killer way to stock up on the basics Uniqlo is known for – muted colors, classic silhouettes and a dress-up-or-down vibe.

Because the GMC Canyon is just a Chevy Colorado in a suit, the trucks share most of the specs. The big difference is that the powerful 2.7-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine is standard on all trim levels of the GMC Canyon. Whether it’s a base model Canyon or Canyon AT4X, it makes the same 310 hp and 430 lb-ft of torque.

Photo: GMC

Photo: GMC

The new Canyon is also taller and will have a wider front track on all trims. Depending on the equipment, the front track width is 66 to 66.3 inches. And the ground clearance is 9.6-10.7 inches. The Canyon AT4X will be the widest (66.3 inches) of the group, with the highest ground clearance (10.7 inches), while also sharing the same DSSV shocks, 33-inch tires, front and rear e-lockers, and skid plates receives the ZR2.

However, there are some notable differences between the upper panels of GMC’s and Chevy’s new midsize trucks. The Canyon AT4x has an approach angle of 36.9 degrees compared to the Colorado ZR2’s 38.3 degree approach angle. And GMC says the Canyon AT4X Edition 1 will come with underbody cameras that wash themselves, while Chevy doesn’t mention a washing system under the Colorado ZR2 Desert Boss.

Maybe that’s why the new GMC Canyon AT4X Edition 1 costs so much. And now that we know that prices for the upscale GMC Canyon start at $40,000, it’s possible to get an idea of ​​what the new Chevy Colorado trims will cost, too.

Photo: GMC

Photo: GMC

Photo: GMC

Photo: GMC

Photo: GMC

Photo: GMC

Photo: GMC

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s main Protestant church, the religious organization said Friday, which a recent independent report accused of practicing disability and concealment in the face of sexual assault

“The Board of Directors of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has learned that the Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the SBC and that this investigation will involve several entities,” said a press release from the organization, specifying that it intends to work with the authorities ” to work together fully.”

“The leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have shown an unwavering determination to address past mistakes and take action to ensure they are never repeated in the future,” the church continued.

An independent investigative report commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention concluded in May that for nearly two decades, suspected victims of sexual assault and those who have sought to speak out within the church have responded to “resistance, disability and… even met open hostility” from members of the Church the Executive Committee.

This sex scandal, which involved nearly 400 pastors, volunteers and educators who assaulted more than 700 victims, was brought to light in 2019 thanks to investigations by two Texas dailies, the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News.

In June, the religious body announced the launch of tools to combat sexual assault, notably the release of a database publicly listing SBC members accused of sexual abuse and the establishment of a crisis unit to implement reforms combat these attacks.

The church had also released a 205-page document listing its members who have been accused of sexual violence since 2007.

The Southern Baptist Convention, with a network of thousands of churches, has over fifteen million members, mostly in the southern United States.