Good evening, let’s start with our top stories:
SNC-Lavalin making profound strategic shift, withdraws guidance and warns of lower 2019 results
SNC-Lavalin Group is making a profound shift in corporate strategy that will see it abandon the fixed price contracts that have been central to its business for more than a decade. The Canadian engineering giant today also issued a profit warning, its third since January, and pulled its previous financial forecast for the year, which has ignited fresh concerns from its biggest investor.
In the first strategic moves under interim chief executive officer Ian Edwards, following the abrupt departure of former CEO Neil Bruce in early June, SNC is set to become a more pure-play engineering consultancy by ceasing to bid on lump-sum turnkey contracts.
Caisse de dépôt et placement, SNC’s biggest investor with a roughly 20-per-cent stake, said it is concerned about the company’s worsening financial trajectory. It urged directors and management to take bold and quick steps to reverse what it called “the current unacceptable trend of the business.”
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Huawei touts its role in connecting Canadians as it seeks to improve its public image
At a news conference in Ottawa today, Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies trumpeted its role in bringing high-speed wireless service to remote areas of Canada. The move is seen as effort to boost its public image as it makes two major requests of Ottawa.
What Huawei wants from Canada:
- The release of its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Vancouver in December on an extradition request from the United States.
- Ignore U.S. lobbying and spare it from a national security ban that could bar its gear from being used in Canada’s next-generation 5G wireless networks.
Context: Relations between Ottawa and Beijing have been steadily worsening since Meng’s arrest. Apparent retaliatory measures have included China’s detainment of two Canadians, former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, as well as banning Canadian pork and beef and restricting canola imports.
The announcement: Through its continuing work with two Canadian telecoms, Ice Wireless and Iristel, Huawei will help connect more than 70 rural and remote communities to high-speed internet by 2025.
Also today: The Washington Post revealed Huawei secretly helped the North Korean government build and maintain the country’s commercial wireless network.
Separately: Britain today postponed its decision on whether Huawei could participate in next-generation 5G telecoms networks until there was a clearer picture about the impact of measures taken against the company by the United States.
Police in Hong Kong are facing criticism over their failure to stop attacks on anti-government protesters
Hong Kong police faced criticism today for an apparent failure to protect anti-government protesters and passersby from attack by what opposition politicians suspected were gang members at a train station over the weekend.
Sunday’s attack came during a night of escalating violence that opened new fronts in Hong Kong’s widening crisis over an extradition bill that could see people from the territory sent to China for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts.
Scores of men in white T-shirts, some armed with clubs, flooded into the rural Yuen Long station and stormed a train, assaulting passengers with pipes, poles and other objects, according to video footage.
A frame grab taken from video shows Ryan Lau Chun Kong, a former sportscaster for local television TVB, bleeding after a mob of suspected triad gangsters attacked pro-democracy protesters returning from a demonstration, at Yuen Long train station.HANDOUT/AFP/Getty Images
ALSO ON OUR RADAR
Ford’s former chief of staff drops libel suit against MPP Hillier: Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s former chief of staff, Dean French, who recently resigned amid a patronage scandal, has dropped his defamation lawsuit against independent MPP Randy Hillier.
The Canadian Press names Andrea Baillie editor-in-chief: The Canadian Press is promoting managing editor Andrea Baillie to editor-in-chief, marking the first time a woman will oversee editorial operations at the national news wire.
Canada’ Maggie MacNeil wins gold at world aquatics championships: Canadian swimmer Maggie MacNeil has won the country’s first gold medal at the world aquatics championships today, setting a Canadian record for the women’s 100-metre butterfly.
ECG feature added to the Apple Watch in Canada: Apple is pushing deeper into health tracking in Canada, adding new features to its smartwatch that alert users if they appear to have a potentially dangerous heart problem and that allow them to take a snapshot of their heartbeat to share with a doctor.
French submarine that disappeared in 1968 is found: The wreckage of a French submarine that sank in 1968 with 52 crew members onboard has been found in the Mediterranean, the authorities said, ending a five-decade mystery over a vessel that was once one of the jewels of the French fleet.
L.L. Bean set to open first Canadian store: U.S.-based retailer L.L. Bean is poised to open its first store in Canada next month at Oakville Place, just outside of Toronto.
Former Jays great Roy Halladay inducted into hall of fame: The late Roy Halladay, former pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Philadelphia Phillies, was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday without a team logo on his plaque. His family made that decision because both organizations meant a lot to Halladay.
MARKET WATCH
Canada’s main stock index rose today, as energy stocks gained on the back of higher oil prices. The Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX Composite index was up 32.94 points at 16,518.88.
On Wall Street, stocks advanced at the onset of a heavy earnings week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 17.70 points to 27,171.90, the S&P 500 gained 8.42 points to end at 2,985.03 and the Nasdaq Composite added 57.65 points to close at 8,204.14.
Looking for investing ideas? Check out our weekly digest of the Globe’s latest insights and analysis from the pros, stock tips, portfolio strategies and what investors need to know for the week ahead. This week’s editition includes four stealth dividend growth stocks, a trio of ETF turnarounds and what a $5.5-billion fund manager is buying and selling.
Got a news tip that you’d like us to look into? E-mail us at tips@globeandmail.com. Need to share documents securely? Reach out via SecureDrop.
TALKING POINTS
Syphilis, an age-old disease with a lot of baggage, makes a comeback in troubled times
“It is, after all, a disease with a tortured history, associated with xenophobia, bigotry, racism, and war-mongering, which are also on the rise. Syphilis is also easily preventable and treatable, but the number of cases is soaring nonetheless, fuelled, paradoxically, by scientific and technological advances in an era where distrust in science is on the rise.” - André Picard
Think your six-figure salary is normal? Get a reality check
“We base our lifestyles on what we earn, so in order to sustain, or improve, we need more money. That is true, but to complain that it is impossible to live on less than a six-figure income is grossly inaccurate and does a disservice to those who make much less.” - Eileen Dooley, human resources strategist
‘Borderline lazy’ Shane Lowry becomes hero of Everymen everywhere with his win at British Open
“The amateur who’d won the Irish Open and then struggled to live up to that promise. An easygoing, roly-poly guy in a sport that fetishizes hard-driven men and Olympic-training routines.” - Cathal Kelly
LIVING BETTER
Feeling like you don’t have much downtime any more? You’re not alone, and it’s especially true for women. According to the most recent data from Statistics Canada, women spent an average of 3.6 hours a day on leisure activities in 2015, 30 minutes fewer than the 4.1 hours they spent in 1986. Meanwhile, men spent 4.1 hours in 2015, compared with 4.4 in 1986. Here, Dave McGinn makes the case for putting down your devices and making your leisure time feel less like work.
LONG READ FOR A LONG COMMUTE
He first worked at Kawartha Dairy as an 11-year-old. Now he’s back as CEO
Brian Kerr was just 11 years old when he rode his bike down to Ontario cottage country’s legendary ice cream company Kawartha Dairy in Bobcaygeon, Ont., to ask for a job. Monty Crowe, part of the family that still owns 100 per cent of the dairy producer, wholesaler and retailer, hired the hometown boy on the spot.
After a 27-year absence, much of it spent working for U.S. food giant Kraft Heinz, Kerr, now 46, is back working at Kawartha Dairy. But this time, he is the chief executive officer and general manager.
He has begun the task of steering the 150-employee company through a new phase in its 82-year history. With the market for its products “pretty much saturated” in cottage country, he hopes to preside over expansion of its own retail outlets as well as its distribution to other stores into more urban areas, while ensuring Kawartha Dairy stays true to its small-town family-run roots.
During Kerr’s first stint working at Kawartha Dairy, he graduated to loading and driving delivery trucks, staying with the company part time until he was 19. “They gave me responsibility and treated me with respect,” he says. “I loved that.” Read the full story here.
CEO Brian Kerr in Kawartha Dairy's 1929 original delivery truck in Bobcaygeon, Ont. (Photo by Johnny C.Y. Lam for The Globe and Mail)JOHNNY C.Y. LAM/The Globe and Mail
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