"I hope Riel will have bolted. I have such a horror of rebels and vermin, that my treatment of him might not be approved by the civil powers” -- Colonel Garnet Wolseley, in a letter to his wife
On this day in 1870, a force of about 400 British regular troops and 800 Canadian militia arrived in Fort Garry, now downtown Winnipeg, after a harrowing trek from Ontario across hundreds of miles of swamp and lake. The expedition under Colonel Wolseley was dispatched after Louis Riel's Red River Rebellion. Riel had fled when the force arrived but it marked the end of the insurgency. The Irish-born Wolseley was a classic 19th century swashbuckler. His incredible career included service in the Crimean War (he was an keen sniper), the Indian Mutiny, China and Africa (he failed to relieve Khartoum and save General Gordon.) A campaigner against British Army bungling, he is said to have been the target of Gilbert and Sullivan’s lampoon as "The Very Image of a Modern Major-General" in the The Pirates of Penzance. Riel was later hanged after his second act of resistance, the North-West Rebellion of 1885.
Constitutional disputes are settled more peaceably in Canada these days but we can expect a frenzied debate over the current government’s plan to abolish the “first-past-the-post” voting system. One option is holding a referendum on the issue but, as demonstrated by Britons’ vote to leave the European Union in June, such plebiscites are unpredictable. At 10:45 a.m. ET today, we’ll be joined on BNN by a political scienctist who says a vote “will prove to be an expensive and unnecessary flop. Past experience indicts such a foray. It will entail amending the Referendum Act and cost well over $300-million.”
The University of Toronto’s Nelson Wiseman warns that “unless the issue is existential, a referendum is a dreadful way to decide anything. Many vote the way they do because of considerations other than the referendum question – see Brexit and the Charlottetown Accord fiasco.”
Soil erosion is one of our themes on Commodities, starting at 11 a.m. ET. We’ll hear from Jerry Hanna, CEO of Clearflow Enviro Systems Group, which has developed a biodegradable mat that slows topsoil loss. The company works with miners and other industrial clients to mitigate a problem that destroys vegetation and damages waterways.
Our BNN Top Line this morning is strength in bank earnings, with giant Royal Bank of Canada joining Bank of Montreal in topping analyst estimates. Barclays says “Royal reported a much more modest beat against expectations than BMO… RY’s results were solid, with the only weakness coming from its insurance operations and the beat was largely generated by much better-than- anticipated provisions for credit losses.”
A correction in soaring house prices is seen as one threat to bank profits. But at 12:15 p.m. ET, we’ll hear from Royal’s Canadian equity trategist, Matthew Barasch, who has been zeroing in on Vancouver. He and his colleagues “do not believe that just because prices have risen a lot. [It] means that Vancouver home prices automatically meet the definition of a bubble that is set to burst, leaving bits and pieces in its wake. Further, we wonder if Vancouver is indeed a bubble, whether or not we are surrounded by bubbles worldwide as Vancouver is hardly an exception in terms of soaring prices brought about by significant foreign inflows and the lowest bond yields in a millennia.”
Yup, a thousand years.
We’re just wondering what a little retreat in leafy Kitsilano will cost in the year 3016. Always supposing that an earthquake hasn’t altered property values in the meantime.
Every morning Commodities host Andrew Bell writes a ‘chase note’ to BNN's editorial staff listing the stories and events that will be in the spotlight that day. Have it delivered to your inbox before the trading day begins by heading to www.bnn.ca/subscribe.
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