The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has awarded over $3 million in contracts to nine Canadian companies – including one that is collaborating with York University scientists – to develop leading-edge uses of space-based Earth observation data and applications, reported Canada News-Wire June 12. Of 12 contracts awarded through the CSA's Earth Observation Application Development Program, one is with Macdonald Dettwiler and Associates. The Richmond, BC, company is collaborating with York University, PCI Geomatics, Noranda and Pacific Forestry Centre to develop a generic hyperspectral data scrubber (GHDS). This software application tool will reduce or eliminate many defects that diminish data quality of airborne and space-borne hyperspectral sensors.
What ‘idiots’ are still buying Air Canada stock?
What kind of idiot is still buying Air Canada stock?, asks The Globe and Mail’s transportation reporter June 13. Despite warnings from Air Canada itself that its shares may have little value, the stock continues to trade above $1. "Retail investors, by and large, are delusional. That's a polite way of saying they're idiots and they'll buy anything," said Fred Lazar, an economics professor specializing in the airline industry at York University's Schulich School of Business.
Industry, not social spending, holding back ‘Northern Tiger
In a series called Stalking the Northern Tiger, the Ottawa Citizen sought the opinion of political scientist Daniel Drache, director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University, in its June 13 instalment about Canada’s social safety net and the economy. The Canadian level of social spending is hardly excessive, said Drache. Canada ranks low in the middle tier of countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in social spending. "Our comparative advantage lies in making social Canada and commercial Canada self-reinforcing," said Drache. A greater impediment to "tiger" status than Canada's social safety net is industry's failure to invest to full advantage in new technology and practices, he suggested. "What I think John Manley was saying is that we should become more dynamic, which requires planning, industrial policy and reducing inequality," said Drache. "The tiger metaphor was not a laissez-faire metaphor. The tigers have always been planned economies."