“Historically, department stores have sort of catered to the middle class,” she said. “As that middle class sort of declines and … is having trouble paying their bills because of inflation or whatever else, then the consumer base for the department store is in decline.”

To read the entire article, please follow the link to CBC Manitoba.

“Maybe they have to face a tariff or maybe they don’t, and that’s going to cause them to delay investment, cut back orders, hours for employees,” he said. 

“If you’re a working Manitoban and you’re working at a factory and your boss is worried about tariffs, you may not get as many hours, maybe not getting overtime anymore. You feel the pinch a little bit.”

Au said it’s hard to tell whether Trump will actually carry out his threats, but if he does, Canada must strike back.

To read the entire article, please follow the link to CBC Manitoba.

“It’s our priority to continue to hold these type of events—to engage in our community, to listen to you, and to take that information back,” Benarroch said. “It’s important to understand how we are able to move forward. Budget 2024 does this by supporting the commitments in our latest strategic plan ‘MomentUM: Leading Change Together.’”

As in previous years, Benarroch was joined by Dr. Diane Hiebert-Murphy, Provost and Vice-President (Academic), and Mike Emslie, CFO and comptroller. They presented an update on UM’s $820 million operating budget, which was approved in May by the Board of Governors.

Their presentation, available in full on the Budget Town Hall website, discussed how UM’s budget model works, how the operating budget is allocated, how it is changing in the coming years, and what our major sources of revenue and expenditures are (details of which can be found in the Annual Financial Report.)

The presentation acknowledged the financial challenges UM faces in the coming years, most of which are difficult to accurately predict, but that overall UM is in a healthy financial state.

“We do have some clear and unexpected financial challenges that we’re going to be facing over the next few years,” Hiebert-Murphy said. “But we are going to continue to resource in fiscally responsible ways and do the best that we can to continue to invest in our core mission at the university and make some gains in some of the areas that we have identified as strategic priorities.”

The 2024-25 budget outlines key areas of increased investment, including: 

• Student Services: Expanding support for admissions, registration, and permanent student resources.
• Competitive Wages: Funding negotiated salary increases across faculties and units.
• Program Expansions: Increasing seats in healthcare-related programs funded by additional provincial grant revenue.
• Financial Support: Enhancing financial aid for graduate and domestic students, with new needs-based aid for international students.
• Capital Renewal: Accessibility improvements, teaching and learning space upgrades, and campus-wide renovations.
• Strategic Research: Investing in interdisciplinary research team grants.
• New Project Funding: Establishing a $3 million pool for proposals aligned with the strategic plan.

Anyone with further questions or comments can submit them to Budget.consultation@umanitoba.ca.

“The success of these projects speaks highly of the quality of new and emerging research at UM,” said Mario Pinto, vice-president (research & international). “I congratulate these twelve researchers on seeking new and cutting-edge ways to address the challenges faced by society.”

The 2023 UM Insight Development Grant recipients are:

Margherita Cameranesi

Margherita Cameranesi, postdoctoral researcher/fellow, Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences: Finding Your Resilience (FYRe): Listening to the Voices of Racialized Refugee Youth to Learn About Their Multisystemic Resilience Using a Participatory Action Research Approach

By listening to the voices of racialized refugee youth who resettled in Winnipeg, Margherita Cameranesi seeks to better understand the mechanisms that contribute to their resilience, mental health, and overall wellbeing. She also aims to develop culturally appropriate and trauma-informed resources for racialized youth seeking asylum in Canada.

Sarah Ciurysek

Sarah Ciurysek, associate professor, School of Art: Navigating a land gift as a settler committed to decolonization: a photographic research/creation project

This year Ciurysek (a settler artist) will be gifted a section of land in northwestern Alberta. Being committed to decolonization and reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous Peoples, Ciurysek seeks to examine decolonizing land use options for privately-owned farmland through a photographic interrogation of self, history, and contemporary land use.

Benjamin Collins

Benjamin Collins, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology: Narratives from Fragments: Re-Thinking Narratives of Manitoba’s Archaeology

Indigenous researchers Kayla Shaganash and Brandi Cable, co-applicant Laura Kelvin, and Collins will study archaeological materials from six sites across Manitoba to help inform how Indigenous peoples engaged with landscapes across the past 8,000 years. This project will provide further training for Indigenous researchers and facilitate engagement with Indigenous communities.

Merissa Daborn

Merissa Daborn, assistant professor, Department of Indigenous Studies: The Food Police: Carceral Food Spaces in Winnipeg

In response to recent increased security and policing at grocery stores, Daborn seeks to better understand the impact of surveillance on Indigenous people in Winnipeg, especially as it relates to their ability to achieve food security. This research will document how systematic surveillance practices result in criminalization of racialized communities.

Zhenzhen Fan

Zhenzhen Fan, Assistant professor, Department of Accounting and Finance: Market Crash Risk: Fact or Artifact?

This project seeks to address whether the risk of financial crash is inherent in the market, or if they result from subjective perceptions of investors. By exploring probable triggers for market turmoil, Fan seeks to better inform investors and policy makers and reduce the risk of crash in the future.

Hikmet Gunay, professor, Department of Economics: Anticipated Regret in Second-Price Auctions

Some bidders go bankrupt after winning an auction due to overbidding. In this research, we aim to understand how emotions cause overbidding, and offer solutions to correct it. Governments can use this research when auctioning infrastructure projects which will prevent bankrupts so that the projects will be completed on time.

Gayle Halas

Gayle Halas, researcher, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences: Homeless, Recovering and ‘Back to the Street’: Identifying the Support Network

Partnering with community agencies and individuals with lived experience of homelessness, the Halas research team seeks to bridge the gap between availability and access to resources/supports needed by individuals experiencing homelessness and discharged from hospital. This project will identify challenges and inform ongoing efforts to launch a Support Hub to facilitate navigation.

Sreemali Herath

Sreemali Herath, assistant professor, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning: Towards inclusive and reciprocal pedagogical practices for all learners: Insights from refugee journeys

Set against unprecedented forced migration, this study aims to document narratives of the refugee journey to Canada. Focusing on refugee families, it aims to develop asset oriented, inclusive and reciprocal curricula that will benefits all learners and provide a broader and more nuanced understanding of refugeeism.

Stephanie Hladik

Stephanie Hladik, assistant professor, Centre for Engineering Professional Practice and Engineering Education: The Impact of Facilitating STEM Outreach: Perceptions, Identities, and Other Impacts

This project works in collaboration with WISE Kid-Netic Energy, a nonprofit STEM outreach organization that recruits undergraduate students from underrepresented groups as facilitators. Hladik seeks to investigate how planning and delivering STEM education impacts how these facilitators perceive STEM fields, develop STEM identities, and gain new skills and career interests.

Jeongmin Kim

Jeongmin Kim, assistant professor, Department of History: Unseemly Military: The Undocumented Workers of U.S. War and Military Occupation in Cold War Asia

This project will engage labor injustice in war and military occupation by offering historical perspectives on contemporary issues of gendered and racialized militarization of everyday life. To understand how local people respond to unfavorable employment in times of war, Kim will investigate cases from 1940s and 50s Cold War Asia.

Suzanne McLeod

Suzanne McLeod, assistant professor, School of Art: Early Distortion: Pinturicchio and the Genesis of a Constructed Image

Possibly the earliest depiction of North American Indigenous people in European art, a recently cleaned Vatican fresco reveals a destructive embryonic stereotype developing alongside Columbus’s 1493 voyage report and the “Doctrine of Discovery”. This project will close an art historical gap by reinterpreting the visual record through an Indigenous perspective.

Virginia Tze

Virginia Tze, associate professor, Educational Administration, Foundations and Psychology: Identifying Systemic Barriers Among People of Colour Entering in Professional Psychology

Canada is experiencing a mental health crisis, and People of Colour looking for a psychologist who is also a Person of Colour can expect to wait up to a decade.  This project seeks to understand how to better support People of Colour in becoming professional psychologists, through a mixed methods design.

On Thursday, the city announced that it has issued $200 million in new bonds, which have already been purchased. The money will go to projects including the South End Water Pollution Control Centre, the north district police station, and the St. James Civic Centre.

The bonds were issued on a 40-year term at an interest rate of 4.65 per cent. The city notes that unlike federal and provincial governments, it can’t legally borrow to balance operating budgets.

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While most stocks are traded through major stock exchanges like the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange, OTC firms are not listed on these exchanges. Despite existing outside of major stock exchanges, the OTC market is vast, with daily dollar volume of $1.5 billion as of 7 November 2023.

Huang explains why these substantial OTC markets can be particularly susceptible to fraud.

“The information environment of OTC markets is very different from publicly listed firms. Much of the trading and stock information is not readily disclosed by OTC firms. This makes it difficult for investors to conduct their analysis before buying in, which creates potential opportunities for fraudsters,” says Huang.

The stock prices of many OTC firms also fluctuate more dramatically than exchange-traded stocks. Combined, the susceptibility of OTC stocks to large price swings and the low level of firm disclosure can make OTC firms ripe for fraud and pose additional challenges to regulators, researchers and retail investors.

In their paper, Huang and co-authors assess the impact of Operation Shell-Expel, an initiative launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2012 to reduce OTC market fraud. The initiative targeted companies that appeared dormant, proactively suspending their operations until they could prove their legitimacy.

Despite others’ criticism of Operation Shell-Expel and doubts about its efficacy, Huang and co-authors hypothesized that the initiative does successfully reduce fraud overall.

“First, we looked at the impact on firms that were suspended,” he explains. “We then looked at other firms with headquarters in the same state as the suspended firms. We found that when suspect firms were proactively suspended, fraud decreased overall at the state level.”

In other words, regulation of one firm “spills over” to reduce fraud among firms in the same state.

Huang, who has been at the Asper School of Business for just over a year, also expresses his appreciation for the School’s research support.

“Asper has been very helpful with funding and resources for new faculty members, which allows me to pursue my research. The Stu Clark Distinguished Speaker Series is particularly impressive, and I’ve been able to invite renowned scholars, including Dr. Andrew Stark, Emeritus Professor, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester and Dr. Waymond Rodgers, Professor, Woody L. Hunt College of Business, University of Texas at El Paso, to share their work and connect with Asper researchers.”

The Stu Clark Distinguished Speaker Series is supported by a generous endowment from Asper School of Business alumnus Stu Clark [BComm/76]. The Series invites prominent researchers from outside of UM to give research seminars and engage with faculty and graduate research students. Upcoming presenters include Jean-Philippe “JP” Vergne, Associate Professor, UCL School of Management, who will discuss the dispersion of information and decision-making on decentralized platforms like the “Metaverse.”

The Asper School of Business supports research like Huang’s that makes an impact.

His research attends to a growing population of retail investors—who are entering the markets earlier and engaging more than ever. Through his work, he contributes to a better market environment, one that allows individual investors to make informed investments in the OTC market and allows policymakers to strike a balance between deterring fraud and fostering growth.