Kushal Kundanmal's Blog

According to this article in Samar Bose’s blog, Mirriad, a UK-based advertising company has created technology to subliminally feature prominent products such as a Nintendo 3DS or Beats’ Pill in various pop. culture media, such as in Justin Bieber’s music videos.

While Samar seems to be delighted that this new technology exists to make it easier to advertise products while he watches Justin Bieber videos, I believe that this technology, and in general, the association of consumerism with works of art is a shallow form of advertising.

The products in question are often flashed for less than a second on the screen and serve the purpose of trying to establish a subliminal connection to the work of art in the minds of the viewers.

An advertisement should focus on convincing a potential customer of it’s value. It should make the customer acknowledge what makes it stand out as a product from it’s competitors. Trying to force the masses to think that the product has value just because it is associated with a certain pop. culture figure is a somewhat deceptive tactic, and in my opinion – a failure of modern media in accepting this trend and a failure on advertisers who continue this trend.

Currently the average costs of sending a child to daycare varies extremely across Canada. Ranging from $152 a month in Gatineau, Quebec to $1676 in Brampton, Ontario.

This is a huge disparity, leading many women in the cities with high childcare costs to struggle financially.

Women in places such as Brampton, Ont. and Surrey, BC on average spend more than 35% of their income on day care and other child care services. In many cases, sending a child to day care is the only practical option if the woman wants to work full time. A study in Alberta found out that 49% of part time working women chose part time work due to the fact that they could not afford day care services.

In Quebec, their child-care policy caps day care fees at $7 a day. Despite a rise to $7.50 by the end of the year, this policy makes Quebec the most affordable province for child care in the country. This province-wide policy has lead to strong increase in women’s participation in the workforce. With an increased labour force, generally comes economic growth.

Currently the Harper Government proposes income splitting policies to help families deal with child care by offering them tax incentives. However Kate McInturff, a researcher at the  Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, says “In every other country where they’ve implemented income splitting, we’ve seen women’s participation in the workforce goes down, but men’s doesn’t go up.” 

She recommends a federal subsidy on the costs of child care. One that will help women overcome the challenges needed to be successful in today’s labour market.

Considering Canada ranks second last in terms of government child care spending in all of the OECD countries, and the fact that Canada has a very high proportion of working women, our policies regarding spending on the future generation should be reconsidered.

Every year, after Thanksgiving, most major retailers begin preparing for the lucrative holiday season, where price wars and amazing deals are to be seen in every decorated window.

The November-December time frame is an important time for these large retailers such as Wal-Mart, who depend upon waves of deal-seeking consumers to bring them large profits.

However, with the recent emergence of e-commerce retailers such as Amazon.ca, the big players on the block will have to re-evaluate their strategies.

Walmart has already announced way back in 2012 that it will not carry Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader. This move has not dealt a big blow to the E-commerce giant as their Kindle products have been immensely popular, however it is clear that Walmart is wary of the online retailer.

Amazon.com is currently the largest online retailer in Canada, owning around 7% of the market. This is larger than the share of Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Best Buy, Lowe’s and The Bay combined. They reported a whopping $1.5 Billion dollars in sales last year.

Walmart must not be complacent with their title as retail king, and they seem to realize the need for sustained innovation. According to Charles Holley, the CFO at Walmart, the retailer will be investing $1.2 to $1.5 billion dollars into it’s e-commerce operations over the coming year.

Considering that the Chinese online retailer Alibaba earned $9.3 billion dollars in sales in a single day – with 43% of it’s customers placing orders on mobile devices, Walmart is probably making a smart decision investing in the online and mobile world.

Expanding on my previous post on the potential for Aquaponics to help sustainably tackle the food crisis, I will look at the case of Urban Organics.

Urban Organics is a Minnesota based company that specializes in urban agriculture and aquaponics. In 2012, they paired up with the large water-management industrialists Pentair to convert a giant abandoned brewery into an indoor urban farm. They utilized advanced water-managment, space-saving and aquaponics knowledge to create a highly efficient vertical farm that is able to sustainably grow organic food and provide for the community year-round. Which in chilly Minnesota is virtually unheard of.

They are able to grow up to 6000 Tilapia fishes and produce an acre’s worth of crops in an 8000 sq. ft. space. A remarkably efficient use of space.

By the start of 2014, Urban Organic’s farm was able to produce 450,000 kg of vegetables like lettuce, and 23,000 kg of fish.

Plans to expand into the second floor of the brewery and introduce more species of fish such as trout into the system will only lead to growth and expansion of profits and produce.

This is a fantastic example of the potential for efficient commercial aquaponics systems. Urban Organic’s facility has just scratched the surface when it comes to the possibilities to provide fresh, organic produce to the masses sustainably.

With the ever expanding population and the increased demand for resources, especially food, we are facing a global crisis. The agriculture industry must come up with a way to sustainably produce enough food to feed the populace.

Although traditional farming practices have served us well, it is evident that the large monoculture farms being employed to produce food are no longer a sustainable production method.

A potential solution to this ever-pressing problem might just be aquaponics.

This closed loop agro-ecosystem is a sustainable and efficient way to produce both fish and vegetables. It requires far less space than traditional farming methods due to the possibility of vertically stacking the crops, and it is fairly cheap and easy to setup.

Despite this being a fairly new practice that has not been implemented on a large scale, the possibility to expand this method to a large scale might just be a strong solution to the global food crisis.

Some small scale studies have proven the economic viability of commercial aquaponics setups, more specifically urban, city based production facilities which allow for decreased transportation costs and improved access to fresh organic produce.

A landmark Supreme court ruling gave title to over 1750 square kilometres of land to the Tsilhqot’in people west of Williams Lake.

This is a large area of land in the Chilcotin, and it will be used as a Tribal Park. This means that all major economic operations in the area will have to be first approved by the First Nations government there.

To the nearby planned $1.1 billion dollar Taseko copper and gold mine, positive stakeholder relations with their First Nations neighbours is vital.

Taseko could try fight and resist the title by the First Nations, or they could change their operations to work with the First Nations.

Engaging with Native leaders and the community, Taseko could employ a proactive approach that will foster good relationships that can benefit them in the future.

For now, Taseko’s project has not been given the go ahead since they did not meet the requirements of the Tsilhqot’in people.

Tying into the PEST analysis we have done in class, Taseko and other resource extracting companies should focus more on understanding the various political and social/cultural factors in their area of operation, and learn to positively overcome them.

Alberta is a province that is known for it’s oil. However, it could easily become a strong producer of clean, renewable wind energy.

Currently there are no incentives to invest in Albertan wind power, despite the millions of dollars required for commercial operations.

Alberta is currently poised to retire 4 GW of it’s coal fired energy generation capacity. This leaves a lot of room for wind power to fill the hole.

However, without provincially endorsed long-term contracts or financial benefits to aid the struggling wind industry, Albertan wind producers will have a tough time finding economic balance.

Ontario and Quebec, which are much larger producers of wind energy, both have such incentives. For example, Ontario’s Feed-In-Tariff (FIT) program mandates long term agreements for the benefit of wind energy producers.

Despite the lack of government support, many private firms are still making the fight for wind energy. Such as BluEarth’s soon to be open 78 MW facility in Alberta.

Maybe it is time for the province to help these pioneers create a strong case for wind energy.

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A successful and sustainable business model must consider the needs of all it’s stakeholders. This includes stockholders, customers and even the community around it.

In an era where unsustainable and unsavoury business practices can be spread around the community through social media and the news in seconds, businesses need to implement effective Corporate Social Responsibility strategies in order to protect their image and benefit all stakeholders.

No longer should the primary focus of business just be profits. Not without considering both people and planet as well. At least, that is the triple bottom line approach (people, planet, profits) that many top Canadian universities have began to teach their MBA graduates.

As Dezsö J. Horváth, dean of the Schulich School of Business says “Research shows that companies that focus on the social and environmental bottom line as well as the financial bottom line create greater shareholder value on average over the mid-to-long term. Adopting a broad triple bottom line approach is more than just good corporate citizenship — it’s simply good business management.”

CSR, as a powerful strategic tool, should be employed by all levels of the corporate ladder. Social responsibility should not be assigned to a small silo-ed department that has little ability to effect management decisions. Rather it should be embedded within the mission of the firm itself to strive to better relationships with all stakeholders.

Visit this link for more information on the growing field of CSR:

http://www.thestar.com/life/worldofmbas/2014/09/08/the_growing_field_of_corporate_social_responsibility.html