Totally rejecting the claims by the U.S. government against BC's lumber industry, the B.C. Lumber Trade Council is ready to battle over softwood lumber once again.

The U.S. government is moving to file for arbitration over the claim that Canada is failing to comply with the agreed terms of the 2006 Softwood Lumber Agreement.

John Allan who is the President of the Lumber Trade Council rejects this outright by saying the claims being made are without merit. "We categorically reject the claims against the British Columbia industry. We have reviewed the negotiating history, our submissions on early drafts, and the final language of the Agreement. From these reviews we have concluded that we are in full compliance."

A new survey finds that law firms enjoying a boom in business. Amongst those polled, 69% of lawyers responded that business was up and their law firms were undertaking more projects and cases that they did last year. By contrast only 6% of law firms reported a drop in business.

Showing the growth in litigation, commercial real estate, and intellectual property were creating high demand for law services, 26% of those surveyed said their law firm business was experiencing "significant increases" over last year.

These findings are from a survey conducted the law staffing service Robert Half Legal. The survey was conducted by an independent research firm and includes responses from 150 lawyers among the largest law firms in both the United States and Canada. Respondents to the survey reported a minimum of three years working in the legal system.

Honda Canada is reporting that they have set a March sales record with 15,169 units sold by its Honda and Acura company divisions. This record comes as sales were up a full eight per cent over this time last year. Acura was the hotter of the two with an increase in sales of twelve per cent.

The highest increases auto units for Honda were by the Honda CR-V and the Honda Pilot. The CR-V saw sales rise by seventy-five percent! The Fit hatchback also set a March sales record. For Acura their new MDX had record sales for the month of March with an overall increase in sales of eighty-five per cent.

Honda who claims to attract some twenty million customers annually has manufacturing plants in Alliston Ontario. A new plant also in Alliston is set to open some time in 2008. The Honda Ridgeline and Civic are built at the existing manufacturing plants.

SES Research in a new poll have found that American citizens are supportive of increased co-operation with Canada when it comes to border security. This co-operation also extends to an intergrated energy policy and anti-terror measures.

SES President Nikita Nanos says of the poll, "More than eight of ten Americans support greater co-operation with Canada on border security, anti-terrorism measures and having an integrated energy policy.".

The SES poll shows American support for greater co-operation with Canada cut across all regions of the US. In contrast, Canada, in particular Quebecers, while they are still supportive of co-operation with the US, were found to be more likely to have less overall support for co-operation.

Emerging Canadian energy dominance played a strong part in the high support felt by Americans. In their rush to remove themselves from their long dependence on Middle East oil and everything that comes with it, nearly 90% of Americans found an integrated energy policy as very important. Canadians were only slightly less enthusiastic of this development at 85% support.

According to a new report entitled Mission Possible: Successful Canadian Cities, which was released today by The Conference Board of Canada, the future prosperity of Canada as a whole will rest on the success of its major cities.

With Eighty per cent of Canadians living largely in urban areas, and more than half living in ten major cities, where two-thirds of Canada's new jobs were created in the past decade, have neither the power nor the resources to compete globally against other city-regions for investment and human talent.

"For Canada to achieve sustainable prosperity in a world of fundamental and relentless change, we must ensure that our cities can realize their potential," said Anne Golden, President and CEO of the Conference Board. "Ignoring cities' needs and treating them all the same won't get us there."

Canada's major cities and their municipal governments of are caught in a kind of fiscal bind. While bearing costs of services offloaded by federal and provincial governments, they are finding that their share of overall government revenues in Canada is insufficient to meet demands. Right now municipal governments obtain less than twelve per cent of the revenue pie and this share is declining. In order for these cities to succeed, they need greater access to taxes that increase with economic growth.

Talvest Mutual Funds has acknowledged that a backup computer file containing client information has recently gone missing while in transit between its offices.

The backup file contained information relating to the process used to open and administer approximately 470,000 current and former Talvest client accounts and may have included client names, addresses, signatures, date of birth, bank account numbers, beneficiary information and / or Social Insurance Numbers. Talvest has retained original copies of their files on its secure website.

While Talvest has no evidence to suggest this backup file has been inappropriately accessed, the manager of Talvest Mutual Funds, CIBC Asset Management, has taken precautionary measures to protect its clients.

Despite a recent downturn in the U.S. economic outlook and growth, Canada has enough strength in its domestic economy to grow by 2.7 per cent in 2007 and 3.3 per cent in 2008. This according to the Conference Board's Canadian Outlook - Winter 2007.

Canadians' real after-tax household income growth peaked in 2006 at 4.7 per cent, and is expected to moderate slightly, to 3.2 per cent on average, in each of the next two years. The Conference Board's Index of Consumer Confidence rose by 1.6 points in December, which further indicates that consumers are feeling good about job prospects and household finances.

"The wealth generated by high resource prices is the primary reason why Canadian household incomes, corporate profits and government coffers grew strongly in 2006," said Pedro Antunes, Director, National and Provincial Forecast. "While some commodity prices have slipped recently, resource prices in general remain strong, and they are expected to continue producing wealth throughout the Canadian economy.

A white paper released by The Canadian Council of Human Resources Associations titled Managing Across the Generations in Canadian Organizations, challenges the paradigm of categorizing employees by generational stereotypes and provides new perspectives on management strategies.

Indicating there is still a need for different HR approaches to managing Boomers and Gen Xers in some areas of the workplace - the White Paper ultimately concludes variations between generations are often less important than differences among individuals. Employers and HR professionals need to understand each employee as an individual and manage them accordingly - rather than relying heavily on group characteristics.

Managing Across the Generations in Canadian Organizations, authored by Queen's School of Business Professor Carol A. Beatty, is the result of CCHRA's 2006 National Human Resources Forum. At the Forum, senior HR professionals, HR association leaders and government officials from across the country were asked to examine the values of Boomers and Gen Xers in the workplace and then predict the implications that value differences could have on the key areas of HR professional competencies. These areas include: Engagement, Values, Staffing, Compensation, Skills, Training and Development and Employee Relations.

The Decima-Investors Group Consumer Confidence Index which was released on Thursday shows a slight increase in consumer confidence in the fourth quarter. Consumer confidence is up 0.6 points to 86.7. While the index shows that U.S. consumer confidence is outpacing Canadian consumer confidence for the first time in over a year, this is primarily attributable to the trend toward greater volatility in consumer confidence south of the border.

Decima Senior Vice President Jeff Walker explains the contrast between Canadians and Americans like this: "whereas there has been some fluctuation in American confidence over the past year, Canadians across all regions have expressed continuing high levels of confidence in the economy."

As a matter of fact, among Canadians, only Albertans indicated a drop in confidence, with the province registering a decline of 7.1 points over the quarter. Confidence rose slightly in all other Canadian provinces.

Canada will experience an economic slowdown in 2007 according to TD Economics. The economic slowdown will be a result of external demand rather than domestic spending as TD Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, Don Drummond notes, "The problem will be with the American not Canadian consumer."

The December issue of the TD Quarterly Economic Forecast states the Canadian economy will expand at an average 2.1 percent pace per quarter over the next three quarters. This is marginally below its potential pace of 2.8 percent. The report can be found online at www.td.com/economics.

South of the border, however, the U.S. economy will fall short of its potential pace (3.3 percent) by a full percentage point, resulting in a greater degree of economic slack. Moreover the American slowdown has only reached its halfway mark.

An ever-deepening housing correction is scarring the economic landscape. A sharp backslide in residential investment shaved 1 percentage point off real GDP growth in the third quarter, which marked the largest drag from this sector in 16 years. TD Economics expects to see a repeat performance in the final quarter of this year given that housing starts plummeted 13 percent in October.