Month: May 2020

MONTREAL ― There is little agreement these days among the prognosticators as to what exactly is headed for Canada’s housing market in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Several recent forecasts predict rising house prices this year, even amid massive job losses and a shrinking economy.

But an economist at U.K.-based Capital Economics says Canada’s house prices are set to fall, and stay down “for years” because the country can expect a decline in immigration levels.

“Demand for housing has become extremely reliant on immigration,” Stephen Brown wrote in a client note this week. 

Watch: Should you bypass pricey urban houses and buy a recreational property? Experts say be careful. Story continues below.

 

He predicts house prices will drop 5 per cent during this crisis, and with lower immigration levels in the years to come, both prices and sales will stay below their pre-COVID-19 levels for a prolonged period.

Brown noted that “immigration has slumped following four of the past five recessions, as higher unemployment reduced the incentive to move.”

But that’s not always the case. If Canada does relatively better than other countries in the crisis, it will still be a draw.

“For instance, immigration rose after the (financial crisis of 2008-09), when Canada was relatively less affected than most countries,” Brown wrote in an email to HuffPost Canada.

If immigration does fall, the housing market will be the hardest hit part of the economy, he said. 

“Investors have based their (house or condo) purchases on the assumption that immigration will keep rents growing strongly. That will be a questionable assumption even if restrictions on travel are soon lifted.”

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Real-time data from rental listings sites suggests that Toronto rents have already fallen 3 to 5 per cent since the crisis began, which is “pretty big for a month,” Brown said.

At present, Canada has closed its borders to non-residents, with the exception of essential migrant workers. But unlike the U.S., which has suspended immigration during the crisis, Canada continues to process applications. 

For decades, Canadian population growth came in roughly even parts from natural growth (births inside the country) and immigration. But in recent years, with the birth rate declining and immigration rising, more than 80 per cent of Canada’s population growth has come from new arrivals.

In this crisis, “the ability to move to Canada would be limited to those with existing savings or incomes to fund the move … and given unemployment rates are going to soar everywhere we would still expect a reduction in immigration,” Brown told HuffPost.

Housing faces headwinds

Other things will also work against the housing market this year, including “a record amount of supply to hit the market,” Brown noted, and the decline of Airbnb as tourism is put on hold during the pandemic.

“The drop in short-term rental demand seems like a key area of weakness for the overall housing market in the short-term,” Brown wrote. The decline in rents “seems to be because an influx of apartments that were previously serving Airbnb have come to the market, and also because few people are willing to commit to rent a place without physically seeing it.”

Yet despite all these things working against the market, Brown doesn’t expect the sort of major price corrections Canada has seen in some previous downturns.

That’s partly because the job losses have hit people at the lower end of the income ladder, and they tend to be renters, Brown said. But it’s also because of the banks’ new mortgage deferral programs.

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“All this will greatly limit the number of forced sales, whether by owner-occupiers or landlords,” he wrote.

Alberta is likely to see the weakest house prices, because of the oil price slump, but because of its high house prices and reliance on immigration, “house prices in British Columbia are the most vulnerable if conditions turn out worse than we expect,” Brown wrote.

MONTREAL — Quebecor Inc. says it wants to “rescue” Cirque du Soleil by purchasing a controlling stake in the struggling company and bringing its ownership back home to Quebec.

In a letter sent to four federal ministers from Quebec, the telecommunications company says it is in funding talks with Quebec’s pension fund manager as well the Fonds de Solidarite FTQ and the Royal Bank of Canada.

Quebecor says in separate press release it is ready to spend “several hundred million dollars” to revive operations at the circus producer, which has halted all 44 shows worldwide and laid off 95 per cent of its employees amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The conglomerate adds that it has been unable to obtain financial details for Cirque du Soleil, citing “blockage” by management.

Cirque du Soleil is reported to be exploring various options to stay solvent, with debt restructuring and bankruptcy protection among the potential options.

Debt at the Montreal-based entertainment giant, founded as a regional touring company by Guy Laliberte in 1984, is estimated at about US$900 million.

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American investment fund TPG Capital claims a 60 per cent stake in Cirque while Chinese firm Fosun Capital Group and the Caisse de depot et placement own 20 per cent each.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 4, 2020.

OTTAWA — The federal budget remains delayed until further notice.

The annual fiscal blueprint was scheduled to be tabled March 30 before it was postponed after the coronavirus pandemic prompted the suspension of Parliament. More than a month later, with the House of Commons back in a hybrid virtual-in-person format, it isn’t clear when or if the government intends to table one in the coming months.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that a budget is “usually pretty accurate” in laying out a roadmap for economic measures. This year is different, he suggested.

“Right now, we’re in a situation where there is a tremendous degree of uncertainty as to what the economy could look like six months from now, what the economy could look like three months from now, what’s going to happen in the coming weeks,” Trudeau said during a news conference outside his Ottawa home.

He said his government has been “extremely transparent” since the start of the COVID-19 crisis about the billions promised for families and small businesses in these “unprecedented” times. 

Watch: Workers can get emergency benefit or wage support but not both, PM warns. Story continues below video.

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Asked about the possibility an economic update, generally seen as a “mini budget,” could be released this spring, Trudeau said in French that “nothing is off the table.”

With provincial governments beginning to map out recovery plans to remove physical-distancing measures, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said now is the “right time” to plan a budget. 

“We have expressed concerns about the federal budget before the crisis,” he said, referencing continued criticism fromConservatives about government spending. 

Last week, the parliamentary budget officer released a report forecasting the federal budget to increase from $24.9 billion in 2019-2020 to $252.1 billion in 2020-21 — the “largest budgetary deficit on record.”

“Now that we have been impacted by the pandemic, it is clear that as a country we are weaker because of the mismanagement of Justin Trudeau,” Scheer said. 

The Conservative leader said that while a federal budget or economic update may not come this week or “perhaps not even this month,” it doesn’t mean the finance department can’t get started on preliminary work.

Scheer said he would like to see an updated budget plan before Parliament adjourns for the summer in June. Reviewing a plan for how the government plans to manage the economy over the next several months is “necessary,” he said.

Parliament has so far approved $164 billion in funding, through three pieces of emergency legislation, for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), and the Canada Emergency Student Benefit.

Scheer wants ‘progressive’ change made to CERB

Treasury Board President Jean-Yves Duclos told reporters during a daily news conference in Ottawa that the government has received 10.6 million applications for the CERB, and 7.3 million people have received the benefit. 

He added that 96,000 applications have been made for the CEWS, which has helped 1.7 million workers across the country as of Sunday.

Conservative have also raised concerns about the current structure of the CERB, saying the rule that workers who earn more than $1,000 a month are deemed ineligible for the benefit may create a disincentive to work.

Scheer said as businesses look to reopen and fill their staffing schedules, some “flexibility” should be woven into the program. 

Instead of a hardline cutoff that makes people ineligible for the emergency benefit, there should be a “gradual” reduction to foster an economic situation where it’s “always better off for Canadians to work.”

He explained a gradual phase-out of the benefit, as people earn more and more, would be a “progressive” change, which could help “encourage and incentivize” people to return to the workforce.

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A Canadian software developer says he has resigned his position as a vice president with Amazon over the firing of employees who he says fought for better COVID-19 protection in the company’s warehouses.

Tim Bray, who says he worked with Amazon Web Services, wrote in a blog post that he “quit in dismay at Amazon firing of two whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of COVID-19.”

Bray says some workers, who had been active with a group of Amazon employees pushing the company for leadership on the global climate emergency, were contacted by Amazon warehouse staff concerned about what they considered lack of coronavirus protection.

In comments reported in other media, Bray described the firings as “chickens**t” and “designed to create a climate of fear.” However, those comments were no longer part of the blog post as of Tuesday.

He says the employees with the climate group responded by internally promoting a petition and an April 16 video call with guest activist Naomi Klein, and made an announcement using an internal mailing list.

Bray says two workers who were leaders with the climate group were immediately fired.

Amazon responded in an email to The Canadian Press that it supports employees’ rights to criticize working conditions, but that the two employees were fired for “repeatedly violating internal policies.”

“We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies,” the email stated.

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The email said Amazon did not have any further comment on Bray’s departure, and would not answer a followup question about what internal policies the two terminated employees had violated.

Bray called the justification for the firings “laughable″ in his blog post, and said he raised his concerns quietly within Amazon.

“Management could have objected to the event, or demanded that outsiders be excluded, or that leadership be represented, or any number of other things; there was plenty of time. Instead, they just fired the activists,″ he wrote.

On Friday, Alberta reported an outbreak of COVID-19 at an Amazon warehouse north of Calgary. At the time, the province said there were five cases at the site at Balzac.

Amazon said last week it has spent more than $800 million on COVID-19 safety measures, including masks, hand sanitizer, gloves and installing hand-washing stations at warehouses.

Bray said in his blog post that his resignation, through salaries and share vestings, will probably cost him more than $1 million.

― The Canadian Press, with a file from HuffPost Canada

MONTREAL — The dining room at Pazzo’s Pizza and Taverna in Stratford, Ont., is closed due to the pandemic and its entire staff has been let go, but as far as small businesses go, this might actually be one of the lucky ones.

Unlike many others, it has no rent to pay, and the mortgage has been temporarily deferred. That gives business partners Larry McCabe and Jeff Leney some breathing room to ride out the COVID-19 crisis.

But McCabe is acutely aware many Stratford businesses are facing much more immediate financial problems ― problems made worse in this tourist town by the closing of the entire season of the famed Stratford Festival.

And he knows when his dine-in pizza restaurant reopens it will not be what it once was.

“What our business looks like is going to be very different, the number of employees will be very different, the use of interior space will be very different,” he told HuffPost Canada.

Watch: Trudeau unveils rent relief for small businesses. Story continues below.

 

McCabe says he’s been told to expect that when the restaurant reopens, social distancing rules will require the dining room to have no more than 50 per cent of its previous capacity. And he says he is preparing for the possibility of repeat lockdowns in the future.

“We’re looking at how we can stagger reservations so that that can happen,” he said. 

He’s confident people will want to sit on the patio in the summer weather ― but not sure if they’ll be comfortable in an indoor dining room. He and Leney are even looking into the possibility of serving customers in the parks that line nearby Lake Victoria. 

And keeping the staff safe from infection will be a priority. “It’s not just, how do we sell things? It’s, how do we do things safely?” McCabe said.

“We’re redesigning everything.”

It’s not only restaurants that are redesigning everything ― practically any business that involves people congregating in some way will have to rethink its practices as the world reopens to new social distancing rules.

Airlines, for instance, are looking at the possibility of removing middle seats, and having seats face in different directions. And as if flying post-9/11 wasn’t uncomfortable enough, it’s likely to get even more so: Canada has announced it will now require air travellers to wear face masks in flight, among other measures.

But the prospect of a new normal with far fewer passengers has the industry unnerved ― to the point that the CEO of discount European carrier Ryanair lashed out at social distancing rules as “idiotic.”

While most entrepreneurs haven’t reacted quite as harshly, at least in public, many don’t see good prospects under these conditions. 

Major problems ahead

In a joint survey with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Statistics Canada reported that nearly four in 10 Canadian businesses ― 39.7 per cent ― say they can survive no more than 90 days being partly or fully open with social distancing measures in place.

A full 17.5 per cent of businesses said they can tolerate no time at all under these conditions.

The survey was somewhat vague about what “social distancing” specifically means for any given business, leaving it to respondents’ imaginations. But that degree of negativity suggests business owners see major problems ahead.

As it waits for the lockdown to end, Pazzo’s is surviving by taking delivery orders ― something the dine-in pizzeria has never done before.

While it may seem those food delivery apps that have exploded in popularity in recent years would be a good solution, McCabe discovered they’re of little help to his business.

“When they’re taking 30 per cent, there’s no margin. You just end up going broke faster.”

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Simply operating puts Pazzo’s in the minority: According to data from Restaurants Canada, 53 per cent of the country’s restaurants are simply not running in the lockdown. 

How many will reopen when it’s lifted is an open question ― as is whether their customers will return. 

There is no way to know, but McCabe estimates Pazzo’s will be earning 30 cents for every dollar it used to earn, once the lockdown ends.

“There’s enough work for three or four of us, but in the summer we would have 70 staff. We won’t get back up to that probably for the next couple years.”

They’re working on “shock-proofing” the business against future closures, but ultimately, “we can’t just keep opening and closing,” he says. “That’s not tenable.”

Going where the demand is

Their lender has granted them a mortgage deferral, and they plan to “pass along the savings” to a tenant on their property, a clothing store owner who recently had a baby.

McCabe is looking into the federal wage subsidy the government has launched, but says it’s hard to ask the government for money for wages when you don’t even know how many people you will need for your business. And in any case, these are temporary measures, not solutions.

“There will be a point where you don’t have support, and you will have to function in some way,” he said.

In the meantime, McCabe and Leney are even considering the possibility of changing the business Pazzo’s does ― in essence, going where the demand is.

“We may be doing a different thing because we own our own property ― whether we get into groceries, whether we get into other areas of sales.”

Alternately, “we have two kitchens. Under some circumstances one could be a community kitchen. We could help, and people here would love to help.”

McCabe worries mom-and-pop businesses simply won’t be able to keep up with the complexity of the changes coming, and may choose to stay shuttered. But he’s more worried about those that took on large amounts of debt before the crisis, when the economy was hot.

“It’s a lot of debt without any equity. They don’t own their buildings. They can postpone rent for three months, but after that, eventually you still have to come up with a model that will work for the next few years ― if everyone’s going to be honest with themselves.”

But as the initial shock of the economic crisis wears off, McCabe is seeing attitudes change, and he has reason to hope.

“There are a lot of positive things that will come out of this as well,” he said. “People will be forced to really look at the people in their community, their strengths and how they can work together.

“We started out being very negative about this, everyone was shocked, and now we’ve come out of shock to ask, ‘What does this mean, and what can we do?’”

OTTAWA — An Ottawa biotech company is voluntarily recalling a rapid test for COVID-19 after Health Canada expressed concern about its effectiveness, dealing a setback to expanded testing in the country.

Spartan Bioscience said Sunday that the concerns centre around the proprietary swab used in the test, but that the Health Canada report out Friday did not raise concerns about the accuracy of the test reagents and portable analyzer device.

The company said it would recall the 5,500 test shipped nationally and work on additional clinical studies to assess the sampling method and swab.

“Spartan will be working as quickly as possible to address the concerns and bring its test to market,” the company said in a statement.

‘It didn’t perform well’

Spartan declined an interview request.

Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said Sunday at a news conference that real-world trials of the test so far haven’t delivered necessary outcomes.

“While the Spartan system, or the device, performed very well in a laboratory setting, and along the specifications the manufacturer had provided, it was in the real-life setting, in the clinical setting, where it didn’t perform well.”

Tam said the recall won’t affect the national testing goal of 60,000 people a day, since that figure is based on systems already in use, but that it could affect the speed of further test increases and especially affect rural communities where local in-clinic tests would be especially useful. 

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the federal government has moved to accelerate approvals for testing and other potentially life-saving measures, but also needs to be ready to respond quickly to new information.

“That is why we are being as nimble as we possibly can to respond to what’s working, to what perhaps isn’t working as well as we hoped that it would, and we will always need to adjust every step of the way as new information comes in on a daily basis through this pandemic, through this crisis.”

Health Canada says the product is restricted to research use only until adequate evidence of clinical performance can be provided.

Watch: Canada’s top doctor says increased testing is needed before society returns to normal. Story continues below. 

 

The federal government announced it had approved the hand-held DNA analyzer on April 13.

The need for greater testing is widely acknowledged as key to understanding the true scope of COVID-19 infection in Canada, and how best to deploy suppression strategies.

Canada was hoping to send the devices to remote and Indigenous communities where access and timely results have been hindered by distance and limited resources.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 3, 2020

WASHINGTON — The United States is keeping Canada and its plans to overhaul its drug-pricing system on a “watch list” of countries deemed a peril to American intellectual property rights — just as a world racked by COVID-19 takes an interest access to in a California company’s experimental new drug treatment.

In its annual report on foreign threats to U.S. copyright holders, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative is raising concerns about Canada’s plan to change how it calculates the fair price of prescription drugs, though stopping short of Big Pharma’s demand that it be deemed a “priority” trouble spot.

Canada’s plan has drawn “significant concern from stakeholders” because it would “dramatically reshape” how the arm’s-length Patented Medicine Prices Review Board evaluates drugs, says the report. The board plans to stop using the U.S. and Switzerland, home to the world’s highest drug prices, to help it determine what Canadian patients should pay.

“If implemented, the changes may significantly undermine the marketplace for innovative pharmaceutical products, delay or prevent the introduction of new medicines in Canada and reduce investments in Canada’s life sciences sector,” the U.S. report says.

The report acknowledges that Canada has agreed to intellectual-property reforms in the forthcoming U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which the USTR announced last week would become the law of the land on July 1.

That agreement may be Canada’s best defence against the escalating dangers of pandemic-fuelled protectionism in the United States, experts say — especially as the challenge of procuring weapons against COVID-19 moves from face masks to therapeutic drugs.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for instance, has pointed out that finding treatments for COVID-19 might take less time than finding a vaccine to prevent it.

The existence of the USMCA, along with Canada’s recently proven track record in negotiating with its stateside neighbours, could bode well for “Buy American” becoming “Buy North American,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

“It would not at all be unusual to have some regional exception or inclusion with respect to domestic preferences,” Paul told a panel discussion hosted earlier this week by the Washington International Trade Association.

“The fact that we do have a USMCA entering into force soon … provides a pretty good framework for that.”

That’s likely to be even more important in the coming months as cross-border procurement concerns start to focus on issues like drug therapies and vaccine supplies. Already, remdesivir — an experimental drug made by California-based Gilead Sciences — is causing a buzz after a recent clinical trial suggested it could prove effective in mitigating the symptoms of COVID-19.

The antiviral drug has been on the World Health Organization’s list of promising treatments getting special attention since March.

Just days after U.S. infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed cautious optimism about the drug from the Oval Office, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized the emergency use of remdesivir on patients infected with the novel coronavirus, buoyed by evidence that it shortens recovery times.

If it pans out, global demand will be enormous and countries with strong trade relationships with the United States may benefit.

Not everyone excited for new deal

Not everyone is happy to see the USMCA, known variously in government circles as CUSMA, ACEUM in Quebec and “the new NAFTA” elsewhere in Canada, taking effect sooner than anticipated.  

Conservative Sen. Don Plett, the Opposition leader in the upper chamber, doubled down Friday on his charge that the Liberal government had promised both Canada’s dairy processors and Conservative senators that the agreement would not kick in until Aug. 1.

And in an interview with The Canadian Press, Plett said he believes the government amended its schedule to help expedite the delivery of U.S.-made N95 face masks — the subject of an export ban imposed last month by President Donald Trump — and to beat back the idea of stationing American soldiers near the Canadian border.

 “We were told directly that Trump had threatened to withhold N95 masks,” he said.

“The second argument, troops at the border … he wasn’t going there to declare an act of war, he was going to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing the border. And so to sell out our dairy industry, in order to make their negotiations with Trump easier, I don’t accept.”

The government has denied that it swapped an earlier implementation date for an exemption to the Trump administration’s export ban on protective medical gear or an end to the short-lived idea of sending U.S. troops to the border.

The July 1 date is expected to cost the processing industry an additional $100 million because the dairy sector’s “quota year” for a number of key products begins in August, and many of the terms of the agreement are tied directly to the production calendar.

“Your government threw Canada’s dairy farmers under the bus,” Plett fumed at Sen. Marc Gold, the government’s representative in the Senate. 

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The government has denied that it ever promised an Aug. 1 come-into-effect date. Gold did not; instead, he refused to discuss “private discussions” with other leaders.

But he did made it clear that Canada’s fraught relationship with the unpredictable Trump administration was top of mind when the COVID-19 crisis began to intensify in mid-March, when the government fast-tracked the USMCA implementation bill through both the House of Commons and the Senate and began negotiating a mutual ban on non-essential cross-border travel.  

“In the context of this new reality, I don’t have to remind senators that maintaining a good close collaborative and stable relationship with the United States, our most important trading partner and our neighbour, has become even more important than it already was,” Gold said.

“Ensuring that the deal passed when it did, and that protectionism didn’t take greater hold on this continent, if not beyond, was a major accomplishment of this government for which I believe Canadians, including the dairy sector, should be grateful.” 

Gold did promise that the dairy sector would be compensated for the impact of the deal, although he provided no specifics.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2020.

MONTREAL — With losses topping $1 billion last quarter, Air Canada predicts it will take at least three years to return to the flight capacity and earnings heights of 2019 due to the “cataclysmic effect” of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re now living through the darkest period ever in the history of commercial aviation, significantly worse than 9/11, SARS and the 2008 financial crisis,” CEO Calin Rovinescu said on a conference call with analysts Monday.

“There is no doubt that we are not yet out of the trough.”

Since mid-March, the airline has slashed its flight schedule by more than 90 per cent and grounded more than 200 aircraft, cutting service internationally to just five airports. Passenger revenue dropped by $604 million or 16 per cent year over year in the first quarter as the company burned $22 million in cash per day in March.

The country’s largest airline hopes to ease that burn rate as it cuts costs, but has “no revenue coming in other than cargo” in the second quarter, chief financial officer Michael Rousseau said.

Third-quarter capacity will be reduced by 75 per cent compared to a year earlier, the carrier predicted.

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Rovinescu declined to discuss the viability of his plan to buy travel company Transat for $720 million, which received a thumbs-up from shareholders in August but awaits regulatory green lights in Canada and the European Union.

“Until we get regulatory approval, there’s really no update that we can provide,” Rovinescu said.

The Montreal-based company said it has reached $1.05 billion in cost savings, achieved in part by furloughing about 20,000 of its 38,000 employees.

It had $6.5 billion in cash at the end of March — some $1.06 billion less than three months earlier — after securing a one-year loan of $829 million and drawing down two revolving lines of credit that yielded roughly $1 billion.

With border shutdowns and record-low travel demand across the globe, Air Canada has converted four Boeing 777s — its largest wide-body aircraft — and several Airbus 330s into cargo planes as demand for medical supplies rises, but “the volume’s not incredibly high,” Rousseau said.

The company is also accelerating the retirement of 79 older planes, including the less efficient Boeing 767s, Airbus 319s and Embraer 190s.

Results below expectations

Air Canada said it lost $1.05 billion in its first quarter compared with a profit of $345 million in the same quarter last year as governments imposed travel restrictions around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The loss amounted to $4 per diluted share for the quarter compared with a profit of $1.26 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2019.

Operating revenue fell to $3.72 billion in the quarter ended March 31, compared with $4.43 billion a year earlier, the company said.

On an adjusted basis, Air Canada lost $392 million or $1.49 per diluted share in the first quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $17 million or six cents per diluted share in first three months of 2019. The results fell 22 per cent short of analyst expectations, which had predicted adjusted earnings of $1.22 per diluted share, according to financial markets data firm Refinitiv.

Air Canada’s shares were down $1.38 or 7.15 per cent at $17.92 in morning trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 4, 2020

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BERKELEY, MO — State Rep. Bruce Franks Jr. yesterday released body camera footage from a 2014 protest in Berkeley, Missouri, saying that he wanted to share the “unfiltered reality” of his and other protesters’ interactions with police that night. The footage shows Franks being beaten, kicked and sprayed with Mace by several officers. The footage was obtained as part of ongoing litigation by Franks against St. Louis County and several of its police officers, and appears to be edited, though to what extent isn’t clear.

Demonstrators had gathered on Christmas Eve to protest the fatal shooting of Antonio Martin, a black teenager killed by police hours earlier. The 18-year-old had been armed and drew his weapon first, police said, though he fired no shots.

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Police said a gun was recovered from the scene, but the officer who fired the fatal shots was not wearing his body camera and a camera in his police cruiser was not recording, according to the Post-Dispatch. Only three cameras at the gas station where the shooting took place captured what happened, all in low quality and from poor angles.

Martin was shot less than four miles from where another police officer shot and killed another black teenager, Michael Brown, only months before.

Police say protesters lit fires and threw bricks at officers at protests that broke out at the gas station after Martin’s shooting. Two officers suffered lacerations, while dozens of protesters were injured.

The video released this week shows several officers using Mace on Franks, brutally kicking and beating him with a baton while he was handcuffed on the ground.

“I’m not fighting,” Franks screams repeatedly as he appears to comply with orders from officers.

In the aftermath of the confrontation, the video shows at least one officer bragging about Macing and kicking a protester on the ground.

“That’s one of the f***ing white b***hes [that] caught me spraying everybody, so she’s on my a**. I’m hiding back here for a little bit,” an officer says as a woman yells at police for Macing protesters who were already subdued.

Franks identifies that officer, who is wearing the camera capturing the video, as St. Louis County Police Officer Timothy Anderer.

“I got a couple good licks in on somebody,” a second officer says.

Anderer replies: “Yeah, we all did.”

“Some guy was kneeling down, trying to get up, and I f***ing kicked him like there was no f***ing tomorrow,” the second officer replies.

“Did you get any stick time in?” a third unidentified officer later asks Anderer.

“No, but I went through a whole bottle of Mace,” Anderer responds, adding that he had ” a couple of good kicks” as well.

At that point, the unidentified officer raises his eyebrows and glances suggestively toward Anderer’s body camera.

“Okay,” Anderer says.

Watch the body camera footage here (Warning: Video contains violence and profanity):

Anderer and two other officers — St. Louis County Police Officer Stephen Owens and Bel-Ridge Police Officer Phillip Von Der Heydt — are named in a lawsuit filed by ArchCity Defenders, a legal advocacy group, on Franks’ behalf.

Franks said he had gone to the protest as a peacekeeper, to mediate between law enforcement officers and demonstrators. The suit alleges that Anderer, Owens and others violated his First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights through their “unreasonable and excessive” use of force.

According to the suit, Franks and other mediators were trying to create a buffer zone between protesters and police when Franks saw an unidentified officer reach for his gun. A protester yelled at the officer to get his hand off his weapon, and in response the officer grabbed one of the mediators.

Franks says he was trying to pull the mediator back to safety when Owens “pulled him violently to the ground.” While on the ground, Owens, Anderer and Von Der Heydt Maced, kicked and beat Franks, while screaming profanities at him, the suit alleges.

After Franks was detained, he says his requests for medical attention were ignored. He was charged with assault and resisting arrest, but that’s not what the video shows, and all charges were later dismissed.

“We can confirm that some of our police officers were involved in the protest shown in the video from 4 years ago in December of 2014,” a spokesperson for the St. Louis County Police Department told KMOX. “The protest turned violent, and subjects were taken into custody. Any use of force that occurred was documented and internal investigations were conducted as part of that review. We can not further comment on the actions taken by officers that night due to pending litigation.”

For Franks, that’s not nearly good enough.

“Since our goal was to facilitate conversations and manage tensions, we should have been able to partner with law enforcement officials present, but unfortunately that was not the case,” he said in a statement. “Instead, officers reacted with excessive force, even against peacekeepers, who raised concerns about their colleagues’ conduct, which is far too common.”

He said he is releasing the footage “not to fuel tension between law enforcement and civilians, but to give insight into the experiences of communities who are disproportionately subjected to police brutality,” adding that he hopes full transparency will highlight the need for reform.

Photo: A woman who says she was 18 year-old Antonio Martin’s girlfriend leaves a message on a makeshift memorial outside the gas station where Martin was shot and killed by a Berkeley police officer on December 24, 2014 in Berkeley, Missouri. Following the shooting, protesters gathered at the scene, leading to violent confrontations between officers and protesters. (Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images)

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NY — A Jewish Columbia University professor who has published studies on the Holocaust walked into her office Wednesday with a group of students to find the space had been vandalized with images of swastikas, according to reports and university officials.

Two swastikas and the word “yid” — an anti-Semitic slur — were painted in red on the walls of Professor Elizabeth Midlarsky’s office in Horace Mann Hall on Broadway and West 121st Street. Midlarsky told Gothamist, which first reported the vandalism, that she was “in a state of shock.”

The psychology and education professor’s studies on the Holocaust have focused on non-Jewish people who helped Jews find safety. In 2005, Midlarsky published a study titled “Personality correlates of heroic rescue during the Holocaust,” according to her Columbia Univeristy faculty page.

“It’s amazing, because I’ve always been looking at the good guys,” Midlarsky told Gothamist. “Not the violence. And I’m experiencing something that’s more on the violent end of things.”

Some of Midlarsky’s students were with her when the vandalism was discovered, according to reports. Ben Riley, 30, told the Daily News that “it’s really just sad that things like this still happen today,” and Katrina Webster, 28 told the newspaper that she hopes the vandal isn’t affiliated with Columbia University.

Teacher’s College President Thomas Bailey condemned the vandalism in a statement and university officials shared information about resources students could access for support.

“We unequivocally condemn any expression of hatred, which has no place in our society. We are outraged and horrified by this act of aggression and use of this vile anti-Semitic symbol against a valued member of our community,” Bailey said in a statement.

The Teacher’s College president said that Columbia is working with the NYPD to identify the vandal.

Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images News/Getty Images

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