Villeneuve to Red Bull: Drop Albon and bring back Vettel!

Former F1 driver Jacques Villeneuve says Red Bull should bring back Sebastian Vettel to Milton Keynes next season as the German knows how to make the most of an Adrian Newey-designed car.

Red Bull promoted Albon to a seat with the senior bull outfit a year ago, and while the British-Thai racer acquitted himself well in his first races with the team, the 24-year-old is currently struggling with Red Bull’s RB16 in qualifying trim relative to teammate Max Verstappen.

Last week in Hungary, Williams charger George Russell said his good friend Albon was “made to look like an idiot” by Red Bull, but team boss Christian Horner says the criticism of his driver is unwarranted, insisting the team had yet to unlock Albon’s full potential.

    Wolff not involved in Aston Martin talks with Vettel

But Villeneuve believes the team’s interests would be better served with Vettel behind the wheel, given the four-time world champion’s deep understanding of design guru Adrian Newey’s designs.

“Verstappen already has problems with the car and it makes sense that Albon is even further behind,” the 1997 F1 world champion told Sky Italia.

“These cars are really not easy to drive. Adrian Newey always designs his cars to the limit.

“Vettel has shown in the past that he has the Newey cars under control. That makes him the perfect team-mate for Verstappen.

“Red Bull would finally have two drivers who can drive to the limit.”

However in Hungary, Horner reiterated Red Bull’s commitment to its current driver line-up for 2021.

“We think that we have a great pairing in Max and Alex and we think that has great potential for the future,” said the Briton.

“So, unfortunately, it’s not something that we are going to be able to accommodate. That is a definite no I am afraid, and Sebastian is aware of that.”

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Morneau Admits To $41,000 ‘Mistake’ In Unpaid WE Travel Expenses

OTTAWA — Finance Minister Bill Morneau told the House of Commons finance committee that before his appearance Wednesday, he wrote a $41,000 cheque to repay the WE organization in three-year-old travel expenses.

Morneau said he discovered the unpaid expenses in a recent review of two trips he and his family took in the summer of 2017 to visit WE Charity’s school projects in Kenya and Ecuador. Records showed about $52,000 in personal expenses for the trips, he said, but they were unable to find receipts for expenses related to the time they spent with the WE organization.

“All I can tell is I was completely surprised that there were expenses that had not been charged to us on review,” he told finance committee members by video link. “It was always my intention, our family’s intention, to pay for all expenses.” 

The finance minister currently faces an ethics investigation for his role in the federal government’s now-cancelled deal with WE Charity to administer a $912-million student grant program.

Morneau’s two daughters have ties with the Toronto-based international charity. He said his daughter Clare has been an unpaid speaker at WE events, and his other daughter Grace is currently working on contract with the organization until the end of August.

“It was my mistake not to have ensured that (the expenses) were paid,” he said, adding that he was unaware the WE-related expenses were not charged to him or his family.

The first trip, Morneau said, was for his wife and daughter to visit the WE organization’s school projects in Kenya. He said he joined his family on the second trip to Ecuador where they helped to build schools with WE.

Morneau said he asked his assistant to reach out to WE on Tuesday, a day before his scheduled appearance before the committee, to find out how much of the expenses for those trips the organization had covered.

“Today, I wrote a cheque in payment of $41,366,” he told MPs. He called his actions “even unknowingly” as “not appropriate” and apologized for the “error.”

On top of the previously unpaid travel expenses, Morneau disclosed that his wife has donated $50,000 to the WE organization on two separate occasions in April 2018 and more recently in June 2020.

He said, in hindsight he should have recused himself in cabinet discussions related to the decision to tap WE Charity to administer a nearly $1-billion deal to administer a student volunteer program. 

Despite the $100,000 donation and unpaid travel expenses incurred on WE-related trips, Morneau said that the idea of conflict of interest didn’t cross his mind at the time. 

WE stood to earn $43.5 million if it had successfully run the program.

In a statement released Wednesday evening, WE Charity said Morneau reached out to check if the family’s Ecuador trip had been paid for by the organization.

“We confirmed that it was,” the statement read. “They then reimbursed WE Charity for what they would have been charged if they had paid at the time: [CAD $5,893.30] per person.”

Morneau’s statement that he was ignorant about the expense accounting was a tough sell to some committee members.

NDP MP Charlie Angus raised concerns about WE hiring Morneau’s daughter and one of the organization’s co-founders having direct conversations with the minister, despite not being a registered lobbyist. 

“WE paid for your travel. That has the perception of attempting to buy political influence,” the Timmins–James Bay MP said. “You’re not thinking there’s a problem here, but they’re paying for influence. I think that that’s really, really concerning that you didn’t seem to think that that was a problem.”

When asked to respond to revelations from a Global News story that the federal government signed the $912-million contribution agreement with a holding company affiliated with WE, Morneau pointed to bureaucrats.

He said that the public service had done their “appropriate due diligence” in recommending WE Charity to administer the federal student grant and volunteer program.

Tory MP asks Morneau to resign

Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said the latest ethics investigation, Morneau’s second, shows how the minister has lost the “moral authority” to hold his office. 

“We know that this is illegal. We know that you ought to have recused yourself,” Poilievre said of Morneau’s admission of unpaid WE-related travel expenses. The Conservative MP asked the finance minister to resign. 

Morneau did not resign. Instead, he repeated his regret about making mistakes in failing to recognize that he and his family had incurred WE-paid travel expenses.

He repeatedly said he did not notice that there were travel expenses related to the WE trip that were not billed to him or his family. The finance minister pledged to “continue to work on behalf of Canadians.”

WE Charity co-founders Craig and Marc Kielburger are scheduled to appear before the finance committee as witnesses on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has also accepted an invitation to to appear before the committee, though a date and time has yet to be confirmed.

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Pandemic Pay Took Big Bite Out Of Bottom Line, Loblaw Says

BRAMPTON, Ont. — Loblaw Companies Ltd. says its net income plunged in the second quarter despite surging revenues because of costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including a temporary pay boost for employees.

Canada’s largest grocer says its earnings attributable to shareholders fell 41 per cent to $169 million or 47 cents per diluted share from $286 million or 77 cents per share a year earlier.

Watch: A strategy expert dives into the issues surrounding pandemic pay. Story continues below.

 

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Excluding one-time items, adjusted profits were $266 million or 74 cents per share, compared with $373 million or $1.01 per share in the prior year.

Revenues for the three months ended June 13 increased 7.4 per cent to nearly $12 billion, from $11.1 billion in the second quarter of 2019.

Loblaw was expected to report 71 cents per share in adjusted earnings on $11.9 billion in revenues, according to financial markets data firm Refinitiv.

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The company says demand shifted during the quarter towards conventional store formats with the market division’s same-store sales increasing 18.8 per cent and the discount division up 4.9 per cent, while same-store drug division sales declined 1.1 per cent.

It spent $282 million during the quarter on safety measures for staff and customers with about $180 million in temporary pay premiums which included a one-time bonus for store and distribution centre colleagues of $25 million.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 23, 2020.

FOX May Partner With ESPN For UFC TV Rights Deal

Over the past several months, there have been discussions of WWE potentially ending their relationship with USA in order to commence a partnership with FOX. WWE’s deal with NBC Universal expires on September 30, 2019, and CFO George Barrios said that the company hopes to announce their U.S. distribution plans between May and September of this year. In late 2017, Triple H had a meeting with executives of FOX Sports to potentially rekindle a partnership. WWE worked with the company in the past, airing a couple of episodes of Saturday Night’s Main Event, as well as a WrestleMania 11 special in 1995.
To make the bidding war more competitive, Variety reports that ESPN has partnered up with rival FOX Sports to bid for television rights for UFC. The two companies have recently proposed to split the UFC TV package, which would bring as many as 15 fight events to the new subscription streaming service, ESPN+. As a company, ESPN has agreed that it would be willing to pay $120-180 million per year to add UFC to the collection of live-event rights. In addition, FOX is willing to increase their contribution from $120 million to $200 million.
The effort in ESPN partnering with FOX aims to turn around the decline in UFC interest, as ratings dropped 22% in average total viewers from last year, falling to just under 2 million. The UFC Fight Night specials on FS1 also fell 17%, averaging 795,000 viewers.

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