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Tricks from Dealerships in Canada when buying a new

Tricks from Dealerships in Canada when buying a new Carhttp://www.apa.ca/template.asp?SectionID=3&ArticleID=7NewsAUTO RETAILING 2002April 2002
Consumers in Western Canada better watch out when they shop for a new car, according to the results of the latest undercover probe released by the Automobile Protection Association. A report on the annual investigation, funded by Industry Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs, will be aired on CTV’s W-FIVE, on Sunday April 28 at 7:00 p.m. APA researchers posing as ordinary buyers visited 42 dealerships in four Canadian cities to shop for new cars and minivans. According to APA president George Iny, 45% of the dealerships visited earned a failing grade.
The APA says that deceptive practices often began even before the APA shoppers made it to the dealerships. In Vancouver and Edmonton, dealer ads left out important information, or the cars in the ads were not available, or they were selling at higher prices. Dealership charges for paperwork and vehicle preparation in three of the four cities visited were frequently excessive. Chrysler dealerships in Vancouver and Toronto charged the highest extra fees, with observed charges for administration and paperwork of $299 to $632. In some cases, the dealers appear to be double billing. In Toronto, West End Chrysler and Islington Chrysler’s pre-delivery charges of $343 and $89 respectively are levied on top of Chrysler’s $955 transport and preparation charge, which already includes a pre-delivery allowance. Dealerships in Montreal rightly included these charges in the price of the vehicle, or charged a small premium for it.
W-FIVE/APA AUTO RETAILING PROBE Cities Visited Dealers Visited Pass Fail Report Vancouver 12 7 5 View Report
Edmonton 12 5 7 View Report
Toronto 12 5 7 View Report
Montreal 6 6 0 View Report
Total : 42 55% (23) 45 % (19)
Results for Each City
Vancouver
At Vancouver Chrysler, the advertised promotion failed to indicate the vehicle was a leftover 2001 model, and Chrysler’s rebate of over $2,000 mysteriously disappeared when the APA shoppers requested a calculation of payments with bank financing. Deer Lake Chrysler had the highest charge for extra fees in Vancouver, including a fictitious $375 lease administration fee payable to Chrysler. Midway Mazda had an unexpected surprise waiting at the dealership, in the form of a $2,200 down payment not disclosed in their ad for a Mazda Protegé. A missing balloon payment boosted the price of a Windstar minivan at Key West Ford by an incredible $9,150. Overall, the Toyota and General Motors dealerships shopped by the APA in Vancouver performed better than their competition. The General Motors dealers were running a carmaker promotion for the Cavalier and Sunfire that was refreshingly free of extra charges payable upon delivery, and they had an adequate supply of vehicles at the advertised price in inventory.
Edmonton
Edmonton is the city with the worst results in the APA survey. Among the more outlandish results, Capital Jeep Chrysler failed to indicate that a new Neon was in fact a leftover 2001 demonstrator. “Furthermore,” said George Iny, “the dealership’s ad actually showed a 2002 car in the photo!” Northstar Hyundai tried to convince the APA shoppers that Royal Bank financing at 7.8% was cheaper than Hyundai’s factory financing or leasing at rates below 4%! Some sales managers and salespeople ruefully observed to the APA shoppers that the Edmonton market was out of control, and there was little they could do about it. The APA says that AMVIC, the Alberta Motor Vehicle Industry Council, is a toothless tiger. “Right now,” says Iny, “ honest car dealers in Edmonton are penalized by the selling practices at over half the dealerships visited, and AMVIC seems to be looking the other way.” The two Toyota dealerships passed easily, but their polished performances came at a price: the selling price of a new Camry sedan was a scant $196 off full retail, compared to selling prices that were $400 to $700 lower in Vancouver.
Toronto
Advertising in Toronto was clearly superior to Edmonton and Vancouver, but dealers are using loopholes to jack up selling prices. Toronto is the capital of extra fees with charges for paperwork and cleaning up the car of $324, $432 and $632 at the three Chrysler dealerships visited. Some dealers made errors on the provincial fuel consumption tax, including Mazda of Brampton that levied a charge of $75 on a minivan (there is none for minivans). Mazda dealers had to scramble to provide explanations regarding Mazda’s confusing promotion that required the dealer to kick in some of the advertised savings and an undisclosed extra charge by Mazda of $105 for every colour except Blue Mica.
Montreal
With a small sample of only six dealerships, Montreal set the standard for the investigation. Salespeople provided a realistic assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of leasing and financing. There was no pressure to close the deal right away. Even Cité Nissan, whose dodgy advertising was the poorest observed in Montreal, was saved by the salesperson who immediately disclosed the extra fees and charges. Sylvain Bossé of Coiteux Hyundai provided a detailed breakdown of all the extra charges for a base Accent – no small feat given all the extra charges for a base Accent, and detailed and knowledgeable disclosure of financing and leasing terms. All three Toyota dealerships provided complete and polished sales presentations, but their non-negotiable fixed prices were a mere $85 off full list on a Toyota Echo. Toyota prices became non-negotiable in January 2002 with the introduction of the Access Toyota selling system. The APA says Access Toyota has resulted in higher prices virtually across-the-board in Montreal, by several hundred dollars in many cases.
Overall Findings
Chrysler and Ford dealerships performed the worst overall. Toyota and General Motors performed best, and Mazda and Hyundai were mediocre. Mazda and Hyundai charge extra for items the other carmakers include, which means surprises are more likely at the dealership. The Nissan ad for a Sentra XE was a model of clarity, with no extra fees and the down payment and monthly payment indicated in the large print. The consistently best sales experience among the brands shopped was Toyota, says the APA. “With or without Access pricing” Iny says, “the APA found Toyota dealers demonstrated a superior level of product knowledge and covered all the bases more consistently and applied the least pressure to make a sale.” However, Toyota dealers in the regions with fixed selling prices appeared to charge substantially more.
When it comes to financing, the APA says the worst deals do not come from the carmakers. The lender most preferred by car dealerships that place deceptive financing ads is the Royal Bank, says the APA, particularly in Western Canada.
What you can do
The APA says that government cutbacks mean you can’t rely on the regulators to keep the industry honest, and industry self regulation in Alberta is not delivering the goods either. In spite of efforts by automakers like Toyota and General Motors to improve standards for retailing, there is still a long way to go. The APA says that an eventual clean-up of auto retailing will likely require much more active involvement by the car makers, as they did with auto leasing. Based on its hidden camera shopping with W-FIVE, the APA suggests taking a copy of a car ad to a competing dealer selling the same brand and asking them to match the offer. Chances are, they’ve already lost a few sales due to the ad, and will work a little harder to match the deal; if not, they’re almost certain to reveal the tricks in the competitor’s promotion to earn your business.

`Jobs that Americans won't do' filled by desperate migrants

`Jobs that Americans won't do' filled by desperate migrants
Mon Jan 17, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Stephen Franklin Tribune staff reporter
She is dizzy, almost wobbly. Her head aches, her coughing won't stop, and because she doesn't have enough money she has not filled her four prescriptions nor seen a doctor recently.
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But that doesn't stop her.
Soon it will be midnight, and Ipifania Dominguez will be back at work cleaning up blood, bone and fat in the world's largest pork slaughterhouse. She'll be back in the "head room," as she calls it, where meat is cut from pigs' heads.
She'll be back reaching and bending as she scrubs the machines, walls and floors with a sponge, breathing cleaning chemicals that burn her eyes, clog her throat and linger, giving her a nauseated feeling when she stumbles home exhausted.
She'll be back at a job few want except someone like Dominguez, 35, a Mexican immigrant illegally living in the U.S., who is thankful for the work that has allowed her to send money home to her six children in Mexico.
For six hours nightly with no breaks or time to eat, she is clutching a sponge while shivering in the cutting room's permanent chill for a job that starts out at six bucks and ninety cents an hour. And she has to hustle because the factory must be clean for the start of a new day and the slaughter of up to 32,000 pigs.
People like Dominguez are the ones President Bush (news - web sites) was talking about recently when he spoke of reforming the nation's immigration policy to allow "good-hearted people who are coming here to work" while stopping "crooks and thieves and drug-runners."
Bush is calling for a system in which foreign guest workers would have temporary legal status to work in this country. Under the plan, employers would have to prove that no U.S. citizens would take the available openings before they could hire guest workers to perform what Bush calls "jobs that Americans won't do."
Not everyone agrees with Bush, however.
"It's not jobs Americans don't want to do. These are wages and working conditions Americans don't want to accept," says Ira Melman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an opponent of lowering the barriers for undocumented workers.
"Why not let the free market determine what wages ought to be instead of flooding the market with low-wage, foreign labor?" he asks.
Hard work has long been a burden, but also a stepping stone for immigrants. Yet some jobs are so dirty, so tough, so miserable that only the hungriest or most vulnerable of the newest arrivals do them. Vulnerable because they do not speak English, cannot offer anything beyond their arms and backs, and dare not speak out because they live in the shadows, afraid of being caught and sent home.
Dominguez and 200 others work for a contractor, QSI Inc., which nightly cleans the Smithfield Foods Inc. plant in Tar Heel, a colossus that employs up to 6,000 workers and ships 6 million pounds of pork daily.
QSI officials say their workers' papers show they are legally in the United States. But according to the workers and those who help them, many of the cleaners are illegal immigrants from Mexico or Central America, coming from poverty and Indian roots. They use fake identification documents with fake names to get and keep their jobs. Dominguez's employer knows her by another name, not Dominguez.
These workers do the jobs turned down by other immigrants who have more skills and savvy--and more deftly falsified identification papers that allow them to compete for more desirable jobs.
Chicago's day laborers
In the same boat as these workers are the day laborers, who crowd Chicago's West Side street corners in bone-chilling cold or on blistering hot mornings, hoping a contractor will stop to hire them. A global stew of Hispanic, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Uzbek and Mongolian immigrants, they often risk their lives on dangerous jobs for little pay, or no pay at all from a handful of bosses who might cheat them or desert them if they get injured.


Carlos Meija, a short, muscular 36-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, is a street-corner veteran. Last year, Meija broke his arm while on a construction job. He says his boss refused to pay his hospital bill or help him out financially during the three months he was recuperating--despite his getting hurt on the job.
On a chilly morning, he huddles at the corner of Argyle Street and Pulaski Road. It is 10 a.m., more than three hours since the first contractors came by looking for help, and he still hasn't snared a job. He is worried. He got lucky late yesterday by taking a job working on a high, steep rooftop. Not everyone wants such work, he explains.
But this is how he prefers to work. "The work here is better than at a factory for the minimum wage," he says, his eyes trained on the street.
A van pulls up, and several men pile in, pushing others aside. But then they hurriedly flee.
"It's no good," a middle-aged man grumbles. "Forget it. It's heavy work. No breaks. And the pay is no good. Eight dollars."
But Meija shoves his way in, and goes to lift heavy boxes for the next few hours.
Except for a few homeless and some people out of work and down-and-out, nearly all of the day laborers waiting on Chicago's street corners are immigrants, says Jose Oliva, director of the Chicago Interfaith Workers' Rights Center.
"Immigrants are much more willing to be exploited, not because they like it, but because they don't see any more options, and they are really just trying to survive," he says.
There are no statistics on workplace abuse of undocumented immigrants because many are terrified to report wrongdoing, don't know whom to call, or, in dire situations, are virtual captives of their employers, according to immigrant advocates.
"Since their immigration status is an issue, this creates a subclass of fearful workers on a grand scale. We are talking about millions," says Lance Compa, a lawyer and labor expert at Cornell University. "It is worse than 30 years ago. It is like 100 years ago."
In a highly critical upcoming report for Human Rights Watch on the conditions of workers in the nation's meat and poultry plants, Compa points to the industries' reliance on immigrants, and especially undocumented workers who are fearful of speaking up.
Latino workers are a majority in many of these plants, he says, adding that this is one reason why North Carolina, which has many such plants, ranked first in the nation in the last decade in the growth of immigrants. From about 100,000 immigrants in 1990, most of them Latino, about half a million live in the state today, he says.
Latinos once were a rarity in the swamp lands, pine forests and small farm towns surrounding Tar Heel in southeastern North Carolina. But that's no longer true. Now, Latinos work at the poultry-processing plants and at hundreds of hog farms that serve the Smithfield Foods plant, where the company says they make up half of the workforce, up from one out of four employees seven years ago.
Barbara Johnson, 61, a 12-year veteran and trainer on the cutting floor, remembers when there were "very few Latinos" at the plant.
Latinos fill crucial role
"We tried to bring in American people," says Johnson, who stands 5-foot-1 in heels, and grew up on a farm nearby, "but the American people, they are just lazy. . . . If they [the Latinos] would get out of here, we would have to close because we couldn't find enough people.
"The Latinos, they'll stand there in pain all day without saying anything," she says. "I told them they could say something. But I think they fear that if they speak out they would get sent back. One day some of the ladies were crying and saying they want to stay, life is bad back in their countries."
A woman known to her employer by the pseudonym of Sara Lopez clung in pain and weariness to her job on the cutting floor because she feared that she would be fired if she spoke up. Five years ago when she left her family in Guatemala, she vowed that she would send money back to her mother and four children.
She is a rarity, a woman--a small, shy 30-year-old single mother--who made her way on the mostly male trail of undocumented workers coming from Central America across Mexico and into the U.S., and finally to this swampy stretch of North Carolina.
The work was hard, cutting meat from the bone, but she learned to adjust.
Three months ago a pain began in her right shoulder and spread to her arm. It ached so much she feared that something terrible inside of her would kill or cripple her.
Finally she told her boss, who moved her to another job. But her arm still ached, and one day she said she could not do the job. She thought her boss told her to go home temporarily. But there was a mix-up. When she came back, they said she had walked off the job, and therefore no longer worked at the plant.
Smithfield officials said they would not comment on workers' individual cases. But they said the plant has a low injury rate, and the company works to keep it that way.
"This work," says the woman known as Lopez, who then turns away to cry. "This work is very important. I am responsible for my children and my family."
Smithfield spokesman Dennis Treacy says his firm does not purposely hire Latinos. "We hire who shows up," he says.
But for QSI Inc., the company based in Chattanooga, Tenn., that cleans the Smithfield facility and other meat-processing plants across the U.S., it is a fact of life, says company spokesman Gary Grauman, that Latinos overwhelmingly apply for its jobs. That is why, he says, about 90 percent of his firm's cleaning workforce are Latinos.
Quality of workers
"We've seen how these people want to come here and work and we embrace that," he says. "They are good workers. They work hard and they are reliable."
The QSI workers offer a different explanation.
Their ranks are nearly all Latinos, they say, because nobody else would do such work. And many Latinos are also new arrivals, desperate to pay off the smugglers, known as coyotes, who brought them to the United States, and so they must find a job, any job, soon.
So, too, not all QSI workers are quiet and satisfied.
Several QSI workers who feuded last year with company officials over pay and job conditions and who were fired, turned to the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has been trying to organize the Smithfield plant for 10 years.
In a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of the workers, the union said QSI officials threatened to fire the workers as well as call immigration officials if they tried to join the union.
The company denied the union's claims at hearings last fall, and a ruling is pending.
At QSI, Saul Ortiz has paid a price for his American job.
He says he is 16 years old, but he seems a very young 16, playing with a small plush toy while glued to a blaring television set in the trailer where he lives with his older brother.
He was hired just over a year ago at QSI in Lumberton, N.C., using fake papers saying he was 25. North Carolina law bars anyone under 16 from working in such a facility.
He was given a week's training, he recalls, and sent to work with a crew that appeared to have some workers his age or younger.
He had arrived a few months before from Veracruz, Mexico, after his family urged him to go live with an older brother and earn money to send home.
The sight of blood and the chemical odors made him want to vomit when he began the job, he says. Sometimes cleaning chemicals splashed on his hands and burned him. And his eyes began to burn.
He was cleaning a machine on the cutting floor, standing on top of it, when he lost his balance one day last January.
As he fell, his hand got caught in the machine, which rips apart pigs' skin. It tore the skin off his left thumb and ripped away the bone, even below the knuckle, leaving a stump.
He went back to work after two months but says he quit because he needed more surgery on his hand and the work would prevent it from healing.
At first he didn't think much about the accident. But lately he does. "I feel anger," he says in a flat voice, shyly looking away. "I'm not the same. I have trouble buttoning my shirt. Tying my shoes. I am not the same. My hand is not the same."
QSI officials say they know nothing about Saul Ortiz, but they do know the person with the fake name that Ortiz used to get hired. That person, they say, was injured on the job. They also say their injury rates are lower than the industry average.
The fear factor
Ortiz's attorney in a worker's compensation suit against the company, Terry Kilbridge, has helped other QSI workers injured on the job. He questions QSI's claim of lower-than-average injuries.
"So many of these people are illegal, uneducated or simply scared of finding themselves back home in Mexico," he says. "I would guess that only a few ever see their way to a lawyer."
Dominguez, who works in the "head room," says she would never complain about her job because she doubts she could find anything nearby that pays better. And her children in Mexico are depending on her to send money home.
She says her husband, who works the second shift at the Smithfield plant, barely shares his pay with her, saying he must send his money to his relatives in Mexico.
When she comes home at dawn, more than an hour after finishing up, the last person in the van that costs her $5 a day, she stumbles up the hill toward her tiny, two-room bungalow, plops down onto the couch and rocks back and forth, holding her head.
"I'm so cold, and so tired," she says. "Cold, cold, cold."

How to keep your RRSP's Creditor Proof TheStar

How to keep your RRSP's Creditor Proof
You know, every so often, something pops up in my day to day practice that stops me in my tracks. Such an event occurred with a prospective client.
Here's the deal. This individual is a successful consultant who makes a healthy six-figure income. She's been socking it away into her home and RRSP's to name a few. Infact, her RRSP's are in excess of $300,000. Not bad for someone in their late 40's!
So, what's the problem? Well, here it is. She got involved in a bad business venture and is holding the bag for the losses of the company. And she is only a minority shareholder!
Here's the downside. She's being sued and if the suit is successful, she will lose her house and her RRSP's! Ouch!
The truth is, if she had met me before the trouble had begun, she could have creditor protected herself and kept it all! But now, because the lawsuit is in action, she can't do anything. Infact, she asked me if she could creditor protects her RRSP's and I advised her that it was too late. Since there is a lawsuit pending, a move to Creditor Protected RRSP's will not work for her. And I'll tell you why as we go through this article. But if she had acted prior to the sniff of a lawsuit, she would have been fine and her RRSP's would be out of the reach of credtiors.
So, you might be asking yourself, just what are creditor protected RRSP's? And do I need them.
Creditor Protected RRSP's are referred to as segregated funds. Like a mutual fund, a seg fund pools money from many investors so it can be managed by a professional and provide a good return. Infact, many seg funds look like brand name mutual funds like AGF, Trimark, and Fidelity. But seg funds are actually insurance contracts with two components: an investment that produces the return and an insurance contract that covers the risk. Unlike mutual funds, seg funds guarantee either 75% or 100% of your principal. A small part of the fund's assets goes to insure there will be enough cash to pay that guarantee. Since there is an insurance element with the seg funds, they are considered annuities. Therefore, they are creditor protected since they are effectively insurance contracts.
To ensure creditor protection of a segregated fund, the beneficiary must be a family member. The wording of the Insurance Act s. 196 (2) for the protected family beneficiary : is as follows:
196(2) While a designation in favor of a spouse, same-sex partner, child, grandchild or parent of a person whose life is insured, or any of them, is in effect, the rights and interests of the insured in the insurance money and in the contract are exempt from execution or seizure. [Definition includes common-law and same-sex parties who live together in a conjugal relationship]
Note to reader: Don't get cute and name your mistress – leave your creditor protected RRSP's to your family members.
That being said, you can't wake up one morning and find yourself facing a lawsuit (like my client) and decide to plop your funds into a creditor protected RRSP. According to the legislation, "Settlement" of your RRSP's into a segregated fund must be done within 1 year of bankrupt, or within 5 years of bankruptcy if the property was at the time required to pay the person's debts. If there is a sniff of trouble at the time of the transfer to the creditor protected RRSP, this will be construed as Fraudulent Conveyance , which basically means the individual knew they were in trouble and looked for a safe hideaway. The courts rule in favor of the creditors in times like this and seize the funds.
For the client mentioned in this article, it's just too late, as a quick transfer to a segregated fund will be construed as fraudulent conveyance. That being said, she's considering taking out her RRSP's altogether, flying to Vegas, and betting on RED! More power to her at this point!
What does this mean to you? Well, if you are a consultant or a business owner, you really must consider creditor protecting your RRSP's. And you have to do so when your affairs are in good standing order. If you contribute regularly to a segregated fund and you find yourself with a litigious creditor, then the creditor will not be able to access your RRSP's for loan payment.
It's best to speak with your advisor about segregated funds to see if they suit your financial planning requirements.
This article was written by John Klotz. John is Vice President – Financial Services of LMS Prolink. You can reach John at johnk@lms.ca or phone (416)-595-7484 ext. 305

Nurses rewarded for innovative wound therapy CBC.ca

Nurses rewarded for innovative wound therapy CBC.caLast Updated Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:46:09 EST CBC NewsMONTREAL - Nurses at a hospital in Montreal say they've discovered a better way to treat infected wounds.
Diabetics can develop infected foot ulcers that fail to heal properly with conventional treatments.
Sterile equipment prevents wounds from becoming infected. To help them, the nursing team at Charles LeMoyne Hospital decided to apply two wound-care methods at the same time.
First, a silver-coated dressing called Acticote is added to stop bacterial growth. Then, a vacuum-assisted closure or VAC sucks out fluid from the open wound and stimulates circulation.
Both treatments are standard for burn victims and trauma cases, but haven't been used in combination for infected wounds.
"Instead of having wound care for months, it's taking only a few weeks and they can have the closure of the wound," said Isabelle Reeves, a nurse specializing in wound care at the hospital on Montreal's South Shore.
The new therapy is expensive compared to traditional treatment. One small sheet of the silver dressing costs $20, but there are other savings.
"Rather than being in hospital for three, four months and being skin grafted ... we're able to shorten the length of the illness and [let] the patients go home earlier," said Dr. Jacques-Philippe Faucher, an internal medicine specialist.
Diabetic Claude St. Martin is going home on his own two feet thanks to the nurses' ingenuity, which won them a 3M Innovation Prize.
"That's the thing that helped heal my leg," said St. Martin. "Otherwise, they would have amputated."
The nurses plan to publish their new way of healing wounds in a journal, since they're already receiving calls from other medical centres interested in trying it.