The Globe and Mail - 02.03.2020

Through a ground-breaking donation of 1000 ounces of Namibian

gold by B2Gold, organizations and individuals have the opportunity

to contribute directly to the protection of the last free-roaming

population of black rhinos left in the world by investing in a

limited-editionNamibianRhinoGoldBar.

Proceedsfromthesaleswillprovidelong-termsustainablefunding

for rhino conservation on communal land in Namibia, where a

rhino-based economy is developing– supporting livelihoods and

providing hope for the future to rural communities.

TOINVESTIN THEFUTURE

| contact: [email protected] or visit us at

thePDACConvention,InvestorsExchange,BoothIE2731 |

© PHOTO BY OLWEN EVANS

1000 OUNCES OF GOLD

|   |

|CREATIVECONSERVATIONANDPHILANTHROPYFORTHEFUTUREOFOURPLANET|

TURIPAMWEDESIGN.COM

HOCKEY

Afterlastweek’swakeupcall,

TorontoMapleLeafsonaroll

B

SOCCER

ManchesterCitywinsEnglish

LeagueCupbybeating

AstonV illa2-1B

SPEEDSKATING

IvanieBlondincaptures

silverintheworld

allroundchampionships B

SPORTS

B9-B

OTTAWA/QUEBEC EDITION ■ MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2020 ■ GLOBEANDMAIL.COM

COMPANIES

CHEVRON ............................................... B

SAUDI ARAMCO ..................................... B

SHOPIFY ................................................. B

SUNCOR ................................................. B

TOURMALINE ......................................... B

The court-appointed monitor for Bond-

field Construction Co. Ltd. is asking a judge

to freeze the assets of the company’s for-

mer chief executive officer, including bank

accounts and real estate properties scat-

tered across Ontario, some of which are

slated for housing developments.

The proposed order would apply to 22

properties in Ontario owned by John Aqui-

no, who ran Bondfield for nearly a decade.

Mr. Aquino has sold or transferred his inter-

est in some of the properties to others over

the past 2^1 ˆ 2 years, including a luxury condo

in Toronto’s Four Seasons building. The

proposed order would freeze r3.9-million

in proceeds from the condo sale, and pro-

hibit Mr. Aquino from selling other assets,

including a unit in a Trump Tower condo in

Miami.

The proposed freezing order is the latest

move by the monitor, Ernst & Young Inc., to

try to recover losses stemming from the

collapse of Bondfield, which had been one

of Ontario’s largest builders of public-sec-

tor projects until it sought creditor protec-

tion in 2019.

A judge has yet to hear arguments about

whether to grant the order and Mr. Aqui-

no’s response to the proposed freeze has

not been filed on the website for the mon-

itor. A lawyer for Mr. Aquino did not re-

spond to e-mailed requests for comment.

Bondfield had been one of Ontario’s fas-

test-growing construction companies and

was awarded more than rz00-million in

contracts from Infrastructure Ontario, the

procurement arm of the provincial govern-

ment, in quick succession between 201‡

and 2015. Some of those projects – the rede-

velopment of both St. Michael’s Hospital in

downtown Toronto and Cambridge Memo-

rial Hospital in Southwestern Ontario – are

more than two years behind schedule.

In 201z, Zurich Insurance Company Ltd.,

which had guaranteed completion of

Bondfield’s projects through more than r1-

billion in surety bonds, became more ac-

tively involved in the company’s affairs af-

ter Bondfield was bombarded with law-

suits from unpaid subcontractors.

BONDFIELD,B

Bondfield

monitormoves

tofreezeassets

offormerCEO

GREGMcARTHUR

KARENHOWLETT

ACQUISITIONS

Ottawaincreasesscrutiny

ofmergersinvolvingChina

B

GLOBEINVESTOR

RobCarrickoffersfour

StatisticsCanadainsights

intoRRSPcontributions B

GLOBEINVESTOR
MainStreetleanstoward
Sanders,butWallStreet
saysTrump B
Cary Silber thought his Toronto cater-
ing-staffing business didn’t have any
employees. He saw his company, AE
Hospitality Ltd., as a turnkey operation
that connected independent contrac-
tors with caterers that needed waiters,
bartenders and chefs.
But then the Federal Tax Court ruled
in May that the 21z workers he contend-
ed were independent contractors are in
fact employees, saddling Mr. Silber’s
company with a bill for r‡9ß,000 –the

sum of the employment insurance and

Canada Pension Plan contributions

that AE Hospitality and its staff should

have been making for years.

AE Hospitality had written agree-

ments with nearly all of the people

working as chefs and waiters, explicitly

spelling out that they were contractors,

and that AE Hospitality had no liability

for any possible tax obligations. But, to

Mr. Silber’s surprise, those agreements

did not decide the matter: The tax court

found in favour of the Canada Revenue

Agency, ruling that the actual way in

which the wait staff and chefs worked

meant they were employees.

Outside of Quebec, there’s no statu-

tory definition drawing a distinction

between employees and contractors.

Instead, common-law precedents are

used to decide on employment status

on a case-by-case basis. “There’s no law

that applies to independent contrac-

tors,” said Hilary Page, employment

and contract lawyer for SpringLaw in

Toronto. Those precedents are headed

for a workout with Uber Technologies

Inc. and other companies, as the rise of

the gig economy further blurs the line

between worker and contractor, be-

tween side hustle and job.

GIGECONOMY,B

Whencontractorsareemployeesinthegigeconomy:

Taxcourtrulingleavescatererwithmassivebill

PATRICKBRETHOUR
TAXANDFISCALPOLICYREPORTER

[SMALLBUSINESS]

Shopifyangelinvestorsearntheirwings

Howthee-commercecompany’sleadersarefunding

anewwaveofambitiousstartups B

KaboFreshDogFoodCEOVijayJeyapalan,seenwithhisdogMilos,isexpandinghiscompanyacrossCanadawith

thehelpofangelinvestors,includingahandfulofShopifyemployees.CHRISTOPHER KATSAROV/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Investors are bracing for more market
turmoil this week as uncertainty swirls
over the spread of COVID-19 and the
impact it is having on the global econo-
my.
About z5,000 cases of the coronavi-
rus have been reported globally. The vi-
rus has killed at least 3,000 people, the
vast majority in China. Several coun-
tries, including the Czech Republic and
the Dominican Republic, reported their
first cases over the weekend, while Aus-
tralia, Thailand and the United States

reported their first deaths.

Stock markets in Canada and the

U.S. are coming off their steepest de-

clines in more than a decade. Last

week, the S&P 500 fell by 11.5 per cent,

and the S&PàTSX shed z.9 per cent of

its value, the worst weekly showing for

both indexes since the depths of the

200z financial crisis. Based on intraday

levels, the TSX had already fallen more

than 10 per cent over the past six trad-

ing days.

Both indexes are firmly in correction

territory, with Canada hitting that level

in a shorter time period than ever be-

fore. (A correction is a decline of at

least 10 per cent.)

The pressure on stocks is being dri-

ven by fears that COVID-19 may end up

having a much more damaging impact

on the global economy and corporate

profits than first feared.

“The coronavirus is in many ways a

black-swan event, one that we couldn’t

see coming, and one that is exception-

ally difficult to measure,” said Frances

Donald, global chief economist with

Manulife Investment Management in

an interview.

“It launches us into a period of ex-

treme uncertainty.”

CORONAVIRUS, B

Marketsonedge,economic

fearsintensifyovervirus

COVID-19sparks‘periodofextremeuncertainty’asindicatorsflashwarningsigns

NIALLMcGEE