B2 | RE P O RT O N BUS I N ES S
About 60%
A recently sold house is seen in the east end of Toronto last Thursday. According to Statscan, the average value of a non-bank mortgage
dropped 7 per cent in the second quarter of 2019 from the previous period. DEBORAH BAIC/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Alternative mortgage lending
spiked in spring 2019: Statscan
RACHELLE YOUNGLAI
Alternative mortgage lending jumped in
the spring of last year, according to new
data from Statistics Canada, as the coun-
try’s housing market started to rebound
after a slowdown caused by stricter mort-
gage rules and rising interest rates.
Mortgages from credit unions, private
lenders, mortgage investment companies
and other alternative lenders increased 25
per cent to $41-billion in the second quar-
ter of 2019, compared with the first quar-
ter, according to Statscan’s survey of non-
bank mortgage lenders.
The growth coincided with the spring
season, typically a busier time for home
sales. (The numbers are not seasonally ad-
justed.) It also occurred as the country’s
real estate market started recovering after
the downturn in 2018, when the govern-
ment’s tougher mortgage rules came into
effect and the Bank of Canada raised in-
terest rates three times.
In February, 2019, home buying across
the country reached its lowest level in
years, according to the Canadian Real Es-
tate Association. Sales started picking up
Telus leads $120-million investment
in Ontario urban-tech startup Miovision
JOSH O’KANE
TECHNOLOGY REPORTER
Telus Corp.’s venture arm is leading a $120-
million investment in urban-tech compa-
ny Miovision Technologies Inc. to help it
deploy its traffic-signal-management plat-
form more quickly worldwide.
Miovision is one of the Kitchener-Water-
loo region’s leading startups blending
hardware and services. It helps more than
17,000 municipalities worldwide monitor
and manage traffic with the help of sensors
and video analysis powered by artificial in-
telligence.
The funding will help the company fur-
ther develop its TrafficLink program,
which lets cities adjust intersection signals
for situations such as emergencies or con-
gestion, and Telus will also remove road-
blocks for Miovision to expand in new
countries by giving it access to the tele-
com’s partner networks.
The smart-intersection company uses
cellular networks to send data from traffic-
signal hardware to a secure cloud service
for analysis using SIM cards – the same tiny
chip-containing cards that connect cell-
phones to data networks.
Miovision already regularly uses Telus’s
network in Canada. But now, on top of Mio-
vision’s bulk-buying discount, Telus will
grant the company discounted access to its
partner networks abroad using those
cards, enabling it to set up in new countries
much more easily. “We don’t have to estab-
lish new relationships” with local carriers,
Miovision chief executive officer Kurtis
McBride said in an interview.
The move would also give Telus greater
ability to build out next-generation 5G cel-
lular networks. Should it want, Mr. McBride
said, it could attach the necessary shoebox-
sized 5G “small cells” to Miovision’s hard-
ware at intersections.
The new investment round, led by Telus
Ventures and including contributions from
returning Toronto-based investor McRock
Capital and others, includes an undis-
closed amount of secondary share pur-
chases as older investors cash out. It in-
cludes $100-million in equity and $20-mil-
lion in debt financing; the company de-
clined to share how much the new
investment would change its valuation.
Telus Ventures managing partner Rich
Osborn was not available for an interview,
but said in an e-mail that, “We think that to-
gether we can create financial and social
value by helping customers build health-
in March and accelerated over the latter
half of last year.
Sonya Coward, a Statscan senior econo-
mist, said there was a similar trend among
mortgage lending from the banks.
The average value of a non-bank mort-
gage fell 7 per cent to $246,802 in the sec-
ond quarter from the previous period.
Statscan said increased sales in lower-
priced properties such as condominiums
and townhouses could have accounted for
the smaller mortgages.
Over all, mortgage brokers say alterna-
tive lending has become more popular
since Ottawa introduced its mortgage
stress test that requires borrowers to
prove they can make their loan payments
at a higher interest rate. The rules, known
as B-20, require borrowers to qualify at a
mortgage rate that is two percentage
points above the going rate or to qualify at
the Bank of Canada’s five-year rate, which-
ever one is higher.
That has made it harder for potential
home buyers to get a mortgage from a
bank that complies with B-20 and pushed
some Canadians to non-bank lenders for
their home purchases.
“There is a direct correlation between
Miovision CEO Kurtis McBride, seen on Monday in Kitchener, Ont., says his team aims to
have a role in shaping how cities collect and use data. GLENN LOWSON/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
ier, happier and safer communities.”
Whitney Rockley, co-managing partner
of McRock and a director at Miovision, said
the funding and expanded Telus network
access would give Miovision a “tremen-
dous” opportunity to scale up quickly in
new markets.
Miovision sees itself as more than just a
traffic-tech company. Mr. McBride and his
staff want to play a role in shaping how ci-
ties collect and use data.
Cities worldwide are grappling with how
to deploy digital technology in civic infras-
tructure, and doing so requires a plan for all
the new kinds of data that will be produced.
Miovision aims to be a standard-bearer by
ensuring that such data is compatible and
shareable between city departments, ur-
ban-tech companies and cities themselves.
With such “open” data architecture,
these groups can find patterns of city life
that can be used to develop further innova-
tions to improve city living.
Traditional traffic-pattern data is col-
lected in analog fashion – sometimes by
people standing on the side of the road
counting cars or by magnet-powered sen-
sors buried in roads. Sometimes whole
neighbourhoods change before traffic
studies are done to reconfigure intersec-
tions because the process is slow. Miovi-
sion’s digital collection tools, which in-
clude 360-degree cameras that anonymize
information that could identify people,
can let cities know how intersections are
G TH E G LOBE AND M AIL
B-20 and that trend,” said Benjamin Tal,
deputy chief economist with CIBC. “In
some ways, we are transferring risk from
the regulated segment of the market to
the less regulated segment of the market,”
he said.
The Statscan survey suggested that bor-
rowers are making their payments on
time. The total number of mortgages in
arrears more than 90 days decreased 12
per cent to 3,656 in the second quarter
from the previous period.
The Finance Department, the national
housing agency and federal banking regu-
lator are examining ways to improve the
stress test, including whether it should
still use the Bank of Canada’s benchmark
mortgage rate.
This is Statscan’s third non-bank mort-
gage lending survey, which was intro-
duced to provide a more comprehensive
view of the country’s residential mortgage
market. It was introduced “in order to fill
an existing information gap,” Ms. Coward
said. Previously, non-bank mortgage lend-
ing data were haphazard. However the
Statscan data are new and the only com-
parable numbers are from the first quarter
of 2019.
used at all times. “We can generate data,
and ultimately analytics and insights, to al-
low cities to make more agile, real-time de-
cisions,” Mr. McBride said.
The City of Toronto has already used
Miovision technologies to collect traffic da-
ta along King Street to measure the success
of making it a transit-first corridor. In De-
troit, the company has deployed a mix of
sensors, video detection and remote mon-
itoring to make intersections safer in nu-
merous ways.
In Miovision’s project area there, cyclists
can be detected and given extended green
lights, connected cars can be warned that
jaywalkers are ahead and priority can be
given to emergency vehicles.
Mr. McBride sees opportunities to mon-
etize Miovision’s hardware beyond his own
company. Not only could telecoms such as
Telus use Miovision’s gear to expand their
5G infrastructure, Mr. McBride also imag-
ines that cities or third-party companies
could choose to add additional software ca-
pabilities to its traffic-signal rigs.
RBC Dominion Securities acted as agent
for the financing – one of a growing num-
ber of private placements for Canadian
tech companies led by Bay Street. “It really
pours fuel on the fire to help them acceler-
ate,” said Aly Gillani, its managing director
for tech financing.
TELUS (T)
CLOSE: $53.50, UP 68¢
| WEDN ESDAY , JAN UARY 2 9, 2020
of companies
in Canada
have entirely
male boards
MATT LUNDY
ECONOMICS REPORTER
Women held fewer than one-fifth
of director seats at corporate
boards in 2017, while more than
60 per cent of boards were com-
posed entirely of men, a new Sta-
tistics Canada study shows.
The report covered about
10,100 companies conducting
business in Canada – including
publicly traded and private cor-
porations, along with govern-
ment business enterprises such
as Canada Post – and found that
18.1 per cent of director seats were
held by women in 2017, a “slight
increase” from 17.8 per cent in
2016. The majority of boards (61.2
per cent) had zero women, while
27.7 per cent had one female di-
rector and the remaining 11.1 per
cent of boards had more than
one.
The study revealed a slow pace
of change on corporate boards,
with women occupying 19.2 per
cent of new director positions in
2017.
“If only 20 per cent of newly
available positions are filled by
women, it simply doesn’t move
the needle very much in any sig-
nificant direction,” said Beatrix
Dart, a professor of strategic
management and the executive
director of the Initiative for
Women in Business at the Rot-
man School of Management.
This was the second time that
Statscan has published a compre-
hensive look at gender represen-
tation on boards, noting last year
this “fills an important data gap”
by providing estimates for a
range of business types, unlike
many reports that solely focus on
publicly traded companies. Stat-
scan’s report also includes for-
eign-controlled entities with
Canadian operations.
Figures varied by industry. The
utilities industry had the highest
proportion of women in director
seats, at 24.6 per cent, while the
finance industry was next at 23.3
per cent. The manufacturing and
construction industries had the
lowest levels of female represen-
tation, with both under 14 per
cent.
The study also found that rep-
resentation was higher at Cana-
da’s largest corporations. Among
companies in the highest quar-
tile by asset value, close to 21 per
cent of director seats were filled
by women.
Government business enter-
prises continue to have the high-
est levels of female representa-
tion, with women occupying 35.2
per cent of director positions in
2017, up from 27.7 per cent in
2016.
Women held 21.3 per cent of di-
rector seats at publicly traded
corporations, while private com-
panies lagged at 17.7 per cent.
More timely data suggest re-
cent regulatory changes have
made an appreciable impact on
gender representation at publicly
traded companies.
Starting in 2015, the Ontario
Securities Commission required
companies listed on the Toronto
Stock Exchange to disclose the
number and proportion of wom-
en on their boards, among other
requirements.
Since then, there has been a
“notable increase” in the propor-
tion of women on boards, ac-
cording to an analysis from To-
ronto-Dominion Bank econo-
mists Beata Caranci and Leslie
Preston published last March.
More recently, the Canadian
Securities Administrators noted
the share of board seats held by
women in a sample of more than
600 companies increased to 17
per cent in 2019, from 11 per cent
in 2015.
But the proportion of female
appointments to Canada’s largest
companies has ebbed, according
to an analysis by executive-
search and advisory firm Spencer
Stuart from last year. Thirty per
cent of appointments of new di-
rectors at Canada’s 100 largest
companies by revenue were
women in 2018, down from grea-
ter than 40 per cent every year
from 2014 to 2017.
“There’s an issue with compa-
nies trying to dodge the bullet
and saying, ‘Oh, we can’t find
anybody suitable for our boards,’
” said Ms. Dart, noting there are
thousands of women certified by
the Institute for Corporate Direc-
tors, along with others capable
for the roles.
“A lot of women are ready to
serve as directors … and are des-
perately looking to be on a
board.”