TORONTO – The bruising battle for control of Rogers Communications Inc. continued on Saturday, with the company claiming its recently ousted chairman intends to hold a weekend meeting with a slate of hand-picked board directors and pre-emptively rejecting the outcome of any such gathering. The company issued a statement saying any meeting between Edward Rogers and the five people he tapped to join the company’s board is both illegal and invalid. It’s the latest salvo in an ongoing feud at the telecom giant, which found itself embroiled in turmoil this week amid media reports that Edward Rogers tried to replace the company’s current chief executive officer among other changes to corporate leadership.““The proposal by Mr. Edward Rogers to hold a purported board meeting with his proposed slate of directors this weekend does not comply with laws of British Columbia, where Rogers Communications Inc. is incorporated, and is therefore not valid,” newly minted board chairman John MacDonald said in a statement. “Accordingly, the purported board meeting and anything that may arise from such a meeting is also invalid. It is disappointing that the former chairman is attempting to act unilaterally without regard for the interests of the company and all of Rogers’ shareholders.”A spokesman for Edward Rogers did not immediately respond to request for comment on whether such a meeting was going ahead or who would be in attendance if it did.Edward Rogers, who was removed as board chair on Thursday but has retained his board seat, is seeking to assert control over the largely family-run company. The son of company founder Ted Rogers also remains as chair of the Rogers Control Trust, the controlling shareholder which, along with Rogers family members, owns 97 per cent of Class A voting shares.The corporate sparring began after Edward Rogers unsuccessfully attempted to oust current CEO Joe Natale, appoint former chief financial officer Tony Staffieri to the role instead and replace other members of the leadership team, according to media reports.Multiple reports say the plan to replace Natale was blocked by other board members, including Edward Rogers’ sisters and mother, and his attempt at shaking up the firm led to him being replaced as chairman.But Edward Rogers would not give up. In a news release late Thursday, he announced his plan to remove independent directors John Clappison, David Peterson, Bonnie Brooks, Ellis Jacob and MacDonald from the company’s board.In their place, he named Michael Cooper, Jack Cockwell, Jan Innes, Ivan Fecan and John Kerr as the new directors.Hours later, the company fired back with a statement rejecting Edward Rogers’ proposed candidates and asserting the board makeup would remain intact. MacDonald said the declaration was made after seeking legal advice.Natale offered public comment on Saturday for the first time since the saga began, issuing a statement reaffirming his commitment to both company shareholders and a proposed takeover of rival Shaw Communications Inc. Natale is widely viewed as the architect of the $26 billion deal, which is still awaiting regulatory approval. “We remain fully focused on successfully coming together with Shaw to deliver the next phase of Rogers’ strategic growth and better serve Canadians in communities from coast to coast,” Natale said in the statement. One of Edward Rogers’ sisters also weighed in via Twitter, making her opposition to her brother’s moves abundantly clear. “Unlike Ed I have no lawyers, PR spin firms, staff or media training. Don’t need it,” Martha Rogers wrote. “I’m no one special, just a fairly ordinary woman put in extraordinary circumstances. Ted put me on the board as a check and balance to ensure nothing this insane occurs. This is for you Dad.”This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2021. Companies in this story: (TSX:RCI.B)

Martha Rogers posted a series of tweets targeting her brother Edward amid a deeply bitter family fight and boardroom turmoil at Rogers Communications Inc., the company founded by their father. The siblings are locked in an extraordinary battle in which Martha has aligned with her mother, Loretta Rogers, and sister Melinda Rogers-Hixon, while Edward Rogers attempts to remake the company’s board of directors and regain his influence after being fired as chair this week. As of Friday night, it was unclear who exactly is on the board of directors at Rogers, one of Canada’s biggest communications and media firms.Martha Rogers began a series of tweets shortly after 3 a.m. Saturday morning, saying she had trouble sleeping because the fate of the company’s 24,000 employees was weighing on her mind. In a series of five more early-morning tweets she said her brother should “cease, desist and step down,” alluding to his role as chair of a powerful family trust that controls the voting shares of the company. She also suggested that she had damaging information about him that she would make public. Martha implied Edward has been leaking stories to the media, aided by communications firm Navigator, and also referenced the now-infamous photo of her brother and his family with Donald Trump, which his wife Suzanne Rogers posted on social media in May. “The truth about his Trump scandal 5 mos ago, their involvement threatening us to suppress it or else they’ll be “severe personal repercussions” (and they very much can),” read one tweet in part. “Unlike Ed I have no lawyers, PR spin firms, staff or media training,” she said in a tweet on Saturday afternoon. “Don’t need it. I’m no one special, just a fairly ordinary woman put in extraordinary circumstances. Ted put me on the board as a check and balance to ensure nothing this insane occurs. This is for you Dad.”Martha Rogers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday afternoon. Jonathan Lowenstein, Edward’s representative at Navigator, was also not immediately available. On top of the deepening family feud, the corporate drama continued over the weekend. After Edward was voted out as chair of the Rogers Communications board on Thursday, he said he would use his role as chair of the family trust to remove five directors on the Rogers board and replace them with picks of his own. Both Rogers Communications and lawyers for Loretta, Melinda and Martha said that he could not do so without holding a shareholder meeting. By the end of the day Friday, two overlapping groups were both claiming to be the board of directors of Rogers Communications Inc. Now, Edward is planning to hold a board meeting with his new directors over the weekend. John A. MacDonald, who replaced him as chair of the Rogers board last week, said that meeting “and anything that may arise from it” would be “invalid.” “The proposal by Mr. Edward Rogers to hold a purported board meeting with his proposed slate of directors this weekend does not comply with laws of British Columbia, where Rogers Communications Inc. is incorporated, and is therefore not valid,” MacDonald said in a statement Saturday afternoon.“It is disappointing that the former Chairman is attempting to act unilaterally without regard for the interests of the company and all of Rogers’ shareholders,” MacDonald said. Rogers CEO Joe Natale also issued a statement indicating he and his management team are committed to the company and to seeing through its $20-billion plan to acquire Shaw Communications Inc. His comment came after the Globe and Mail reported on Friday that he and many of the executives were prepared to depart if Edward gets his way and reconstitutes the board in his favour. Edward wants to remove MacDonald, John Clappison, David Peterson, Bonnie Brooks and Ellis Jacob from the board and replace them with Michael Cooper, Jack Cockwell, Jan Innes, Ivan Fecan and John Kerr. He has said those changes were effective as of Friday, when he sent a resolution to that effect. The Rogers board and lawyers for Melinda Rogers-Hixon dispute that. (Peterson is also vice-chair of Torstar Corp., the company that owns the Toronto Star.)

Rogers Communications says it rejected an attempt by former chair Edward Rogers to name a slate of new directors because the move “does not comply with laws of British Columbia,” where the company is incorporated. “The proposal by Mr. Edward Rogers to hold a purported Board meeting with his proposed slate of directors this weekend does not comply with laws of British Columbia, where Rogers Communications Inc. is incorporated, and is therefore not valid,” the company said in a statement on Saturday. “Accordingly, the purported Board meeting and anything that may arise from such a meeting is also invalid.” The company did not offer details on what laws the move would contravene. Saturday’s statement is the latest development in an ugly fight for control of the company. WATCH | Rogers plagued with leadership dispute, family infighting:

So Facebook wants to change its name. According to tech site The Verge, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to announce a new name change that reflects a shift in focus for the company from social networking to what it is calling “the metaverse” — a mix of technologies meant to create a virtual world that Facebook happens to run. Still, for an embattled company, bruised by a string of injuries to its reputation, the change likely reflects a few things Facebook is looking to achieve.For one, it is now embroiled in a bitter battle with the tech press over various lapses in the company’s track record: privacy gaffes, moderation problems and a failure to tamp down on the ills of social media. Couple that with a high-profile “60 Minutes” interview with a whistleblower who detailed Facebook’s various failings, and you see how a name change might be just the thing for one of the world’s largest companies to sweep a few unpleasant realities under the rug. It isn’t just the self-inflicted wounds that is worrying Facebook, however. Recent reports show that Facebook has poured its significant marketing budget into Instagram rather than its core product, mainly because Facebook is terrified of losing the key younger demographics who grow into a lucrative customer base. What’s more, with the TikTok app cresting over a billion users and swallowing much of the cultural energy once absorbed by Instagram, Facebook is feeling vulnerable, and is casting about for the next big thing after the familiar newsfeed.So: the metaverse. It’s a diffuse idea, and Facebook envisions it as a kind of layer of tech between you and the world. More practically, the metaverse is likely to be a mix of virtual reality in the form of headsets; augmented reality, in which smart glasses and other things layer information atop reality; and a host of other tech — maps, wearables, headphones — to shape how you interact with everything.The first thing to ask about the metaverse is whether or not it’s something we want at all. The second is that, even if we do, whether we want Facebook — or whatever their name will be — to be the company to run it. Big tech has operated somewhat differently than most corporations in that, rather than simply offering one a product, tech tries its best to become like modern infrastructure. This is often how tech gets misunderstood. Uber, for example, is often thought of a replacement for taxis. What Uber actually wanted wasn’t to simply be a ride-hailing app on your phone but an entire transportation infrastructure — the tech layer that runs not just rides, but bikes, scooters, transit, and eventually, autonomous cars. It didn’t pan out that way — Uber sold off its autonomous-car division after it became clear self-driving is a much harder problem to solve than anyone knew — but the desire to become a layer was what drove things.So Amazon wants to be the layer between you and shopping, using not just its website but voice assistants, smart buttons, and more to be everywhere. Google wants to be the layer between you and day-to-day tasks — booking appointments, scheduling meetings, and so on.Facebook’s desires are arguably more insidious. The metaverse is essentially the layer between you and reality. Picture walking down the street wearing Facebook-branded smart glasses, little bits of information about stores or coffee shops appearing as you stroll. Imagine taking a class or having a meeting in Facebook-run virtual worlds. That is the vision.In essence, the metaverse isn’t just a virtual world, but an intermediary layer between you and the rest of the world — a set of technologies meant to insert Facebook’s business between individuals and their daily activity. In the same way that Facebook monetized basic communication, it now wants to monetize, well, life. In short, Facebook wants to be the operating system for reality. Even if Facebook didn’t have a track record of privacy intrusions, harming its users’ mental health, or quashing dissent, would we in fact want any company to become the interface between ourselves and reality? The answer seems quite clearly “no,” but it is especially so given Facebook’s blasé, almost careless approach to the well-being of the world it purports to make better.It seems clear that augmented reality is coming, and there may well be benefits. Just as social media has its upsides, so too does technology that can give directions, inform us about our towns and cities as we are in them, or provide a more embodied experience when we meet virtually. But what is cause for worry is that Facebook’s wish to become the company that runs that technology seems to stem more from a desire for domination than either mere altruism or even capitalist profit motive. In short, what Facebook wants isn’t to offer you a neat product, but to entrench itself and seize control — and that isn’t something a name change can or should obscure.Navneet Alang is a Toronto-based freelance contributing technology columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @navalang

Every week, Melanie Morrison gathers data on the prices charged by Canadian grocers for tens of thousands of products. But these days, Morrison, who runs a company based in Saskatoon called BetterCart Analytics, is mostly interested in the price of just three of them: condensed milk, peanut butter and plain old butter. Based on the data she’s collected on these three products, Morrison is convinced that Statistics Canada’s efforts to track food price inflation data may require a big rethink. Poor data collection on food prices means Canadians may be finding it much harder to put food on the table than the federal government is acknowledging, after all.Take the federal agency’s own findings, Morrison said. In September 2019, Canadians paid an average of $2.82 for 500 grams of peanut butter, according to Statistics Canada. In September 2020, that price had dropped to $2.69. And by September 2021, it was back at $2.82. “I don’t see this in my data,” said Morrison. “We see a range from $3.39 to $5.59 in the current price. And at the highest, we see up to $9.99.”And then there’s butter. In Morrison’s estimation, Statistics Canada’s data showing that the average price of 454 grams of butter has grown 5.9 per cent over the past year is terribly off.“Our data indicates the real rate of butter price inflation over the past year has been 19.8 per cent on average across Canada,” Morrison said. “I’m concerned about the validity of quite a lot of this data.”She has reason to be: millions of Canadians are living on tight food budgets and low fixed incomes that are pegged to the rate of inflation for living costs, including the inflation of prices for food staples like butter, cooking oil, meat and potatoes.And it’s not just the food prices and inflation figures that Statistics Canada reports that has Morrison concerned.She said container sizes aren’t being accurately reflected in some cases, meaning the amount of food for the price may be shrinking.Take evaporated milk, for instance. Statistics Canada tracks the price of 385-millimetre cans. But those cans don’t exist anymore in Canadian grocery stores.“It’s now sold in 354-millimetre cans,” Morrison said. “The cans have shrunk.” The prices on the other hand, have not. That may mean, due to what’s referred to as “shrinkflation,” that the cost of items like evaporated milk may have gone up in a manner possibly overlooked by Statistics Canada, even though the agency makes efforts to adjust for varying container sizes.Every month, Statistics Canada offers food price data, as well as data on everything from footwear to automobiles, in a monthly report called the Consumer Price Index (CPI). For more than 90 years, the CPI has tracked the prices of scores of Canadian products to help governments and businesses adjust their payments to millions of pensioners and social assistance recipients according to prevailing rates of cost inflation. But Morrison believes Statistics Canada’s food price monitoring efforts, and its 4.2 per cent annual food cost inflation figure for the past year, may be based on data that’s somewhat too far removed from Canadian shops and kitchens. If the government isn’t accurately tracking the inflating cost of something as basic as butter, how reliable is the rest of the CPI?Until recently, Statistics Canada had a nearly total monopoly on the data needed to calculate food price inflation rates. But the internet has changed that, said Morrison, whose company claims to be able to track real-world food prices more comprehensively than Statistics Canada to help grocers make what it calls “data-driven decisions in real time.”Morrison’s cornucopia of grocery price data is gathered from thousands of grocery stores — chains and independents alike — across the country, using online sources such as grocery store flyers and their websites.It’s a complex business, propelled by massive computing power involving “web-scraping” and data-mining tasks. She now has close to a billion products recorded in her databases. Not all of Morrison’s clients are grocers with cutthroat price competition in mind, however. She also collaborates with Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab in Halifax. Together, they’re probing the accuracy of the CPI’s food price inflation figures and Statistics Canada’s data gathering when it comes to food prices. Charlebois and Morrison both emphasized that Statistics Canada has “a stellar reputation” when measuring macroeconomic metrics for policy-makers, industry and consumers alike. The CPI, said Charlebois, is “likely accurate about many aspects of our economy,” including durable goods, automobiles, energy and lodging.” But food distribution, he said, is “becoming more complicated as market dynamics are much more intense than they used to be.” In Charlebois’ opinion, Statistics Canada’s biggest problem in tracking food prices is that it likely relies too heavily on just three national chains within Canada’s highly concentrated grocery industry for much of its price data. Unlike in the U.S., where the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service relies in large part on a vast consumer network for food price data from 120,000 households, Statistics Canada largely relies on data from the three chains it “partners” with. Due to “corporate confidentiality” Statistics Canada can’t disclose the names of the three chains, said Heidi Ertl, director of consumer prices at StatCan. “We have oligopolistic conditions in the grocery industry,” said Charlebois, with reference to the very small number of chains that control about 80 per cent of the grocery market. With just three companies providing so much of Ottawa’s food price data, “I suspect Statistics Canada’s methodologies may be a victim of that,” he said.Charlebois also wonders if Statistics Canada is doing enough to track prices in Canada’s independent grocery stores.All of these questions feed his basic concern that the federal government is underestimating the budget pressures on low-income Canadian families, especially pensioners and social assistance recipients whose incomes are often pegged to the rate of inflation stated in the CPI. Contacted via phone and email, Jason McLinton, vice-president of grocery division and regulatory affairs for the Retail Council of Canada (RCC), declined to discuss whether “oligopolistic” market conditions exist within the Canadian retail food industry, and whether — in part because of this — the retail price data that Statistics Canada receives from grocery retailers does not sufficiently represent the actual prices Canadians pay for food.“It is not surprising that results from Statistics Canada’s report, whose data and methodology are easily accessible online, might differ from an investigation whose data and methodology are not,” McLinton said in response to questions about Charlebois’ investigation with BetterCart.Charlebois, however, noted that Statistics Canada’s food price inflation calculations are based on raw data from grocers that’s not available online and not at all otherwise easily accessible to the public or independently verifiable.It’s gathered using a data collection process that he said is not explained in anything like sufficient detail to be considered publicly transparent. It’s “very ambiguous,” he said. As a whole, Charlebois gives Statistics Canada rather low marks for public disclosure concerning its raw data and data-gathering methodologies for the food section of the CPI, although he senses that may now be changing as public dismay over food price inflation grows.Of Canada’s five main grocery chains — Loblaw, Metro, Sobeys, Pattison and Walmart — only Metro responded to interview requests on the topic of its role in helping Statistics Canada track food prices. But it wasn’t because Metro wanted to discuss the topic. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have someone who can speak on this topic,” Metro communications manager Stephanie Bonk said in an email. Statistics Canada’s Ertl said in a phone interview and in emails that she considers Charlebois’ criticisms of the way food prices are documented unfair and incorrect.Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, food prices were collected by interviewers visiting stores, she said, adding “this is now replaced by online prices using store websites or flyers.”Beyond this, she explained, food prices are now mostly captured using weekly scanner data collected directly from the three unnamed grocery chains. “The data are collected on a weekly basis and include sales and promotions where applicable,” Ertl said.Food prices are collected from about 500 grocery outlets across all regions in Canada, and “17,000 target products are captured from grocery retailers,” she added.Ertl acknowledged that Statistics Canada may not be getting enough data, however, adding that she has been lobbying to persuade other major national grocery chains to participate in the data gathering.“We’re close to reaching an arrangement with a fourth chain,” she said. “We’re trying to cover nationwide. We’d love to get retail scanner data from as many as we can.”That’s good news, said Charlebois.But, in an era when a grocery superstore carries as many as 40,000 food products, tracking 17,000 products, impressive as that sounds, may not be good enough, he said, given that Statistics Canada ought to be able to harness the computing power needed to do so.And even if another grocery chain proves co-operative, Charlebois is concerned Statistics Canada will still be missing a big share of the total knowable grocery prices that it could much better track if it adopted the U.S.’s consumer-oriented approach, as well as BetterCart’s web-scouring approach, alongside its existing ones, including the data it gets from its three unnamed grocery “partners.”Ertl said a CPI modernization program has been underway since 2018 to overhaul its methodologies and expand its data-gathering reach.“There’s always room for improvement” she said. Back in Saskatoon, Morrison said she’s keen to help Ertl in any way she can.“We’re not looking for a fight with StatCan,” she said. “In an ideal world, we’d be able to help them.”

Apple unveiled new products last MondayIn an Apple event on Oct. 18, the company announced new AirPods, new MacBook Pro laptops and new processors, among other things. Apple’s new processors, the M1 Max and M1 Pro, were released less than a year after the company announced its M1 chip for the Mac.Investors responded enthusiastically to the news, pushing the share price up more than two per cent on Monday alone. By market close Wednesday, shares of Apple closed four per cent higher than the Monday open.In its third-quarter fiscal 2021 results, Apple reported net sales of $81 billion, from $60 billion driven by an increase in product sales of $17 billion. Overall net income for the quarter almost doubled to $21.7 billion, from $11.3 billion in 2020.David Soberman, a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, notes that a major trend in consumer electronics is increased functionality.“It used to be that you would use a phone to make calls, an iPod to play music and a computer to do work. Now it is possible to do (a combination) of those things on all of those devices,” said Soberman.As for the impact of Apple’s closed system, which gives Apple complete control over its hardware and software, Soberman explained that, “anytime you are trying to use Apple software or functionalities that are virtual they work great on Apple products, but when you try to use them on a Windows-based computer they are difficult.”“For Apple, it has a core group of users that it continually offers new versions and upgrades to. This is how its business flourishes,” said Soberman, adding that Apple’s latest product offerings are to take advantage of pent-up demand and “capitalize on people coming back into the marketplace who want to spend.”Microsoft recently released new Surface computersIn a Surface event on Sept. 22, Microsoft unveiled a new phone, three tablets and a laptop under the Surface umbrella. The announcement seemed to be in line with expectations as suggested by a ho-hum rise in the share price of less than one per cent by end of day.Aside from its Surface suite of products, Microsoft earns revenue on Azure, its cloud services division; Xbox, its gaming division; and LinkedIn.For fiscal 2021, the company reported total revenues of $168 billion, up from $143 billion the prior year, driven by a $22-billion increase in service and other revenue. Overall net income for the year came in at $61 billion, from $44 billion in fiscal 2020.The Windows operating system is based on an open system that allows third-party products to interoperate with it. Examples of this are laptops that run on a Windows operating system but are manufactured and branded by Google, Dell or HP.As for the open system used by Windows, Soberman said that it allows Microsoft to license its offerings and venture into new products and services without a massive investment.In terms of working with other companies, “Microsoft tries to make its system as compatible and seamless with other providers who want to work on its system. It co-operates with Google and social media companies to try to increase the compatibility and performance of offerings on (Windows),” said Soberman.Within the past 10 years, Microsoft has doubled-down on its consumer offerings with the first Surface tablet released in 2012 and many upgrades since then. Soberman said that Microsoft’s “Surface computers are state of the art and good looking” adding “this is the one product area where Microsoft is active and strong.”Bottom lineIn the Apple versus Microsoft debate, it comes down to consumer preference. On one hand, Apple’s products are user friendly but require consumers to purchase the suite of products to fully benefit from the integration. On the other hand, Microsoft’s products operate on the Windows platform, which can be finicky, but the open system allows manufacturers such as Dell and Google to license Windows, which leads to a price war in the market. Windows products are better for consumers’ wallets, but Apple’s premium products are better for investment portfolios. It’s two thumbs up for Apple this week. The second one is in place of my arm and leg next time I make an Apple purchase.

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With food prices in Canada on the rise, some Canadians and community organizations say tactics to help cut the cost of their grocery bills are all the more essential.Those tactics are being further tested by inflation, with food prices up 3.9 per cent from where it was a year ago. Over the past 12 months, prices for meat products spiked by almost 10 per cent, with seafood, dairy, eggs also seeing significant increases. Edible oils and fats, like olive oil, canola oil and margarine, are up 18.5 per cent. High food prices especially hurt those with low income — a disproportionate number of whom are Black, Indigenous or people of colour, said Zsofia Mendly-Zambo, a PhD candidate at York University in Toronto who specializes in health policy and equity. Faced with other rising costs for fixed expenses like housing, child care or transportation, people try to cut costs on what they eat, she said, because “food is the thing that we can squeeze the most.”  Adwoa Toku says growing her own food has saved her a lot of money and made living in Toronto easier financially. Here she displays a recent harvest of collard greens, peppers and tomatoes from her backyard garden.