Employment equity (Canada)

Employment equity (Canada)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: Employment equity refers to Canadian policies that require or encourage preferential treatment in employment practices for certain designated groups: women, people with disabilities, Aboriginal peoples, and visible minorities. Employment equity goes beyond mere non-discrimination in requiring these specific groups be targeted for proactive treatment.


History
The roots of employment equity are in the 1984 Abella Commission, chaired by Judge Rosalie . She considered the US term, affirmative action. but decided not to use that term because of the emotions and ill will surrounding affirmative action. In its place she created the term “employment equity” for the Canadian context. Judge Abella’s report later became the foundation of the Employment Equity Act of 1986, later amended as the Employment Equity Act of 1995.

[edit] Protected groups
The Employment Equity Act designates four groups as the beneficiaries of employment equity:
1) Women
2) People with disabilities
3) Aboriginal people, a category consisting of Status Indians Non-status Indians, Métis (people of mixed French-Aboriginal ancestry in western Canada), and Inuit (the Aboriginal people of the Arctic).
4) Visible minoriies, a category defined as the following (using the nomenclature of the Canadian government): Blacks, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Latin Americans, Pacific Islanders, South Asians, and West Asians/Arabs.
The term “non-white” is used in the wording of the Employment Equity Act and in employment equity questionnaires distributed to applicants and employees. This is intended as a shorthand phrase for those who are in the Aboriginal and/or visible minority groups. In this context, the use of the term non-white does open the door to ambiguity. For example, people who are Arabs or Latin Americans may consider themselves to be white, yet the federal government treats Arabs and Latin Americans as members of the visible minority category.

[editCoverage
The Employment Equity Act is federal legislation, and as such, applies only to certain industries that are federally regulated under the Canadian constitution, namely banks, broadcasters, telecommunication companies, railroads, airlines, maritime transportation companies, other transportation companies if inter-provincial in nature, uranium-related organizations, federal crown corporations (companies where the federal government owns the majority of shares), and corporations controlled by two or more provincial governments. Thus the scope of the Employment Equity Act is quite limited, and the vast majority of employers, including nearly all retailers and manufacturing companies, fall outside its jurisdiction.
The Canadian federal government also administers the Federal Contractors’ Program(FCP). This is not part of the Employment Equity Act, but rather is a non-legislated program that extends employment equity to organizations beyond the scope of the Act. The FCP states that suppliers of goods and services to the federal government (with some specified exceptions) must have an employment equity program in place.
Some provinces use the term employment equity in conjunction with their enforcement of provincial-level human rights legislation (for example, British Columbia and Saskatchewan but no province has a law that is an analogue to the federal Employment Equity Act. The government of Quebec requires that employers show preference to people with disabilities, which could be considered a form of employment equity legislation

Short Stocks

A short seller usually borrows through a broker, who is usually holding the securities for another investor who owns the securities; the broker himself never purchases the securities to lend to the short seller.[1] The lender does not lose the right to sell the securities while they have been lent, as the broker will usually hold a immense pool of such securities for a variety of investors which, as such securities are fungible, can in lieu be transferred to any buyer. In most market conditions there is a prepared supply of securities to be borrowed, held by pension funds, mutual funds and other investors.

To profit from a decrease in the cost of a security, a short seller can borrow the security and sell it expecting that it will be cheaper to repurchase in the future. When the seller decides that the time is right (or when the lender recalls the securities), the seller buys equivalent securities and returns them to the lender. The method depends on the fact that the securities (or the other assets being sold short) are fungible; the term "borrowing" is therefore used in the sense of borrowing $10, where a different $10 note can be returned to the lender (as against borrowing a automobile, where the same automobile must be returned). There are also several strategies or Stock Tips suited to beginners, such as diversification, tracking a market, and value investments.

short selling (also known as shorting or going short) is the practice of selling assets, usually securities, that have been borrowed from a third party (usually a broker) with the purpose of buying identical assets back at a later date to return to the lender. It is a kind of reverse trading. Arithmetically, it is equivalent to purchasing a "negative" amount of the assets. The short seller hopes to profit from a decline in the cost of the assets between the sale and the repurchase, as the seller will pay less to buy the assets than the seller received on selling them. Conversely, the short seller will incur a loss if the cost of the assets rises. Other costs of shorting may include a fee for borrowing the assets and payment of any dividends paid on the borrowed assets. "Shorting" and "going short" also refer to entering in to any derivative or other contract under which the investor profits from a fall in the worth of an asset.

Forex or stocks?

One question I often hear being asked by wanna be traders is which is the best market to trade, Forex or stocks? Unsurprisingly, the answer given more often than not depends upon who you ask. If you ask a Forex broker this question, then no doubt you will be told that the FX market is the biggest and most liquid market in the world and is therefore the best. And of course, if you ask a broker that doesn't deal in currencies this question then you're likely to hear 101 reasons why the Forex market is best avoided.
So which market is actually the best to trade? Well, people will have to decide that for themselves. It's true that the Forex market doesn't have a directional bias; it is without a doubt the largest and most liquid market in the world, it is open 24/5, it has no central exchange etc... But do those characteristics actually help small traders? Personally I find that fairly doubtful, but each trader will have to decide for them self how much benefit things like massive liquidity, 24 hour opening times and no central exchange will actually bring them. I just can't see very much benefit in these things at all for the average non-institutional trader, the stock market is liquid enough for most traders, looking at numbers 24 hours a day isn't healthy, and I would actually say the market would be better with a central exchange and an official price.


But traders, I believe, will not get their individual answer to the question which is better, trading Forex or trading stocks by comparing the market sizes and liquidity levels, or by comparing opening hours. The question, I believe, can be answered by honestly asking ones self what kind of trader do I want to be and by fully understanding the implications of each kind of trading.
One of the most important things that newbie traders need to learn is that there are different types of markets and that different markets need to be approached with different trading strategies. The Forex market produces some of the longest lasting and cleanest trends and is therefore best traded with a long-term trend following strategy; the stock market however does not have this characteristic. Stock market indices usually do have a directional bias (i.e. it's either a bull market or a bear market) but they also tend to 'zigzag' producing a series of mini highs and lows as the speculators driving the stock market repeatedly target support and resistance levels.
If you would like to trade infrequently, using some kind of long-term trend following strategy then Forex is probably for you, at least it is probably more likely to be suitable for you than trading stock market indices is anyway.
Long-term trend following systems are, in my opinion, the easiest systems to mechanise and develop, but the most difficult systems to trade psychologically. I actually believe that most people's brains are hardwired to trade in exactly the opposite way that a mechanical trend following system would dictate that they should. For example, most people aim to buy value, that is, they aim to buy low and sell high. This makes perfect sense in most business models, but it is not right for trend trading – trend trading demands we do exactly the opposite, trend trading demands we buy when the price is making new highs and sell when the price is making new lows. Trend trading also involves holding trades for long periods of time (often many months) whilst most people are tempted to take profits when they have them. Everyone accepts that they can't win all the time and that losing trades are a part of trading, but even when they have accepted this they will still be left with the feeling that this particular trade they are in right now has to be one of the winners, so the temptation to take a winning trade off to soon for a small profit and hold a loser to long hoping it turns round is always there.
In short, to honestly answer the question of which is best Forex or stocks, one has to be honest with themselves about which kind of trading they strategy they would like to use. If they would like to use a long-term trend following strategy after being honest about how difficult this can be emotionally then the Forex market is probably better for them than trading stocks and stock market indices. If one isn't cut out for that emotionally, and I believe most people aren't, then trading stocks would probably be a better bet.