Home reno program filling up

RAFAEL BRUSILOW, FOR METRO CANADA

January 13, 2009 01:00

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to renovate a house, a new program at Humber might be for you.

Hoping to capitalize on the home renovation industry, the Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning will offer a Home Renovation Technician diploma program at its Toronto and Orangeville campuses starting in September. 

The intensive one-year program will run a full 12 months through the summer of 2010, letting students complete the equivalent of four semesters of study in three semesters — essentially doing a two-year diploma in one year.

“It’s for people who want to build things — it’s designed to provide them an opportunity to get their hands dirty,” said Joe Andrews, director of Humber’s Orangeville campus. 

Guy Morrison, co-ordinator of the program at Humber, says students will get to put their renovation skills to the test in a real-world setting as Humber is building two houses in a special warehouse near campus. 

“When students will install a kitchen or a bathroom, they’ll actually do it in a real house, so it’s a lot more realistic,” Morrison said.

With decades of renovation experience himself as a carpenter and electrician, Morrison says the thrill he still gets out of doing a renovation work boils down to the knowledge that you’ve done a good day’s work.

“The satisfaction of seeing the finished product and knowing that you did it — that’s something I still don’t know how to describe, but it’s a good feeling,” Morrison said.

Humber is taking 20 students for the program at the Orangeville campus and 20 at its Rexdale campus in Toronto in September and 40 more Toronto students in the spring of 2010. 

Spots are filling up quickly, so Morrison suggests getting in touch with Humber before the end of January if you’re interested. 

You can find out more about the program at www.humber.ca or contact Guy Morrison directly at guy.morrison@humber.ca.

Plan offers tax credit for home renovations

Flaherty floats idea before meeting with premiers today

STEVEN CHASE AND BRIAN LAGHI

From Thursday's Globe and Mail

January 15, 2009 at 4:00 AM EST

OTTAWA — The Harper government has been floating the idea of a tax credit for home renovations - an idea that could deliver significant stimulus for Canada's residential construction industry in the Jan. 27 budget.

Deliberations continue as Canada's premiers meet today in Ottawa to put the final touches on a budget request for Prime Minister Stephen Harper - one that sources say will include more cash for employment training, more benefits for the jobless and extra funding for infrastructure.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, meanwhile, has been conducting his own consultation on the looming budget, expected to deliver up to $30-billion in stimulus to soften an economic downturn.

During a closed-door session in Montreal last week, Mr. Flaherty asked participants' opinion on a partly refundable tax credit for renovations. Some economists among the more than 20 attendees criticized the proposal while representatives of the building-trades sector lauded it. Tax credits can be used to reduce the amount of taxes a person owes to the government, but refundable tax credits can benefit filers even if they have no taxes to be paid; in that case, they could get a refund based on the credit.

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Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.(Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

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The federal Finance Department looks favourably on stimulus spending that helps builders, in part because so many of their materials are made in Canada. This ensures more benefits of stimulus spending remain in this country than if the money goes to taxpayers in the form of rebates to spur consumption. There's a good chance that consumer spending would leak the benefits of stimulus to foreigners: 50 per cent of durable goods bought in Canada are imported.

"[By] contrast, only 20 per cent of investment in residential and non-residential buildings is imported through such inputs as building materials," the Finance Department said in its recent paper on stimulus.

One important decision Mr. Flaherty will have to make should the Tories proceed with this idea is whether to offer a tax credit for home renovation in general, or merely for retrofits and upgrades that increase energy efficiency.

Toronto Dominion Bank chief economist Don Drummond said stimulus for home renovations would be helpful because there's a limit to how many public works projects Ottawa can kick start soon.

"There's only so much of the big infrastructure stuff you can get going in 2009 and 2010," Mr. Drummond said.

"We are past the peak of employment in the construction industry, and those people are going to be getting laid off."

One drawback of programs such as subsidies for retrofitting and house refurbishment is that they are typically difficult to administer, hard to monitor and susceptible to fraud.

In Ottawa, the premiers plan to ask Mr. Harper when they meet with him tonight and tomorrow for more infrastructure money and increased flexibility in spending it.

The Harper government has committed itself to $33-billion over seven years, and is pledging to accelerate that spending. But premiers want the government to add to the overall global total.

Governments also appear close to an agreement to streamline environmental requirements for infrastructure projects. Ontario is particularly concerned for Ottawa to find a way to increase benefits for the unemployed and not just money for worker training. Toronto wants more workers to be able to access benefits.

Premiers will not put a price tag on their requests. "Most premiers are not looking to jam up the feds and put an astronomical number they can't meet," the source said.

Canada's municipal governments yesterday released a list of more than 1,000 infrastructure projects that they say could start this spring if federal funds become available.

Combined, the projects would create more than 150,000 jobs, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities said in a release.

Seniors easy prey for scam artists: Police

Detective will give tips to avoid being a victim

January 08, 2009

BY DANIEL REID

"It’s just a matter of educating people on not giving personal information."

From bogus home renovation firms to identity thieves, scam artists are constantly finding new ways to prey on Kanata’s seniors, according to an Ottawa police detective specializing in fraud and identity theft.

Seniors can be easy prey because “they are more trusting and they’re not used to these modern types of frauds,” said Det. Bob Arbour, a member of the police’s organized fraud unit since 2002.

That’s why Arbour is offering a primer on preventing fraud at the next meeting of the Probus Club of Kanata at Kanata United Church on Tuesday, Jan. 13. The meeting starts at 10 a.m.

The police detective has seen it all, from criminals claiming to represent credit card companies to phony door-to-door salespeople trying to auction off counterfeit currency.

But anyone has the potential to be fooled by a scam artist, he said. It just depends on “how good of a fraudster you’re dealing with,” said Arbour.

“It’s human nature,” he said. “We’re honest people and want to believe the people were dealing with are honest.

“But if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Arbour offers a few basic tips to avoid being had:

• Never give out your personal information. If your bank or credit card company is calling, they will already have your information. They won’t need to ask. “(Many seniors are) not aware of what they should provide,” said Arbour. “You shouldn’t be providing any information.”

• Always ask for identification. Make sure you know who you are dealing with. Find out what company they work for and research that company at a later time.

• Don’t be afraid to walk away from a deal. There’s no harm in taking some time to research your investment, said Arbour. There’s also no harm in deciding you’re not interested either.

“It’s just a matter of educating people on not giving personal information,” said Arbour. “It will eliminate a lot of investigations.”

IDENTITY THEFT

There are several sophisticated ways a scam artist can illegally dig up your personal information, whether through online phishing – e-mails or websites masquerading as trusted companies – or compromised pin pads at ATM machines. But one of the more popular techniques is also one of the most rudimentary: it’s called dumpster diving.

A scam artist will pick through your garbage and paper recycling bin for unshredded documents. They can do the same at financial institutions that don’t properly destroy their waste.

With that information, Arbour said crooks can sometimes get phony debit cards to access your bank.

But not all scams are that elaborate.

Arbour has seen cases where scamsters were trying to sell fake, blackened currency that they claimed had been illegally smuggled into the country. The buyer is only asked to buy a chemical to remove the black substance.

“That’s why we don’t get very many complaints (about this type of scam) because they think they’re just as guilty as the person scamming them,” said Arbour. “We’re human so we have a certain amount of greed.”