Going for a song? Jackson to auction scores of outfits

Report examines post-pandemic labour market

Janet Jackson is cleaning out her closet, putting her wedding dress and dozens of her stage costumes up for auction in May for the first time. Julien's Auctions said on Thursday that the five-time Grammy winner is selling more than 1,000 of the costumes she wore on stage, on tour, on red carpets and in music videos over the past four decades. “Janet has never done an auction before. In fact, we find it very hard to find items at auction, any auction, from Janet Jackson because she's kept everything,” Martin Nolan, executive director of Julien's Auctions, told Reuters. “It's cathartic for her ... she's happy to let them go and to raise money for a charity that's really important to her,” Nolan said. Some of the top items in the May 14-16 sale in Beverly

Hills include the original Rhythm Nation Jacket from her eponymous 1990 world tour. The singer's most famous outfit — the black leather bustier that was ripped, briefly exposing her breast at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime

show — is not included in the auction.

Canada's travel landscape is about to change after the federal government approved Air Canada's $190-million purchase of Transat A.T., a deal diminished in value by COVID-19.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced the approval Thursday evening, saying the government concluded the purchase is in the public interest. He said it considered a range of factors, including level of service, social and economic implications, the financial health of the air transportation sector, and competition.

“Given the devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the air industry, the proposed purchase of Transat A.T. by Air Canada will bring greater stability to Canada's air transport market,” he said in a statement.

The pandemic was also cited as a factor when Montreal-based Transat noted it may not be able to continue on its own because of the significant financial challenges.

The government said the acquisition is the best outcome for workers, Canadians travellers and industries that rely on air transport.

In December, Transat shareholders approved the revised deal, equal to $5 per share and a significant reduction from an earlier $720 million or $18 per share.

Air Canada won support from Transat's largest shareholder, Letko Brosseau, after sweetening the deal in August 2019 from its initial offer of $520 million or $13 per share a few months earlier.

Alghabra said approval is subject to “strict conditions which will support future international competition, connectivity and protect jobs.

Air Canada must ensure that Transat A.T. provides communications and services in both official languages.

The country's largest airline must also preserve the Transat head office and brand in Quebec, maintain 1,500 employees for Transat's leisure travel business, conduct aircraft maintenance in Canada while prioritizing contracts in Quebec, have a price-monitoring mechanism, and launch new destinations in the first five years.

It wasn't clear when the deal will close.

Transat reconfirmed its unanimous support for the sale to Air Canada in January after receiving an unsolicited proposal on Dec. 22.

Telecom owner Pierre Karl Peladeau's investment company Gestion MTRHP Inc. had made an offer valued at $5 per share if Ottawa and regulatory authorities rejected Air Canada's takeover.

Transat was co-founded in 1986 by several Quebec businessmen, including current CEO Jean-Marc Eustache and Francois Legault, the province's premier. Legault left in 1997.

Transat, a tour operator that operates Air Transat, has paused operations until April 30 and furloughed about 450 employees.

Air Canada announced Tuesday hat it will temporarily lay off 1,500 unionized employees and an unspecified number of management staff as it cuts 17 more routes to the U.S. and international destinations.

The COVID-19 pandemic is fuelling trends that could have far-reaching effects on the Canadian labour market, including existential changes that might see the end of workaholism and the adoption of a three-day work week, according to a new report from a Toronto-based think-tank.

“The value placed on professional aspirations and our relationship to work is shifting, and individuals may be happier with less hours of work, less income and new work norms,” states the report, titled Yesterday's Gone, from the Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Ryerson University.

“Workaholic extinction” is just one of 34 specific trends that are related to eight “megatrends” outlined in the think-tank's report, which was funded by the federal government-funded Future Skills Centre. While not intended to be a prediction of the future or a deep dive into any one trend, the study looks at developments that could shake up Canadian employment by 2030.

The report delves into the possible futures that await Canada's labour market in post-pandemic times — touching on developments that are already happening and those that may be more distant possibilities — and aims to get them on the radars of policy-makers, businesses and workers.

For example, it notes that 53 per cent of those surveyed in an Angus Reid Institute poll last year said that making a 30-hour work week standard in Canada would be a good idea. The shift in values that might emerge could lead in 2030 “to new kinds of work, a three-day work week, more part-time positions, gig work, freelancing, and portfolio careers,” the report says.

The study is also trying to get the conversation going as it notes that COVID-19 has caused “significant disruption” for Canadian workers over the past year.

“It is a very challenging time to make truly future-focused decisions,” said Jessica Thornton, one of the report's authors and a collaborator at the Brookfield Institute.

The megatrend “Our Lives Online,” for example, notes that the internet is becoming a bigger part of people's days, as they work from home more and then spend their downtime streaming shows on Netflix. This, the report says, could lead to a larger number of Canadian workers decamping from downtown areas where offices are located (perhaps sparking the economies of some rural communities in the process) and a surge in online job training, which could affect universities.

“Shifting Power” points out that small businesses have been hit hardest, while some massive corporations have thrived, which could mean further market consolidation in the future. This could weaken worker bargaining power, as well as act as a drag on entrepreneurship, the report says.”