The United States Congress may be playing chicken with the economy and the stock market may be on a rollercoaster ride, but confidence in Calgary is still going strong. Investors and lenders are still pouring money into the city’s real estate market.

Two of the major players in collecting much of that money are Tosh Findlay, vice president of RBC Capital, and Jason Cottle, managing director from the same firm. During the last five months, they have been responsible for $650 million in sales within the Calgary region. The pair specializes in debt financing and property brokerage.

Their debt financing

The second quarter of 2011 was a hot one in Calgary for downtown office leasing. It had the highest level of absorption of office space ever recorded for one single quarter. Colliers International released a report noting that those downtown tenants are still taking up space at that blistering rate. It is possible that those that haven’t yet acquired their prime spots may have missed out, at least for now.

In July of 2010, the vacancy rate for downtown space was at 15.22 percent. At the end of June in 2011, that rate fell to 7.79 percent. In the second quarter

Gas prices keep climbing. In Calgary, the pumps are reading almost $1.30 a litre. Across the rest of Canada it’s even worse. Analysts believe that these high prices will be around for months. That may mean that more people will be foregoing that road trip and vacationing closer to home this year.

Tourism Calgary’s CEO Randy Williams believes it may have some impact on the city’s recent gains in visitor numbers. Fuel costs do increase the cost of travel. Air ticket prices usually go up, or have annoying fuel charges added. It costs more to jump in the car or RV

Calgary’s school board administrative spending leaves room for improvement, according to a report issued by the Calgary Herald. According to the report, the city’s separate school and public school boards allocate significantly higher amounts of money to trustees and top personnel than the majority of other large Alberta school districts.

If they trimmed their administrative budget in keeping with the more frugal districts, the Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School District could achieve respective savings of $10.5 million and $4.8 million.

The districts that spend the least of their budgets on headquarter-related expenses are the Edmonton Catholic and Red

Candidates for the coming federal election faced off at the Calgary Centre forum this past Wednesday and touched on a number of issues of concern. About 70 people attended the affair held at the Knox United Church. One of the first items that came up was the corporate tax cuts. Lee Richardson, the incumbent, and a Conservative, defended the cuts because they help improve the economy and create jobs.

Disagreement came fast and furious with Mark Power, standing in for NDP candidate Donna Montgomery, noted that Canada has better things to fund and worry about than making sure that large corporations

Calgary based Shaw Communications is once again delaying the launch of its wireless cell phone market. Brad Shaw, CEO of the firm noted Wednesday that the company won’t launch until early in 2013 so that it has time to study and implement the LTE, or longterm evolution networks. These are the 4 G networks being launched by most United States carriers. If Shaw were to launch now, it would only be with the 3 G technology, which will soon be old news. Shaw wants time to study the 4 G systems and not just be another cell phone carrier getting

The roof of the Clifton Manor nursing home collapsed during lunchtime this past Wednesday. Thanks to the quick thinking of the nursing home staff the 30 or so seniors in the dining room escaped without a scratch. The building, at 4726 8th Avenue SE was having its aging roof repaired. Staff members heard a strange noise coming through the ceiling and rushed everyone out of the building. A bit later 1,100 kilograms of roofing material, sitting two metres high on a pallet came crashing into the lunch room.

Mario Siciliano, the president and CEO of the Brenda Strafford Foundation, advised that

The Calgary Parking Authority started a new parking system this past Monday. If we judged it from the first day, it would be considered a total disaster. The idea was for commuters to buy a monthly pass, currently $70, that would allow them to park in a special reserved area. The pass would allow up to five vehicles to be listed on the pass, would cut down on the daily rate and make sure they had a spot to park.

On Monday all the reserved spots at Crowfoot Station were taken by 7:30am, mostly by those who did not pay their

There is a massive lawsuit happening in Calgary right now, all having to do with mortgage fraud. The BMO Bank of Montreal is suing to get funds back from hundreds of Albertans that took out loans on over-valued homes and in most cases defaulted. BMO claim that there were 14 groups working together to recruit “straw buyers” to buy the flipped and inflated homes.

“Straw buyers” are paid a fee to take out a mortgage on a property, usually using forged documents in order to secure those mortgages. Payments are usually between $3,000 and $8,000 for their services. Calgary MP Devinder

Sometimes it is hard to attract physicians to set up shop in rural parts of Canada. Many recently graduating physicians are on the fence of whether to go for the city lights or the quiet evenings in the middle of almost nowhere. But the Federal Government has come up with an enticing carrot of an idea.

Beginning in 2012, a $9 million federal program would put $40,000 in the hands of new doctors that opt for small town postings. That is the amount of their student loan debt that would be erased, and that is a very big carrot to graduates