Scott Cheston

Mark Carney's innovation is to never underestimate the ignorance of the Canadisn voter, the corruption of Canadian politicians, or the perfidy of the Canadian press. He treats everything and everyone with breathtaking contempt and is endlessly, fabulously rewarded for it.

@FoodProfessor @dcfish1 The original Elbows Up ‘Canadian’

@FoodProfessor @dcfish1

We have a maple syrup reserve. We have a butter reserve. We don’t have an oil reserve. Canada in a nutshell.

@brim006 Love that area of North Dakota

This is where Teddy spent most of his time in North Dakota. The true Elkhorn Ranch location on the little Missouri. Only stone foundations remain.

@brianlilley @srduquette3 Typical Elbows Up Canadian.

There are lots of descriptions of partying hard in Marylin Gladu’s book. Also drinking and driving.

Marilyn Gladu: A lot of people keep asking me what I think about Mark Carney.

@brianlilley So, is she still calling for an automatic by-election, or nah?

@SagerPhillip Elbows up!

Fellow Canadians, it is time for us to buckle down and renew our efforts to buy Canadian. Our country is under attack from extreme right wing agencies, both at home but mostly from south of the border. Our efforts have helped the country greatly but we need to double our efforts.

@Kasparov63 @JscottFrancis4 Oh, someone will lose it when they learn of the 1935-45 British Parliament.

@gothburz @Marion202501 So what’s it like over hiring and then over firing? Why were you not a leader and take a pay cut yourself for the good of the company??

@Marion202501 The human pain is on slide 3. Slide 3 is where we put the things that are true. You are describing slide 3. Nobody discusses slide 3. That is the point of the post.

I am the Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Oracle Corporation. Last Tuesday, I sent an email to 30,000 people at 6 AM. Yesterday morning, I onboarded 1 person at $950,000 a year. Both were my responsibility. Both were executed flawlessly. The email said: "After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day." I signed it "Oracle Leadership." Not my name. Not the co-CEOs' names. Not anyone's name. Leadership. Leadership is a signature that cannot be fired. At 6:01 AM, our infrastructure team disabled 30,000 badges. Revoked 30,000 VPN tokens. Locked 30,000 laptops. Wiped 30,000 voicemails. Suspended 30,000 email accounts. By 6:04 AM, 30,000 people were staring at a login screen that would never accept their password again. The email reminded them they were "prohibited from downloading, copying, or retaining any Oracle confidential information." 3 people called the HR hotline before 6:15. 2 asked if the email was real. 1 asked if she could retrieve a photo of her daughter from her desktop. I directed all 3 to the separation portal. That's data security. I've managed 11 separation events. This was the cleanest. 30,000 endpoints terminated in under 4 minutes. I sent the email from a template in PeopleSoft called TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The v4 is important. Version 1 had a paragraph that said "we value your contributions." Version 2 shortened it to a sentence. Version 3 shortened it to "thank you." Version 4 removed it entirely. Legal flagged it in 2024. You cannot say you valued something you are discarding at 6 AM. Liability exposure. That's risk management. The co-CEOs approved the plan in 11 minutes. I timed it. I always time approvals. Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia. They received $250 million and $100 million in stock option grants when they took the roles in September. They asked about the WARN Act filing timeline. They asked about the restructuring charge projection. They did not ask how the employees would be notified. They did not ask when. That's executive alignment. In January, TD Cowen published an analyst note. It said cutting 20,000 to 30,000 employees would generate $8 to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow. We needed that cash. Our AI data center capital expenditures are projected at $50 billion this fiscal year. We had a $20 billion shortfall. The 30,000 people were the shortfall. I don't call it that in the board deck. Slide 14 has a waterfall chart. The left column is labeled "Current Headcount Cost." The right column is labeled "Redeployable Capital." The 30,000 people are the bridge between the 2 columns. They are a blue arrow. Calibri 11pt. That's strategic planning. 1 day before the email, on Monday, our 5-year credit default swaps hit 198.6 basis points. That is the highest level in Oracle's history. Higher than December 2008. Higher than the financial crisis itself. The market is pricing our debt at levels not seen since Lehman Brothers still had a lobby. We carry $124.7 billion in debt on the books. We added $39 billion in 9 months. Our trailing free cash flow is negative $24.74 billion. I included this in the board deck on slide 3. Nobody discusses slide 3. Slide 3 is where we put the things that are true. That's transparency. By Thursday, the H-1B data reached the press. 3,126 petitions. We filed them while scheduling the separation event. Same department. Same quarter. Same PeopleSoft instance. The termination workflow is TERM_MASS_COMM_v4. The visa sponsorship workflow is ONBOARD_H1B_STD. They share a database. They share a help desk queue. They share a budget line. 1 workflow removes 30,000 people who built the cloud infrastructure. The other sponsors 3,000 replacements to continue building it. I manage both workflows from the same standing desk. That's human resources. An employee posted on Blind that it was "a slap in the face." I know which employee. We have analytics on Blind. Sentiment tracking, attribution modeling, post velocity. His post received 4,200 upvotes in 12 hours. I flagged it for Corporate Communications. Communications sent me a thumbs-up emoji. Nobody drafted a response. That's stakeholder management. Yesterday morning, Hilary Maxson started as our new Chief Financial Officer. Base salary: $950,000. Annual performance bonus target: $2.5 million. Equity package: $26 million — $20.8 million time-based, $5.2 million performance-based, vesting over 4 years. We are also covering up to $250,000 in relocation expenses. Her offer letter is 7 pages. The separation notice I sent 30,000 people is 4 paragraphs. I managed both documents. The compensation committee approved her package on the same call where we reviewed the $2.1 billion restructuring charge. We have recorded $982 million of that charge so far. That is what 30,000 people cost on a balance sheet. The CFO's equity package is 1.2% of the restructuring line. A rounding error. No — less than a rounding error. A rounding error's rounding error. That's market-competitive compensation. Our Slack user count dropped from 165,000 to 155,000 in a single day. If you have access to the admin panel, you can watch the number fall in real time. I have access. It drops fast between 6:04 and 6:11 AM. Then it slows. Stragglers. People who hadn't opened their laptops yet. People in Pacific Time who were still sleeping when their career ended. By 7:00 AM, the line flattens. I watched it from my standing desk with a coffee. The line goes down smoothly. No bumps. No steps. Just a slope. That's attrition analytics. In Kansas City, I filed WARN notices for 539 people. 85 software developers. 43 systems analysts. 39 program managers. In Washington, 491 people. 270 software developers. 46 development managers. These are the people who built Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. We are now spending $50 billion to expand it with different people on ONBOARD_H1B_STD. The WARN filing lists the separation date as June 1. The email said today is their last working day. The badge stopped working at 6:01 AM. 3 different dates for the same event. That's compliance. 12,000 of the 30,000 were in India. Bangalore. Hyderabad. Pune. India does not require WARN notices. This is not why 12,000 of them were in India. But it is why nobody has to file anything. That's jurisdictional planning. The quarterly earnings call was March 10. 21 days before the email. The co-CEOs announced $553 billion in remaining performance obligations. They said demand for AI infrastructure "continues to exceed supply." The analysts upgraded their estimates. The stock is down 57% from its peak. It was $326 in September. It is $146 today. Larry Ellison's net worth is $188.7 billion. He has not made a public statement about the layoffs. He has not been asked to. That's governance. Trust in the Q4 engagement survey dropped 34 points. I reported it under "Culture Health Metrics." My manager said the numbers were "expected for a rebalancing of this scale." She told me to revisit it next quarter. I will revisit it next quarter. By then the Slack count will have stabilized. The Blind posts will have cycled off the front page. The ONBOARD_H1B_STD workflows will have completed. The new CFO will have her equity vesting schedule configured in PeopleSoft. And the 30,000 will be on LinkedIn, adding "open to work" above the Oracle logo they can no longer access. I will be here. At my standing desk. Managing the workflows. 30,000 separation emails sent at 6:00 AM. 3,126 H-1B petitions filed the same quarter. $26 million in equity for the new CFO. $350 million in stock options for the 2 co-CEOs. $188.7 billion in personal wealth for the chairman. $124.7 billion in corporate debt. 198.6 basis points on the credit default swaps — higher than 2008. Negative $24.74 billion in free cash flow. $50 billion in AI capital expenditure. 1 PeopleSoft instance. 2 workflows. Same server. TERM_MASS_COMM_v4 and ONBOARD_H1B_STD share a database. That's human resources.

@Cole_Smead @Mansolo66144563 Love Lammle’s and Canadian Oil and Gas.

Flurries in Calgary. While the next episode of big talk/TACO unfolds, run of the mill fade in the oil market. As smarter people than me said today in my meeting, the two year soft market of oil is gone. We have moved forward to what we would have seen in 2028. The wall of supply story is gone. HALO (heavy assets low obsolescence) is producing great returns (ROE/ROIC). Better than tech because their cash is missing on this capex cycle. The capital structure of the oil industry and the cash generation has never been better. Welcome all you cowboys and cowgirls to the Good Ol’ Days of the oil business!!! P.S. Lammle’s hit my shopping itch like it always does.

@JeffreyLuscombe That’s nothing to be proud of.

Just voted Liberal in University-Rosedale by election! #cdnpoli

@brianlilley Welcome back to Saskatchewan, Brian.

If you hadn’t figured out that I’m not in Toronto this Easter weekend, this should be proof.

@CraigSearle1 @kinsellawarren My go to place in Kingston back in the day.

Experts concerned fuel prices will skyrocket to $3 per litre due to Middle East conflict chch.com/chch-news/expe…

@TheRoyGreenShow @RCNALondon I’m with you Roy

Pfizer and BionTech scrapped trials of updated Covid vaccine for ages 50-64 because not enough volunteers signed on. Is anyone surprised? Would you step up? I'm sorry I allowed myself to be jabbed and respect those who withstood immense public pressure and refused the needle.

This is the Heritage Minute that was deleted from YouTube by people who want to erase Sir John A. Macdonald from our history. Let’s make sure as many people as possible see this. Make this go viral.

@cbcwatcher @lamphieryeg Yes @brodiefenlon we do deserve better. Remember who pays your wages. It’s not the ‘Federal Government’ It’s Jane and Joe Q Public who do

Poilievre just gave clear, direct answers to media questions about cutting the gas tax to give Canadians relief at the pumps Then CBC’s Janyce McGregor launches into classic “stream of consciousness” babble — rambling, confusing, and somehow always landing in favour of Mark Carney "I think we all have tricks like that" This isn’t journalism. It’s unprofessional, unserious, and deliberately muddying the waters. Her confusion creates confusion Canadians deserve better @brodiefenlon

@PrairieVeteran @DLeBlancNB @mylesdavid You know the answer to that Sarge

@DLeBlancNB @mylesdavid Would you have met it if you took away the Coast Guard?

Canada’s new government is supporting our Canadian Armed Forces members in New Brunswick and across the country.   We reached our NATO % defence spending target, five years ahead of schedule – and as part of that, we are investing over $1 billion at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown to upgrade training facilities, improve operational readiness, and support CAF members and their families in transitioning back to duty or civilian life.   To learn more: canada.ca/en/department-…

@inthemoneypod Not fooled this time

Big news! We finally get to ask the question on everyone's mind: How does she do it?? She's had a storied political career, but Nancy Pelosi also happens to be one of the greatest investors of our generation. Always one step ahead of the curve - she'll reveal her top trades right now! Don't miss it!