Section 2: Economic events

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Canada

Canadian Natural Resources restarted its Horizon oilsands plant after an eight-month shutdown due to a fire. It also announced spending $2 billion in 2012 towards a 140,000 barrel-a-day expansion.

Swiss-owned Xstrata announced new expansion plans for two Canadian nickel projects, including $530 million on the Raglan project in northern Quebec and $119 million on Fraser Morgan in Sudbury. Xstrata also revealed plans to buy First Coal in a deal valued at $153 million.

China-owned Jilin Jien Nickel announced it will double investment in its project to extract nickel in Nunavik in northern Quebec to $800 million.

GM will invest over $300 million to prepare its assembly plants in Oshawa and Lansing, Michigan to build two new Cadillac models next year. Toyota received a $71 million loan from the federal government and a matching grant from Ontario as part of its $545 million investment to assemble the electric version of the RAV4 at its plant in Woodstock. Ontario will contribute $48.4 million as part of Magna International's $432 million 6-year project to develop electric vehicle technologies. Ford and Toyota announced a preliminary agreement to collaborate to develop a hybrid system for pick-up trucks and sport-utility vehicles.

BC voters rejected the harmonized sales tax in a referendum, resulting in the province stating it would revert to the PST/GST system by March 13, 2013 and repay the federal government $1.6 billion it received for the HST transition.

World

Standard and Poor downgraded long-term US debt to AA+, removing its 70-year triple-A rating. Other agencies kept the AAA rating.

The European Central Bank began buying Italian and Spanish debt in the secondary market after the bond yields of the two countries rose to about 6%.

Hurricane Irene hit the east coast at month end, causing extensive flooding and power outages for 6.7 million customers.

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