Latest news with #Pollara
Hamilton Spectator
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Hamilton Spectator
‘Rage' survey shows the politician Canadians are most angry about
Justin Trudeau leaving the stage has eased the rage. And credit Donald Trump with giving Canadian politicians a bump. That's the suggestion from Pollara Strategic Insights' latest 'Rage Index' poll . Since the firm's last such survey in November , Canadians' anger toward the federal government has plunged 18 percentage points and there was a 10 percentage point drop in frustration with various provincial governments. 'One of the main theories on this is Trudeau himself was obviously a focal point of a lot of anger in Canada. We haven't done the poll since he left as prime minister,' said Dan Arnold, Pollara's chief strategy officer. Trudeau governed from 2015 until being succeeded in March by Prime Minister Mark Carney, who then kept the Liberals in power by securing a minority government in the April federal election. 'You don't see as many 'F—- Carney' flags as you did 'F—- Trudeau' flags,' said Arnold, referring to the profane banners that became commonplace around the time of the so-called ' Freedom Convoy ' protest in Ottawa three years ago. Overall, 37 per cent were angry with the federal government — down from 55 per cent in November — while 28 per cent were happy and 35 per cent were neutral. Similarly, 42 per cent were angry with their provincial government — compared with 52 per cent in the last poll — with 27 per cent happy and 31 per cent neutral. But 78 per cent of respondents were angry with the new U.S. president, who has launched a trade war against Canada, while eight per cent were happy and 14 per cent had no opinion. 'The other thing that's going on is that Donald Trump is a big source of anger. Trump has become a bit of a lightning rod of anger,' said Arnold. 'A lot of the frustrations that people would normally put on their Canadian political leaders have been redirected toward Trump,' he said. Using online panels, Pollara surveyed 3,400 people across the country May 16-20. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The firm found 49 per cent were unhappy with 'the types of changes happening in Canada,' an improvement on the 59 per cent finding last fall. Only 16 per cent were happy on that metric with 35 per cent neutral. But 40 per cent of respondents were happy with the results of the April 28 election while 34 per cent were unhappy and 26 per cent were neutral. About one-third — 32 per cent — were happy with Carney's new cabinet sworn in last month while 26 per cent were unhappy and 42 per cent had no opinion. However, 56 per cent are angry about the Canadian economy, a one percentage point uptick from November's poll, with only 14 per cent happy and 30 per cent were neutral. In that same vein, 38 per cent were unhappy with their own personal financial situation, up from 36 per cent in the last survey while 32 per cent were happy and 30 per cent were neutral. 'That's the one area where we don't see people feeling better,' noted Arnold. 'Actually, the anger level has gone up a little bit on things like the Canadian economy and personal finances — and that is absolutely because of the uncertainty that's going on right now,' the pollster said. 'We've seen unemployment figures starting to tick up and there's ... a lot of angst out there about what tariffs are going to mean and what this is going to have as an impact on Canada,' he said. 'So that is where we do see anger increasing. Trump himself is obviously catching a lot of the negative sentiment that otherwise would be going towards Canadian leaders. People are upset with the economy, but they're blaming it on Trump, instead of blaming it on Mark Carney or the provincial premiers right now.'
Toronto Star
13-06-2025
- Business
- Toronto Star
Canadians favour other countries over Donald Trump's America, survey suggests
As G7 leaders gather in Kananaskis, Alta., a new poll suggests Canadians are souring on the U.S. and embracing relations with other world powers. The Pollara Strategic Insights survey found net impressions of the U.S. have plunged since President Donald Trump returned to office in January. At the same time, Canadians are feeling positive about the other G7 member nations: Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'We've kind of lost our best friend in the United States and maybe, as a country, Canada is now looking toward some of its older friends to reconnect with as a result of that,' said Dan Arnold, Pollara's chief strategy officer, referring to Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods that have led to a trade war between the neighbouring countries. Indeed, the firm polled people in Canada and the U.K. and found similar results on both sides of the Atlantic. Five out of six Canadians — 83 per cent — said the bilateral relationship with Britain was 'important' with only 17 per cent saying it wasn't. Across the pond, 76 per cent of Britons said their country's relationship with Canada was 'important' while about one in four said it was not. The British have a more positive view of Canada (+78 per cent) than any other country in the poll — ahead of Japan (+61 per cent), Germany (+60 per cent), France (+50 per cent) and Ukraine (+47 per cent). But the poll found they have a negative view toward India (-1 per cent), the U.S. (-3 per cent), China (-24 per cent) and Russia (-63 per cent). ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Among Canadians, Italy has a +66 per cent favourability rating followed by Japan at +64 per cent, the U.K. at +59 per cent, France at +57 per cent, Germany at +54 per cent and Ukraine at +41 per cent. China was at -27 per cent, India at -29 per cent, the U.S. at -47 per cent and Russia at -63 per cent. That's a 60 percentage point drop in Canadian sentiment toward the American since Pollara's survey last year when Joe Biden was U.S. president. Using online panels, Pollara surveyed 3,400 Canadians on May 16-20. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Similarly, the firm polled 2,511 Britons on May 2-16. The margin of error for comparable surveys is within 1.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. 'If the Americans aren't going to be the number-one ally in many respects for the next three years (of Trump's presidency) … then the Canada-U.K. relationship is something that bears some noting,' said Arnold, pointing out Canada's recently elected Prime Minister Mark Carney used to be governor of the Bank of England. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Because of that, 60 per cent of Britons are familiar with him, and of those, 80 per cent had a positive view of Carney, who succeeded Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader on March 9 and was elected April 28. Just seven per cent had a negative view and the rest had no opinion. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not as well known among Canadians. Only 26 per cent were familiar with him. Of those, 58 per cent had a positive view with 30 per cent negative and the remainder had no opinion. That's an overall +28 per cent for Starmer, who won power last summer. The most admired foreign leader among Canadians was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who will attend the G7 summit that begins Sunday. Zelenskyy, whose country was invaded by Russia in 2022, was at +53 per cent, ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron (+46 per cent), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (+33 per cent), Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (+31 per cent) and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (+29 per cent). On the negative side of the ledger, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will also be at the G7, was at -17 per cent, ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping (-52 per cent), Trump (-66 per cent) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (-69 per cent). Neither Xi nor Putin was invited to Kananaskis. Politics Headlines Newsletter Get the latest news and unmatched insights in your inbox every evening Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up Yes, I'd also like to receive customized content suggestions and promotional messages from the Star. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Politics Headlines Newsletter You're signed up! You'll start getting Politics Headlines in your inbox soon. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page.
Hamilton Spectator
13-06-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Canadians favour other countries over Donald Trump's America, survey suggests
As G7 leaders gather in Kananaskis, Alta., a new poll suggests Canadians are souring on the U.S. and embracing relations with other world powers. The Pollara Strategic Insights survey found net impressions of the U.S. have plunged since President Donald Trump returned to office in January. At the same time, Canadians are feeling positive about the other G7 member nations: Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. 'We've kind of lost our best friend in the United States and maybe, as a country, Canada is now looking toward some of its older friends to reconnect with as a result of that,' said Dan Arnold, Pollara's chief strategy officer, referring to Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods that have led to a trade war between the neighbouring countries. Indeed, the firm polled people in Canada and the U.K. and found similar results on both sides of the Atlantic. Five out of six Canadians — 83 per cent — said the bilateral relationship with Britain was 'important' with only 17 per cent saying it wasn't. Across the pond, 76 per cent of Britons said their country's relationship with Canada was 'important' while about one in four said it was not. The British have a more positive view of Canada (+78 per cent) than any other country in the poll — ahead of Japan (+61 per cent), Germany (+60 per cent), France (+50 per cent) and Ukraine (+47 per cent). But the poll found they have a negative view toward India (-1 per cent), the U.S. (-3 per cent), China (-24 per cent) and Russia (-63 per cent). Among Canadians, Italy has a +66 per cent favourability rating followed by Japan at +64 per cent, the U.K. at +59 per cent, France at +57 per cent, Germany at +54 per cent and Ukraine at +41 per cent. China was at -27 per cent, India at -29 per cent, the U.S. at -47 per cent and Russia at -63 per cent. That's a 60 percentage point drop in Canadian sentiment toward the American since Pollara's survey last year when Joe Biden was U.S. president. Using online panels, Pollara surveyed 3,400 Canadians on May 16-20. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Similarly, the firm polled 2,511 Britons on May 2-16. The margin of error for comparable surveys is within 1.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. 'If the Americans aren't going to be the number-one ally in many respects for the next three years (of Trump's presidency) … then the Canada-U.K. relationship is something that bears some noting,' said Arnold, pointing out Canada's recently elected Prime Minister Mark Carney used to be governor of the Bank of England. Because of that, 60 per cent of Britons are familiar with him, and of those, 80 per cent had a positive view of Carney, who succeeded Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader on March 9 and was elected April 28. Just seven per cent had a negative view and the rest had no opinion. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not as well known among Canadians. Only 26 per cent were familiar with him. Of those, 58 per cent had a positive view with 30 per cent negative and the remainder had no opinion. That's an overall +28 per cent for Starmer, who won power last summer. The most admired foreign leader among Canadians was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who will attend the G7 summit that begins Sunday. Zelenskyy, whose country was invaded by Russia in 2022, was at +53 per cent, ahead of French President Emmanuel Macron (+46 per cent), German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (+33 per cent), Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (+31 per cent) and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (+29 per cent). On the negative side of the ledger, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will also be at the G7, was at -17 per cent, ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping (-52 per cent), Trump (-66 per cent) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (-69 per cent). Neither Xi nor Putin was invited to Kananaskis.
Techday NZ
13-06-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
Oracle unveils AMD-powered zettascale AI cluster for OCI cloud
Oracle has announced it will be one of the first hyperscale cloud providers to offer artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputing powered by AMD's Instinct MI355X GPUs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The forthcoming zettascale AI cluster is designed to scale up to 131,072 MI355X GPUs, specifically architected to support high-performance, production-grade AI training, inference, and new agentic workloads. The cluster is expected to offer over double the price-performance compared to the previous generation of hardware. Expanded AI capabilities The new announcement highlights several key hardware and performance enhancements. The MI355X-powered cluster provides 2.8 times higher throughput for AI workloads. Each GPU features 288 GB of high-bandwidth memory (HBM3) and eight terabytes per second (TB/s) of memory bandwidth, allowing for the execution of larger models entirely in memory and boosting both inference and training speeds. The GPUs also support the FP4 compute standard, a four-bit floating point format that enables more efficient and high-speed inference for large language and generative AI models. The cluster's infrastructure includes dense, liquid-cooled racks, each housing 64 GPUs and consuming up to 125 kilowatts per rack to maximise performance density for demanding AI workloads. This marks the first deployment of AMD's Pollara AI NICs to enhance RDMA networking, offering next-generation high-performance and low-latency connectivity. Mahesh Thiagarajan, Executive Vice President, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said: "To support customers that are running the most demanding AI workloads in the cloud, we are dedicated to providing the broadest AI infrastructure offerings. AMD Instinct GPUs, paired with OCI's performance, advanced networking, flexibility, security, and scale, will help our customers meet their inference and training needs for AI workloads and new agentic applications." The zettascale OCI Supercluster with AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs delivers a high-throughput, ultra-low latency RDMA cluster network architecture for up to 131,072 MI355X GPUs. AMD claims the MI355X provides almost three times the compute power and a 50 percent increase in high-bandwidth memory over its predecessor. Performance and flexibility Forrest Norrod, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Data Center Solutions Business Group, AMD, commented on the partnership, stating: "AMD and Oracle have a shared history of providing customers with open solutions to accommodate high performance, efficiency, and greater system design flexibility. The latest generation of AMD Instinct GPUs and Pollara NICs on OCI will help support new use cases in inference, fine-tuning, and training, offering more choice to customers as AI adoption grows." The Oracle platform aims to support customers running the largest language models and diverse AI workloads. OCI users leveraging the MI355X-powered shapes can expect significant performance increases—up to 2.8 times greater throughput—resulting in faster results, lower latency, and the capability to run larger models. AMD's Instinct MI355X provides customers with substantial memory and bandwidth enhancements, which are designed to enable both fast training and efficient inference for demanding AI applications. The new support for the FP4 format allows for cost-effective deployment of modern AI models, enhancing speed and reducing hardware requirements. The dense, liquid-cooled infrastructure supports 64 GPUs per rack, each operating at up to 1,400 watts, and is engineered to optimise training times and throughput while reducing latency. A powerful head node, equipped with an AMD Turin high-frequency CPU and up to 3 TB of system memory, is included to help users maximise GPU performance via efficient job orchestration and data processing. Open-source and network advances AMD emphasises broad compatibility and customer flexibility through the inclusion of its open-source ROCm stack. This allows customers to use flexible architectures and reuse existing code without vendor lock-in, with ROCm encompassing popular programming models, tools, compilers, libraries, and runtimes for AI and high-performance computing development on AMD hardware. Network infrastructure for the new supercluster will feature AMD's Pollara AI NICs that provide advanced RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) features, programmable congestion control, and support for open standards from the Ultra Ethernet Consortium to facilitate low-latency, high-performance connectivity among large numbers of GPUs. The new Oracle-AMD collaboration is expected to provide organisations with enhanced capacity to run complex AI models, speed up inference times, and scale up production-grade AI workloads economically and efficiently.
Hamilton Spectator
01-06-2025
- Business
- Hamilton Spectator
Poll reveals who is Canada's most popular premier and who is most disliked
As first ministers gather against the backdrop U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war, a new poll suggests Alberta's Danielle Smith has the highest negatives of any premier. The Pollara Strategic Insights survey also found Ontario's Doug Ford is the country's most popular premier — thanks largely to his stance against Trump's tariffs. 'It's probably that she's been offside on the Team Canada approached to Trump — at least in some people's opinions — and she has raised the spectre of an Alberta referendum, which is obviously not going to be well received outside of Alberta,' Dan Arnold, Pollara's chief strategy officer, said Friday. 'She's potentially looming as a bit of a foil on the national stage,' said Arnold of Smith, who has publicly sparred with Ford over national unity and how to deal with the mercurial American president. Smith — who stressed she does not personally support separation — maintained she will hold a The Ontario premier, on the other hand, has been working closely with Prime Minister Mark Carney and has emerged 'as a bit of a national statesmen in some respects,' the pollster noted. 'Ford's national profile and popularity have really come from ... the 'Canada Is Not For Sale' hat and his tone against Trump,' he said. Using online panels, Pollara surveyed 3,400 people across the country May 16-20. While opt-in polls cannot be assigned a margin of error, for comparison purposes, a random sample of this size would have one of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The firm found 47 per cent of respondents had a positive impression of Ford while 27 per cent had a negative one for a net rating of +19 per cent. In Ontario, the premier, who was reelected Feb. 27 with a third consecutive majority, has a +12 per cent ranking while outside his home province he is at +23 per cent. 'By taking the Captain Canada cape and running with it, he has built up that national profile,' said Arnold. At the other end of the popularity scale, 19 per cent had a positive impression of Smith with 29 per cent negative for a net rate of -10 per cent. In Alberta, where she is dealing with a health contracts scandal and a possible referendum on secession, she was at -5 per cent and was at -12 per cent in the rest of the country. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has a +51 per cent rating at home and +16 per cent in other provinces. Quebec's François Legault, who polls suggest faces a challenging election next year, was at -10 per cent at home and +1 per cent outside his province. The Pollara poll comes as the recently elected Carney is meeting with first ministers in Saskatoon to discuss removing interprovincial trade barriers and expediting construction of 'nation-building projects' like pipelines, mines, ports and energy infrastructure to offset the impact of Trump's tariffs. 'Given that Carney's got Alberta roots ... I think for the next year or two that could be the interesting struggle in our politics — what happens in the midst of a referendum and how does Danielle Smith play in the rest of the country,' said Arnold.
