 Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | Is your new car on a storage compound? Inside Kia's scheme to deliberately withhold deliveries | | |  | Go Public has learned that new Kia cars are not being released to Ontario dealerships — and reportedly many more across the country — to sell. Instead, they’re being stored on this compound, 30 kilometres south of Kitchener, Ont., and allegedly on other similar compounds across Canada. (Patrick Morrell/CBC) | | | New Kia vehicles that have arrived from overseas are sitting on a storage lot in Wolverton, Ont., purposely locked up even though customers have been waiting months and months — some well over a year — to get their vehicles.
The new cars are being withheld from Kia's Ontario dealerships — and reportedly from many more across the country — as part of a controversial plan by Kia Canada to game the number of sales in the last six weeks of the year.
Go Public has obtained a video in which a Kia regional manager explains the scheme — passed down from top Kia executives — to more than 100 dealership reps in Ontario during a Nov. 17 video call.
"All of you are gonna be very unhappy with me today," said Kia's central region manager Vince Capicotto as he outlined the plan, which he said would roll out nationally.
Instead of shipping all the vehicles to dealerships, Capicotto told the dealers only some will be released — the rest will remain on various compounds until the new year.
The reason for this, he explained in the call, is to avoid appearing too successful in the eyes of headquarters in Korea.
"With the global slow down, Kia Canada wants to control wholesale and retail performance in 2023 to not show high over-achievement," he said.
"There's a high risk with over performance that Kia headquarters will not provide Kia Canada resources necessary in our budget for 2024 to have a successful year if we over perform for the balance of 2023 at too high a rate."
According to Capicotto, Kia Canada has hit its target of selling 84,000 vehicles for 2023. He said there was concern that if sales continued to go well, headquarters would decide Canada didn't need marketing support in the new year and would cut back on that.
An auto expert says it's a very unusual move for Kia Canada.
"It is normal for automakers to use creative strategies at the very end of the year," said Shari Prymak, senior consultant at Car Help Canada, noting this includes pre-registering vehicles toward the end of the year so they can show higher sales.
"Usually, those strategies are to help increase sales, not reduce them," he said. | | | | | More on this issue | | | | |  | | Got a story you want investigated? Contact Erica and the Go Public team at gopublic@cbc.ca | | | | | Volcano in Iceland erupts after weeks of activity, evacuation of town | | |  | (Civil Protection of Iceland/Reuters) | | | | A volcano spews lava and smoke as it erupts in Grindavik, Iceland, on Monday. In November, police evacuated the town after strong seismic activity in the area damaged homes and raised fears of an imminent eruption. Read more on this story here | | | | | | | | | In brief | | | The United States, Canada and a host of other nations are creating a new force to protect ships transiting the Red Sea that have come under attack by drones and ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin announced early Tuesday in Bahrain. The seriousness of the attacks, several of which have damaged the vessels, has led multiple shipping companies to order their ships to hold in place and not enter the Bab el-Mandeb Strait until the security situation can be addressed. "This is an international challenge that demands collective action," Austin said in statement released just after midnight in Bahrain. Read the full story here.
The Trudeau government won't say if it's considering imposing sanctions on violent Israeli settlers in the wake of travel bans announced by both the U.S. and the United Kingdom in recent days. The European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said last week that he will recommend EU sanctions as well. Canada, like its American, British and European allies, has called on Israel to restrain extremist Jewish settlers who have brought new levels of fear and violence to the West Bank under the year-old government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Friday, Canada co-signed a joint EU-U.K.-Australia statement saying that Israel's failure to restrain or prosecute Jewish extremists has created "an environment of near-complete impunity" for settlers engaging in acts of violence. But a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada wouldn't say whether the federal government is considering taking action against violent settlers. Read the full story here.
At one point, Elaine Dawe's sense of loneliness enveloped her life. "I was sad all the time. I was lonely. I didn't want to get dressed. I went for a week in my nightgown, didn't wash my hair sometimes for a week-and-a-half," said the 76-year-old Toronto woman. Dawe is a human face of what the World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared a "global public health concern," in which loneliness has been linked to an increased risk of obesity, dementia, cardiovascular disease and stroke. In November, WHO launched an international commission to tackle the problem. It is headed by U.S. surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy, who cited research that compared loneliness to the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness knows no age. Once thought to be a problem of the elderly, a Statistics Canada survey from 2021 found that one in 10 Canadians over the age of 15 identified as being always or often lonely. Many psychologists agree that the pandemic exacerbated our sense of loneliness. However the problem has been building for decades as people moved away from friends, family, and community. Read the full story here.
A food influencer arranges a cheese star at the top of a Christmas tree-shaped display of baby romaine lettuce wedges. In the background, Mariah Carey rallies all holiday-lovers with her annual call to action, belting "It's time!" as her Yuletide anthem All I Want for Christmas Is You starts playing. The influencer squirts blue cheese salad dressing out of a squeeze bottle in a criss-cross pattern to look like a garland. The 5.4 million views for this one video on Instagram alone speaks to the appeal of holiday food boards. Hummus wreaths, charcuterie Santas and upright snack-based Christmas trees are being posted and shared across Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok. On TikTok, videos about "Christmas charcuterie boards" have racked up 20.9 million views so far. Shareable snacks arranged to look like Christmas themes aren't necessarily new (think of the gingerbread house), and the infamous butter board started to trend last year. But the craze this year could be related to high food prices, says Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Boards can be shared, which can make them more economical than a meal, he said. Read the full story here.
Now here's some good news to start your Tuesday: Bonita and Dex Pelley stand in Bridie Molloy's, a lively pub in downtown St. John's, wearing a wedding dress and a suit. These are the same outfits they wore 24 years ago, the first time they said, "I do." Now they're doing it all again, but this time, with a change of heart. "He proposed to me before the transplant and he said, 'If I get through this, marry me again,'" Bonita Pelley told CBC News at the ceremony. "And here we are, and this is 24 years later and we are so grateful." Surrounded by friends and family, the couple are celebrating not just a long and happy marriage, but a recent heart transplant that saved Dex's life. Read more on this story here. | | | FIRST PERSON | It's a game to some, a religion to others. To me, hockey is part of my love story with Canada | Erlinda Tan had just moved to Canada from the Philippines when Sidney Crosby scored his golden goal at the 2010 Olympics. Since then, the joy of hockey has helped her feel like she belongs. Read her column here. | | | | | | |  | The time Canada built a million cheap homes | The Liberals want to bring back a Second World War idea for housing blueprints. Could books of pre-approved designs make more homes, faster?
Listen to today's episode | | | Today in history: December 19 | | | 1843: A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, is first published in England.
1917: The first National Hockey League games are played. The visiting Montreal Canadiens defeat the Ottawa Senators 7-4, and the Montreal Wanderers hold off the Toronto Arenas 10-9.
1975: Bertha Wilson is appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal, becoming the first woman in Canada to be named to a provincial court of appeal.
1984: Following years of negotiations, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyong sign an accord for the return Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997. | | | (With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters) | | | | |  | CBC NEWS APP | The most convenient way to get your news
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