Winnipeg’s vast tree canopy is a source of great pride for many Winnipeggers, but it’s under threat.

The Emerald Ash Borer Beetle and Dutch Elm Disease alone is expected to take out two-thirds of the city’s public tree canopy over the next century. If something’s not done — and soon — all of that life that all of those trees breathe into Winnipeg’s neighbourhoods will be snuffed out.

That’s why, in September, Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman announced a bold vision to protect and expand the city’s tree canopy. Called the Million Tree Challenge, it asks individuals, not-for-profits, and private businesses to come together to plant one million new trees across the city over the next 20 years.

In December 2019, Telpay answered the call and made a $250,000 commitment to the Million Tree Challenge which includes public tree plantings. There were public plantings scheduled for 2020 however due to the pandemic it forced those events to be delayed, so instead we’re offering Winnipeg business affiliates free trees to plant themselves. One of those affiliates is the Dakota Community Centre, which will receive 250 trees.

“We are very excited that through this initiative, more trees will be coming to our site and into our community,” says Michele Augert, CEO of the DCC. “It is through such meaningful partnerships that we are able to continue to enhance our spaces and the places people in our community come to live, play, and gather.”

This is just one green initiative among many for the DCC, however. In 2017, for instance, the community hub opened a 60,000 square foot fieldhouse that is LEED Silver certified. And in 2018, it became a Telpay for Business customer, doing away with issuing 200 paper cheques each month to vendors, instructors, referees, timekeepers, and ice technicians.

Eliminating those cheques and going with an electronic payment solution like Telpay’s is no small environmental idea, by the way. One estimate by the PayItGreen Alliance suggests that paper cheques add 3.6 million tonnes of greenhouses gases to the environment every year. Telpay estimates that by eliminating the paper cheques of over 100,000 businesses across Canada, our electronic system has saved the equivalent of a mature 80,000 tree forest.

But like the DCC, Telpay’s electronic payment system is just one of our many green initiatives. This January we enacted a Green Action Plan that includes making office operations even more sustainable, retrofitting our historic building in downtown Winnipeg, and participating in the Million Tree Challenge.

Visit info.telpay.ca/greenactionplan for all of the details on the Green Action Plan or contact us directly at 1-800-665-0302 or sales@telpay.ca to find out how switching to Telpay can help your business reduce its environmental footprint.

As this pandemic has shown, again and again, it’s our most vulnerable populations that have been impacted the most. So when COVID-19 hit British Columbia and the province went into lockdown, some social welfare agencies worried about how it would affect their ability to get supports to those in need.

Luckily, the Secwépemc Child and Family Services Agency (SCFSA) didn’t quite have the same level of concern as some.

Based in Kamloops, B.C., the SCFSA provides a range of child protection services on behalf of the seven bands in the Secwépemc First Nation. Its mission is to protect the rights of Aboriginal children, ensure their safety, and maintain their connection to family, culture, and community.

Part of that mission involves delivering payments to clients, which would be difficult — and unsafe — if those clients had to visit the SCFSA office. As health officials have implored us, we need to stay home and keep two metres apart.

However, the SCFSA has been a Telpay customer since 2014, meaning it can easily get payments to clients quickly without having to do so in person.

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According to Stats Canada, more than 1.7 million Canadians work from home and no doubt that number has skyrocketed in recent weeks as companies try to ensure the safety of their employees.

The good news is that technology allows for a relatively smooth transition to remote work, but this sudden shift also presents some challenges.

One of the biggest hurdles for companies used to making payments via cheque is how to pay bills, employees, and the government from home. It can also be quite costly and inefficient to send those cheques, which isn’t ideal in the current economic climate.

Telpay’s all-in-one payment software for businesses, Telpay for Business, can help you solve both of these challenges. Here’s how.

Streamlined payments
Once you have Telpay for Business set up, you can pay employees, government remittances, and bills to over 150,000 businesses from an all-in-one platform. Plus, Telpay for Business works with a wide range of accounting software, including Adagio and QuickBooks, as well as payroll software like Easypay and Paymate.

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The COVID-19 virus, also known as coronavirus, has had a significant impact on businesses across Canada and the globe.

Staff is being advised, wherever possible, to work from home to avoid the spread of this virus, which has impacted all elements of our life. From schools closing to sports and entertainment events being postponed, the way we operate has been temporarily altered. For businesses, there is a great concern ensuring employees and suppliers continue to receive payments that they are expecting. It remains of utmost importance to your business that your financial commitments remain intact.

We appreciate what you are going through, how your normal operations are being challenged. It’s not an easy time, however, your electronic payment partners at Telpay are here to help. Our comprehensive all-in-one payment solution, Telpay for Business, can help ensure your business payments – from payroll direct deposit, vendor payments, government remittances, pre-authorized debits, and international payments – are not interrupted.  Additionally, Telpay’s email remote authorization approval feature eliminates the need for your signing officers to travel or go to the office to sign physical cheques. This ensures that all critical business payments continue to be made and social distancing is adhered to.

We have a comprehensive Business Continuity Plan (BCP) that ensures the continuity of service. Our BCP has been in place for years, is tested bi-annually, and anticipates this type of impact. It allows us to remotely run our entire process from processing payments, collections, and payrolls daily.

As well, our staff will continue to be available by phone, email, or chat to answer any questions you have and guide you through any troubleshooting you require.

As situations change or new information becomes available that affects our business continuity plan; we will send updates here. If you have any questions, please call our office at 1-800-665-0302 or email customercare@telpay.ca.

For information and updates on COVID-19, you can visit the following links:

• Government of Canada Coronavirus Update
• World Health Organization
• Public Health Agency of Canada

My involvement with computers goes back to the early 1950s. I was assigned to work on the audit of Trans Canada Airlines (now Air Canada). They had advanced unit record equipment for the time. Eighty column cards with holes punched in them were the data media. Plug boards, sometimes called spaghetti boards because of the complicated wiring, were the equivalent of computer programs. Sorting machines could turn a deck of punched cards into something close to a data base. Mostly the combination of parts printed, added and subtracted numbers in varied sequences. Multiplication and division functions required special control boards.  That approach to data processing was almost the exclusive domain of IBM. They didn’t call it a computer but that may have been because they were working on a fully electronic computer and thought they could divert attention from that effort. In fact they were embarking on a series of developments that lead to the famous 360 series that dominated the computer scene for many years.

But other developments were taking place along side the business systems where IBM was focused. The experience of working with some of them has had a significant impact on my own career. In the early 1950s there was a simple computer called an LGP30. This unit used ticker tape for input of data and loading programs. The computing function consisted of what we now call a central processing unit (CPU) and a rotating drum on which the program was stored as well as any data the program had to read or write to. These were stored in the form of magnetic on or off signals that the CPU could interpret.  In operation, the drum rotated so that the the CPU could execute program instructions sequentially and store results elsewhere on the drum as instructed by the program.

Lesson 1. The LGP30 provided clear  lessons in how computers function. 

A while later when working for a firm of architects, I had the opportunity to talk the partners into investing in an LGP30. A very bright member of the structural division of the firm, Adolf Berg, took an interest in it and quickly learned how to program it. The firm had a project on the books to design a large office building. Adolf decided to program the structural calculations for the building. As the firm worked through various design possibilities, Adolf would recalculate the structural requirements very quickly saving hours of engineers’ time. When the project was put out to tender the structural cost came in substantially below estimates. This was very pleasing to the owner but not so much for the architects. Their fees were based on a percentage of the cost of the building.

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