The chase by Michael Kane:

The RCMP today laid charges against Montreal engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, alleging what amounts to bribery in the amount of $47,689,868 was paid during the course of doing business in Libya over a 10-year period, ending in September of 2011. SNC-Lavalin officially denies the charges, but suggests certain individuals may have been acting on their own without the knowledge of the company.

Wal-Mart issued its latest quarterly financial report and the shares fell 2.8% at the opening bell. Buried in all the numbers were at least two important items. Wal-Mart is bowing to pressure an increasing wages for employees in the United States. It's still well below what workers want but existing employees will get a raise to $10 and new hires will start at $9 an hour. Another notable item is that Wal-Mart is warning that earnings for the current quarter will likely be at the lower than expected.

After a one-day strike earlier this week, CP Rail and Unifor have been negotiating under binding arbitration. Now Canadian National Railway faces a strike as its talks with Unifor have not been going well. That's according to CN. Unifor will give its side of the story at 12 noon ET,

One of the latest big things in technology concerns the ability of consumers to pay for items using their smartphones. BlackBerry has been hooked into MasterCard and Visa since last year. Apple recently introduced ApplePay capabilities and now Samsung is trying to take some revenue from Apple by buying a company called LoopPay, which also works on older iPhones

The investment community is again concerned by a drop in world oil prices. The energy index on the Toronto market was the biggest contributor to yesterday's drop of a half of 1%. This morning the U.S. Department of Energy is expected to report that supplies of crude oil increased by another 3,000,000 barrels last week. The American Petroleum Institute - which is run by the oil industry - says its calculations, stockpiles climbed by 14,000,000 barrels. Both estimates are helping to depress the price. Another factor adding to the volatility is that Lunar New Year celebrations have begun in Asia and that is reducing trading activity. Oil contracts trading in New York fell $1.39 yesterday and are down another $2 this morning - back to the $50 mark.

The Lunar New Year celebrations kept stock markets closed in China and Hong Kong today as well as the market in Seoul, South Korea and the Jakarta Exchange in Indonesia. Some of these will be closed for a week.

In the past year, shares of Bombardier have fallen 27% to their lowest level since 2009 but the government of Quebec is trying to reassure the company it has the money to help it get through a cash crunch. Bombardier has not asked for any kind of a bailout but sent a ripple through the important aerospace community when it suspended production of the Learjet 85 due to a drop-off in orders. Bombardier has 76,000 people on the payroll and is planning some layoffs.

A new survey by the website CareerBuilder.ca finds a lot of Canadians are late for work at least once a month. 55% are late at least once a month. And 34% are late once a week or more. Traffic was the most common complaint, followed by bad weather, then problems with public transportation.

“Kung Hei Fat Choy” roughly translates into "Congratulations on Becoming Rich". This being the Lunar New Year, it's a marketing opportunity and Maple Leaf Foods has come out with at least five specialty items to observe the beginning of the Year of the Sheep. However, none of them includes lamb. Maple Leaf is Canada's largest pork processor - so they are all sausage-based.