canadian stocks were firmly lower in midday trading tuesday with the sptsx composite index dragged down 18555 points by comments by us federal reserve chair jerome powell who said he is prepared to speed up interest rate increases in the us amid hot economic data most sectors were in the red at noon with materials health services and tech services stocks leading the declines while only tech health tech and industrial services posted gains shares in blackberry ltd dropped after the company said it expects to book a noncash goodwill impairment charge at one of its units and that it sees lower revenue in the fourth quarter at midday canadas sptsx composite index was down 097 at 2031601 and the bluechip sptsx 60 fell 099 to 122246 blackberry ltd shares were 13 lower at 475 canadian dollars us349 after it said late monday that it expects to incur a material noncash and onetime goodwill impairment charge of 440 million for its secure communications platform spark total revenue is expected by the company to be 151 million close to the 1573 million forecast by analysts last year in the same quarter blackberry reported revenue of 185 million shares in cymat technologies ltd dropped 15 to c035 after it announced plans to halve the exercise price of its outstanding purchase warrants to encourage their earlier exercise pet valu holdings ltd shares were 31 lower at c3865 after reporting a slight decline in fourthquarter profit after booking higher expenses in the quarter including increased staffing and interest rate costs while revenue growth beat forecasts haivision systems incs shares jumped 19 to c440 after the videostreaming and visualcollaboration company received a takeover approach from video and audioinfrastructuresolutionsmaker evertz technologies ltd corus entertainment incs shares fell 26 to c187 after the media and content company cut its dividend payout in half to focus on debt reduction declaring an annual dividend rate of c012 per class b share and c0115 per class a share