Canadians are projected to spend 13% less on gift-giving this year as they save money for essentials, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Black Friday will be a total bust for retailers. Dentalcorp, Canada’s largest consolidator of dental clinics, has launched a review of its business to determine how to best “unlock shareholder value,” to which one answer could be “just sell the thing.” Canada is projected to be short 44,000 physicians by 2028, with family doctors accounting for 72% of the defici...
Nov 25, 2022•7 min
Just a few days into the 2022 World Cup, feats of athleticism from the world’s best soccer players have been largely overshadowed by controversies and bold acts of defiance. The pain of rising interest rates is starting to spread across the housing market, and more people may soon find themselves facing larger monthly mortgage payments. Mercedes is now charging a US$1,200 annual subscription fee for drivers of its EQ models to gain access to faster acceleration and better performance capabilitie...
Nov 24, 2022•9 min
Meta’s Oversight Board, an independent body that judges the company’s most high-stakes content moderation cases, just made a decision that could change how the company moderates content. In 2017, the government launched its National Housing Strategy to create more affordable housing, which includes a sub-plan aimed at cutting chronic homelessness in half by 2028. Canada’s biggest private unions are looking for some of the largest pay gains seen in a generation to make up for the damage inflation...
Nov 23, 2022•9 min
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM)-the group that quite literally decides what time it is-voted to [abolish the leap second](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/science/time-leap-second-bipm.html#:~:text=It was devised as a,allow Earth to catch up.). On December 1, a new law comes into effect guaranteeing ten paid sick days a year for employees in federally-regulated industries like banking, telecoms, and air transport. Several major biotech players are moving fast to develop...
Nov 22, 2022•10 min
If you log onto Twitter these days, the vibe is akin to what we imagine being on the deck of the Titanic was like, you know, riiiight after it hit the iceberg. Qatar spent ~US$300 billion (roughly 6.8 Twitters) on World Cup 2022, making it the most expensive FIFA contest ever. A disastrous presale of tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour has landed Ticketmaster (and its parent company Live Nation) in hot water with an army of Swifties—and (only a slightly more powerful force) the US Justice D...
Nov 21, 2022•8 min
According to a guy that’s seen the darkest side of the corporate world, the fallen crypto exchange FTX is the worst of it all. Last month Indonesia floated the idea of a so-called “OPEC for nickel”. Now, it’s shopping around for partners to make this cockamamie dream a reality. At the top of its list? Canada. You probably know that it rains a lot in Vancouver. What you might not know is that Canada’s grain supply chain essentially comes to a screeching halt every time the skies open up there. Ce...
Nov 18, 2022•8 min
Is it the beginning of the end of Canada’s real estate downturn? RBC thinks so. Cult-favourite note-taking platform Notion launched a private alpha test for its newest product, Notion AI, which can generate written content with a single prompt. Canada is ill-equipped to detect ships in its Arctic waters, and the country’s Auditor-General is pointing fingers at the federal government for not doing enough to address the problem. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://thepeak.typeform.com...
Nov 17, 2022•7 min
The Bank of Canada (BoC) is on track to give “monetary tightening” a whole new meaning by losing between $5 billion and $6 billion over the next few years. As Black Friday rears its head, the world’s largest retailer is showing signs that the doom and gloom facing the retail sector this year may have been (at least a little) overhyped. A former researcher who worked in its electric batteries unit at Hydro-Quebec has been accused of collecting trade secrets and passing them on to China. Celebrati...
Nov 16, 2022•8 min
More Canadians than ever want to get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle (EV), but most won’t be able to plant their butt in a driver’s seat anytime soon. Still have some spare CERB money kicking around? Why not bring together your closest billionaire friends and buy a professional hockey team? Not long after warning of a slowdown around what is usually a busy holiday season, Amazon has become the latest company to cut jobs to brace for a potential economic downturn. Celebrating something? L...
Nov 15, 2022•9 min
After becoming the first company to lose US$1 trillion in market value (yes, ever), Amazon is taking a long, hard look at its business, because something ain’t right. Elon Musk held his first meeting as the company's CEO, fielding questions from staffers and dropping several off-side comments, like saying “there’s a good chance” Twitter will not survive the economic downturn. After scrambling to drum up money to fix a cash shortfall of US$8 billion, FTX filed for what will be the biggest US bank...
Nov 14, 2022•8 min
Cost-cutting is the name of the corporate game these days, and WeWork is no exception. Just a few months ago, text-to-image AI seemed like super-futuristic tech reserved solely for hardcore researchers. Now, it’s available for free on one of the most popular design apps. In the wee hours of Thursday morning, NASA launched JPSS-2—its newest satellite, which joins a global observation system analyzing the Earth’s weather patterns. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://thepeak.typeform.c...
Nov 11, 2022•8 min
Keurig Dr. Pepper invested US$50 million for a minority stake in Athletic Brewing, a leader in the booming non-alcoholic craft beer market. Picture this: The reality TV show “Love is Blind,” but for your personal dating life. The Big Tech carnage continued as Meta laid off 13% of its workforce (~11,000 workers), in the largest staff reduction in the tech industry this year. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://thepeak.typeform.com/to/MNdYA3TO The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media P...
Nov 10, 2022•9 min
Live from The Peak’s Bet on Canada Summit in Toronto! Retirees used to spend their time sunning in Florida. These days, they’re going back to work. The federal government will dish out money to fix provincial healthcare—hooray! And just like that, one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency exchanges has fallen. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://thepeak.typeform.com/to/MNdYA3TO The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.
Nov 09, 2022•9 min
Executives at Airbnb want you to know they have, in fact, read all your angry tweets about out-of-control cleaning fees, and that they’re listening and learning. Canada’s proposed Online Streaming Bill Canadian is starting to make creators sweat. Americans head to the polls today, which means that by tomorrow there will be a crop of kooky new congresspeople that may or may not keep you awake at night. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://thepeak.typeform.com/to/MNdYA3TO The Peak Dail...
Nov 08, 2022•9 min
In exchange for not seeing the sun after work until spring, you’re now getting an extra hour of sleep—and the odds are, that’s something you desperately need. Unilever, the multinational giant that owns brands like Ben and Jerry’s and Dove, is the biggest corporation yet to give a big thumbs up to the four-day workweek. China’s president Xi Jinping has gone from having “concerns” over the war in Ukraine to telling Russia to knock it off with the nuclear threats. Celebrating something? Let us kno...
Nov 07, 2022•9 min
Over 55,000 Ontario education workers, including early childhood educators, educational assistants and custodians, are set to walk off the job today. The government served up its annual Fall Economic Statement, including a declining deficit as the main, and risks around Canada entering into a recession as a side. As the world becomes increasingly like a sci-fi novel, new devices are letting the human body do things that once seemed impossible. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://the...
Nov 04, 2022•10 min
The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 75 percentage points, bringing its benchmark rate range to 3.75%-4% and effectively making any type of debt (mortgages, credit cards, auto) a little bit pricier. Less than a week into his tenure as “Chief Twit” turned “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator,” Elon Musk is moving quickly to make his mark on Twitter by revamping its business model. The latest version of the Google wildfire warning system will introduce machine learning models trained on ...
Nov 03, 2022•8 min
The Adidas-Kanye West split meant the death of Yeezy: The immensely popular and influential line of shoes the controversy-mongering rapper designed for the company. That’s potentially bad news for the sneaker resale market (projected to be a US$30 billion industry by 2030) and for those touting sweet kicks as a burgeoning asset class. Toronto-based TouchBistro, a software provider for restaurants, is breezing though a market downtown that has left venture capitalists holding their dollars close ...
Nov 02, 2022•10 min
From squashing presidential term limits to picking fights with Taiwan, a lot is going on in China these days... so much so that we almost forgot about the zero-COVID crackdowns. Canadians are starting to feel the economic crunch as the Bank of Canada continues to try and combat inflation that’s more stubborn than a toddler before naptime. Italian alcohol giant Campari paid US$600 million for a 75% stake in bourbon-whiskey maker Wilderness Trail to expand its reach in the booming whisky market. C...
Nov 01, 2022•9 min
First came “The Great Resignation”. Then there was “quiet quitting” (and the reaction, “quiet firing”). Countless stories about workers checking out from their job over the past year—either literally, or just mentally—painted a bleak picture of the modern workplace, but one that new data suggests bears little relationship to reality. After what felt like thousands of years (but was really just a few months) Elon Musk, finally, officially, and with no-take-backs, owns Twitter... now here comes th...
Oct 31, 2022•9 min
In the midst of a healthcare workers shortage, Canada's nurses are heading south of the border. From exercising organs to “hacking” menstrual cycles, there’s a ton of terrible medical advice on the internet… which is why YouTube is moving to certify channels of licensed professionals like doctors, nurses, or therapists who produce health-related content. Household wealth in Canada dropped by ~$900 billion in Q2 of this year according to RBC economists-the largest quarterly drop on record-driven ...
Oct 28, 2022•10 min
The Bank of Canada surprised markets with a smaller-than-expected interest rate hike of 0.5 percentage points yesterday (bringing its policy rate to 3.75%), below the 0.75 percentage point hike most economists had forecast. Deepfakes are growing in popularity with small brands to generate buzzy content featuring celebs without having to shell out endorsement money, per The WSJ. On Monday, NASA’s new team dedicated to researching unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs, formerly known as UFOs) will b...
Oct 27, 2022•11 min
Remember when Europe faced those “unprecedented risks” to its natural gas supply earlier this month? That was then. Now, the continent is basically swimming in it. Canadian pot grower Canopy (+23.5%) has purchased three pot companies south of the border (Acreage, Wanna, and Jetty’s) to form a brand new American business arm. Tech giants Microsoft and Alphabet are kicking off a week packed with earnings, during which investors are sitting tight for indicators about the state of the broader econom...
Oct 26, 2022•10 min
Saudi Arabia’s [Future Investment Initiative](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/wall-street-is-heading-to-saudi-arabia-as-us-oil-spat-simmers-1.1836247#:~:text=An escalating dispute over an,the US and Saudi Arabia.) (FII) kicks off today, with the who’s who of international finance meeting in Riyadh to talk shop, despite the icy chill hanging over Western relations. As Canada Blood Services (CBS) deals with decade-low donation levels, the nation’s blood supply administrator hopes paying people to get ...
Oct 25, 2022•10 min
If Snap’s earnings are any indication of how social media companies are faring right now, the answer is: Not well, not well at all. The G7 price cap on Russian oil imports set to start December 5 has been touted as the biggest step yet in defunding the Russian war machine. But experts aren’t so sure. The battle between blue and green bubbles is about to get a whole lot uglier as cars evolve into drivable devices. Celebrating something? Let us know here: https://thepeak.typeform.com/to/MNdYA3TO J...
Oct 24, 2022•9 min
After six weeks in office (the shortest tenure for a British prime minister), Truss was forced to resign in the wake of economic turmoil caused by her disastrous “mini-budget”. In today’s normal, nothing-to-see-here news: VIA Rail is adding ‘buffer cars’ to its oldest passenger trains to absorb impact in the event of a crash. Tomorrow’s draw for the 2023 Women’s World Cup will decide the tourney’s first-round matches, but what remains undecided is who’s going to broadcast them. Celebrating somet...
Oct 21, 2022•10 min
After a rocky year of subscriber losses and investor doubt, Netflix is back with ambitions bigger than a season premiere of Stranger Things. The annual inflation rate slowed to 6.9%, down from 7% last month, mostly thanks to falling gas prices, but is still above what most experts expected. The core inflation rate (which excludes energy and food prices) actually rose to 5.4% from 5.3%. In the global race for top talent, governments are bending over backwards to attract the world’s most-desirable...
Oct 21, 2022•11 min
Friendshoring is on the rise as Western countries start shifting trade to friendly partners to cut dependence on totalitarian regimes, most notably China and Russia. Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s most important financial institutions, is restructuring its business to streamline work and improve its digital offerings. Meta is selling Giphy after UK regulators ruled that its ownership of the popular GIF platform restricts consumer choice and hurts competition both in the ad and social media ma...
Oct 19, 2022•8 min
Canada’s biggest grocer announced it is freezing prices on all of its No Name products (over 1,500 items) until the end of January 2023, per The Globe and Mail. When the NHL kicked off its season last week, fans were quick to notice the addition of digitally enhanced dasherboards (DEDs) on rink boards, with some taking to social media to air their grievances around the “hard-to-watch” animations. There’s a new app you need to know about so you don’t feel hopelessly out of touch next time you’re ...
Oct 18, 2022•10 min
Embattled British PM Liz Truss made (another) U-turn yesterday, firing her top finance official, Kwasi Kwarteng, and reversing plans to slash corporate taxes. Weather forecasts have always been unreliable (the atmosphere is changing constantly), but as the weather becomes even more unpredictable, sports leagues, airlines, and even militaries are turning to private forecasters. If you’re looking to move up the ranks at your company, you might just want to find a new one, according to a new study ...
Oct 17, 2022•8 min
