In a lot of ways, the economy we have is created by our laws. That may seem obvious, but it’s easy to forget that when you’re just going about your business, all those little daily transactions happen with a larger framework. Things like how much the stuff you buy costs and what people get paid are, to a great extent, determined by the laws we make rather than just “economic laws.” One of the most important pillars of that institutional framework our economy functions in is competition law,...

Two things are true: Electric vehicles have never been better, and the vast majority of people in Canada (and the US) still aren't buying them. So what's going on? Has the EV transition hit a roadblock or are these natural growing pains that will get worked out in time? And how are the automakers factoring all this into their plans for the future? Brian Kingston, President and CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, joins us on this episode to explain what's going on inside...

This episode originally aired in July 2023. Canada's population is growing quickly. Really quickly. Last month, we surpassed the 40 million mark, and we're growing faster than any other G7 country. Between 2016 and 2021, Canada has grown twice as quickly as the US. And the reason for that growth is simple: Immigration. Of the growth we saw in 2022, immigration accounted for around 95% of it. And this is by design. By 2025, the federal government wants to add 500,000 new permanent residents to...

The cost-of-living pressure created by high inflation and rising interest rates hurt consumers, of course. But it's also creating headaches for many retailers. In this episode, Marty Weintraub, leader of Deloitte's National Retail Consulting practice in Canada, joins us to explain the many ways that the cost-of-living squeeze Canadians are feeling is also impacting the retail sector, from a sharp uptick in shoplifting to a squeeze on mid-tier stores. ----- More episodes of Free Lunch by The...

Many of us have a vague sense of what industrial policy means, and we might even have an opinion about the specific forms it can take. But that fuzziness around even the definition of industrial policy has made studying it — and learning what makes industrial policy succeed and fail — difficult. Dr. Réka Juhász is trying to change that. Through her innovative academic work (and that of her collaborators at The Industrial Policy Group), she is advancing our understanding of how governments...

A lot of the big trends in the economy right now are converging in the auto sector, and the negotiations over new contracts for autoworkers at the Big Three carmakers: Ford, GM, and Stellantis.  You’ve got the conflict between workers and employers over wages, and some evidence that workers may have more leverage than they’ve had in a long time. You’ve got the clean energy transition, with the rise of EVs and what that means for the industry and people who work in it. And you’ve got the push...

76% of people who own small-to-medium-sized businesses are planning to retire within the next decade. What happens when they call it quits? Who will take over those businesses, if anyone? What will happen to the people they employ? These are all pressing questions, but the vast majority of small business owners in Canada do not have a succession plan. On this episode, Cordell Jacks, CEO and General Partner of The Regenerative Capital Group, joins us to explain... The scale of the wave of...

If you want to make yourself mad about the state of transportation in Canada, all you have to do is go to Europe.  Anyone who’s made the trip can tell you that in almost every European country, it’s faster, more convenient, and more comfortable to take public transportation than it is here.  And the same is true now in many parts of Asia—places that not long ago were much poorer than Canada, with much less well-developed infrastructure.  So why is public transportation in Canada so far behind...

Canada’s job market is confusing right now. On one hand, unemployment is still near record lows, last month’s job numbers from StatsCan exceeded expectations, and wages are finally starting to increase faster than inflation.  But...  Our population is growing so quickly that we actually added more people in July than the 40,000 jobs that were created, job vacancies are drying up, and compared to the US, our wage growth hasn’t been great at all.  Brendon Bernard is the Senior Economist at...

If you look at a chart of global nuclear energy output over time, what you see is hockey-stick growth from the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s—and then nothing. After growing from zero to around 2600 THw, we just stopped building more of it. But that’s starting to change.  Around the world, new nuclear projects are starting up, and plants scheduled for shutdown are being refurbished to last for decades to come. And one of the places at the forefront of this nuclear renaissance is...

This episode originally aired on April 4, 2023. In the past six months, publicly-available artificial intelligence models have advanced from an interesting toy to, with the launch of ChatGPT-4, something altogether different. The new version of OpenAI's language model can write reasonably good code, pass standardized tests like the LSAT with flying colours, and understand subtle jokes—things that machines have never done. As its capabilities have advanced, a growing number of people have...

The Online News Act, or Bill C-18, has already radically changed how Canadians get their news. First and foremost, we can no longer get it on Facebook or Instagram. Google may be the next to go, depending on what the final regulations look like. But Canada isn't the first country to attempt to bring in regulations like C-18. Several European countries have tried to force Big Tech to pay publishers, too, and in some cases have been subject to news blocks that are still in effect. Ricard Gil...

A recession is coming. A soft landing is around the corner. Inflation is here to stay. Inflation is transitory. Rates are going to stay elevated indefinitely. Central banks are going to cut rates soon. These are all messages that investors have heard at some point over the past two years or so, as every new bit of economic data seems to bring new forecasts about where the economy is heading. In such a confusing environment filled with mixed signals, how can the average person hope to...

The economy has been through a pretty turbulent period over the past few years, and one of the sectors that’s experienced that the most has to be the restaurant industry.  Pretty much all the big macro trends we’ve lived through show up here. Whether it’s the supply shocks of COVID, the inflation of the past 18 months, or disruptions in the labour market, restaurants have experienced all of these things in a really dramatic way.  And through it all, they’ve had to go on opening their doors...

This episode originally aired on January 24, 2023. Anyone who has dealt with Canada's healthcare system knows that it's under incredible strain. Part of that is because of the pandemic and the backlogs that piled up over the past three years. But many of the factors that led to the crisis we're now facing have been building up for much longer than that. Dr. Saad Ahmed, a family physician based out of Vancouver and lecturer at the University of Toronto's Department of Family & Community...

The wildfires Canada has experienced this year have been the worst on record, and it's not even close. Most of us have been impacted in one way or another. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes, and—tragically—a number of people have lost their lives. In this episode on Canada's wildfires, we are joined by Derek Nighbor, President of the Forest Products Association of Canada, to look at their impact on the forestry industry, how businesses in the sector are...

A lot has happened since 2018, but if you think back to that time, you might remember that Canada’s cannabis industry was booming.  There were multiple Canadian cannabis businesses that were valued at multiple billions of dollars. People were getting rich trading weed stocks and starting weed companies.  And this wasn’t just money moving around, like with meme stocks during the pandemic. The largest companies, like Canopy, Aurora, and Aphria, were spending money to build massive facilities...

Last week the Bank of Canada hiked its policy interest rate to 5%, a 22-year high and a 10x jump from where they sat just over one year ago. By now, everyone is familiar with the Bank's rationale for aggressively raising rates: It has a mandate to ensure price stability and bring inflation down to a target of 2%. But how are higher rates actually pushing inflation down? When prices are driven up by supply shocks in Eastern Europe or labour strikes at ports, how much control over inflation...

Fun fact: Canada used to be something of a semiconductor manufacturing power. Ottawa was a centre of innovation in the space, with local telecom companies like Nortel Networks at one point employing nearly 100,000 people around the world. Things have changed since then, of course. Nortel and Ottawa's other telecom giants are gone (or shadows of their former selves), either bought out or put under by foreign competition. And Canada is no longer a big semiconductor player. Meanwhile, the...

Canada's population is growing quickly. Really quickly. Last month, we surpassed the 40 million mark, and we're growing faster than any other G7 country. Between 2016 and 2021, Canada has grown twice as quickly as the US. And the reason for that growth is simple: Immigration. Of the growth we saw in 2022, immigration accounted for around 95% of it. And this is by design. By 2025, the federal government wants to add 500,000 new permanent residents to Canada every year. So how our immigration...

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, the importance of the biotech sector suddenly became very clear to everyone. Things we have taken for granted for our entire lives—ready access to vaccines and medicine—became a scarce commodity, and the supply chains to deliver them became a top priority. But the biotech sector is far larger than just vaccines (or even pharmaceuticals). Biotech companies in Canada are working on products for customers in agriculture, manufacturing, and more....

By many measures, men aren't doing so well right now. Suicides and deaths of despair among men are rising. 15% of men report having no close friends. In a recent survey, 65% reported agreeing with the statement, "no one really knows me well." Men have fallen behind women when it comes to educational attainment, and most young men report feeling no sense of purpose. So, what's going on here? Matt Jeneroux thinks we have, among other things, a communication problem, and he joins us on this...

Toronto is one of the epicentres of Canada's housing crisis. And while you may not care about the city's housing regulations (unless you live there), they are impacting you. Buyers priced out of the city end up scooping up homes elsewhere, driving up prices in other parts of the country. For a long time, Toronto hasn't done much to increase its own supply of homes. But that just changed: The city passed a new law making it possible to build multiplexes—up to 4 units in a single...

Our hosts are off this week, so we're bringing you one of our favourite episodes (just our third-ever) from back in January. Enjoy! Canada's housing market has become our national obsession, and with good reason. Years of skyrocketing prices are now meeting surging mortgage rates, and the result is some of the least affordable housing in the world. What's driving that affordability crisis, and what comes next? On this episode of Free Lunch by The Peak, we speak with Mike Moffatt, a Senior...

Basic income has been pitched as the solution to so many of our problems. Eliminating poverty, sparking entrepreneurship, empowering people to pursue their passions—all of these would be, its boosters claim, outcomes of a basic income. But not everyone is so optimistic about the idea. Lindsay Tedds is an associate professor at University of Calgary’s Department of Economics, and co-authored the book Basic Income and a Just Society: Policy Choices for Canada’s Social Safety Net. On this...