State Of The Race

Driving The News

A previously hidden report tells us that foreign buyers were driving up housing prices in Canada, according to the Globe.

What’s in the report? The Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) report, which dates back to 1996, found that 33 out of 46 homes in Burnaby, British Columbia were bought by newcomers who had a total income of $16,000. However, their neighbours had much higher incomes, which the report indicates that they could’ve been hiding other of foreign income.

Why it matters: Experts told the Globe that had the CRA released the report earlier, the feds could’ve cracked down on foreigners that have contributed to the rising cost of living in Canada.

Quebec-based ShopperPlus scored $20 million in Series A funding. 

What’s ShopperPlus? It started out as a discount online store for printer ink and other office supplies. In the 14 years since ShopperPlus launched, the online retailer has grown to 18 categories including electronics, home decor, small appliances, and household items.   

Celtic House Asia Partners’ led ShopperPlus’ Series A, and included investments from Wish co-founder Danny Zhang and the National Bank of Canada. 

Zoom out: Like other e-commerce platforms, ShopperPlus also experienced significant growth during the pandemic, and is capitalizing on that growth to scale up.

Time and money are the two things every startup is short on. That’s why Taylor Day’s partnership with Clearco is such a game changer.

What’s happening: Taylor Day, a boutique ad agency specializing in building brands with a digital-first approach, has partnered with Clearco to provide startups with the financial tools they need to grow.

Get started: Supercharge your growth by working with Taylor Day — apply for funding from Clearco to get started today.

Timbits aren’t enough to draw them in: Americans aren’t flooding our land border like we expected would happen after restrictions for tourists were lifted.

What’s happening: The number of Americans who entered Canada during the first week of its reopening doubled from the week before, but it still represents a quarter of visitors we'd expect from the U.S. 

​Why it’s happening: Filling out paperwork, taking a COVID-19 test, and preparing a quarantine plan ahead of visiting to Canada doesn’t seem to be worth the hassle for American visitors. The visitors that are entering Canada seem to be doing so to visit relatives instead of a spontaneous trip to Niagara Falls.  

Bottom line: We can expect more Americans visiting Canada once some of the requirements to cross the border are eased.

Is there anything more irritating than dealing with expense receipts? You have to keep the receipt, upload it to an app (or worse: turn in the paper copy to someone for filing away who-knows-where), send that over to your accounting software, make sure all the numbers match up... and then if an employee forgets or loses the receipt, it’s even more of a headache.

Fortunately, there’s now a better way: Float’s automatic receipt collection system is the easiest way to track and keep receipts across your company.

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Try out Float today and get the smart corporate card that works for your business.

Leading shipping industry representatives are calling for a global levy on emissions from ships.

 

What's happening: The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and Intercargo, two top shipping associations, submitted a proposal to the UN's shipping agency calling for a levy on carbon emissions created by ships.

Why it matters: Shipping accounts for 3% of emissions right now, but it could be one of the more difficult sectors to decarbonize.

Pop star Olivia Rodrigo will pay millions in royalties to artists she drew inspiration from, according to Billboard. 

Catch up: 18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo rose to fame with her first single “drivers license” in January. A few months later she then released her first album, Sour, which had all of us in our feels and regressing to our teenage selves. 

​What happened: Last week, Rodrigo updated the credits on her album to include the artists, but that’s not all. She’ll also shell out more than US-$2 million in royalties to pay the artists she credited. 

Why it’s happening: Even though Rodrigo and Swift are fans of each other and Elvis Costello said he didn’t mind that his music inspired her song “brutal,” other parts of the music industry weren’t too pleased with Rodrigo’s use of other artists’ notes and composition. 

Bottom line: There’s apparently a price to pay for artists that toe the line between inspiration and imitation in the music industry.

Earnings: Dollarama and Lululemon will release their quarterly results tomorrow and Transat on Thursday. 

Economy: The Bank of Canada will tell us whether or not it'll adjust our interest rate in response to how the economy is recovering tomorrow. 

Figures: To wrap up the week, Statistics Canada will report how many new jobs were added and lost in August on Friday.