On Monday, Mountain Equipment Co-Op (MEC) announced that the board had approved the sale of the outdoor equipment retailer to US private equity fund, Kingswood Capital Management LP. According to the board, the sale was necessary to save the struggling retailer from going under.

Not so fast...

What about the members? Anyone who's shopped at MEC knows that you have to be a member to make a purchase. MEC embraced the member's co-op model and built loyal following among long time customers who appreciated having a voice in the company.

So as you can imagine... the membership wasn't too pleased to hear that the company was being sold without their consultation.

Viva La Revolution: As a show of defiance, MEC members launched a petition to stop the sale. In less than 72 hours, the petition received over 33,000 signatures.

Will this change anything? Probably not. Under MEC's co-op model, your $5 membership purchased you a share in the company and the right to vote for board members. In good times, the company's leadership would use profit to buyback shares from members in the form of gift cards.

But now that the organization is in creditor protection, member's shares are worthless until creditors get paid and no petition can change that. So unless something drastic happens, this acquisition is going to go through.

With cases across the country rising, the single most important issue for the health of the Canadian economy is how well we react to a second wave of COVID. Here's the latest:

Ontario: In response to a recent high of 315 cases in one day, Premier Ford and the Government of Ontario are looking to impose a new round of gathering restrictions. It is expected that the guidelines will lower the limit on social gatherings. The current limit is 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors.

Atlantic Canada: The Atlantic provinces have imposed a regional bubble which forces Canadians traveling from outside the region to quarantine for 14 days. Although controversial, the bubble has been effective and total number of cases remain below 100.

Quebec: La Belle Province is in the midst of a second wave with over 300 new cases daily. The Province is keeping an eye on the surge and they have committed to imposing new restrictions on specific regions if cases grow.

Alberta: Wildrose Country has seen steady growth in cases partially due to outbreaks in reopened schools. Six Alberta schools have had outbreaks of two to four cases.

British Columbia: In BC, the number of patients hospitalized rose to the highest in four months as the province announced an additional 97 new cases. Mask wearing, except on transit, remains voluntary.

IPOs... so hot right now. Yesterday, buzzy tech startup Snowflake debuted on the NYSE and it was a smash!

What's Snowflake? The startup provides cloud data management solutions for enterprise businesses (zzzzz). Boring but...

How did the IPO go? It was a HUGE success. The IPO was one of the most successful software public offerings in history! Did you buy? We hope so because the stock jumped over 160% on the first day of trading.

At the market close, the company's valuation hit $90bil, nearly seven times its last private market valuation of $12.4bil.

But, how... Snowflake is in a lucrative space:

But the IPO fun doesn't end there. Outspoken investor Chamath Palihapitiya announced his plans to take US real estate startup Opendoor public through one of his SPACs (special purpose acquisition companies).

With the market hot, expect even more IPOs to come out of the woodwork over the next few months.

Big news in the TikTok world. Charli D’Amelio, one of the biggest stars on TikTok, joined rival app Triller. Depending on how you react to that sentence... probably says a lot about how much time you spend on TikTok.

So for the less TikTok literate, let's break it down:

Zoom out: As the future of TikTok in the US remains in limbo, rival apps, such as Instagram Reels and Triller, are attempting to stake their territory.

Platforms have realized that the quality of talent and content is as important as the functionality of the app itself. That's why Triller has been actively recruiting big name TikTokers to join their platform.

But will it work? Triller can sign all the talent they want but unless they can build as addictive an algorithm as TikTok's, it's hard to take them seriously.