As Canada ramps up efforts to meet its lofty decarbonization goals, the country’s oil sands are scrambling to keep up.

CES, the world’s biggest tech trade show, kicked off yesterday in sunny and sinful Las Vegas with tech companies big and small ready to show off new gizmos and gadgets.

Whispers of a recession we’ve been hearing for some time are turning into audible groans as the economy struggles under the weight of rising interest rates. So now is a good time to ask: Are you (and your finances) prepared for a potential downturn? 

The (figurative, economic) storm clouds are starting to break in Europe as peak inflation has come and gone—thanks to sliding natural gas prices.

What comes after a surge in employee turnover? A surge of untrained employees.

On New Year’s Day, Ukraine carried out a hugely successful strike on a Russian military site, and reportedly pulled it off by locating soldiers using their cell phones—a sign of Ukraine’s ongoing technological prowess in the warzone.

Former FTX CEO and ex-“Next Warren Buffet” Sam Bankman-Friend (known by friends and the entire internet as SBF) maintained his innocence in court yesterday while facing charges that could land him up to 115 years in the big house.

Activity in Canada’s manufacturing sector is seeing its longest slowdown in seven years thanks to a drop in output, new orders, and purchasing activity, per Reuters.

Some Western countries are looking to play Robin Hood by taking Russia’s money and giving it to Ukraine, but it’s not as simple as swooping in with a crossbow and green tights.  

Worries about the economy are having an unusual effect on Canadian workers—rather than hunkering down ahead of a potential recession, a growing number of people are hunting for new jobs.

What’s new: Half of the Canadians polled said they plan to find a new job this year, a 31% increase from six months ago.

Changes by Apple to limit how companies track iPhone users have created an opportunity for Shopify to turn its advertising business into a growth engine this year, president Harley Finkelstein told the Financial Times.

Why it matters: Shopify is doing the new year, new me thing (relatable, to be honest) after a painful 2022 that saw its share price fall 70%. E-commerce growth stalled as Covid lockdowns ended, and now the company needs to find another way to grow quickly. 

If you’ve been avoiding the news for the past ten days, don’t stress—that’s what the holidays are for. We’re here to get you caught up on the big stories you might have missed while spending your time on more festive matters. 

Think back to this time last year—did you make any resolutions? Better yet, did you stick with any of them? As the year closes out, people look forward to starting fresh, but the plans we make to better our lives are often hard to follow through with—especially when it comes to our finances. 

Driving the news: A new survey found that 22% of Canadians are looking to reset their financial habits in the new year, focusing on investing, saving more money, and sticking to stricter budgets.

Did you score any big Boxing Day deals? It’s likely not too late—many post-Christmas sales are now lasting the entire week as retailers try to squeeze every last dollar out of the holiday shopping season.

Catch-up: Boxing Day is entrenched in Canadian culture. While the origins are debated, most people think it stems from Queen Victoria encouraging wealthy residents to "box up" their old wares to give to the poor.

The federal government unveiled the details of a two-year ban on foreign home buyers set to kick in on January 1st (and as last-minute Christmas shoppers, we really get leaving the announcement to the very last minute).

What happened: The regulations will bar non-Canadians (anyone who isn’t a citizen or permanent resident) from purchasing houses in Canada for the next two years, with some exceptions.

The company that once tweeted “love is sharing a password” is now rolling out plans to target over 100 million people who watch the service using borrowed passwords. 

In 2019, Netflix researchers found password sharing—often between family or friends—was eating into the company’s subscriptions. As executives mulled over how to address the issue without upsetting customers (paying and non-paying), the pandemic hit, leading to eight million new subscribers in 2020 alone and kicking the password-sharing can down the road. 

With most of the country affected by an extreme cold or winter storm alert—or both—the biggest travel weekend of the year is sure to be an eventful one.

Why it matters: This is the first holiday season during which large parts of the country are not affected by strict Covid restrictions since 2019, but forecasters expect dangerous weather conditions to guarantee another year of disrupted plans for millions of Canadians.

No holiday season is complete without gathering on the couch to binge cheesy movies. But you might not know those holiday movies are a Canadian enterprise… and business is booming. 

Make fun of them all you want, but holiday movies are one of the backbones of the Canadian film industry and economic drivers for small towns across the country From Squamish to Niagara-on-the-Lake, northern vistas set the backdrop of countless movies where hometown hunks teach big-city ladies about the spirit of the season. 

$2.4 million worth of bitcoins were mysteriously transferred from virtual wallets linked to QuadrigaCX, the bankrupt Canadian crypto exchange that was revealed to be a Ponzi scheme. 

The strange part? Those wallets were previously thought to be inaccessible, and we don’t know where the bitcoins have gone. 

If you thought seeing stock markets freefall for the last year would have scared off investors, let us introduce you to the incoming wave of do-it-yourself Canadian traders.