It might be time to cut back on the spaghetti carbonara… not because you need to watch the carbs, but to save on your grocery bill.

What happened: Stats Canada lowered its estimates for Canadian wheat production this year to 29.5 million tonnes, which would be the second-lowest total in eight years. It could present a 14% drop from last year’s bumper wheat crop due to droughts across the Prairies.

As the labour market slows down, the “job-hopping generation” is deciding to stay put. 

What’s happening: New Stats Canada data shows that Canadians are changing jobs at the lowest rate seen since 2020, a sign the labour market is weakening, per The Globe and Mail.

Ever played SimCity and thought it might be fun to try your hand at creating a city from scratch in real life? You aren’t alone: A growing cohort of entrepreneurs backed by deep-pocketed financiers are giving it a whirl.

Driving the news: A company backed by a who’s who of the tech world has spent US$800 million buying up tens of thousands of acres of land as part of a plan to build a new city in California, per an investigation by The New York Times.

After a record-breaking 2022, the fine art market has crashed harder than a Jeff Koons balloon dog sculpture knocked off its pedestal by a clumsy gallery-goer. 

Driving the news: In the first five months of the year, overall global fine art sales have dropped by 14% compared to the same time last year, while sales at the Big Three Auction houses (Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips) dropped a whopping 20%, per Artnet.

Why did inflation fall from multi-decade highs last summer to within the Bank of Canada’s target range last month? It seems like a simple question, but as with most things in economics, the answer is hotly contested. 

Catch up: The textbook Econ 101 story is that central banks reduce inflation by raising interest rates, which reduces demand in the economy through some combination of job losses, frozen or lower wages, and a pullback in consumer spending. 

A slowdown in Canada’s labour market has sent the unemployment rate up… and could bring inflation down. 

Driving the news: New data shows job growth flatlining in July. But if you consider that Canada’s population grew by 81,900 in the same time period, it means labour markets are softening even more significantly under the surface, according to RBC Economics. 

Is your ‘type’ an accomplished tech professional with a six-figure salary? Then you might have to battle it out with Canada’s immigration office. 

What happened: Canada is moving away from its points-based system for immigrant selection to pursue people with work experience in the tech sector, per The Globe and Mail. 

A new train system launching today in Montreal is set to reshape how people get around the city—and could become a proof of concept for a new way of building infrastructure elsewhere in the country. 

Catch up: The first phase of the Réseau Express Métropolitain (REM) will whisk riders from the suburb of Brossard to Montreal’s central station—a trip that takes up to 40 minutes in rush hour traffic—in just 18 minutes. 

Inflation is cooling across the Western world, but don’t grab your party hats just yet. 

Driving the news: Over the last month, the Bank of Canada, US Federal Reserve, and European Central Bank (ECB) each raised their respective key interest rates by 0.25 of a percentage point, bringing the cost of borrowing in Western markets to 22-year highs.