Like Zayn Malik leaving One Direction, Alberta wants to break away from Canada’s national pension plan.

What happened: Alberta is looking to leave the Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) and establish its own provincial pension fund after a long-awaited report claimed the province would be entitled to a $334 billion asset transfer if it left in 2027 — over half of the CPP’s entire assets.

For the second time this year, the federal government hauled grocery executives to Parliament Hill for a “chat” about high food prices.

Driving the news: Canada's five biggest grocers have agreed to work with the feds to stabilize food prices, according to Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.  

The federal government is rolling up the welcome mat for international students (and maybe sticking it in storage for a while).

Driving the news: Several federal cabinet ministers have floated options to reduce the number of international students at Canada’s universities and colleges, part of an effort to do something about out-of-control housing costs. 

Canada’s delegation to the G20 Summit is finally on its way back home after proving that in this country, no one is safe from flight delays. 

Driving the news: Prime Minister Trudeau and his squad spent two extra nights in New Delhi after a technical issue left the 36-year-old government-issued plane grounded, necessitating a rescue plane to be sent. Jeez, didn’t Joe Biden have some spare room on Air Force One to help them out? 

While Canadian troops have been used to fight unprecedented wildfires this summer, some say there’s a better solution. 

Driving the news: Canada’s former army commander, Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie, is urging Ottawa to create a national response team dedicated to fighting natural disasters, per the CBC.

Yesterday, the federal government tried to smooth things over with tech giants by offering them an exemption from the Online News Act, a contentious new law that requires Google and Meta to pay up for carrying links to news articles. For a price tag of $234 million, that is. 

In light of the continued showdown between tech giants and the feds, Ricard Gil, a professor at the Smith School of Business, joined us on Free Lunch by The Peak to explain how a similar scenario played out in Spain over a decade ago (hint: it did not end well). 

The emergency alerts you get on your phone are facing fierce criticism, and not just because they frequently scare the living daylights out of you with that blaring siren sound.

Driving the news: With four months still left on the calendar, a record 993 emergency alerts have been sent this year through Canada’s emergency messaging system, Alert Ready.

As the West and China’s geopolitical relations grow tenser than our shoulder muscles at the height of a newsletter draft, academic relations are also under strain. 

What happened: The US and China agreed to a six-month extension on a critical symbolic agreement to cooperate on science and technology research. Many researchers feel the agreement will continue to be crucial for developing scientific and medical breakthroughs. Meanwhile, several US lawmakers want it to expire as they believe it puts US intellectual property at risk.

The federal government is floating ‘capping student visas’ as a new idea to cool the housing crisis… but Québec is having none of it. 

What happened: Earlier this week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller confirmed that the federal government is strongly considering a cap on the number of international students Canada accepts. The Québec government responded by saying it would reject such a cap. 

Someone call Ramit Sethi from Netflix’s How To Get Rich, because Canadian cities need financial rescuing. 

Driving the news: Faced with $46.5 billion in budget pressures over the next decade, Toronto is asking the province to approve a new city sales tax to drum up more revenue.