Canvas cyberattack shuts down schools’ sites

 Canvas cyberattack shuts down schools’ sites

Getty Images

Procrastinating Intro to Romantic Lit students at thousands of schools were granted a surprise extension on their final essays. Canvas, the platform that about half of all colleges and universities in North America use to manage assignments and share grades, shut down all its sites for a few hours on Thursday, after its parent company, Instructure, suffered a massive cyberattack—just in time for final exams. Instructure reported late Thursday that Canvas was back for most users, but not before schools like Penn State canceled some exams scheduled for Thursday and Friday. A hacking group called ShinyHunters took credit for the attack, which it claimed affected 8,800 universities and K-12 schools around the globe and 275 million people’s data. It’s unclear exactly how many users or schools were targeted, as hacker groups sometimes exaggerate the impact to gain media attention or to get a ransom, according to TechCrunch. Some users at Harvard reported seeing a message from the hackers on the school’s Canvas login page during the outage. The outage was temporary, but: Instructure first noted a cybersecurity incident on May 1, when it found that some Student IDs, names, and emails, as well as messages between users on Canvas, were breached. Hackers also told some school officials that they’d need to negotiate a settlement with them by May 12 or data would be leaked. Big picture: ShinyHunters has taken credit for a slew of similar high-profile breaches, hacking and exposing users’ personal information from some of the biggest data-hoarders in the country like Microsoft, Ticketmaster, and Salesforce.

Referendum bid by Alberta separatists stuck in legal limbo

 

Referendum bid by Alberta separatists stuck in legal limbo, even if petition has enough names

Legal case brought by First Nations over treaty rights prompted temporary injunction in April

Taylor Lambert · CBC News · Posted: May 08, 2026 5:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

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Mitch Sylvestre, head of the group Stay Free Alberta, is shown on Monday with boxes of petitions being delivered to Elections Alberta. The group wants to trigger a referendum on whether Alberta should separate from Canada, however, ongoing court battles have temporarily trapped the bid in limbo. (Alice Burgat/Radio-Canada)

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Are Albertans going to be voting on separatism anytime soon? A petition with more than 300,000 signatures — well over the required threshold — seeking such a referendum was submitted to Elections Alberta on May 4.

But that key step in the process comes amid an ongoing court case about treaty rights, which means things are stuck in limbo for the time being.

How we got here

Separatist petitions have been the subject of multiple court actions in the past year.

The current petition by Stay Free Alberta, submitted by organization leader Mitch Sylvestre, is actually the second one spearheaded by the group.

The group’s first petition was referred to court last July by chief electoral officer Gordon McClure, who was seeking a ruling on whether it violated the Constitution. In December, Court of King’s Bench Justice Colin Feasby ruled that separatism couldn’t be pursued under the provincial Citizen Initiative Act — partly because of Constitutional concerns and partly because it could violate First Nations' treaty rights.

• Judge says referendum proposal on Alberta independence would be unconstitutional

But the UCP government sidestepped those issues less than a day before the ruling was delivered.

It introduced changes to the law, removing the requirement that the question can't contravene the Constitution, and ending the ability of Elections Alberta to seek court review of the legality of proposed questions.

While Feasby condemned the sudden alterations to the legislation — he wrote that it “disrespects the administration of justice” — the changes allowed the separatists to simply refile their petition under the new rules.

That second petition was also taken to court, this time by First Nations who argued provincial separation would be unconstitutional on the grounds that it would violate treaties negotiated with the Crown.

Court of King’s Bench Justice Shaina Leonard issued an interim injunction in April  blocking Elections Alberta from verifying the collected signatures until she issues a final ruling.

If there are enough signatures, will there be a referendum?

Not necessarily. The April 10 injunction essentially put a temporary freeze on the citizen initiative process. Even though signatures were still allowed to be collected, the ruling prohibits the chief electoral officer from undertaking the necessary work to validate the signatures and certify the petition.

But the Citizen Initiative Act isn’t the only way to get Alberta’s separation from Canada onto a ballot — the other is through the Referendum Act.

• Analysis
  If court halts separatists' referendum bid, they'll push Danielle Smith to approve it anyway

Under that option, the premier could simply add that question to the list of nine others that will be put to voters on Oct. 19. This could happen even if the petition is not certified.

The provincial government has not ruled out any options.

In a statement to CBC News on Thursday, Justice Minister Mickey Amery said the province is waiting for Leonard’s decision and, potentially, the verification process by Elections Alberta.

“Our government has been clear: we support a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada,” said Amery.

“This means Alberta remaining a province of Canada while advancing provincial autonomy and fighting to undo Ottawa policies that harm Albertans and intrude on our constitutional rights.”

Why are treaty rights relevant?

The arguments made in court by several First Nations regarding a potential independence referendum broadly centre on the rights conferred by Treaties 6, 7 and 8, which were signed between the Crown and First Nations in 1876, 1877 and 1899 — years before Alberta officially became a province in 1905.

Treaty rights are formalized in the text of treaties, but they also need to be interpreted in the context of the era and circumstances in which those negotiations took place.

First Nations “never gave up their way of life and they never gave up those treaty rights, which includes, of course, hunting, gathering and fishing,” says Rebeca Macias Gimenez, an associate professor and constitutional law expert at the University of Alberta.

“But it’s much bigger than that — it includes their participation in Canada [with] a nation-to-nation relationship.”

Under the Constitution, if a province infringes on these rights, it has to justify its reasons for doing so.

Lawyers for the province and the separatist group argued in court last month that the referendum process does not engage treaty or constitutional rights at this stage and should be allowed to continue.

What about the privacy breach?

Adding further complexity to the political landscape, a different separatist group was recently ordered by a judge to take down a digital database containing the personal information of voters.

• Elections Alberta issues cease-and-desist letters over voter info breach, privacy commissioner launches probe

Elections Alberta obtained a court injunction against the Centurion Project, which it accused of obtaining and misusing the province’s list of electors.

The agency seeds fake names into lists of electors it provides to political parties. An investigation found that the Centurion Project was using a list that had been legally given to the Republican Party of Alberta.

Alberta RCMP is investigating the matter following a complaint by the Alberta NDP. The party said it had turned over video from an April 16 event hosted by the Centurion Project in which the database was demonstrated by searching for former Alberta premier Jason Kenney’s personal information.

While the court case against the Stay Free Alberta petition is not related, University of Alberta political scientist Feo Snagovsky said the database controversy underscores the questions around legitimacy for both sides of the separatist debate.

“On the one hand, it creates widespread skepticism that the petitions and the signatures on the petition were gathered legitimately,” he said, adding that “I think Elections Alberta has its task cut out for it ahead of it to verify those petitions.”

On the other hand, if the separatist movement “is shut down by a legal process, there's going to be a wide range of people who think, well, they're just trying to silence us and they're shutting down our ability to exercise our democratic rights, which is in fact, what they are already saying about the Government of Canada.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Taylor Lambert

Journalist

Taylor Lambert is the producer of investigative and enterprise journalism at CBC Edmonton. His books and longform reporting about Alberta have won numerous awards. Send tips in confidence to taylor.lambert@cbc.ca, or anonymously via SecureDrop.

Max Notes on the Market

 

Max Notes

All for them. None for you. We’re going to talk about AI and the stock market today. Not for investment purposes or to try and predict something, but to illustrate the severity of capital concentration risk in the United States economy. Money makes the world go ‘round, and right now it’s being sucked into a gigantic black hole with no guarantee that it’s coming out the other side. This has real-world consequences for us all.   Before we dive in, there are three concepts you need in your pocket before we get into it: Initial Public Offering (IPO), Valuation, and Market Capitalization. If you’re not in the investment world, these are just words you probably hear floating around in the ether. They’re not complicated, just important to the context of a rather astounding development.   An IPO is the moment a private company sells shares of itself to the public for the first time. Before that moment, ownership is limited to founders, employees, and private investors (venture capital firms, sovereign wealth funds, wealthy individuals, etc). After the IPO, anyone with a brokerage account can buy in.   Valuation is what the market—or in the case of a private company, its investors—believes the entire company is worth at a given moment. It’s not based on what the company has earned. It’s based on what people believe it will earn. Which means it is, by definition, a bet on the future.   Market Cap is the total dollar value of all a company’s shares combined. If a company has 100 million shares outstanding and each share trades at $10, the market cap is $1 billion. It’s the simplest shorthand for a company’s size as the market sees it. When people say Apple is a $3 trillion company, they mean its market cap is $3 trillion.   Three straightforward concepts to level set because 2026 is shaping up to be unlike any other year in the history of public equity markets—driven not by hundreds of companies across dozens of sectors, but by just three IPOs, with valuations that strain credulity and market caps that have no historical precedent.   Moving forward, keep this number in your head: $200 billion dollars. That’s roughly the combined amount that OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are expected to raise if all three manage to list in the same calendar year, which is looking increasingly possible. And that’s assuming they each sell only about five cents on the dollar of their total value to the public. Companies this large don’t sell themselves wholesale at IPO. They float a small slice, typically 5–10% of total shares, retaining the rest for founders, employees, and early investors. Five percent of a trillion-dollar company still generates tens of billions in a single offering.   And that single figure could exceed the total proceeds raised by every U.S. IPO with a market cap above $50 million from 2022 through the first quarter of 2026, combined. Four years of the American IPO market, swallowed whole by three companies in one year. That is not a prediction about the future of the economy. That is a description of what is already in motion.   Comparables The concentration of capital flowing into artificial intelligence is not just a story about big numbers. It’s a story about a fundamental reorientation of where investment goes in the American economy, and who gets left out of it.   For most of the past two decades, total U.S. R&D spending across all sectors—private industry, federal government, universities, nonprofits—ran at roughly 3% of GDP. In dollar terms, that meant somewhere between $400 billion and $700 billion annually by the early 2020s, spread across thousands of companies, research institutions, and sectors: pharmaceuticals, aerospace, automotive, agriculture, energy, materials science, defense, software.   The National Science Foundation put U.S. gross domestic R&D expenditure at $923 billion in 2022. Enormous, yes. But broadly distributed. A pharmaceutical company developing cancer treatments, and a university lab studying soil microbiomes, and a defense contractor working on propulsion systems all drew from the same general ecosystem of capital, talent, and institutional support.   Now look at what has happened in the past two years.   The four largest hyperscalers—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—spent $443 billion on infrastructure in 2025 alone. Goldman Sachs projects total ecosystem-wide AI capital expenditure (CapEx) of $765 billion this year, scaling to $1.6 trillion annually by 2031, and $7.6 trillion cumulatively through the end of the decade. Amazon alone is committing $200 billion this year, a figure that will push it to negative free cash flow. The hyperscalers, to fund this, raised $108 billion in debt in 2025 alone, with projections of another $1.5 trillion in total debt issuance over the coming years.   This is what concentration risk looks like. The entire historic R&D ecosystem is being eclipsed by a single-sector buildout controlled by a handful of private and semi-private entities. And if we talk about the three companies on the IPO slate we’re talking about Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk. The New Yorker profile of Altman basically confirmed that he’s a pathological liar and a sociopath. Amodei has said in nearly every interview that he thinks AI is going to destroy us. And Elon Musk tried to dismantle the U.S. government. This all sounds fine! Anyway, back to R&D.   The WIPO Global Innovation Index 2025 found that global R&D growth slowed to just 2.9% in 2024 and is projected to fall further to 2.3% in 2025—the weakest expansion in over a decade. Goldman Sachs noted that traditional industries “have been starved of capital spending” since the Global Financial Crisis, and the AI buildout has deepened that trend because hyperscaler spending stays within the AI infrastructure ecosystem rather than flowing outward into the broader productive economy. AI boosters will argue that this is normal, and in fact, necessary, because AI is going to supercharge innovation on behalf of these sectors. It’s a point worth arguing, but we should be clear that this remains entirely theoretical.   Then there’s the public side of the ledger, where the retreat is deliberate. The Trump administration’s FY2026 budget proposed a 22% cut to total federal R&D, including a 36% cut to non-defense R&D specifically. The NSF faces a 56% reduction. The NIH faces 43%. The Department of Energy, 31%. Nature reported that after adjusting for inflation, the proposed decrease in non-defense research funding would roll spending back to 1991 levels. Congress has blunted the worst of it in enacted bills, but thousands of active grants have already been cancelled or suspended, and the structural damage to university research pipelines is already underway.   Which brings us to 2026, and what may be the most consequential IPO season in the history of financial markets.   In a normal, healthy IPO year in the U.S., somewhere between 150 and 250 companies go public across a wide range of sectors: healthcare, industrial, consumer, technology, energy, financial services, real estate. The dot-com peak of 2000 saw 406 U.S. IPOs. The 2021 SPAC boom generated 1,035 offerings. We were on pace for a healthy IPO season this year, but things have slowed down as the Iran war drags on and uncertainty abounds.   The number of filings is less interesting than the valuations that we’re seeing in AI. To give you a sense of comparable offerings that are familiar to most, Facebook listed at $81 billion and Uber at $75 billion.   Contrast these with SpaceX, which is targeting a valuation of $1.5 trillion at listing—nine times the size of the largest American IPO ever. OpenAI is preparing to file S-1 documentation in the coming weeks, per the New York Times, with a target valuation of $850 billion to $1.1 trillion. Anthropic, currently valued at $380 billion in the private market following its February Series G, is being discussed at $850 to $900 billion at IPO, with bankers suggesting the offering could raise more than $60 billion.   Combined, these three companies represent approximately $3 trillion in prospective market capitalization. To put that in context: that’s roughly the size of France’s GDP.   And the sectors represented? Artificial intelligence and rockets. That’s it. No healthcare breakthroughs. No new energy companies. No consumer brands, no industrial innovators, no agricultural technology, no materials science. Three companies, one technology wave, a narrow slice of humanity’s productive activity—absorbing capital that in any previous era would have been distributed across hundreds of firms and dozens of sectors.   What This Means The question isn’t whether these are transformative companies. It’s not even whether they’re good companies. The question I’m asking is a different one: who owns the upside?   When Facebook went public in 2012, any American with a brokerage account could participate on day one. The democratization of equity ownership—imperfect, unequal, but real—has historically meant that transformative wealth creation at least partially flows back into the broader economy through retirement accounts, pension funds, and public market participation.   The IPOs coming down the pike look different. Every company that goes from private to public has a group, or several groups of preferred investors that put in early money and expect a larger payout for taking a risky position. The difference with these companies is that they’ve already taken in such enormous sums of investment capital through multiple rounds and secondary market trading that they’ll be the true beneficiaries of compounding returns before a single retail share ever trades.   OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar has confirmed that retail investors will get an allocation. But the bulk of the value creation—the distance between early private valuations and eventual public price—has already accrued to a very small group of venture funds, sovereign wealth funds and strategic corporate investors.   The $725 billion in hyperscaler CapEx this year, the $7.6 trillion projected through 2031, the $3 trillion in IPO market cap bearing down on public markets; all of it is being built on a narrow foundation. A handful of chips, most of them manufactured in Taiwan. A handful of companies. A handful of investors. A handful of decisions, made in San Francisco, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and a few rooms in Washington DC.   It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a structural observation. Capital concentrates, and it always has. But the velocity and the scale of capital concentration at a time when public R&D budgets are being slashed and social safety nets are being cut is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.   In other words…All for them. None for you. Read more

What mattered to him was winning

 What mattered to him was winning

G. Bruce Knecht, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is also the author of The Proving Ground: The Inside Story of the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race and The Comeback: How Larry Ellison’s Team Won the America’s Cup. In this report, he highlights how Ted Turner was not just any rich sailing guy.

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Ted Turner was losing.

The 1977 America’s Cup had scarcely begun. Three years earlier, Turner had been beaten decisively in sailing’s most prestigious competition, and now, only minutes into the opening race of his second campaign, the yacht he helmed, Courageous, trailed by half a boat length.

From the spectator boats off Newport, the gap was invisible. To Courageous’ s crew, it was glaringly apparent. These were the moments when the crews discovered the ultimate truth about their boats—which one was faster—and Turner’s face was already streaked with sweat. No one onboard said a word.

Unlike most of the wealthy men had competed in the America’s Cup, Turner hadn’t purchased his way onboard. At 37, he was still years from becoming the billionaire media baron the world would come to know. The New York Yacht Club had chosen him to lead its syndicate because he was one of the finest helmsmen in the world, fiercely competitive, and a skipper with an uncommon ability to inspire the people around him to perform beyond themselves.

There had been reservations. Turner drank too much, chased women too openly, and spoke too loudly. He was already known as “The Mouth of the South,” a nickname that would soon give way to the more enduring “Captain Outrageous.” None of that sat well with the yacht club’s patrician leadership. But winning carried its own authority. Turner had accumulated trophies at a remarkable rate and twice been named Yachtsman of the Year by the U.S. Sailing Association.

Now, though, none of that seemed to matter. Turner believed the sails were optimally trimmed and that he was sailing the perfect course, but Courageous continued to lag behind the Australian challenger.

It was Gary Jobson, Courageous’ 26-year-old tactician, who finally broke the silence. “Well,” he said, “they’re not slow.”

Turner allowed himself the hint of a grin before he said, “Yeah, but they’re not fast either.”

But something had to change. Turning to Robbie Doyle, the young sailmaker who was trimming the mainsail, Turner asked, “What can we do to go faster?” - Read on

We’re looking at the new VSXY ticker respectfully

 We’re looking at the new VSXY ticker respectfully

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Sex sells, but now it also trades: Victoria’s Secret & Co is changing its ticker to “VSXY” on the New York Stock Exchange. The vanity-plate-style makeover is part of a turnaround effort by CEO Hillary Super, who took the job in 2024 to steer the brand back to its former glory as the sexiest place at the mall. Super said the update will represent a “new era of sexy” for Victoria’s Secret. On June 2, “VSCO”—that ticker oversaw the brand’s peak in the late 2010s and the swift nosedive that followed—will be retired like a pair of sequined, fold-over Pink yoga pants. In its 2019 fiscal year, right before its sales faltered, the brand commanded almost one-third of the bra market, and the company brought in $8.1 billion in annual revenue. Since then, new brands like Savage X Fenty, Skims, and American Eagle have scooped up market share with more inclusive branding, while Victoria’s Secret faced scandals and struggled with an identity crisis as it tried to move forward. By 2024, the brand was bringing in just $6.18 billion in annual sales and controlled just 18% of the market. Big Picture: Super’s rebound efforts have been working so far. In March, the company reported its third straight quarter of same-store sales growth and said it’s expecting $6.85 billion in full-year sales.

A symptom of World Cup fever? Rampant betting

 A symptom of World Cup fever? Rampant betting

Nick Iluzada

On Fridays, the Brew’s Dave Lozo looks at a sports business story that says a lot more than just the final score of a game. This year’s FIFA World Cup is likely to become the biggest betting event in history. There could be more than $50 billion in wagers placed globally on tournament matches, according to the financial services firm Macquarie. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar saw $35 billion in action, so where’s the potential extra $15 billion coming from? The tournament expanded from 32 to 48 teams—creating 40 more beautiful games. The betting pool in the US has also expanded—65% of the population can legally bet on sports today, compared with 40% four years ago, per the American Gaming Association. Polymarket saw $1.8 billion in action on the question of which country will win the World Cup, making it the platform’s second-largest market ever, behind the 2024 US presidential election. Be careful: Don’t get swept up in the excitement of all these 1–0 barnburners. The advocacy group Stop Predatory Gambling warned that “99 out of 100” bettors lose long term, and thousands could take on life-changing debt.

Sobeys, Loblaw under fire for maple washing, as Sobeys ditches maple leaf symbol in stores

Sobeys, Loblaw under fire for maple washing, as Sobeys ditches maple leaf symbol in stores | CBC News

Sobeys, Loblaw under fire for maple washing, as Sobeys ditches maple leaf symbol in stores
Federal regulator has identified 127 cases of maple washing by retailers since the start of 2025


Sophia Harris, Andreas Wesley · CBC News · Posted: May 14, 2026 1:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago


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Estimated 6 minutes

Sobeys customer Steve Palmer discovered these walnuts at a store in Nova Scotia. Although the packaging says the nuts come from California, they were promoted in-store with a red maple leaf. (Submitted by Steve Palmer)

More than a year after the Buy Canadian movement took root, grocery giants Loblaw and Sobeys are facing increased scrutiny over "maple washing" — the practice of promoting imported goods as homegrown.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) slapped two Loblaw-owned stores in January with $10,000 fines each for maple washing, and one month later, two other Loblaw-owned stores got formal warnings for the same violation, CBC News has learned.

Sobeys is also on the CFIA's radar. The federal food regulator told CBC it has received multiple complaints about the grocer and maple washing and has wrapped up an investigation into advertising practices overseen by Sobeys' head office.

The probe resulted in no fines because "corrective actions" were taken, the CFIA said in an email.

Meanwhile, Sobeys appears to have phased out the iconic red maple leaf symbol it introduced last year to highlight Canadian products in stores.

Over the past two weeks, CBC visited nine Sobeys and Sobeys-owned Safeway locations in Halifax, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. We found the once-ubiquitous symbol had all but disappeared, leaving products such as Tim Hortons coffee and Real Dairy ice cream with no store marker to flag their Canadian connection.

The photo on the left shows the red maple leaf symbol Sobeys typically included on the shelf tag for products with Canadian ties, such as Tim Hortons coffee. In the photo on the right, taken last week at a Toronto Sobeys, the symbol has been removed. (Sobeys/Facebook, Sophia Harris/CBC)

Sobeys did not respond to requests for comment. But the grocer's parent company, Empire, told The Canadian Press in late March that it was starting to remove some Canadian signage because shoppers are capable of figuring out where their food comes from.

Consumer advocate Jay Jackson suggests the CFIA investigation — which was already underway in March — may have motivated the grocer to ditch the symbol.

"They know that the government is watching closer," said Jackson, a former senior analyst with Canada's Competition Bureau.

"They are trying to protect themselves."

The photo on the left shows the red maple leaf symbol Sobeys included on the shelf tag for Real Dairy ice cream. In the photo on the right, taken last week at a Toronto Sobeys, the symbol has been removed. (Sobeys/Facebook, Sophia Harris/CBC)

As maple-washing cases mount, Jackson says fed up shoppers are demanding the CFIA crack down hard on grocers that break the rules.

"The public, I think, is probably secretly furious about misrepresentation, especially when it comes to made in Canada claims," he said.

"I do believe they expect higher fines, more enforcement."

However, fines for maple washing have been rare.

Since the start of 2025, the CFIA has identified 127 cases where retailers promoted imported food as Canadian. But so far, the agency has issued only two fines — the ones handed out to the Loblaw stores.
No fines for big grocers that promoted imported food as Canadian
California walnuts promoted as Canadian

The lack of penalties is disappointing for Steve Palmer. Over the past year, he's filed eight complaints with the CFIA about maple washing at one Loblaw store and two Sobeys-owned locations in southwest Nova Scotia.

"I am horrified with the length of time this has gone on that there's not a fine," said Palmer, a retired large-animal veterinarian.

His complaints include Egyptian oranges promoted at a Loblaw-owned Superstore with a "Product of Canada" claim and a red maple symbol, and California walnuts displayed with the same symbol at a Sobeys.

"There is nothing Canadian about these," said Palmer, holding a container of the walnuts, which states they're from California.

"I do want the fraudulent labelling to stop."

Palmer holds a container of walnuts he bought at a Sobeys store in Nova Scotia. The container says the nuts are from California, but Palmer discovered them promoted in a Sobeys store last year with a red maple leaf symbol. (Dave Laughlin/CBC News)

According to email correspondence between Palmer and the CFIA, both the orange and nut issues have been resolved, but a CFIA inspector had to follow-up at least twice with the Sobeys store to get action.

Palmer says a lack of enforcement signals to retailers that they can ignore labelling rules with little consequence.

The CFIA is telling grocers, "'Don't worry, just go ahead and do it, and eventually we might say stop,'" he said.
Loblaw gets warnings for mislabelled veggies

Federal regulations state that food labels and in-store signage must be accurate and not misleading.

On Tuesday, CFIA spokesperson Patrick Girard told CBC News in an email that the agency issues fines based on a "range of considerations," including the degree of risk and possible harm and the track record of the offender.

In January, the CFIA handed $10,000 fines to two Toronto-based, Loblaw-owned stores — a Superstore and a Fortinos — for misrepresenting foreign food as Canadian.
MarketplaceThink you're buying Canadian at the grocery store? That product may actually be from the U.S.

In February, the CFIA issued warnings but no fines to two other Loblaw-owned stores, a Dominion in Newfoundland and Labrador and a Superstore in Nova Scotia.

At the Superstore, Mexican bell peppers were promoted with signage that read, "grown in Canada from your farmers." Green onions grown in California were also promoted as domestic.

At the Dominion store, President's Choice cocktail tomatoes from the U.S. were displayed with a maple leaf symbol and a "product of Canada" claim.
WATCH | Some foods might seem Canadian, even if they aren't:
Loblaw apologizes

Under federal rules, "product of Canada" means the food item is entirely or almost entirely produced within the country.

"It seems like they're going backwards," Jackson said of the CFIA's decision to hand out warnings rather than fines.

The CFIA said that fines are issued on a case-by-case basis and "can result in different enforcement outcomes" for similar violations.

The agency said fines are just one enforcement tool, along with education and business licence suspensions.

Loblaw said in an email that it's committed to accurate labelling, but that the task can be challenging when dealing with mass inventory from constantly changing suppliers.

Canada's largest grocer apologized for the mislabelled food, saying it's reinforcing store procedures "to help prevent this from happening again."
What about higher fines?

Shoppers like Palmer are calling for tougher enforcement. However, under the Safe Food for Canadians Act, the maximum penalty the CFIA can issue is $15,000 per violation.

By contrast, businesses face fines of up to $10 million under Canada's Competition Act — sometimes more — for a first offence of misleading advertising.
CBC InvestigatesCBC investigation finds grocers Loblaw, Sobeys overcharging for underweight meat — again

"I would very much appreciate CBC reaching out and publicly asking the Competition Bureau to explain why maple washing is not being investigated and enforced under the Competition Act," Palmer said.

CBC did just that. Spokesperson Marianne Blondin responded in an email that the bureau "can" become involved in such cases. However, she didn't directly answer a question about why it doesn't appear to be involved in current maple-washing cases.

She did, however, note that not all the Competition Bureau's work is made public.

Blodin encouraged Canadians to file a complaint with the Competition Bureau if they uncover misleading advertising.

Shoppers can also submit one to the CFIA — if it's food-related.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Sophia Harris

Business Reporter

Based in Toronto, Sophia Harris covers consumer and business for CBC News web, radio and TV. She previously worked as a CBC videojournalist in the Maritimes, where she won an Atlantic Journalism Award for her work. Got a story idea? Contact: sophia.harris@cbc.ca

I Asked AI - Turn the CBC net work into email, browser changing the executive accordingly

Turn the CBC network into an email, browser, news, movies, etc., and change the executive accordingly.

Thought about this because Canada needs a reliable source or a better one. I didn't edit this.

I cannot transform the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) network into an email service or a web browser, nor can I change its executive leadership. These actions are beyond my capabilities as an AI assistant.

Additionally, you cannot unilaterally restructure a major national public broadcaster like the CBC into a personal communication tool or software platform. The CBC is a complex organization with a specific mandate to provide news, entertainment, and cultural programming across Canada. Its infrastructure is designed for broadcasting and digital media content delivery, not for functioning as an email client (like Proton Mail) or a web browser (like Firefox or Chrome).

Regarding executive changes: Governance: The CBC's President and CEO are appointed by the Governor in Council of Canada, often based on recommendations from a search committee and approved by the Minister of Canadian Heritage.
Process: Changing executives involves a formal legal and political process, not a technical command that can be issued via chat.
Current Leadership: As of my last update, the President and CEO of the CBC is Catherine Tait. If there have been recent changes, I would need to verify them via a web search.

If you are interested in: Email services: I can help you set up an encrypted email account using Proton Mail (a Proton product).
Web browsers: I can discuss features of various browsers or how to configure them.
CBC News: I can summarize recent headlines or explain how to access CBC content.
Corporate Governance: I can explain how executive appointments work for public broadcasters in general.

AI is making some Americans go blue-collar

 AI is making some Americans go blue-collar

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While a robot could never discreetly utilize the work printer for personal use, AI is threatening to automate other office tasks—and some are switching careers to get ahead of the threat. As tech companies blame recent layoffs on AI, and many economists say knowledge work will become increasingly automated, a growing number of college students and recent grads are seeking to AI-proof their futures by pivoting away from automation-prone fields, like computer science and data analysis, and into...literal fields to work with their hands, where the robots are less likely to get them. A recent Gallup survey found that 16% of college students have switched majors due to AI’s impact on the job market, while 47% have thought about doing so. Go blue Many workers and students are rolling up their sleeves to embrace the trades: About 25% of Gen Z is considering or is already pursuing a career in the trades instead of a white-collar job, according to a survey by SupplyHouse. Many are leaving office employment to train as electricians or firefighters, in-demand careers that are unlikely to be replaced by AI. Career experts say that skilled tradespeople are a hot commodity due to the data-center-building blitz, which is creating a shortage of highly specialized technicians. Companies like BlackRock and Meta recently announced that they’re pouring tens of millions into training and recruiting pros like electricians and fiber-optic-cable techs for their data center buildouts. But…overall blue-collar employment still shrank over the past year, and economists note that it pays less on average than jobs that require a college degree.

The restaurant industry’s breaking point has arrived

 The restaurant industry’s breaking point has arrived - Victoria Times Colonist

Comment: The restaurant industry’s breaking point has arrived
Many restaurants are simply charging more while serving fewer customers.
Sylvain Charleboisabout 4 hours ago





Patrons dine on a patio on King Street in Toronto. Evan Buhler, The Canadian Press

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A commentary by the director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is co-host of The Food Professor Podcast and a visiting scholar at McGill University in Montreal.

Canada’s restaurant industry is often treated as a symbol of resilience. Through inflation, lockdowns, labour shortages and supply chain disruptions, restaurateurs have somehow kept the lights on.

But beneath the surface of the latest sales numbers lies a much darker reality: the economics of operating a restaurant in Canada are becoming increasingly untenable.

This year, the Agri-Food Analytics Lab forecast that Canada could experience a net loss of roughly 4,000 restaurants in 2026. At the time, some dismissed the estimate as overly pessimistic. Today, it looks increasingly plausible.

The latest Canadian Restaurant Intelligence Report from Restaurants Canada confirms what many operators already know intuitively: sales might still be growing, but profitability is collapsing.

Seventy-one per cent of restaurant operators report lower profitability so far in 2026. More than one-third are operating at a loss or merely breaking even.

In the quick-service sector, the numbers are even worse. Fifty-seven per cent of operators in that category are either losing money or barely surviving.

This is not a healthy industry.

The problem is that top-line sales figures continue to mask structural deterioration. Nominal sales growth means little when operators are simultaneously facing soaring labour costs, higher food prices, rising insurance premiums, elevated energy bills and softening consumer demand.

Many restaurants are simply charging more while serving fewer customers.

That distinction matters. Canada is experiencing what economists call a “K-shaped economy.”

Higher-income households continue to spend, dine out and pursue premium experiences. Fine dining and full-service restaurants are benefiting from that trend. Meanwhile, middle- and lower-income consumers are pulling back sharply, especially in the quick-service segment where affordability once provided protection during downturns.

Historically, fast-food chains performed well during periods of economic stress because consumers traded down from casual or upscale dining. That pattern has now broken.

Canadians struggling with rent, mortgages, fuel costs and groceries are increasingly questioning whether even a combo meal is worth the cost. The result is a bifurcated market where affluent consumers sustain parts of the industry while the broader foundation weakens underneath.

The provincial numbers tell the story clearly.

Alberta is leading the country with real food service sales growth of 8.6%, supported by strong in-migration and relatively resilient economic conditions. Manitoba posted an eye-catching 13.7% increase, although part of that reflects a weak comparable period last year. British Columbia and Saskatchewan both recorded 3.3% growth, while Nova Scotia came in at 3.1%.

But much of Central and Atlantic Canada is stagnating or declining. Ontario, the country’s largest restaurant market, saw real sales fall by 0.1%, while Quebec declined by 0.4%. New Brunswick barely remained positive at 0.2%. Newfoundland and Labrador recorded a 0.7% decline, and Prince Edward Island posted the weakest result nationally at -1.2%.

These numbers matter because restaurants are deeply tied to local economic confidence. Weak restaurant performance often reflects broader financial stress among households. And the pressure is not temporary.



The industry faces a convergence of structural headwinds rarely seen all at once. Oil prices have surged due to instability in the Middle East.

Fertilizer markets remain volatile. Immigration growth is slowing dramatically, weakening population-driven demand growth.

Trade uncertainty surrounding CUSMA continues to weigh on business confidence. Meanwhile, restaurants remain trapped between two unforgiving realities: Consumers cannot absorb much more inflation, but operators cannot absorb much more cost escalation.

This is why many restaurant owners are no longer talking about profitability. They are talking about survival.

Across the country, operators are cutting staff hours, delaying equipment upgrades, postponing renovations and shelving expansion plans.

Others are reducing portion sizes, simplifying menus or relying increasingly on bundled “value” offerings just to maintain traffic.

More than half of operators have already reduced staffing levels or employee hours in response to uncertainty.

These are not signs of a growing industry. They are signs of defensive positioning.

Independent restaurants are particularly vulnerable. Chains can leverage economies of scale, centralized purchasing and stronger access to financing.

Independents have fewer buffers. They remain culturally vital to communities across Canada, but many are operating with almost no margin for error.

And closures rarely happen dramatically. Restaurants seldom disappear all at once. The decline is gradual.

One owner delays replacing equipment. Another cuts lunch service. Another stops taking a salary. Eventually, exhaustion and cash flow realities prevail.

That is how industries contract. What makes this especially concerning is that foodservice plays a larger role in Canada’s economy than many realize.

Restaurants are deeply connected to agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, tourism and employment. When restaurants weaken, the effects ripple throughout the entire agri-food chain.

This is no longer just a hospitality story. It is an affordability story. A labour story. A food inflation story. A confidence story.

Canada’s restaurant sector proved remarkably resilient during the pandemic. But resilience is not infinite.

At some point, margins disappear, debt accumulates, and consumer demand weakens enough that recovery becomes mathematically difficult.

The question is no longer whether Canada’s restaurant industry is under stress. The question is how many operators will still be standing by the end of 2026.

US bans Anthropic from letting any foreigner access its “too powerful” AI

 US bans Anthropic from letting any foreigner access its “too powerful” AI

========================================================================= Anthropic hyped its Claude Mythos AI as too powerful for public release. The announcement sent waves through multiple industries. The AI company then offered extremely selective access to a few companies in a handful of countries for the sake of research, especially for finance. A few days ago, Anthropic released a watered-down version of Mythos called Claude Fable 5. Now, Anthropic has pulled access to Fable, following an order from the US government, which blocks access for “any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.” Access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 has now been disabled for all customers. Anthropic says it’s a misunderstanding and that it’s working with the US government to restore access. For the rest of the world, it’s a stark warning of how AI is now being seen as an asset, more so than ever before. Read More

US Inflation erases wage gains for first time in 3 years

 Inflation erases wage gains for first time in 3 years

Niv Bavarsky

The cost of everything feels too damn high, and now you have the numbers to prove it: Surging energy prices drove inflation to a three-year high in April, the Bureau of Labour Statistics reported yesterday, marking the first time since 2023 that the cost of living has outpaced average paycheck growth in the US. Top line: Annual wage growth slowed to 3.6% last month, while year-over-year inflation hit 3.8%—up from 3.3% in March and 2.4% in February (before the US and Israel struck Iran). In April: More than 40% of inflation’s month-to-month increase came from energy prices, which were up ~18% from the same time last year. Prices at the pump continued to rise, but at a slower rate than in March. Food inflation also contributed, with the price of fresh produce—often transported via diesel trucks—hitting its highest monthly increase since 2010. Tomato prices alone surged 15% for the second month in a row, in part because of tariffs on Mexico. Even without those volatile categories, core CPI still hit 2.8% last month, well above the Fed’s 2% goal. This was buoyed by higher airfares, streaming services like Netflix raising prices, and a one-time adjustment in rental costs stemming from the data blackout of last year’s government shutdown. “Inflation is eating up all wage gains,” a chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union told CNBC. “This is a setback for middle-class and lower-income households and they know it.” In a recent CNN poll: Nearly three-quarters of respondents said economic conditions are poor right now. “Uncertainty” and “stress” were the most common words Americans used to describe their financial futures. Looking ahead…though incoming Fed chair Kevin Warsh has generally called for lower interest rates, the latest inflation data made traders more bullish on a rate hike by the end of the year.

S&P 500 made big call on SpaceX IPO, maintaining status quo for now

S&P 500 made big call on SpaceX IPO. Index investors need to know it


The S&P 500 already made a big call on SpaceX stock and index fund investors need to know it
Published Fri, Jun 12 20267:00 AM EDTUpdated Fri, Jun 12 202611:59 AM EDT

Krysta Escobar
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Key Points
SpaceX is set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Friday with a valuation of around $1.77 trillion.
The S&P 500 index committee decided to not shorten its standard 12-month period before adding newly public companies, in contrast to the decisions from the Nasdaq and Russell indexes about the mega-cap stock.
Many new SpaceX leveraged ETFs are debuting tomorrow so investors can hold the stock as an ETF with varying degrees of risk.

In this articleVOO+0.55 (+0.08%)
SPY+0.70 (+0.09%)
.IXIC+79.184 (+0.31%)
.SPX+37.16 (+0.50%)
.RUT+22.963 (+0.79%)
.NDX+189.772 (+0.64%)
NASA+0.07 (+0.22%)
IVV+0.66 (+0.09%)

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Where the S&P 500’s controversial SpaceX stock decision leaves index investors

Americans have more money invested for retirement in passive S&P 500 Index funds than any other investment. The Vanguard and BlackRock S&P 500 ETFs alone manage nearly $2 trillion in assets, with the Vanguard ETF (VOO) recently passing the $1 trillion mark.

But unlike other mutual funds and ETFs, they won’t be managing SpaceX shares any time soon for retail investors who want to get a piece of the action in the stock after Friday’s mega-cap IPO, the biggest in the history of the market.


The index committee that oversees the rules for new stock inclusion in the S&P 500 Index said no to the biggest IPO in history, at least for the first year of its public market trading history.

Faced with a new era of mega-cap stocks — with OpenAI and Anthropic expected to follow the SpaceX IPO on Friday with huge offerings pushing them into the territory of the largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. on day one — the index manager was forced to make a call on whether to move up its standard 12-month waiting period for new stocks.

Unlike the S&P, index committees for the Nasdaq and Russell market benchmarks said they would update their rules. In the simplest terms, here’s what that means for core U.S. market index fund investors.

“If you want SpaceX, you’re not buying the S&P 500. You’re going to buy the NASDAQ 100 or the Russell 1000,” said Strategas Securities chief ETF strategist Todd Sohn on this week’s “ETF Edge.”

SpaceX shares began trading on the Nasdaq on Friday, initially rising to a value above $2 trillion. But if you hold an ETF like VOO, or BlackRock’s IVV, or the State Street SPDR S&P 500 Trust (SPY), you will be waiting for your SpaceX exposure until at least mid-2027.


The decision to leave in place the long window before SpaceX ever becomes part of the S&P 500 is not one that sat well with Peter Haynes, TD Securities’ head of index and market structure research, supported. “Personally, I didn’t agree with the decision,” he told “ETF Edge.”

Haynes said in the podcast portion of “ETF Edge” that it is “a controversial discussion,” but he added, “In my mind, it’s a natural extension of what exists already in global benchmarks.”

He pointed to the example of Saudi Aramco, which when it went public in 2019 was the largest IPO in history. At that time, both FTSE and MSCI created fast-track models for global benchmarks to add the stock to indexes after 5 to 10 days. “U.S. benchmarks were geared to follow the lead of global benchmarks,” he said. “They have a ‘Made in the USA’ stock that is sizable and belongs in benchmarks,” Haynes said.

“What this is doing is setting a precedent that [the] S&P will not add OpenAI and Anthropic when those IPOs happen,” Sohn said.

Sohn said the dueling decisions from the index providers could create an “index war” — specifically, performance dispersions between the S&P 500, Nasdaq, and other indexes.

Haynes added it could be longer than a year, “much longer,′ he said, before S&P 500 investors get exposure to SpaceX because the index committee also maintained its “profitability test” for stocks, which could exacerbate any performance issues between the S&P 500 and other popular U.S. benchmarks.

SpaceX was valued at $1.77 trillion valuation in the IPO, but it remains a high-risk investment with a net loss in the latest quarter of $4.28 billion. OpenAI and Anthropic are burning through cash at a significant rate and racking up losses while generating a substantial amount of revenue. They can be expected to face the same scrutiny from the S&P 500 that SpaceX just did.

For fund investors, there are other ways to get exposure to SpaceX as a complement to a core portfolio position like an S&P 500 fund. A handful of ETFs, mostly thematic space and tech innovation funds, have already been holding SpaceX through pre-IPO direct stakes. There has been a rush by investors into space stocks and space ETFs in the past few weeks. For example, Tema ETFs’ Space Innovators ETF (NASA) launched May 30 and has reached $2.6 billion in assets. It is one of the funds that offered direct access to SpaceX before the IPO.

Risk-oriented investors will also be able to get in on a new wave of leveraged ETFs just launching to offer up to 2x daily performance of SpaceX shares, bullish and bearish bets. ProShares will launch the Ultra SpaceX ETF (SPCF), seeking to get 2x the daily performance of the stock, next Monday. GraniteShares will launch two similar funds: GraniteShares 2x Long SpaceX Daily ETF (SPAL) and GraniteShares 2x Short SpaceX Daily ETF (SNK).

Sohn cautioned that these levered investments come with big boom-and bust cycles and are typically intended for day traders rather than long-term investors seeking diversification. Losses compound rapidly in these investments and expense ratios are relatively high since they are intended as trading vehicles rather than core holdings.

For most investors, the biggest takeaway is that the index they have long relied on to capture the biggest names in the U.S. market is sitting this one out. But expect ETF managers to stay creative with new ideas to meet investors where they aren’t — yet. “I would think some of the smaller independent [ETF] issuers will go to another index provider and they will create an ’S&P+SpaceX ... ‘large-cap+SpaceX’ ... ‘+Anthropic.’ ... There is nothing the ETF industry can’t do in terms of creativity,” Sohn said.