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Lumber's recent drop could be a sign that prices of commodities are starting to chill out.

Vaccine Tracker

As of writing, 79.2% of Canadians 12+ have received at least one dose and 51.3% of Canadians 12+ are fully vaccinated.
Did you catch that? Over 50% of eligible Canadians are fully vaccinated 🙌.
Percent of total populations (including children under 12) who have received at least one dose as of July 12: Canada: 69.6%, U.K: 67.7%, Israel: 66.2%, U.S: 55.1%, E.U: 54.3%.
Percent of total populations (including children under 12) population who are fully vaccinated as of July 12: Israel: 60%, U.K: 51.2%, U.S: 47.6%, Canada: 44.4%., E.U: 39.6%.

There are now multiple contenders for the Silicon Valley of the North title: Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, and Edmonton are among the fastest growing talent pools for tech in North America, according to a new report from CBRE Group.

Background: CBRE Group, an American real estate and investment firm, compiled data on North America’s 50 largest tech markets between 2015 and 2020. The report tracks the these tech hubs' labour markets, and other metrics like average salary and diversity.

By the numbers:

Canadian cities took 3 of the top 5 spots in ranking for tech markets that gained the most talent, with Toronto taking the top spot, Montreal third, and Vancouver fourth.
Smaller, but growing markets for tech talent in Canada are Edmonton with a 53.3% growth rate—the highest among the 50 markets compiled—and Calgary, with a 17.9% growth from 2015-2020. Which of these cities will call themselves the Silicon Valley of the North West?
Montreal’s tech market, which is the second-largest in Canada, grew ~31% from 2015-2020.
Vancouver sits somewhere between Canada’s small and large markets with around 91,000 tech workers and a ~36% growth between 2015-2020, and Ottawa at 74,000 workers with a 22.5% growth rate.
Ottawa was ranked the most concentrated tech talent market in North America—that’s the Shopify effect, for you.

Zoom out: While SF and NYC have retained their statuses as popular tech hubs, smaller cities like Waterloo’s and Edmonton’s tech labour markets have seen massive gains over the past five years.

One Big Fine

French authorities have ordered Google to pay a record ~$741 million fine for failing to negotiate fair deals with their news publishers.

Background: Google is a double-edged sword for news publishers: they depend on the platform to generate clicks, but also allege that Google cuts into their ad revenue. For example, Google shares snippets of publishers’ stories in search results, so a lot of people don’t bother clicking on the link at all.

What was the deal? In February, Google signed 121 French publishers to a US-$76 million licensing deal, as part of a broader initiave to work with news publishers called Google News Showcase.

Under Google News Showcase, Google would pay select publishers for exclusive content and boost traffic to their sites.

Now, France's competition watchdog is alleging that Google didn't negotiate fair deals with the French publishers, and that Google didn't negotiate access to previews to the publishers' media on search results.

What's next: Google has 2 months to re-negotiate terms with publishers or will have to pay a fine of ~$1.3 million per day.

Time To Hit The Gym

Brazil-based fitness chain Smart Fit, which is backed by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), aims to raise up to $750 million in its upcoming IPO.

What’s Smart Fit? Founded in 1996, Smart Fit is Latin America’s largest fitness chain, with 928 locations (that’s triple the number of GoodLife locations in Canada) in 13 Latin American countries.

The CPPIB has been investing in Smart Fit since 2006, and bought a 12.4% stake in the chain in 2019.

Other investors of Smart Fit include Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, and Brazil-based Dynamo.

Smart Fit plans to use IPO proceeds to open new locations and acquire other fitness chains.

Zoom out: Smart Fit is just one of CPPIB’s Latin American investments: the pension fund has had a presence in Latin American markets since 2006 where it has nvested at least $16 billion to date.

Table Stakes

The Centretown Community Health Centre (CCHC) has been providing health promotion services, children’s programs, and mental health and addictions services to Ottawa residents for over 50 years. But when COVID-19 struck, they needed to pivot and find virtual solutions to continue serving the community.

Because many of CCHC’s clients are high risk and don’t have access to technology on a regular basis, it needed solutions that could allow it to remain connected to recipients of in-person programming.

What happened: With a $20,000 grant from the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation, CCHC has been able to continue to connect with its clients and offer the vital support that its in-person services typically provide.

The funding allowed CCHC to create a virtual community leader program, supply volunteers with new tablets, and distribute mobile devices with pre-paid plans to highest risk clients so they can stay connected when it matters most.

Learn more about how the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation is helping build brighter futures by enhancing technology programs and keeping residents of this community connected.

Put It On Our Card

Toronto-based fintech startup Float raised $5 million in a seed round, bringing their total investments to ~$6.5 million.

What’s Float? Founded in 2019, Float provides corporate cards to small- and medium-sized businesses without personal guarantees.

Users can create virtual cards that function like Visa cards, but draw on an existing account balance.
Float also offers a spending management platform that helps businesses keep on top of their expense reports and reimbursements.

SF-based Susa Ventures and Toronto-based Golden Ventures co-led an investment of $4 million, while Silicon Valley Bank provided an additional $1 million in debt.

Other investors in Float’s seed round included Garage Capital, Tiny Capital, and Global Founders Capital.

What’s next: Float follows the successful models of American-based corporate credit card companies like Divvy, Ramp, and Brex. The fintech startup plans to use the new funds to grow their team and expand to international markets.

Green Planes

United Airlines and Mesa Air agreed to buy 100 electric planes each from Heart Aerospace.

United and Mesa also led a US-$35 million investment round in the Swedish-based startup.

Catch up: In 2018, United Airlines pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 without using any carbon offsets, and the airline is looking into new planes to achieve this goal.

Last month, United signed an agreement to purchase supersonic jets from Denver-based Boom that claim to be net-zero carbon aircraft.

The deal: Together, United and Mesa will buy 200 of Swedish-based Heart Aerospace's electric planes, which are expected to be operational by 2026.

Each plane can transport up to 19 passengers and because of their limited range, are ideal for shorter trips, like traveling from cities within the same state.
United said there are at least 100 routes that they can use the ES-19 planes for.

Zoom out: While electric planes may soon be flying shorter routes, we’re still a long way away from an electric 737 doing long haul trips.

Open House

This slick West Vancouver nest includes ample indoor-outdoor living space and an unbeatable view. Here's what it includes:

4 Beds, 5 Baths
Infinity pool with 2,000 sqft of covered deck space
Theatre room
Jaw dropping ocean views

Find out how much for this Vancouver gem.

Leftovers

NASA will work with Blue Origin, among other aerospace companies, on a nuclear-powered spacecraft.
Elon Musk wrapped up his last day in court over Tesla's acquisition yesterday.
Toronto's trade board calls on the provincial government to introduce vaccine passports.
The Russian-based ransomware group REvil mysteriously went offline yesterday.
NFT sales are starting to fall off.

Peak Picks

Watch the trailer to Pixar's latest film that's set in Toronto.
Where can we get this mac and cheese ice cream? Asking for a friend, of course...
Is the five day work week dead?
This TikTok star is on track to take over Charli D'amelio's #1 spot.
Here's how McDonald's is able to make their Big Macs so affordable.
Shein is taking the fashion world by storm but is their take on fast fashion sustainable?

TSX	20270.65	0.19%
S&P 500	4369.21	-0.35%
DOW	34888.79	-0.31%
NASDAQ	14677.65	-0.38%
Gold	1809.90	0.22%
Oil	75.25	1.55%
Dollar	0.80	0.0%

July 14, 2021

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