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Good morning. Upset shoppers in the U.K. are irate that Kellogg’s altered the recipe it uses to make Rice Krispies, claiming the change has robbed the cereal of its famed snap, crackle, and pop noises.

But don’t start furiously typing up an email to the bigwigs at Kellogg’s just yet! The company confirmed to CBC News that the recipe change doesn’t affect products in Canada. Thank goodness, we can rest easy. 

Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.

Markets: The markets reacted with an outburst of positivity following the U.S. midterm election results. Top Wall Street indexes were all in the green yesterday, and Canada’s main stock index even posted its best outing in seven months.

Personal shoppers: they’re not just for the rich and famous anymore.

What happened: Google has expanded its online shopping integration for Gemini to Canada, offering direct checkout for purchases made from Lululemon, Shoppers Drug Mart, Simons, and select Shopify merchants without ever having to leave the chatbot. Consumers can also ask Gemini to research and select an item for them to buy and add it to their cart.

Why it matters: As AI eats away at other parts of traditional search, Google is looking to shore up shopping searches with AI. It could be a winning play: a Mastercard survey found that 41% of Canadians are open to using AI for online shopping, with more than half of those AI-curious respondents also open to the idea of letting AI agents make purchases for them.

Yes, but: There are signs that people aren’t exactly champing at the bit to delegate all of their shopping duties to bots. DoorDash said that it only had “several hundred” orders placed by third-party AI agents so far — for context, it averaged 3 million deliveries a day in 2025. Meanwhile, Uber fulfilled just four trips ordered by agents last quarter. Seriously! That’s all!

Our take: AI agents might one day account for a meaningful share of purchases made. But here’s the thing: many people enjoy shopping and won’t want to offload it to AI like they do with boring stuff like spreadsheets.—QH

Ottawa is hashing out the specifics of its landmark sub purchase. Canadian negotiators are reportedly angling to buy eight Type 212CD military submarines upfront from Germany’s TKMS and Norway’s Kongsberg, with an option to buy four more afterward. The feds reportedly want to retain flexibility for future governments and are also factoring in costs. (CBC News)

AMD puts a $2.9 billion price tag on Taalas deal. The chipmaking giant disclosed what it’s paying to buy the Toronto-based semiconductor startup after announcing the acquisition in August. If it’s approved by regulators, it will be one of the biggest Canadian tech takeovers of all time. However, some experts fear this is part of a troubling trend of promising semiconductor startups leaving the country due to lack of late-stage capital. (Globe and Mail)

Canadian Tire to breathe new life into Mark’s. The company will spend $200 million to “reinvent” the resolutely unhip clothing retailer (which we still refer to as Mark’s Work Wearhouse). The cash will be used to ensure that at least 40 Mark’s locations — either new or existing — are outfitted with a revamped design that’s already in place at 21 locations. (The Canadian Press)

📡 What else is on our radar:

Financial Literacy Month is a good time to check that your life insurance still matches your financial responsibilities, not just that you have coverage.

PolicyMe says there isn’t one amount of life insurance that works for everyone. The right amount depends on what your coverage would need to replace, such as your income, a mortgage or other debts, and the needs of your children or other dependants.

PolicyMe’s 2026 Life Insurance Gap Report found that 24% of Canadians weren’t confident or were unsure their families would be financially secure if they died unexpectedly.

Next, consider how long you need coverage. Term life insurance covers you for a set period, which can make it a practical fit for obligations with an end date, like a mortgage or the years your kids are financially dependent on you.

Compare your options and get an online life insurance quote with PolicyMe.

Six Figures is our anonymous interview series with Canadian workers making more than $100,000 in all kinds of industries. To get these stories, we dipped into our very own Canadian Salary Index, a growing database of compensation intel. Check it out — and add your own salary. 

Total compensation: $152,100

Base compensation: $128,500

Experience: 5 years

Location: Toronto, Ontario 

I went to school for a business administration undergrad, and then I did a master's of management in AI. Right now, I'm working as a data scientist-slash-analyst. Right out of school, I did a co-op with Loblaws and I was making around $65,000. Then I went to another grocery chain as a data scientist, and made $90,000, which felt like a huge jump, then I got promoted and got a bonus, so I was making around $110,000. During COVID, groceries were making a lot of money so everyone got a 10-15% bump. And now I’m at Lyft as an analytics lead. My base is $128,500 and stock options, which are in USD, which is nice. 

What does your job look like?

Even though all my roles kind of sound the same, I’ve been doing different things at each company. At Loblaws it was R&D, at the other grocery chain it was optimization for marketing campaigns, and at Lyft it’s more about dashboarding. 

Do you feel well-compensated?

In the tech industry, you are comparing yourself among your peers a lot. So to me, it feels like I'm not making as much as I could be making, just because I know what salaries some of my friends are making at DoorDash and Instacart — and it's basically double. And then you look at Bay Area tech salaries and it’s even crazier. There’s a lot of jumping around in the tech industry. I jumped because I was tired of the grocery business. I hear from my friends that DoorDash is very toxic, so it wouldn't justify the pay jump. The total comp might be great but the trade-off is your mental health.

Do you have advice for anyone looking to break into tech?

There are a lot of ways to get in, because tech is such a big umbrella. A lot of companies value master’s degrees. PhDs are paid like crazy. In this day and age, companies don’t care as much about whether you know how to code because it’s all Claude. Before it was, “Can you build this logic?” and now it’s a lot more about, “Do you know how to problem-solve? Have you seen a scenario like this before?”

If you want to build a data centre, don’t let the neighbours vote on it — at least that’s the takeaway from this week’s U.S. elections. 

What happened: Voters opted to restrict data centres in 44 of the 45 cases where local measures related to data centres were on the ballot on Tuesday, according to Redbud Consulting.

Zoom out: Data centres have become a highly visible focal point for voter unease with AI and the tech sector more generally, something which politicians are now tapping into. 

In Canada: Opposition to data centres is alive and well here, too. A poll earlier this year found that 68% of Canadians would oppose a data centre near their home, and proposed projects have drawn local opposition.

Why it matters: AI hyperscalers will need far more customers and usage than they currently have to justify how much they’ve already spent on the tech, and that will (barring some technological breakthrough) require many more data centres. Politically, that now looks like it will be a serious challenge — though who knows, maybe OpenAI’s attempt to rebrand them as “compute campuses” will do the trick.—TS

The Peak is launching a new publication exclusively for Canadian financial advisors and wealth managers, Peak Advisor. It’s a weekly briefing covering the industry news, analysis, and scoops you need to stay ahead.

We’re accepting pre-registrations right now, and will begin sending the newsletter in the new year. Sign up now for free.

🧸 300. New Toys “R” Us and Parties “R” Us departments that Canadian brand owner Next Century aims to have opened by the end of next year at Staples locations across the country. The deal with Staples is part of Next Century’s plan to revive the defunct brand, with the first department opening this month in Richmond Hill, Ontario.

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