📈 Biggest Face-Off

Good morning. Today, we’ll take a look back at the biggest stories of September and October and crown a winner for the Biggest Face-Off of the year (which involves no hockey players, but plenty of fighting).

—Lucas Arender

Ottawa launches a home-building blitz. Prime Minister Mark Carney launched Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency designed to fast-track and fund more affordable housing units across the country. The idea behind the agency is that by cutting red tape, unlocking public land, and offering up government investments, the feds can get the housing train moving a little faster. We only need 5.8 million new homes by 2030, so it should be a walk in the park. (September 15 Edition)

TikTok ban averted. After briefly being taken offline for Americans, ByteDance and the White House cut a deal to keep the TikTok feed flowing into the eyeballs of American users. The group taking over TikTok’s U.S. operations will be led by Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, which will each own 15% of the new venture. (September 16 Edition)

OpenAI ditches its non-profit structure to form $500 billion business. The AI startup finalized a deal that split the organization into separate non-profit and for-profit wings, a restructuring that will allow it to eventually file for an IPO. In a fight to stay atop one of the most competitive and capital-intensive industries in the world, OpenAI’s original do-good mission has taken a backseat to survival. (October 29 Edition) 

Quebec declares the Northvolt battery plant dead. Months after the Swedish firm filed for bankruptcy, the provincial government (finally) cut its losses on the EV battery facility, declaring it would not put any more cash behind the project. It was a costly misfire for the Quebec government, but the sale of the land set aside for the plant could recoup a big chunk of its investment. (September 3 Edition)

Canada Post ordered to end home delivery. After losing $1.3 billion last year, the Crown postal service was directed by the federal government to end its home mail delivery service, close some of its rural post offices, and stop delivering letter mail daily. Canada Post has not been the model of a profitable business for a long time, but Ottawa decided it was time to stop spending billions to subsidize its operations. (September 26 Edition)

Winner: Air Canada vs. flight attendants. The standoff between Canada’s largest airline and its 10,000 flight attendants was one of the biggest stories of the year. Ground pay, the work done by flight attendants while planes aren’t in the air, was a major sticking point during contract talks. With little progress made at the negotiating table, the workers went on a three-day strike, picketed outside major airports, and watched as Air Canada was forced to cancel hundreds of flights a day. Ottawa tried to invoke a back-to-work order to end the strike (and faced heavy criticism). The gambit failed when the union ignored the order and stayed on the picket line, but a tentative agreement between the airline and the union had workers back on the job within a few days.

Runner-up: Hollywood vs. AI. OpenAI signed on to help make Critterz, a feature-length AI-generated animated movie, while startups like Canada’s Moonvalley AI pitched Hollywood studios on their “ethical” AI video generator. Actors, writers, and directors have pushed back hard, but given the financial upside for studios, this genie may be out of the bottle on AI-generated content. 

Runner-up:Ostrich farm protesters vs. Ottawa. In arguably the strangest face-off of 2025, protesters in B.C. camped outside for days to try to save a flock of ostriches that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency ordered to be culled over bird flu concerns. The culling of the 300-odd ostriches became a bit of a cause célèbre for the right-wing activists and politicians, including RFK Jr.

On Wednesday, November 19, this banana duct-taped to a wall was sold at auction for US$6.2 million. Sotheby's called the artist of this piece, Maurizio Cattelan, "among contemporary art's most brilliant provocateurs." In a year when fine art collections lost their cachet (and value), at least the humble banana came out victorious.  

Consider this your friendly reminder that there will always be someone rich enough to spend unimaginable amounts of money on the dumbest things.

📈 US$5 trillion. Nvidia’s market value, briefly, in October, making it the first company ever to reach the $5 trillion mark. Nvidia, and the army of AI companies that it's in bed with, have been responsible for basically all market growth in the U.S. this year. 

💳 111 million. Total users of buy now, pay later service Klarna. The company saw its Canadian user base nearly double in the past year, and went public on the New York Stock Exchange in one of the biggest IPOs of 2025, notching a nearly US$20 billion valuation. 

🇨🇦 $5 billion. Size of the tariff relief package that Ottawa rolled out to help hard-hit industries. In addition to the funding, the feds set up a reskilling program for up to 50,000 affected workers and shifted the federal procurement rules to prioritize buying Canadian products.

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