Bring it on home

Good morning. Mark Zuckerberg is being memed into oblivion after an appearance on the Cheeky Pint podcast, where he was forced to drink a Guinness that he clearly did not enjoy. Upon taking his first sip, the Meta founder looked like he was fighting hard to choke back vomit.

While Zuck has once again failed miserably at looking like a relatable dude, he can at least take solace in the fact that The Social Reckoning bombed hard over the weekend. 

Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.

Markets: Top Wall Street indexes shrank yesterday amid a global semiconductor sell-off. Canada’s main stock index was unaffected, and actually benefited from an ease in bond yields.

Apple’s new CEO is hoping a US$299 family assistant can help it catch up in the AI race. 

What happened: Apple unveiled its long-awaited smart home hub called the HomeView, a device that serves as a personal assistant for everything from scheduling appointments to adjusting the thermostat. 

Why it matters: Apple is pitching the HomeView as the ideal host for its flagship AI offering: a revamped Siri assistant. The smart home hub’s success (or lack thereof) could signal whether people are truly as excited about AI personal assistants as Silicon Valley seems to believe they are. 

Yes, but: Fears have grown about the security of smart home systems and appliances. This week, a major cyberattack struck hundreds of supermarkets across France, remotely altering fridge temperatures, starting fires, and spoiling millions of euros’ worth of food. 

Our take: A lot of the HomeView’s features are also available on an iPhone or iPad. Apple could be overestimating how many people are willing to pay for a wall-mounted AI assistant to alleviate the laborious task of pulling their phone out of their pocket.—LA

Three Canadian roller-coasters closed after a death in Georgia. Following the fatality of a 42-year-old man on a Six Flags roller-coaster, Canada’s Wonderland (which is owned by Six Flags) and La Ronde are shutting down similar rides at their parks out of precaution, including the Behemoth and Leviathan coasters at Wonderland. Six Flags didn’t officially confirm the cause of the patron’s death, but other parkgoers reported seeing him fall off of the roller-coaster mid-ride. (CTV News)

Cyclists take bike lane battle to the Supreme Court. A group of cyclists is asking Canada’s highest court to hear a case that centres around the Ontario government tearing down bike lanes in Toronto, arguing that the province shouldn’t be permitted to pursue “life-risking policies.” The removal was initially blocked by a judge who found the policy to be an unconstitutional risk to cyclist safety, but that decision was overruled in August by the Ontario Court of Appeal. (The Canadian Press)

Stelco president defends decision to lay off Hamilton workers. In a letter to Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, the head of the steelmaker wrote that exports of cold-rolled and coated steel to the U.S. have plummeted 58% since the trade war began, calling the losses unsustainable. Ottawa approved the sale of Stelco to U.S.-based Cleveland-Cliffs two years ago under the condition that it maintain its worker headcount for five years. (The Canadian Press)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

As Canada's Challenger Bank, EQ Bank recently shared recommendations to the Department of Finance Canada ahead of the upcoming Budget 2026. They cover concrete steps to make banking more competitive and more affordable for Canadian households and businesses at a time when they need it most.

A few ideas we think you'll care about:

EQ Bank is grateful for the chance to collaborate with Finance Canada on a banking system that protects Canadians, while helping them get ahead, every day. Read EQ Bank’s full set of recommendations here.

🤝 Meet Nicole Parlapiano. She’s the chief marketing officer of Tubi, the fast-growing ad-supported free streaming service. With Tubi in the midst of its largest ad campaign to date in Canada, we sat down with Nicole to talk about viral social posts, the streaming wars, and why the platform feels so at home in Canada.

Tubi’s been in Canada for a few years, but what is its current market exposure?

One in five Canadians watch Tubi, so that's incredible strength in viewership. We've had a lot of growth in the market: 22% growth in total viewing time and 34% growth in weekly average viewers. So year-on-year, we've had a lot of growth here. We also have invested in an office and local talent. We have Gabe Lindo, who's our GM, but I also have a marketing team here now, and I am just very cautious about marketing and markets without having a local team to tell us how the brand should show up and make sure that it is locally relevant.

What is it that Tubi likes about Canada?

Canada's always been a place where stories can be stranger than what we'd accept in the U.S., and things incubate here, and then they get popular and set the stage for the best movies and comedy ever. So this has always been a place where people could, I think, experiment. And what they used to play on the public stations here — Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short, they were just fucking around and having fun with it — and I think Canadians have always been okay not following Hollywood standards. It always just felt to me like the perfect market, and so I'm excited to finally have the right pieces in place to actually be louder in this market.

There’s a viral X post that reads “I wanna work at Tubi so bad, I bet they let you smoke cigs in the office.” How much do you embrace this sort of trashy reputation?

Well, smoking cigarettes doesn't mean that you don't have good taste in content. I mean, aren't cigarettes kind of back? And I would say the Canadians with Heated Rivalry kind of put cigarettes back on the map.

I get great joy out of those tweets because I like that our audience doesn't see us as this stodgy Hollywood gated big corporate machine. They see that we respond to them, that we are in on the joke, and I think you can't ignore what's true about your brand. We do take more creative liberties, and we do in our marketing, take more risk than you see entertainment companies taking, and so I honour it, I don't think it's bad. It gives me a good laugh, and I think it's funny that they are always thinking about who's actually working there. I'll see in the comments sometimes, “Someone from Jersey is definitely running this account.” And I'm like, “I'm from New Jersey, and so was our head of social. How do they know?”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Read the full Q&A here.

One of Canada’s buzziest defence start-ups has found a new partner in Ukraine.

What happened: Dominion Dynamics signed a memorandum of understanding with Tencore to assemble the Ukrainian defence firm’s TerMIT armoured vehicles in Canada. Exact logistics are still up in the air, but both sides hope production can begin next year.

Why it matters: Dominion has great expectations, especially after securing the largest-ever Series A raise for a Canadian defence start-up earlier this year. However, it has yet to secure any procurements from the Canadian federal government. The Tencore deal is an encouraging sign that it will be able to successfully field clients outside of the feds. 

Zoom out: Speaking of the feds, Ottawa is committing harder than ever to Ukraine’s war efforts as U.S. support wavers, recently signing a 100-year strategic and political partnership as well as another agreement pledging a third of all Canadian-made drones to the country.—QH

🍿 $45.1 million. Box office revenue that Cineplex made in September, a new record for the month and a nearly 20% increase from the same period last year. The bump was driven by the continued popularity of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey and more guests choosing premium formats.

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What’s that? Why yes, we do have today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!