Buying Canadian-ish

Good morning. German grocery chain Lidl has opened the hottest new pub in Ireland. Frustrated with the country's strict liquor licence laws, Lidl found a creative workaround: Build a pub inside its grocery stores. Since patrons are allowed to buy takeaway drinks, Lidl can not only sell pints of Guinness in the pub, but also cans to bring home.  

Something tells us that if Costco did this, it would become a very popular Friday night destination. Who doesn’t want to drink a few beers, grab a $1.50 hot dog, and go browse for new patio furniture?  

Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.

Markets: A tech stock rally sent the Nasdaq to a record high, while the TSX inched slightly higher on the day.

Figuring out how to buy Canadian at the grocery store is hard enough. For the federal government, it’s proving to be an even taller order. 

What happened: According to a Toronto Star investigation, nearly a third of federal procurement dollars have been awarded to American-controlled companies since Mark Carney took office, up from one-fifth in the 16 months before he was elected.

Why it matters: We’re starting to see the practical limits of the federal government’s effort to spend more money with Canadian companies. In the case of many major procurements (like a $100 billion fleet of submarines), the best, and sometimes only, option is offered by non-Canadian businesses.

Zoom out: Many of Canada’s international trade deals stipulate that once a government contract exceeds a certain dollar amount, it must be open to foreign companies too. That means Ottawa is often not technically allowed to favour homegrown firms for major contracts (though allies have complained that Ottawa is doing so anyway). 

Our take: The reality is that many of the world's most important companies are American. For “Buy Canadian” to be a realistic goal across government procurement, we’re going to need to create a lot more viable Canadian competitors.—LA

UofT launches a $100 million fund to lure PhD students. The University of Toronto will double the pay for new PhD researchers in a bid to attract a wave of fresh academic talent, particularly from U.S. schools. U of T’s president said the school now has the most lucrative PhD funding package in Canada, and close to the top globally. (Globe and Mail)

Canadian troops are struggling in the Arctic. Despite Ottawa’s commitment to have a military presence in the Arctic year-round, an internal government investigation found that Canadian troops were ill-prepared and ill-equipped for the -30 C conditions. During a major training exercise with U.S. troops in Alaska this year, there were multiple instances of technology malfunctioning in the cold, troops making phone calls (and giving away their locations to the theoretical enemies), and several cases of frostbite. (CBC News)

McDonald’s is facing a class-action lawsuit over AI pricing. The fast-food chain is being sued in Chicago for allegedly using an AI algorithm to implement vastly different prices for the same menu items at different locations. A Reuters investigation found that, in one case, a Big Mac at a location in Fresno, California, was priced at US$5.69, while the burger at a location just two miles away was $6.89 — more than 20% more expensive. (Reuters) 

📡 What else is on our radar: 

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A prime minister only has so many hours in a day. For Mark Carney, whose attention has been divided between a trade war with the U.S., a flashy investment summit, and deepening European ties, that might be truer than ever. Enter: the Prime Minister’s Office, Carney’s inner circle. “In every government that I have known, that top echelon of a prime minister's staff almost always has more influence and more impact on what the government does than most of the ministers in his cabinet," says an Ottawa insider close to the prime minister. We dug into who exactly who is driving decisions in the PMO, and what it says about how Carney is governing the country.

Read the full story and get to know who’s who in Carney’s inner circle.

“We’re watching and monitoring it closely,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of reports that a lab worker at a Siberian plague research institute had died last week after an accident in the facility. “I ⁠don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause just to keep an ⁠eye on it.”

Why it matters: The details of what happened at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute are murky, but local press reports indicate the infection that killed the worker was a case of pneumonic plague. Dozens of people have been quarantined, but Russian authorities say the situation is under control and no new cases have been discovered.

For the first time in more than a decade, Quebec will be governed by a separatist party.

What happened: A resurgent Parti Québécois (PQ) will form a minority government in Quebec after promising to hold an independence referendum within the next four years, falling just a handful of seats short of a majority with less than 30% of the popular vote.

Why it matters: Between the PQ and Québec solidaire, a smaller left-wing separatist party, the election has produced a separatist majority in Quebec’s National Assembly. But Plamondon’s failure to secure a majority makes the path to independence more challenging.

What’s next: Plamondon could charge ahead with a referendum anyway, though he has promised to do so only once Donald Trump has left office, and there’s no guarantee his minority government will last that long. In the meantime, he is likely to look for fights to pick with Ottawa to improve his side’s chances should he gets the referendum he’s promised, which could complicate the federal government’s efforts to marshal a unified response to a hostile U.S. administration.

Most rental developers hand you a gym and a party room. Fitzrovia handed its residents 10 minutes and a shot at $10,000, pitching their businesses to founder and CEO Adrian Rocca.

Read the full story on Fitz Pitch.

🏔️ 76,500. Alberta’s population growth last year, more than any other province or territory. While overall immigration was down across the country, a steady stream of Canadians have moved to Alberta from other provinces, particularly B.C. and Ontario.

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