Cleanup in aisle three

Good morning. Welcome back from what we hope was a restful Thanksgiving long weekend. Over the weekend we noticed old clips from the Quebec variety show Soirée canadienne trending on social media, and they’re absolutely delightful. Here is one of our favourites to ease you back into the work week.

Today’s reading time is 5½ minutes.

Markets: Canadian markets were closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 slid a touch. Q3 earnings season in the U.S. gets underway in earnest today with major banks starting to report results.

After hitting a wall at home, China’s automakers are ready to try selling cars to Canadians. 

Driving the news: Geely Auto, China’s second-largest automaker, is planning to start selling EVs in Canada next year through its own dealership network, the first push by a major Chinese car manufacturer into the Canadian market.

Why it’s happening: Chinese companies are far ahead of Western automakers in the EV race (particularly on price), but demand at home has started to weaken, pushing them to expand into other markets. Geely’s domestic sales in the first nine months of this year have fallen 23%, while exports jumped 169%. 

Why it matters: Ottawa hopes it can lure investment from Chinese automakers in domestic manufacturing to help offset the damage done by U.S. tariffs to the country’s existing auto sector. 

Yes, but: The elephant in the room is how the U.S. will respond to Chinese forays into Canada’s auto sector. The White House has sounded different notes on the matter: Donald Trump has at times seemed surprisingly chill about Canada opening up its market, and at others has cited it as a major trade issue and warned Canada against becoming a “drop-off port” for Chinese cars. 

Zoom out: While Canada starts slowly cracking open the door to Chinese autos, Europe is trying to go in the opposite direction and cap Chinese car imports into the EU — its homegrown auto brands have steadily lost market to cheaper Chinese competitors, and Europe’s auto sector is facing mass layoffs.—LA

Russia struck Ukrainian oil refineries after Trump announced an “energy ceasefire.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia attacked six energy facilities across Ukraine yesterday and warned that Ukraine would retaliate against Russian energy sites if the attacks continued. Donald Trump announced over the weekend that both countries had agreed not to attack each other’s energy infrastructure, part of an effort to bring down oil and gas prices. (CBC News)

Saudi Arabia suspended all flights at its main international airport in Riyadh after Houthi attacks. The airport will be closed for air traffic until at least Saturday after missiles fired by Houthi militants struck the facility multiple times over the weekend and yesterday. At least 13 people were killed in the attacks along with hundreds wounded. Houthis also attacked other airports in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. (The Guardian)

Two economists won a Nobel Prize for their work on economic stability. Robert Hall and Michael Woodford split this year’s prize for economics for their work on the “microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization,” or how decisions by individuals and businesses affect the broader economy. The pair’s work has “helped us smooth out the economy’s peaks and troughs,” according to the committee that awarded the prize. (The Nobel Prize)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

If fear of internal conflict is what's keeping your salary bands in a drawer, you're in good company. 41% of Canadian HR leaders named it their top concern, the highest of any country we surveyed. Only 18% of employees think transparency would mostly cause conflict.

What employees want is simpler: to understand how pay gets decided. 78% say pay transparency matters, but only 36% say the criteria behind their pay are written down and shared. Nearly a quarter say it's never been explained at all.

Alan has set every salary with a published grid for ten years. Our free guide for Canadian employers has data from 700+ Canadians, a 5-step plan sized for growing teams, and what a decade of open pay did for our hiring.

Get the employer's guide!

It’s a bad day to be a pint of ice cream in a French supermarket. 

What happened: A major cyberattack struck hundreds of supermarkets across France, remotely altering fridge temperatures, starting fires, and spoiling millions of euros’ worth of food.

Why it matters: After decades of hooking everything up to the internet in the name of convenience and efficiency, we’re now discovering that comes with some serious downsides — like the ability for hackers to disrupt an entire country’s food supply chain, for example. 

Zoom out: Leaders at Anthropic and OpenAI are reportedly preparing for the public backlash that would follow a large-scale, AI-enabled cyberattack targeting a major bank or critical infrastructure, like a water or power utility. Many expect such an attack to happen within the next six to 12 months.

“The Prime Minister was clear: this agreement is in direct opposition to the efforts of Ukraine, Canada, and our allies to create peace and stability in Europe. It will provide additional revenue for Russia and help finance its illegal, unjustifiable war against Ukraine.” That’s how the Prime Minister’s Office described a call between Prime Minister Carney and Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the weekend, in which Carney apparently took aim at a U.S. plan to import millions of tonnes of diesel from Russia.

Why it matters: The statement is one of the most direct criticisms of U.S. foreign policy by a Canadian prime minister in recent memory. But it also contrasts sharply with another readout released yesterday by the PMO describing a call between Carney and Donald Trump, in which Carney “thanked the President for his leadership toward securing an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.” It’s a tension that underscores the balancing act Ottawa is attempting to strike between leaning into its European relationships without antagonizing (too much, at least) Washington.

Every purchase now comes with a follow-up: “How did we do?” Between the post-dinner texts, the post-delivery emails, and the post-Airbnb-stay nudges, we’re being asked to review everything — and many of us have stopped answering. And if you do feel compelled to leave a genuine rating? That effort will likely get drowned out in a sea of online fakery, from AI-slop reviews to incentivized (and illegal) flattery. Writer Sara Harowitz talked to a lawyer, a retail analyst, and a restaurant owner about how online reviews got here, and whether the real ones still matter.

▶️ Click here to read the full story

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🤖 US$70 billion. Annualized revenue that OpenAI says it expects to hit by the end of the year. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the company’s annualized revenue was US$50 billion as of September. What the final figure actually ends up being will largely depend on the definition of revenue used — per Bloomberg, the US$70 billion forecast is derived from “sales based on a shorter period.”

There’s no time like the present to take on today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who.