Dude, where’s my carbon price?

Good morning. After retiring from professional competition earlier this year, Canadian curling legend Brad Gushue has taken a job as the high-performance director for… USA Curling. 

To be fair to Gushue, he said he took the job only after much consideration and because a similar role didn’t exist for him here in Canada. Now to be completely unfair to him, this is treason of the highest order and we hope he oversees the implosion of the organization.

Today’s reading time is 5½ minutes.

Markets: Canada’s main stock index fell yesterday on general economic uncertainty, with most of its subgroups down. The worst performer was the tech sector, which fell 1.7%, as big names like Shopify, Open Text, and Thomson Reuters all found themselves in the red.

A new west coast pipeline is one step closer to reality.

Driving the news: Ottawa and Alberta are ready to strike a deal on industrial carbon pricing, sources told the Globe and Mail. The two sides will agree to raise Alberta’s fee for industrial polluters from the current rate of $95 per tonne of carbon emitted to $130 per tonne by 2040.   

Why it matters: The memorandum of understanding between the feds and Alberta to build a new oil pipeline to B.C. includes commitments for the province to cut emissions, including raising its carbon price. With that hurdle cleared, the pipeline is one step closer to reality.

Zoom out: The Carney government has not hesitated to slash Trudeau-era environmental regulations for the sake of political expediency and infrastructure (see also: ending the consumer carbon tax, nerfing the oil and gas sector emissions cap). With this move, Carney has basically torn up the industrial pricing strategy, which will have carbon consequences.—QH

The Alberta separatist referendum was thrown out by an Alberta court. Following a challenge from a First Nations group, a provincial judge tossed out the petition that could’ve triggered a referendum on Alberta’s separation from Canada. The Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation argued that the referendum would violate its treaty rights and Canada’s constitution. Still, the ruling does not mean the independence referendum is necessarily dead: Premier Danielle Smith has previously said she would put the independence question on the ballot this fall if the necessary signatures were collected. Last week, Alberta separatists submitted a petition with over 300,000 signatures, nearly double the total needed to trigger a vote, though they have not yet been verified by Elections Alberta. (Globe and Mail)

High-stakes U.S.-China summit kicks off in Beijing. The leaders of the world’s two largest economies have begun two days of talks that will centre around trade disputes (most prominently AI chip restrictions) as well as Taiwan and the Iran war. Accompanying Donald Trump on the trip are a number of CEOs looking to resolve business issues with Beijing, including Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Apple’s Tim Cook. Hard to imagine the combined net worth on that Air Force One flight. (Associated Press) 

Anthropic now has more business customers than any AI company. According to new data from payment platform Ramp, 34.4% of business customers now use Anthropic’s services, more than any other AI company, including OpenAI. It’s a remarkable milestone given that just 9% of businesses were paying for an Anthropic product a year ago. OpenAI, on the other hand, has seen its share of the business market fall 1% over that span. (TechCrunch)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

A new survey from Mydoh found that 90% of Canadian parents regularly talk to their kids about money. Yet only 9% strongly agree their child is prepared to manage it independently once they move out on their own.

That gap? It's the difference between knowing and doing.

Mydoh's first-ever Financial Resilience Report digs into why financial knowledge isn't translating into financial readiness, and what parents can actually do about it. Key findings include:

Financial confidence comes from doing – not just understanding. Mydoh helps bridge that gap by giving kids practical, hands-on opportunities to make real-world money decisions, with parent oversight built in.

Read Mydoh's Financial Resilience Report

A new study found that there is a biological sweet spot for sleep — between six and eight hours a night — that is linked to lower rates of disease and longer lives. Researchers analyzed 500,000 adults and discovered that getting more (or less) than six to eight hours of sleep per night can actually be detrimental to your health. 

Why it matters: The study provides the most comprehensive picture yet of the link between sleep and the health effects of aging. While researchers say everyone’s sleep needs can be different, the results support the theory that improving our sleep can cut our risk of age-related diseases.

Prestigious business schools are starting to put their degrees on sale like a bakery trying to move day-old croissants. 

Driving the news: A number of top universities, including Purdue, University of California, and Johns Hopkins, are offering tuition discounts of up to 50% for certain MBA degrees as they grapple with declining enrolment for programs, per The Wall Street Journal.  

Why it matters: The MBA, at least in its traditional form, is no longer the silver bullet it once was for finding well-paid work out of school. As a result, more students are thinking twice before spending up to US$300,000 on a degree that may not even guarantee them the chance to rock a Patagonia vest and collect a healthy six-figure paycheque.

Why it’s happening: Having an MBA certainly doesn’t hurt your chances in the job market, but these days, employers are placing a higher value on AI fluency and skills-based credentials rather than a second university degree. Last year, mentions of AI literacy skills on LinkedIn job postings — for everything from administrative assistants to writers — nearly tripled compared to 2024.—LA

🏝️ 700 billion. Minutes that people have spent watching Survivor in the show’s history, the equivalent of 1.3 million years. Not accounting for subscription revenue that it’s driven for NBC’s Peacock streaming service, the reality show has netted the network over US$270 million in the last four years alone.

You have an appointment with today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!