Essential needs

Good morning. After 74 historic years, CBC will no longer broadcast Hockey Night in Canada. Starting next season, the national broadcaster will not carry NHL games after failing to renew its sublicensing agreement with Rogers Sportsnet, the league’s Canadian rightsholder.

CBC plans to replace the Saturday night hockey block — which is part of the fabric of our national culture — with a new program focused on Canadian athletes competing in events featured at the Olympics.

Call us pessimists, but we don’t think biathlon or water polo are going to do the same numbers.

Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.

Markets: For the second straight session, Canada’s main stock index hit a record closing high yesterday. It wasn’t all rosy, though: shares in Garage owner Groupe Dynamite tanked 35.9% after it posted quarterly earnings, cutting new store plans and missing some targets.

More Canadians are asking strangers online for help paying their bills. 

Driving the news: New GoFundMe data shows that over 15,000 fundraisers have been launched in Canada for “essential needs” like bills, groceries, and housing payments in the first five months of 2026. Since 2020, there’s been a 274% increase in these types of cost-of-living fundraisers. 

Why it matters: The growing use of crowdfunding to cover basic life necessities reflects the growing wealth divide in Canada. The richest 20% of Canadian households now hold 65.5% of the country's net worth (around $3.5 million each, on average), while the bottom 40% have just 3.1%, averaging $82,100 per household.

What they’re saying: Despite the growing number of cost-of-living fundraisers, Canadians continue to give when they have a personal connection to the recipient. GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan told The Peak that the personal nature of the platform has helped buck the broader trend of declining charitable donations.  

Bottom line: Even with Canadians donating a combined $1 billion on GoFundMe in the last five years, most of these emergency fundraisers don’t hit their targets.—LA

SpaceX surpassed Amazon after announcing a $60 billion acquisition. The space company announced yesterday that it was buying AI coding startup Cursor, in a deal that will pay its founders exclusively in SpaceX stock. Cursor has been one of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing startups and has been a central player in the shift to so-called vibe coding. Shares in the Elon Musk-led company have surged 25% since its IPO last week, making it the fifth most valuable public company in the world. (TechCrunch)

Gildan shares tanked after short sellers accused it of inflating sales. The Canadian apparel company saw its stock fall ~18% following a report from short seller Jehoshaphat Research alleging that Gildan has been asking clients to order more products than they need to boost its revenue and improve the appearance of its quarterly earnings. Jehoshaphat Research claims it spoke to several former Gildan workers and customers who admitted to the practice. (Globe and Mail)

Quebec struck a language deal with the province’s English universities. McGill, Concordia, and Bishop’s universities have reached an eight-year deal with the province that will include $20 million in annual funding to help English-speaking students become more proficient in French. In return, the universities have committed to having 60% of their out-of-province students graduate with functional French. The deal puts an end to a legal saga that saw the schools sue the Quebec government over a proposed tuition hike for English-speaking students. (The Canadian Press)

📡 What else is on our radar:

Close your eyes and picture the dish you always order. The one you recommend to friends. The one that makes a place feel like your place.

Now imagine it quietly disappears from the menu because the restaurant can’t find enough people to keep up.

That is what labour shortages put at risk.

Restaurants are Canada’s 4th largest employer, supporting 1.2 million jobs and a $125 billion sector. Yet today, 70,000 foodservice jobs are vacant.

Eventually, that pressure lands somewhere we all notice: the plate.

So, what happens when those hands are harder to find? We think Canadians should know.

🤝 Meet Yannick Bigourdan. He's one of Toronto's most prolific restaurateurs and the operator behind buzzy names like The Berczy Tavern, The Carbon Bar, and the Michelin-recognized Lucie, as well as the founder of KLTY Hospitality Consulting. He stepped off the floor to field some questions about how the math of running a restaurant is changing, how he picks a vibe for a new spot, what a Michelin nod does for a restaurant, and some of his best dining experiences.

What has changed most about the restaurant industry since you first got into it?

The romance used to live in the dining room, and the kitchen was hidden away in the back. That has flipped completely. The kitchen is the show now, the chef is the personality, and the dining room is expected to feel effortless and even sometimes invisible. But the change that actually keeps me up at night is the math. When I started, you could build a restaurant around food cost in the high 20s and labour in the mid-20s, and the model worked. Both of those numbers have crept up while the guest, understandably, doesn't want to pay much more than they did a decade ago. So the margin for error has more or less disappeared.

What's a popular restaurant trend you'd like to see left in the past?

The idea that the restaurant is there to educate the guest. Think back to the early 2000s, when the Food Network was at its peak and suddenly every server was expected to teach you something about your meal. It made sense at the time. It doesn't now. Today's guests are well travelled and genuinely knowledgeable. They've eaten widely and they know what they like. That posture of teaching the customer feels dated to me, and a little condescending.

What's been your most memorable dining experience anywhere in the world?

Without a doubt, Daniel in New York. It's a masterclass in hospitality, with an incredibly curated menu, and I was lucky enough to be hosted by chef Daniel Boulud himself. The whole evening was almost surreal. It's a memory I'll always cherish.

A glass of wine at lunch on a weekday — yay or nay?

Yes, without hesitation. A glass of white at lunch is part of the culture I come from, where people take the time to actually sit down in the middle of a long working day. There's something to that. A proper break, a glass of wine, something delicious, and you come back to the afternoon reset. A glass of Chablis with that salad? Anyone?

This interview has been lightly edited for length. Read the full Q&A on our website.

Ottawa is taking another crack at solving one of its longest-standing political bugbears.

What happened: Canada’s Indigenous services minister tabled Bill C-37 yesterday, the latest piece of federal legislation meant to solve the First Nations drinking water crisis. It aims to ensure “First Nations have legally enforceable protections for safe drinking water.”

Why it matters: The drinking water crisis has been a persistent issue for three decades now. Justin Trudeau promised to end all long-term drinking water advisories in First Nations communities by 2021. Since 2015, 156 have been lifted, but 38 still remain across 36 communities — and official stats may actually underestimate the scope of the problem.

Zoom out: At a meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance last week, the Assembly of First Nations said it would cost about $778 million in sustained funding to solve the 38 advisories, and $44.2 billion total to address all water and wastewater-related issues.—QH

🤖 US$34 billion. How much OpenAI spent last year, while bringing in $13 billion in revenue. Despite the spending spree, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has seen its market share dip below 50% for the first time since it was released, thanks largely to the emergence of Anthropic’s Claude.

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