Goblin mode

Markets: Canada’s main stock index emphatically broke a five-day losing streak yesterday, posting its biggest daily gain in a month on strong corporate earnings. A top performer was T-shirt giant Gildan Activewear, which saw shares rise 9.5% after a quarterly earnings beat.

Ottawa wants to make “snow-washing” a thing of the past.

Driving the news: The federal government is establishing a new financial crime agency that will be responsible for investigating money laundering, corruption, and other white-collar crimes in Canada. The Financial Crime Agency (FCA) will act as a standalone police force, with the power to investigate, arrest, and prosecute financial criminals. 

Catch-up: These types of crimes have historically been handled by Fintrac and the RCMP, but neither has had the authority or resources to really go after financial criminals. Fintrac can only issue relatively small fines and simply hands off its investigation findings to police. 

Why it matters: Up to $130 billion of dirty money flows through Canada’s financial system every year, earning the country a reputation as a money laundering haven. Having a dedicated agency focused on investigating and prosecuting these types of cases could turn around that bad rap. 

Bottom line: In the 2023-24 fiscal year, Fintrac flagged $44 billion in transactions that were likely tied to money laundering, terrorist financing, or other financial crimes. If that money were clean and contributing to Canada’s economy, it would likely be a top 20 sector for the country’s GDP.—LA

An Alberta separatist group gained access to private elector data. Elections Alberta took The Centurion Project to court yesterday and successfully forced it to stop sharing Alberta voters’ personal information with its members. The separatist organization somehow gained access to an elector list and built an app that could search for Alberta residents by name or address, a tool designed to recruit new members to the independence movement. (CBC News)

Bombardier rode the private jet boom to a banner quarter. The Montreal jet maker brought in US$1.6 billion in revenue in the first quarter and saw its free cash flow (money left over after expenses and capital expenditures) hit its highest level in two decades. Bombardier, which was on the brink of folding just 10 years ago, is now boasting a market cap of more than $28 billion. Not a bad turnaround. (Globe and Mail)

Polymarket has added new tools to bust insider traders. The prediction market platform says it has built a new set of tools that will flag suspicious trades for insider trading and provide evidence to help law enforcement agencies go after the users. The move comes a week after a U.S. military officer was arrested for allegedly turning a ~US$400,000 profit betting on the ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — an operation that he was directly involved in. (Bloomberg News)

What else is on our radar: 

Every day, people count on public services to access benefits, keep food safe, protect communities, and respond when disaster strikes.

But Prime Minister Carney’s government is cutting those services, leaving workers and their families who are already stretched thin, without support. The consequences are real: longer waits, growing backlogs, and greater uncertainty when support is needed most.

Great nations aren’t built through austerity – they’re built by investing in the public services people rely on and the workers who deliver them.

If this government is serious about a strong Canada, it should invest in strong, reliable public services.

For you, for your loved ones, for your community — For You, Canada.

Montreal-based food-tech startup Opalia raised $3.2 million in a seed round. The money will help the company commercialize its technology, which creates lab-grown dairy cheese, butter, milk and other dairy products using cow cells. Opalia has already filed for a patent and is expected to begin commercial sales in 2028. 

Why it matters: While lab-grown dairy products are a pretty new development, the market for dairy alternatives is booming. If it tastes like the real stuff, the startup could be on the ground floor of a new food niche. Dang, even cows are at risk of getting laid off these days.

It seems OpenAI’s models have been reading too many fantasy books. 

Driving the news: OpenAI published a blog post explaining why it instructed GPT-5.5 — its latest model powering ChatGPT — to never mention goblins or gremlins unless it's entirely relevant to a query. It comes after several posts about the system prompt went viral. 

Why it’s happening: OpenAI first noticed a spike in mentions of fairy tale creatures last November in the wake of GPT-5.1, calculating that use of “goblin” had increased 175% after the launch of the model, while use of “gremlin” jumped 52%. As the mentions continued to rise, the team was able to trace the root cause: the model’s customized personality feature.

Why it matters: The goblin phenomenon is an innocuous example of a deeper problem. Positive reinforcement and an imperative to be liked by users can cause bots to give inaccurate answers. Or worse, be sycophantic and encourage bad behaviour.—QH

🌎 Hint: This island is known for its dramatic waterfalls, black sand beaches, and massive shield volcano at its centre. It’s also home to a vast network of underground lava tubes, including one of the longest in the world. The island’s female free divers, known as haenyeo, famously harvest local seafood without oxygen tanks. 

Take a closer look and lock in your guess here.

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⛳️ US$5.3 billion. How much the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund has invested in the LIV Golf Tour over the past four years — it’s now pulling funding after years of steep losses. LIV poached top players away with $300 million salaries, but has lost $1.4 billion over the last three and a half seasons.

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And, like clockwork, here comes the mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!