Left turn

Earnings to watch: Nike will report its results on Tuesday, while Quebec-based retailer Groupe Dynamite (the owner of Garage), will hold its earnings call on Wednesday. Markets will be closed on Friday for the Easter holiday.

NDP members are betting that a sharp turn leftward can revive their party’s fortunes.

What happened: Former journalist and filmmaker Avi Lewis won the federal NDP’s leadership race handily, capturing 56% of the vote on the first ballot. Alberta MP Heather McPherson came in second with 29%.

Why it matters: The election of Lewis, a self-described socialist, is a gamble that after years of bleeding support, the NDP can chart a path back to relevance by embracing a more aggressive left-wing agenda. 

Yes, but: Some provincial NDP leaders are less keen on the direction Lewis is taking the party. Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi said the direction of the party “is not in the interests of Alberta,” and Saskatchewan NDP leader Carla Beck published an open letter rebuking Lewis’s positions on energy.

What’s next: With the NDP down to just six members of Parliament and still polling in the single digits, Lewis has his work cut out for him to turn the page on a pretty bleak era for the party.—TS

Pakistan says it will hold talks between the U.S. and Iran. The announcement from Pakistani officials, which hasn’t been confirmed by Washington or Tehran, comes as ~3,500 additional U.S. troops arrived in the Middle East. Iran has rejected any negotiations under military pressure, claiming the U.S. is using the talks to distract from a ground invasion. The Washington Post reported that U.S. forces were planning for a weeks-long ground operation in Iran, likely focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. (Reuters)

Ottawa passes bill to limit asylum claims. Under the new immigration law, any person who makes an asylum claim after living in Canada for more than a year will no longer be entitled to an asylum hearing and will be fast-tracked for deportation. The law aims to crack down on international students who are increasingly claiming asylum to stay in the country after their study permits expire. In the past year, 17% of all asylum claims in Canada have come from students. (Globe and Mail)

Eli Lilly bets big on AI drug discovery. The pharmaceutical giant has cut a US$2.75 billion deal with AI drug developer Insilico for the exclusive rights to commercialize their medicines globally. Hong Kong-based Insilico has already developed at least 28 drugs using its in-house AI tools, nearly half of which are already at a clinical stage. (Bloomberg News)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

🪐 Launch of Artemis II. The mission to send humans back to the moon could launch as early as Wednesday. Canadian Jeremy Hansen will be among the four-person crew that will travel 8,000 kilometres past the moon — the farthest humans have gone from Earth — before returning back home 10 days later. This crew won’t land on the moon, but will test NASA’s new Space Launch System and Orion capsule, setting the stage for a planned 2028 landing on the lunar surface. 

📊 New GDP data. We’ll get updated January GDP numbers and preliminary February data tomorrow. Statistics Canada estimated that the economy was stagnant in January, but there are some signs of growth ticking up slightly in February. Trade data on Thursday may also start to show the impact of higher oil prices on Canada’s trade deficit.

🇺🇸 U.S. jobs report. The latest non-farm payrolls report for the U.S. economy will be released on Friday, and forecasters expect to see a gain of around 50,000 net new jobs. February’s report was surprisingly weak and showed the economy losing 92,000 jobs, raising concerns about an economic slowdown.

AI chatbots are happily sending people down conspiracy rabbit holes. 

Driving the news: A pair of recent research papers found that AI chatbots tend to reaffirm users’ dangerous beliefs and distort their sense of reality. 

Zoom in: The UofT researchers found that AI chatbots consistently validated users' unfounded claims about stalking and surveillance, using terms like “SMOKING GUN”, “100% certain”, and "this is stalking.” Without any evidence, the chatbots assured users they were the victim of conspiracies involving family members, government agencies, and colleagues. 

Why it’s happening: One cause may be that users appear to prefer responses that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs, and chatbots have been designed to keep people chatting (including by telling us what we want to hear).

Bottom line: Even as AI models have improved, Anthropic’s own data suggests that these cases of reality distortion have actually grown. It’s hard to imagine that trend reversing course without a serious shift in how these products are designed.—LA

🇨🇦 $31.2 billion. Canada’s budget deficit in the first 10 months of the fiscal year, up from $26.85 billion during the same period a year ago. The Liberal government's most recent budget anticipates the deficit will remain high over the next five years, but fall slightly to $56.6 billion by 2029-30.

Without further ado, today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who.