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Good morning. Here’s a fun stat to kick off the day. Number of active NFL players who are also grandfathers: one.

Philip Rivers, who hasn’t played pro football since 2020, has come out of retirement as a ‘break in case of emergency’ quarterback option for the Indianapolis Colts. The team, which has all three of its QBs out with injury, might have to start Old Man Rivers this weekend. 

At age 44, Rivers is currently the oldest player in the league. As well, the eldest of his 14 (!) children had a baby just this year, meaning if he starts, he’d be the first grandfather to play in an NFL game since Brett Favre 15 years ago. We desperately hope that this happens.

Today’s reading time is 6 minutes.

Markets: Canada’s main stock index rose yesterday as metal mining shares were boosted by record silver prices. However, anxiety about upcoming interest rate cut decisions held back a real surge.

Like all of us this time of year, Canada is looking for ways to buy new stuff for less.

What happened: Canada’s new Defence Investment Agency (DIA) awarded its first contract, a ~$3 million “strategic partnership” with Telesat and MDA Space to build satellite comms for the military in the Canadian Arctic. The commitment is part of a larger ~$5 billion operation the DIA is overseeing to improve satellite comms options in the region.

Why it matters: This is the first test to see if the DIA can deliver on its goals of streamlining procurement, boosting domestic industries, and involving the private sector in project development — all things Canada’s current defence procurement system struggles to do.

Yes, but: The DIA is only in charge of handling procurements worth more than $100 million. This was done so the agency doesn’t get bogged down with every tiny deal, but some critics feel this makes the DIA simply a half-measure, cutting red tape for some projects but not all.

What’s next: The DIA is also in charge of procuring new submarines, new Arctic radar, new surveillance aircraft and software upgrades for the CC-130J Hercules transport aircraft.—QH

Air Transat reaches tentative deal with pilots. The airline has averted a pilots strike, which could have begun today. Details of the deal, which will need to be ratified by the pilots’ union, have not been released.

SpaceX planning largest IPO in history. The Elon Musk-led space company is reportedly planning an IPO for next year to raise more than US$30 billion at a $1.5 trillion valuation, which would make it the largest public listing of all time.

Microsoft commits $7.5 billion to Canadian data centers. The tech giant emphasized that it will prioritize digital sovereignty, keeping all data within Canada and resisting any orders that would disrupt its services.

Canada’s ambassador to U.S. calls it quits. Kirsten Hillman will leave her post as Canada’s top envoy to Washington in the new year. Ex-Blackrock exec Mark Wiseman is her likely replacement.

China limits Nvidia chip imports from the U.S. Despite the Trump administration’s decision to allow Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chips in the Chinese market, Beijing is now planning to limit how many are imported, part of an effort to build a self-sufficient AI supply chain.

Ottawa planning largest-ever trade mission. The feds say a February trade trip to Mexico will likely be the largest it's ever made to a foreign country, with hundreds of Canadian businesses already applying to tag along. We’re not sure turnout would’ve been this high if the trip wasn’t in the gruel of Canadian winter. 

Zelenskyy given “days” to respond to U.S.-backed peace deal. President Trump says Volodymyr Zelenskyy needs to respond in days to a proposed peace deal that would force Ukraine to accept territorial losses in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S. Trump is reportedly aiming to have a deal done by Christmas.

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There are going to be some extremely irritable Australian kids this morning. Spare a thought for their parents. 

What happened: As of today, millions of children under 16 in Australia will be blocked from using social media, a first-of-its-kind ban that will put the onus on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and X to remove all underage accounts and prevent kids from making new ones. 

Catch-up: The Aussies are not the only ones trying to get kids to put down their phones and touch grass. In Canada, most provinces have rolled out some form of cell phone ban in schools, while Québec is considering an outright social media ban for kids under 16. 

Why it matters: The big question mark around age restrictions on social media has been how to enforce them. Australia will serve as a global guinea pig — if its ID system works, it could quickly be adopted by other countries grappling with their own generation of chronically online children.

Bottom line: Few people now dispute the countless studies showing the negative effects of social media on children’s mental health and development. The real question is whether parents, governments and social media platforms can collectively make an outright ban like this work in practice.—LA

🤝 Meet Dr. Andrew Boozary. He’s a primary care physician, policy practitioner, researcher, and founding executive director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto. He recently helped establish Dunn House, the first-ever social medicine supportive housing initiative in Canada, and his name has been floated as a possible challenger to Ontario Premier Doug Ford. We asked him about the links between housing and healthcare, private medicine, and what countries he thinks are getting healthcare right.

People who are chronically unhoused, live on average, half as long as the general public. It’s a damning health statistic. The reasons are clear: the physiological stress of unstable shelter, the inability to manage medications or follow-up, and far worse access to primary care. As a result, and through no fault of the individual, patients with no fixed address have higher rates of illnesses like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, and tend to have health care costs that are eight times higher. We cannot talk about universal health care without committing to housing as a human right. Housing policy is health policy. We either invest in homes and prevention, or we pay for it through emergency department visits, prisons, and most devastatingly, early deaths.

When I looked at the data, one thing stood out: 234 Toronto patients accounted for more than 15,000 emergency department visits in 2019 alone. The UHN CEO and Board were incredible in leveraging a hospital parking lot to partner with every level of government and the United Way to build Dunn House, a permanent social medicine housing complex for UHN patients who were cycling through emergency departments, hospital wards and living in shelters or encampments. One year in, we saw a reduction of more than 50% in ED visits, a 79% drop in hospital bed use, over $2 million in health care savings, and most importantly, people gaining back stability, relationships, and dignity. And if you haven’t had a chance to read about Jason Miles, you should. That is the true heroism in all this. 

I don’t look to any single country for a silver bullet. I look to places that treat health as a collective, iterative project: where primary care is the foundation of a high-performing health system and housing, income and childcare are treated as core health infrastructure, as you see in some Nordic countries. André Picard has called Canada “the least universal health system in the world.” We insure hospitals and doctors but leave out pharmacare, homecare, and many of the supports other countries treat as basic. Years ago, I called this Canada’s “Mirage of Universality.” We talk a lot about universality in contrast to the U.S., but we have never funded it at the scale our rhetoric implies.

This excerpt has been edited for clarity and length. Read the full Q&A on our website.

📺 303,000. New cable TV subscribers in the U.S. last quarter, the first time since 2017 that subscriptions actually increased. As streaming platforms raise prices, the data suggests that the age-old cable bundle may be able to survive — especially those that pair traditional channels with streaming services — and that most of the people who were going to cut the cord have already done it.

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Score a major win against today’s mini-crossword.