Pantry staples

Good morning. A new survey from media insights company Charter found that executives are about twice as likely as their subordinates to trust AI over their own judgment, with around a third of exec respondents saying they trust bots over their own brains.

Despite this, the survey’s lead author says that "the odds that an AI CEO shows up and takes over a company are excruciatingly low." Hmmm, let’s check back in a few years from now when even more leaders have offloaded their cognitive abilities to a machine. 

Today’s reading time is 5½ minutes.

Markets: Canada’s main stock index was in the green yesterday as the tech and financial sectors rose. Meanwhile, shares of SpaceX and Netflix continued their divergent paths after both posted earnings on Tuesday, with the former up 7.8% and the latter dropping 5.3%.

More Canadians can’t keep their pantries full without help.

Driving the news: Food bank usage across Canada has more than doubled since 2019, according to new data, with a record-high 2.35 million visits in March of this year. Nearly one in five Canadians who are using food banks are employed, up from around one in 10 seven years ago. 

Why it’s happening: While grocery inflation has slowed as of late — September saw the smallest annual increase in nearly two and a half years — prices are still elevated after years of hikes. According to RBC data, a typical grocery basket has become 30% costlier since 2019. 

Why it matters: The spike in food bank usage, especially among employed Canadians, reflects how the cost of everyday essentials has been outpacing earnings growth. Since 2021, the cost of groceries and housing has grown 50% faster than Canadians’ average hourly pay, according to Kaylie Tiessen, chief economist at the Canadian SHIELD Institute. 

Bottom line: Food banks have been a saviour for a lot of Canadians, but they are a band-aid solution that can’t sustain this type of volume. One in five food banks in the country are already running out of food before feeding all of their visitors.—LA

Ottawa and Ontario roll out $9 billion in relief for tariff-impacted sectors. Mark Carney and Premier Doug Ford unveiled billions in additional financial support for steelmakers, auto businesses, and critical minerals in Ontario, with Carney citing the “cloud of uncertainty” U.S. tariffs have created. The leaders also announced a $1 billion investment to build road infrastructure to the Ring of Fire — a critical minerals hub in northern Ontario. (CBC News)

SpaceX and Tesla are discussing a merger. The two Elon Musk-run companies have begun exploring a US$3.5 trillion merger, with the tie-up being described as a matter of when, not if. Musk said that the deal would make it easier for the companies to jointly develop robotics, AI chips, and other tech (like more flying cars, perhaps). (Semafor)

RCMP raid Quebec bus maker. As many as 75 officers searched Lion Electric’s headquarters outside of Montreal yesterday as part of a larger fraud investigation. A CBC News report last year found that Lion Electric allegedly exaggerated the size of its order book and failed to disclose to investors that it had lost major customers. The company, which landed millions in government investment, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2024. (CTV News)

📡 What else is on our radar: 

Everyone assumes AI spending is a Toronto tech story. Float's data says otherwise.

Float pulled anonymized transaction data from 10,000+ Canadian businesses, covering two years of real card spend, to build Canada's AI Spending Snapshot. A few things stood out:

If you're building a 2027 budget, this is the benchmark you're missing.

See the full report.

Six Figures is our anonymous interview series with Canadian workers making over $100,000 in all kinds of industries. Do they feel well-compensated? How did they get to where they are? What advice do they have for others looking to break in or level up? To get these stories, we dipped into our very own Canadian Salary Index, a growing database of compensation intel. Check it out — and add your own salary. 

“I graduated in 2012 and immediately started working. I had an internship at an ad agency and then I ended up getting hired by that ad agency when I graduated. I was making $36,000 a year. Four years later, I went to a retail consultancy, where my salary was $70,000 and went up to $85,000 by the time I left. In 2018, I started at my current company, doing branding design work for hospitality and restaurants — I’m not an interior designer. I’ve never really had promotions, but my salary has gone up.” 

Do you feel well-compensated?

“Probably not. I think it's the case for a lot of salaried people, where you end up taking on a lot more jobs. I do have a good work-life balance. I try to block off my evenings and weekends, even if there’s a 3 a.m. email from a restaurant client because they’re still working and I'm like, ‘Oh, I'm not going to answer that until Monday.’

I’ve just quit to go freelance. I felt like I was stagnating a little bit and there was no further room for upward growth. My boss is going to be my first freelance client. But I’m hoping for more money and also more variety.” 

What do you want people to know about the industry? 

“That the stereotype that restaurants are terrible businesses is true. The margins are really tight. It's really hard to succeed. There isn't a lot of money to put toward what some people consider superfluous creative and branding. I would argue that the ones that do it right are the ones that see the value in that.”

Advice for anyone looking to break into hospitality design? 

“Embrace the power of your network and don't let anyone be a stranger.”

One of the unsung backbones of the modern internet is under threat.

Driving the news: Developers of PHP — a programming language that powers as much as 70% of the internet — warned of two vulnerabilities that hackers could use to take control of systems (in mere seconds in some cases), and urged users to apply newly released security patches. Many websites, including government of Canada sites, went offline as a precaution. 

Why it matters: This bug had been hiding in PHP for years, and it likely would have stayed hidden were it not for the advent of new AI cybersecurity models (the researcher who first uncovered it was using OpenAI’s ultrapowerful GPT-5.6 Sol model). The situation speaks to the growing fear of “Bugmageddon,” where AI unleashes a flood of unpatched vulnerabilities.

What’s next: One security consultant told Wired that the “worst case is wormable malware affecting big chunks of the internet.” As of writing, there is no major confirmed breach, but since the use of PHP is so pervasive, fears remain that something will happen.—QH

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