The Peak Weekend Reader

Good morning. When our writers received an invitation to tour the offices of Canada Rocket Company, one of the country’s newest space startups, they knew they couldn’t betray their inner children and say no. But our interest in rockets goes beyond a middle-schooler’s fascination. Hugh Kolias, the CEO and co-founder of Canada Rocket Company, estimates that, conservatively, more than 50% of the world’s economy is tied to space, whether that’s GPS for our transportation networks, powering our credit card transactions, or, increasingly, our connection to the internet. It turns out that sovereignty — easily the buzzword for 2026 — applies to outer orbit, too.

While other space startups typically bet on some kind of groundbreaking innovation, Canada Rocket Company is sticking to the basics. They’re building a reusable rocket in the style of those that came before it that fills an explicit market need: taking Canadian satellites into space — something SpaceX is increasingly reluctant to do.

Next week, our transit column with Reece Martin returns, along with a deep dive into the surprising geopolitical utility of the Welland Canal.

Happy reading,

Liz

🤓 Justin Trudeau has found himself a new role. Oxford University announced that our old prime minister has joined its Blavatnik School of Government as a fellow and member of its World Leaders Circle — which basically sounds like a retirement home for former PMs, counting the U.K.’s Rishi Sunak and New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern as members. We hope JT teaches his new pals about quantum computing and shows them how to fall down stairs.   

🍞 Scammers got themselves some bread price-fixing bread. When Loblaw opened its claims process to reimburse Canadians affected by its bread price-fixing scheme, scammers jumped at the chance for some quick cash. A new Globe and Mail piece breaks down how they did it, and unveils that an estimated $8.5 million worth of claims were possibly fraudulent. 

🤑  A group chat won Canada’s biggest-ever lotto prize. Four friends from Calgary who were in a group chat together where they’d organize buying lottery tickets beat the odds and won the $90 million Lotto Max prize. The group — who aptly dubbed themselves Manifesting Millions — have officially claimed the prize, with each member taking a juicy $22.5 million cut. 

👋 Turns out getting slapped extremely hard in the face is dangerous. An Australian inquiry is looking into emerging competitions like Power Slap (where people slap each other) and Run Nation (where people run into each other) to see how they can be regulated to make them safer. However, one concussion expert told the inquiry that she felt that there were no ways to do this, and said that “death is a distinct possibility” in both contests.

On Thursday, the U.S. government expanded its onerous sanctions on Cuba, continuing a mission by the second Trump administration to choke the communist island into submission. 

The campaign kicked into high gear in January when the White House signed an order threatening tariffs on any country that shipped fuel to Cuba, exacerbating an ongoing energy crisis in the country. Another major move came in May when, looking to further isolate Cuba’s economy, the U.S. extended the threat of sanctions to anyone doing business in Cuba’s metals and mining, energy, defence, financial services, and security sectors. 

While the primary outcome of these two actions has been an extended humanitarian crisis in Cuba, there have been other unforeseen ripple effects — like job losses in Alberta and a critical mineral bottleneck… let us explain.

This week, Canadian critical minerals company Sherritt International announced it was temporarily laying off 47% of its workforce at its nickel and cobalt processing plant in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta — some 280 employees. The furloughs are expected to last 90 days, but considering the plant hasn’t been operational since June and there’s no timeline for it restarting, it could end up being much longer. Why hasn’t the plant been operational? In short: the Cuban sanctions. 

Since 1991, Sherritt’s Fort Saskatchewan refinery has received nickel and cobalt feed — the intermediate stage where critical mineral particulate has been separated from the ore but still needs further processing to be made into an actual metal — from the Moa Mine in eastern Cuba. The joint venture had been fruitful for decades, even if the company did run afoul of the U.S. (in 1996, its then-CEO was barred from entering the country). However, the company’s valuation has plummeted in recent years due to heavy debts and subdued nickel prices. Then, these new sanctions arrived and made things even worse.

First off, the fuel embargo meant that Moa didn’t have enough energy to run and suspended operations in February. Already reeling from reduced supply, the company found itself unable to import any feed from Moa in May, running the risk of getting sanctioned through the new U.S. measures. By June, the refinery ran out of feed and was forced to pause operations. And while Sherritt is in the process of getting an exemption on working with Cuba, even if it does get the go-ahead, it might not have the financial capacity to fully restart its operations. 

Now, this is all a big deal because Sherritt’s plant plays a big part in the continent’s nickel supply chain and a particularly outsized one in its cobalt supply chain. It is just one of three large-scale nickel refineries in North America and the only significant cobalt refinery. As is, Canada accounts for just about 3% of the world’s refined cobalt — if Sherritt can’t recover then, obviously, that number is going to go down.

Mining consultant and researcher Patricio Faúndez succinctly summarized the lesson of this situation in a research note from July: “Mineral security does not depend only on having plants, technology, or political allies, but also on having supply chains that are traceable, financeable, and legally viable. Restrictions do not come only from the East. They can also emerge from within the Western regulatory architecture itself.”

In conclusion, there are a lot of moving parts to building a sovereign critical mineral supply chain. And right now, one of them is broken.

📡 What else is on our radar:

The billion-dollar question: why do we need sovereign rockets? Because 50% of the world’s economy is tied to space. That’s why Canada Rocket Company, a new startup that just received an $8.3 million grant from the Canadian government, is focusing on one seemingly simple task: building a reusable rocket that fills a very specific need. We paid a visit to the CRC’s Etobicoke office and spoke with its co-founder and CEO to find out whether getting sovereignty into orbit is really rocket science.