📈 The Peak World Dispatch

Good morning. And welcome to the first edition of The Peak World Dispatch — a Peak Premium newsletter that will run every other weekend for paid subscribers, alternating with The Peak Weekend Reader. This newsletter will go deep into one burning geopolitical issue every edition and keep you up to date on top international headlines (plus a few fun treats). 

This edition is free for all in order to provide everyone a taste and give latecomers another chance to subscribe to Peak Premium — but after this weekend, it’s for paid subscribers only. If that intrigues you, you can find more info here. If it doesn’t, no sweat — our weekday edition will still be delivered hot, fresh, and free.

👶 People aren’t having babies in Canadian cities anymore. A new analysis found all 42 major cities across Canada have seen a significant drop in fertility rates over the past five years, with more than half of them falling to record lows. After six decades of decline, Canada’s average fertility rate — the average number of children a woman has — sits at 1.25. 

🧶 Knitting could be the secret to kicking your bad habits. Whether it's drugs or nail biting, research suggests that knitting and crocheting can drastically improve the emotional regulation that helps people kick nasty habits. One particularly notable success story was a woman from the Netherlands who knitted more than 550 sweaters to stop smoking cigarettes.

🎸 Montreal is getting its own take on Almost Famous. The trailer just dropped for a new film called Mile End Kicks. From Canadian director Chandler Levack, it chronicles the indie rock scene of 2011 Montreal through the lens of a young music critic. That Montreal music milieu is the reason we have Mac DeMarco, Arcade Fire, Grimes, and many more artists. 

📱 Disney is launching its own version of TikTok. As if we didn’t have enough options to waste our time doomscrolling, Disney+ is adding a short-form video feed called Verts that will churn out clips of Disney-owned content. It seems that even Hollywood has acknowledged that Gen Z won’t watch a movie unless it's clipped into a TikTok first.

Early in his prime ministership, Mark Carney called Canada the ”most European of non-European countries.” Some commentators saw this observation as his first real gaffe, but since then, Canada has forged deeper ties with Europe as its relationship with the U.S. continues to destabilize.  Ottawa has inked a new security partnership with the EU, enhanced its trade deal with the bloc, and joined a European defence fund. Carney is also pursuing a spot for Canada in the Eurovision song contest. Heck, even spelling on government documents is looking more European these days.  

A radical idea has even started to gain some traction: Canada should join the European Union. The argument goes that Canada would reap the benefits of EU membership including free trade with a major economic bloc while reducing our dependence on the U.S. While Carney has dismissed the idea, for some fans of ‘values-based internationalism,’ it isn’t just a flight of fancy. For example, Augusto Lopez-Claros, executive director of the Global Governance Forum, has argued forcefully for the marriage, writing that “Canada already behaves like a de facto member of the club in all but name.” He believes that Canadian membership “would immediately expand the EU’s global footprint and underscore its identity as a values-based institutional order rather than a regional bloc.”

A modicum of everyday Canadians also appear to be receptive to the idea. A recent Abacus Data survey of 1,915 Canadian adults found that 48% were in favour of joining the EU, compared to 28% who opposed membership. That number goes up to 63% for respondents who also said they approve of the Carney government. 

But can Canada even join the EU? Under current conditions, no. Per Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union, any potential member must “be a European state.” This definition is a little malleable — for example, Turkey has been under consideration for over 20 years despite the fact that most of its landmass is technically located in Asia — but it couldn’t be stretched to cover Canada. The only border we share with a European state is the 1.28 km land border with Denmark on Hans Island, which was drawn up in 2022 to end a 50-year territorial dispute. (If you want to push it, we suppose you could point to the tiny French archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland’s coast.)

However, if the political will was there, then there technically could be another path. The Treaty can be amended through processes under Article 48. It wouldn’t be a walk in the park. First, a member state, the European Parliament, or the European Commission would have to propose an amendment to Article 49 to allow the accession of non-European states. From there, the European Council must agree to examine the proposals and hold a convention of various bloc VIPs, who would work to produce a recommended set of amendments.

These recommendations would then be discussed at a conference of all member state governments, which must also come to a consensus on them. If this miraculously happens, the states must unanimously ratify the proposed changes through their own procedures, which could potentially include multiple national referendums. Only then would the amendment come into effect.

And even if all that happened, there’s still the accession process. The EU is harder to get into than the Berghain, with more steps than an Ikea instruction manual. Especially now as more EU parliamentarians are wary of further enlargement (you can blame this on Hungary). But, hypothetically, it would start with Canada submitting an application — an action that itself would likely require a national referendum — to the Council of the EU, which would then seek the opinions of the European Commission. If the Commission says, ‘sure, they seem cool,’ the Council would then grant Canada “candidate” status. 

From there, Canada would have to work its way through 35 policy areas — called “chapters” — to ensure its laws and policies meet, or will meet, EU standards. A few examples include company law, energy, and defence policy. Since Canada is a strong liberal democracy with many policies aligned with the EU, it’s already closer than a lot of EU candidates. But major changes would still need to be made including, but not limited to: enacting a maximum 48-hour workweek, aligning environmental regulations, adopting EU tariffs, and recognizing the supremacy of the European Court of Justice. Eventually, we’d also need to allow free movement into Canada of any Europeans and, in all likelihood, adopt the euro. 

After the chapters are dealt with, an accession treaty is drafted that must be unanimously approved by the Council of the EU, ok’d by the European Parliament, and unanimously approved by the existing member states. Once again, as with the amendment process, final ratification would involve states carrying out their own national procedures. 

To put it succinctly, the whole process would be long, arduous, costly, and likely a total gong show.

Bottom line: “Canada is inescapably North American,” Graeme Thompson, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group's Global Macro practice, told The Peak. “Its largest trading partner — for good and ill — will remain the United States. Instead of indulging in Euro-fantasies, Ottawa is rightly focused on practical steps to improve Canada’s position at home and abroad. None of those include joining the EU.”—QH

🇳🇴 Carney visits Norway as Arctic defence ramps up. Mark Carney landed in Norway yesterday to talk shop with Norwegian PM Jonas Gahr Store and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and observe a NATO wargaming exercise involving Canadian troops. Arctic defence was undoubtedly a top discussion topic given the exercise and the news Canada will spend $35 billion to upgrade existing Arctic military bases and build a network of new ones. (CBC News) 

🇮🇷 Iran in talks with Europe to reopen Strait of Hormuz. Sources told the Financial Times that France, Italy, and other European nations have begun initial talks with Iran about potential deals to guarantee their ships safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz — the closure of which has choked off about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. Meanwhile, Donald Trump told Fox News the war will end, “when I feel it in my bones,” which isn’t very encouraging. (Financial Times)

🇨🇳 New Chinese policy entrenches cultural assimilation. China adopted a new law that enshrines the duty of the country’s recognized ethnic minorities to embrace standard Chinese as a common language and forge a culture centred on the Han majority. The policy is one of the biggest planks yet in President Xi Jinping’s push for cultural uniformity, which has replaced previous Chinese Communist Party ideals of promoting a multiethnic nation. (Wall Street Journal)

🇺🇸 Trump White House launches trade probes. The Office of U.S. Trade Representative is probing 60 U.S. trade partners, including Canada, looking for policies and practices that are "unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce." The findings will potentially be used as the basis for new tariffs. Currently, the U.S. has a blanket 10% levy after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump’s 2025 “Liberation Day” tariffs. (The Canadian Press) 

🇫🇷 Eureka! Lost Archimedes text unearthed at French museum. A missing page from the Archimedes Palimpsest — a mid-10th-century compilation of works by the revolutionary Ancient Greek mathematician — was discovered by researchers at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in France. The page contains geometric diagrams and an excerpt from a treatise which were hidden underneath religious texts that had been written overtop at a later date. (Artnews)

Mapo tofu is one of the most famous Sichuan dishes, an unctuous example of the numbing mala flavour the region is known for. The brothy mix of silken tofu, ground beef, and lots of Sichuan peppercorns is guaranteed to warm you up on a cold night and tingle your taste buds. You can cook it up at home with this traditional recipe from The Woks of Life.

And if you find yourself in Chengdu, making use of the newly granted visa-free travel to China, pay a visit to Chen Mapo Tofu to get yourself a bowl of the stuff. The shop is allegedly the birthplace of the dish and has earned Bib Gourmand honours from the Michelin Guide.

Kick off the weekend with The Peak’s Saturday Crossword, the daily sudoku, and Codebreaker!

Then, test out another round of our new game, Who’s Who.

And after that, test your lie-detecting skills and pick out the fake news headline.

Keep scrolling for the answer.

You best stop believing in fake headlines — with #4, you’re reading one.