Vouch for me

Good morning. After nine years at the top, Olivia is no longer the most popular girls’ baby name in Canada, with perennial runner-up Charlotte unseating it in 2025 per Statistics Canada. It’s a salient reminder that even the mightiest dynasties eventually fall. For boys, Noah finished in first place for the fifth consecutive year, beating out Theodore and Liam. 

If you’ve named your child any of these names, we hope you don’t suddenly feel self-conscious about it. They are all lovely names.

Today’s reading time is 5½ minutes.

Markets: Canada’s main stock index suffered its steepest daily decline yesterday since June 5 as the markets were once again rocked by rising bond yields (the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield rose to its highest point since 2007) and inflation fears.

You can now rat on people for lying on their LinkedIn page. Unfortunately, you still can’t report self-proclaimed ‘thought leaders’ for their cringey posts. 

What happened: LinkedIn is rolling out a suite of new tools and features designed to crack down on users who fake their identities, work history, or education on their profiles. One of the new features will allow other users to vouch for their former colleagues and classmates.

Why it’s happening: Lying or embellishing on your resume is nothing new, but AI has made it a lot easier to make those lies more convincing — whether that’s creating a digital paper trail for a job you never had or generating an entirely fake profile. According to one analysis, a quarter of job candidate profiles are expected to be fake by 2028.  

Why it matters: AI tools have already enabled job hunters to send off hundreds of polished applications every day, overwhelming hiring managers in a sea of CV slop. Throw in the added challenge of well-disguised fake profiles, and it’s never been harder for companies to differentiate strong candidates from scammers (or foreign operatives, apparently).—LA

Canada’s population growth fell to its lowest rate since World War I. The population grew by just 0.5% over the 12-month period that ended in July, the slowest pace since 1915-16. Overall, Canada added ~189,000 new people, as stricter temporary residency policies slowed the arrival of newcomers. In an ill-timed Truth Social post, Donald Trump wrote yesterday that Canada is "destroying itself” with out-of-control immigration. (Global News)

Meta is testing a “human concierge” for its personal AI assistant. As part of a trial for its Muse AI agent, the company has reportedly been using human contractors to make phone calls on behalf of users — one of the autonomous features that Meta has touted Muse can handle. Meta workers have pushed back, arguing the feature carries unnecessary risk. One employee testing the feature asked Muse to call an internet company to negotiate his bill, a task that led to the human contractor making racist comments during the call. (Reuters)

Health Canada strips Grifols of its licence in Winnipeg. The health regulator has suspended the licence for Grifols’ blood plasma collection site in Winnipeg after a young donor developed fatal heart problems while visiting the clinic, the second such death at a site in the city. Grifols, which is the only major commercial plasma collector in the country, has denied any links between the deaths and the donations. (CBC News)

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Welcome to Six Figures, the anonymous interview series where we speak to real 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.

This week, an Air Canada pilot making $325,000.

“You start as a private pilot — and you could do this, a farmer in his field could do it. After you become a private pilot, you can then become a commercial pilot and that allows you to get paid to fly. Once you complete that, it's a matter of finding a job. I became a flight instructor in Quebec City to build up my hours. It takes a pretty significant amount until you get qualified. Then I took a job out in Calgary flying a larger charter plane. Then I moved over to Air Canada Express in Calgary, which does all the regional flying in Canada. I started as first officer and then slowly upgraded to captain after which I moved to Vancouver. And then joined Air Canada in 2019.” 

Do you feel well-compensated?

“In the Canadian context, yes. But compared to international airlines, United, Delta, and so forth, Canadian pilots are underpaid.”

What do you want people to know about the industry? 

“The barrier to entry is significant. People will take out massive loans of over a hundred thousand dollars just to get qualified, only to have a $44 an hour pay for the first time you're flying. What’s interesting is lawyers, bankers, they take their appropriate experience and move to another firm, for example, and they're paid consummate to that experience. When I went from Air Canada Express to Air Canada mainline, I went back to the bottom. I took a pay cut to go to Air Canada.”

Advice for anyone looking to break into aviation?

“Go explore things, go for an introductory flight, see what you like and don't like, and then you just have to grind away. It's a pretty competitive industry, so work hard and set yourself apart as best you can.”

Canada’s movie theatre monarch has a new CEO, and could soon have a new owner.

What happened: Cineplex chose Bill Walker as its new CEO yesterday, immediately taking the place of Ellis Jacob, who was in charge for more than two decades. Walker’s first order of business: overseeing a strategic review that could lead to a sale of the company. Cineplex has secured the services of Goldman Sachs and TD Securities to conduct the review.

Why it’s happening: It’s been a bang-up year for the movies, and Cineplex wants to sell high. Films like Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey have set box office records, while surprise smashes Obsession and Backrooms proved that Gen Z audiences are now key drivers of cinemagoing (and restored hopes that not every hit has to be IP-driven).

Why it matters: Cineplex runs the moviegoing game in Canada. Even with indie cinemas gaining some ground, it still controls about three-quarters of box-office revenues in Canada. A de facto monopoly is bad enough; a monopoly in foreign hands sounds even worse.

Zoom out: Cineplex’s iron grip made national headlines last month after a Toronto theatre was forced to cancel screenings of Tony after the movie’s distributor cited a longstanding industry practice essentially giving Cineplex exclusive exhibition rights in a geographic area.—QH

With corporate concentration and a lack of competition driving prices up in groceries, banking, telecom, and more, Do Not Pass Go is your survival guide to our monopolized times.

Featuring independent investigative journalism through free weekly newsletters and podcasts, Do Not Pass Go helps you understand the competitive issues shaping our economy.

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🏥 $100 million. Anonymous donation that the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation received — the largest gift ever given to a Canadian cancer organization. The money will go toward the foundation’s highest priorities for research, education, and patient care.

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Look! It’s today’s mini-crossword, the daily sudoku, Codebreaker, and Who’s Who!