Good morning. Today, we look back on a stormy 2024, and do our best to smoke out some fun. (Note: Individual interpretations of fun may vary.)
But first, a programming note: Business Brief is going on hiatus until the new year, so I wanted to take this moment to thank you for reading these past seven months – it has been a wild, scary, rewarding, humbling and ultimately joyful journey. I’ll still be (lightly) cobbling away over the remainder of year, so feel free to find me as always at cws@globeandmail.com. Let me know what I’m missing, what you’d like to see in 2025, your new year’s resolutions (mine is to use fewer colons: they’re too much of a crutch) and anything else you’ve got on your mind. Now, onto business:
In the news
Corus Entertainment Inc. paid $1.8-million in bonuses to five top executives after the company laid off more than 800 employees as part of its struggle to avoid insolvency.
Evolve Power’s chief executive officer said the company is suing Alberta for a collective $16-billion over the government’s flip-flop on coal policy, which he says has decimated investor confidence in the province.
D-Wave is suddenly back from the brink, with a surging stock price and a recent equity issue providing a cash cushion for the quantum-computing company to develop its products and secure customers.
Happening today
- At home: Statistics Canada reports retail sales for October.
- Abroad: The U.S. releases its November PCE Index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge.
- In the market: Earnings include Carnival Corp. and Winnebago Industries. I have news on that, but it’s under Winnebargo.
- I’m sorry. Another resolution: fewer dad jokes.
iStockPhoto / Getty Images
In focus
The words we used in 2024
Canada’s economy this year was an Escherian map of ups and downs: slow growth, emergency-level labour productivity, work stoppages that cost the country billions, catastrophic forest fires, rising unemployment, falling inflation, falling interest rates, falling housing prices, and falling loonies all around.
On Bay Street, Toronto-Dominion Bank’s anti-money-laundering failures drew the scrutiny of U.S. regulators and the attention of our reporters, who found a cultural shift that seeded succession woes, risk aversion and an exodus of leaders. Couche-Tard swung for the fences (perhaps with warning-track power) with a bid to buy the Japanese owner of 7-Eleven; Toronto-based Barrick Gold is facing years of uncertainty at its gold mine in Mali; Rogers bought BCE’s stake in MLSE and promised to make watching sports easier to follow; and two of Canada’s biggest hockey-equipment makers changed hands. (No foreign investment review?)
A ”family fallout” in Ottawa, meanwhile, might hasten a federal election. As things stand, Pierre Poilievre has a strong chance at becoming Canada’s next prime minister, and having the opportunity to make good on his pledge to walk back the Liberal government’s signature climate measures.
Word of the year
‘Tariff’
Could it be anything else? Whether or not you agree with Donald Trump that it’s the most beautiful word in the world, you can’t deny its growing ubiquity and singular ability to galvanize policy makers into action. (At least, talking about taking action. In Canada, both of those things will be necessary as it navigates a federal election and the president-elect’s second term.)
Second place: “Optionality.” Third: “Ventocity.” (More on both below.)
All in a name
Griftco
In January, Niall McGee reported that Ontario granted taxpayer funds to mining exploration companies called Griftco and Money Money Money. Griftco is named after one of the principal’s friends, and has carried out several deals after being founded as a shell company in 2008. No swindling here. Very little is known about Money Money Money, meanwhile, but you can’t knock the candour.
The meaning of Fartcoin ($FRTC)
Bitcoin stole the spotlight this year as it crested the US$100,000 milestone. But the newest meme coin to let rip in value is Fartcoin. It began, as all great things do, as an idea floated by an AI-powered chatbot that autonomously creates its own content, and rode the digital-currency surge that followed the election of noted crypto enthusiast Donald Trump. (What did I just write?)
In any event, markets are understandably focused on what a hawkish Federal Reserve means for the greenback, and Canadians are watching as the loonie falls to new lows. But neither currencies are of much interest to the growing millions of people pouring their money into digital representations of it. Even if Fartcoin fizzles, however, it will have demonstrated a mounting appetite for money that falls outside the guardrails of political and financial institutions.
What started as an AI-generated fart joke has put up serious numbers in about two months. On Wednesday, it reached a market capitalization of $1-billion.
Market capitalization in U.S. dollars
- Fartcoin: $1-billion
- Office Depot: $781-million
- Guess Inc.: $725-million
Established crypto currencies like Bitcoin are seeing their longer-term outlooks boosted from Trump. But the life expectancy of a meme coin is about the same as its popularity on the internet – which is to say, not long.
In a year that saw some novelty coins generate sky-high hype and instant riches before the shine wore off just as quickly (see: the sordid case of $HAWK) FRTC’s ventocity might be more noteworthy for the fact that it was devised by a robot with the goal of achieving virality.
This was not the singularity we feared, but the singularity that we deserve.
A view into a TD branch in Toronto earlier this month.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Overheard in 2024
💵
“It takes 30 people to say yes to something, and only one person to say no.”
TD executive on the bank’s increasingly dense layers of bureaucracy.
A former executive had one quibble with that quote:
“It’s not 30 people, it’s 50 people who need to say yes.”
🗑️
“This is not the Sopranos.”
Waste giant GFL Environmental Inc. CEO Patrick Dovigi responds to a report in October by The Globe that another executive with his company was targeted the same night someone shot at his Toronto home. He said the incident at his house was an attempted burglary.
🔪
“Okay, let me show you how to skin an eel.”
Loblaw CEO Per Bank’s response when challenged to get his hands dirty while visiting a fish counter at one of the company’s T&T Supermarkets.
🤔
“She made a lot of bad policies less worse.”
Dan Kelly, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, on Chrystia Freeland’s record as finance minister.
🧳
“We’ve got Mogg-xit done.”
Dan Norris, the new MP for North East Somerset and Hanham constituency, after defeating Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg in Britain’s election in July.
🎤
“If Taylor Swift were an economy, she’d be bigger than 50 countries.”
Dan Fleetwood, head of research org QuestionPro.
Euphemism watch
There are quotes from people, and there are quotes from executives in analyst conference calls. This year, CEOs weren’t cutting prices – they were finding value.
- “We need some new entry price points.”
- Tortilla chips need “some value reset” and “value intervention.”
- Savoury snacks require “adjustments in value.”
- There is “some value to be given back to consumers after three or four years of a lot of inflation.”
And they were being more than just nimble:
“To ensure that we preserve the long-term optionality of bringing additional pushbacks into our mine plans in the future, we use our mineral resource prices to position key capital infrastructure, such as process plants and tailings dams.”
Barrick executive Simon Bottoms, Nov. 22
“Our alternate port arrangements for QB or the optionality we have for Red Dog volumes are both examples of how we drive reliability and certainty for our customers.”
Teck Resources executive vice-president Ian K. Anderson, Nov. 5
“We view this investment as incremental to our organic commitments and believe this investment adds longer-term optionality to our North American growth agenda while providing near-term earnings and capital accretion to the bank.”
Bank of Nova Scotia CEO Scott Thomson, Aug. 12
Interregnum: A Haiku
Canada wavers
Green dreams meet uncertain hands
Trade winds stir the fog
Stock photo that best captured the vibe.
Charted
The cost of borrowing vs. the cost of living
If “tariff” was our word of the year, it follows that we’re looking at this chart. In January, the Bank of Canada’s benchmark lending rate was sitting at 5 per cent after a historic run of hikes aimed at halting inflation’s rise. Governor Tiff Macklem held the rate steady at the bank’s first meeting of 2024, but said the question was no longer about how high the rate would climb, but for how long its “current restrictive stance” would be in place.
And lo, there was light! Okay, so he didn’t make his first of several cuts until June, and the cost of living is still a problem for many Canadians, but the real estate market is picking up pace and borrowers with variable rates are feeling relief. Now, we hurry up and wait to see how serious Trump is about that word of the year.
The outlook
By-the-numbers edition
$61.9-billion: Deficit reported by the federal government in its fall economic statement.
$40.1-billion: Amount Freeland vowed last year would represent the deficit’s ceiling.
7 per cent or below: Alcohol level of premixed drinks covered by the GST holiday.
US$1.7-billion: Amazon’s average daily sales revenue.
$449.2-billion: Estimated cost of Canada’s current federal budget.
183: Days it would take for Amazon to match that cost.
69 cents: The loonie’s lowest level since 2020.
70: Percentage of Canadians who visit a Dollarama store at least once a month.
138,000: Increase in Canada’s labour force in November, one of the largest on record.
94,000: Average monthly increase in the U.S. labour force, in a population more than eight times larger than Canada.
Three: Number of Dans who were quoted above.
Morning update
Global markets sank ahead of a possible U.S. government shutdown as investors awaited key U.S. inflation data that could either ease or worsen concerns about stubbornly high price pressures. Jitters pushed Wall Street futures into negative territory, while TSX futures followed sentiment lower.
Overseas, pan-European STOXX 600 was down 1.67 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 0.91 per cent, Germany’s DAX gave back 1.39 per cent and France’s CAC 40 retreated 1.08 per cent.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 0.29 per cent lower, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng declined 0.16 per cent.
The Canadian dollar traded at 69.50 U.S. cents.