Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know. Take our business and investing news quiz.
This week: Trump has threatened (once again) to hit another Canadian product with tariffs. Meanwhile, Australia has just become the first country to enact a unique bit of policy, which could serve as the framework for other nations to follow suit. What did they do? Take our quiz and find out.
d. Microsoft says it will spend billions of dollars in Canada over the next two years as part of a data-centre expansion. It is also vowing to keep data within Canadian borders and to protect Canada’s “digital sovereignty.” What’s making the company so agreeable all of a sudden? It sounds as if Microsoft is worried about a potential backlash against U.S. tech giants. Imagine that.
b. Kick kids off social media. Australia has become the first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking access to platforms including TikTok, Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram and Facebook. The backlash against the tech giants may gain momentum if other countries decide to follow Australia’s example.
b. Silver prices have more than doubled this year, bursting through US$60 an ounce for the first time. Rising industrial demand and falling inventories have helped the metal’s rise. So, too, has the recent decision by U.S. authorities to deem silver a critical mineral. The biggest factor, though, may simply be imitation. Investors have seen gold go on a historic tear and figure silver could do the same.
a. Edmonton. Mr. Abel grew up in Alberta's capital and graduated from the University of Alberta before moving to the United States.
c. Fertilizer. This is getting a bit repetitive, isn’t it? Mr. Trump is now threatening tariffs on imports of fertilizer from Canada. His goal is to use the tariff money to help defray the cost of a multibillion-dollar funding package for U.S. farmers, who have been battered by months of trade-war uncertainty. How increasing the price of fertilizer will help these farmers is difficult to understand, but Mr. Trump appears undeterred.
a. 200 per cent. Despite what most people think, the number of doctors in Canada has grown faster than the population as a whole. So why the apparent doctor shortage? Much of it has to do with the growing medical needs of an aging population. This surge in health care demand is now a major reason why most provinces run deficits. If provinces still had the demographics they did when boomers were young, all but British Columbia would be posting sizable surpluses today – without changing a single tax rate or spending line.
c. They are about double. The number of objections submitted by taxpayers to the Canada Revenue Agency is now nearly double what it was immediately before the pandemic. Data provided to The Globe and Mail by the CRA show that the number of taxpayer objections grew from about 68,000 in 2018-19 to around 128,000 in 2024-25.
a. Entertainment. If the economy is slowing, it’s difficult to see it in consumers’ spending habits. Royal Bank of Canada cardholders spent 204 per cent more on arts and entertainment in October, 2025, than they did in the prepandemic days of early 2018, according to transaction data reported by the bank.
d. Paramount has launched a hostile bid worth US$108.4-billion for Warner Bros. Talk about drama: It’s Paramount’s last-ditch effort to outbid Netflix and create a media powerhouse that would challenge the dominance of the streaming giant. You know, someone should really make a movie about this.
c. Three Fed officials dissented from the move, the most dissents in six years and a sign of deep divisions on a committee that traditionally works by consensus. Two officials voted to keep the Fed’s rate unchanged, while one voted for an even deeper cut.
d. All of the above. Investment bankers rejoice! Elon Musk’s SpaceX is looking to raise more than US$25-billion through an initial public offering in 2026 that would value the entire company at more than US$1-trillion, according to Reuters. ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its rival Anthropic are also reportedly in talks to go public next year in what could also be massive deals.
b. Oracle shares slumped nearly 11 per cent in premarket trading on Thursday after its quarterly earnings report disappointed analysts. Downbeat forecasts and higher spending on capital expenditures fanned worries that the company’s massive AI investments are taking longer than expected to pay off.