Factories and research sites for BYD, Shanghai Launch, Chery and Geely are on Industry Minister Mélanie Joly’s itinerary before she heads to Beijing with a delegation of Canadian business leaders for possible meetings with senior Chinese government officials. The corporate participants include mining and insurance companies and pension-fund investors. Later, in Japan, Joly is to meet with executives from Honda and Toyota. (The Globe and Mail)
The U.S. banking giant said Monday it is bringing its 10-year Security and Resiliency Initiative, first announced in October, to the country. The program aims to direct financing, capital raising and investment toward sectors including energy, defence, critical minerals and advanced manufacturing, although the bank has not disclosed a specific dollar allocation for Canada. (The Logic, The Globe and Mail)
Countries need “redundancy” and “diversification” in the large language models and other AI tools they use for security and critical systems, Prime Minister Mark Carney said, citing the restrictions the U.S. placed on Claude-maker Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable products as an example of the problem with “overreliance on certain models.” (The Logic)
The United States wants a revised North American free trade deal that keeps the basic structure of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, Prime Minister Mark Carney said. Deep changes to the existing treaty would require votes in the U.S., Canadian and Mexican legislatures and “the U.S. has been clear that they do not want to go to Congress to change the fundamental architecture,” Carney said during a visit to Ireland. (The Logic)
The Liberal government introduced legislation on Friday that would empower the foreign affairs minister to publish a list of goods from specific producers or regions suspected to have been made with forced labour—and demand importers be ready to prove otherwise before border agents let the items into Canada. (The Logic)
The operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange said the deal will increase its recurring revenue as well as its revenue from outside Canada as it tries to build an “index factory.” On a conference call, TMX CEO John McKenzie said the RAFI acquisition “supercharges” the company’s ETF business. (The Logic)
The Swedish furniture giant co-led the round alongside New York-based food-tech investor Lever VC. NS/TX, the parent company of New School Foods, will use the money to expand manufacturing capacity for its alternative protein products produced at its Toronto facility. (The Logic)
The Liberal government’s 10-year plan to improve food affordability and security commits $1 billion to make it easier for independent grocers and local farmers to compete with major chains on price and distribution, including by building two new food terminals. (The Logic)
Canada approved fewer than 7,000 visitor visas and electronic travel authorizations for travellers citing FIFA events as their reason for travel between Nov. 14 and March 31, according to data obtained by The Logic. (The Logic, Toronto Star)
Speaking at the Eurasia Summit on Thursday, PSP Investments CEO Deborah Orida said investors are operating in a "new investing regime," arguing that infrastructure investments may become more attractive as inflation remains volatile, while private equity returns can no longer rely on cheap leverage and rising valuations. (The Logic)