Citing the rising costs of fossil fuels and electricity, the prime minister announced a new federal program that he said will support a million residential retrofits, mostly those that replace furnaces or baseboard heaters with heat pumps. Heat pumps cost more than furnaces up front but are cheaper to operate, and work as air conditioners in the summer. Carney promised decisions within 24 hours, for people who have to replace broken furnaces quickly. (The Logic)
Sequoia Capital led the Series B round for the startup, which is based in New York and Toronto. Other investors in the financing included Nvidia, Samsung, venture arms of Microsoft and Qualcomm, and prominent U.S. tech executives. (The Logic)
The technology will become increasingly integral to firms’ processes and operations, Neil Bunn, Google’s director of customer engineering for Canada, predicted at a Global Risk Institute event in Toronto on Wednesday. As a result, “you are paying the least for AI that you will ever pay for AI, in your life.” (The Logic)
Galen Weston will become chair of the British store chain, adding it to the Weston group’s portfolio, which includes Shoppers Drug Mart and Loblaws. The Weston family’s investment arm, Wittington, will have operational control of Boots, while Toronto holding company Fairfax Financial will invest about US$2.3 billion for a 50 per cent equity stake. (The Logic)
Canadian takeover activity fell sharply in the third quarter. The value of deals targeting domestic companies dropped 45 per cent year over year to US$28.3 billion, while deal volume fell 67 per cent to 227 announced transactions, according to London Stock Exchange Group data, the sharpest year-over-year drop for a quarter since 2022. (The Logic)
Ottawa and Tokyo should update their bilateral tax treaty to remove barriers to investment, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and its Japanese counterpart said in a joint statement as both countries look to strengthen their economic relationship—and as Canada competes for global investors’ attention. (The Logic)
The Liberals introduced a bill Tuesday that supersedes the plan for the agency laid out in last spring’s economic update, when they wanted to carve the Defence Investment Agency (DIA) away from the regular federal procurement system but keep it within the federal bureaucracy. Making the DIA a Crown corporation will let it “engage in defence production, procurement, and investment activities,” the government said—not just act as a buying agency. (The Logic)
The prime minister said the possibility of a future separation referendum doesn’t lessen the urgency of acting now to strengthen Quebec’s economy within Canada’s: “This is not a time to wait for something a few years down the road,” Carney said in Ottawa. Quebec’s premier-designate Paul St-Pierre Plamondon’s Parti Québécois won 59 National Assembly seats Monday—five short of a majority but enough to form a minority government—with just 28 per cent of the vote provincewide. (The Logic)
The Parisian firm’s open source Mistral Large 4 system is “state of the art” in areas that are “absolutely key for customers,” said Pierre Stock, vice-president for science. He cited cybersecurity, manufacturing, financial services and the ability to work with images as well as text. (The Logic)
Planned developments in housing, infrastructure, defence, energy, resources and AI data centres could generate $670.6 billion in additional investment by 2030, according to a study by the Business Development Bank of Canada and The Transition Accelerator think tank. Meeting the projected demand—much of it in construction—would require far more workers than the growth expected in Canada’s workforce over that period, the study found. (The Logic)