The American tech giant objects to Canada’s Bill C-22, which would make it much easier for police and security agencies to get access to digital communications. The bill would weaken the security of systems that Americans rely on, Apple said, and that crosses a line. Besides raising its concerns in Ottawa as a House of Commons committee studies the bill, Apple hopes to get its home country’s legislators involved. (The Logic)
The insurer and financial firm saw its first-quarter net income drop 50 per cent year-over-year to $465 million, well below the $715 million expected by analysts, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Shares fell nearly five per cent on Thursday afternoon. (The Logic)
The Toronto-based company has signed a letter of intent to list on the TSX Venture Exchange by combining its business with a numbered shell company. Spendsafe offers prepaid credit cards and financial literacy tools for kids and teens. (The Logic)
The Department of Finance has yet to make a decision on 859 requests from businesses for relief from Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods—about 53 per cent of the total. (The Logic)
The deal, for the French aircraft manufacturer’s 160-seat A220-300 model, marks “the largest order for a Canadian-designed and produced aircraft in history,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney. In his remarks before signing the purchase agreement, Tony Fernandes, CEO of Malaysia-based discount airline AirAsia, said he is pining for the A220-500, a 185-seat version of the aircraft that the company has teased but has yet to announce. “Get a move on,” Fernandes said jokingly to Airbus commercial aircraft CEO Lars Wagner at Wednesday’s signing. (The Logic)
The Quebec-based public pension manager ramped up activity in private markets last year, with “record” deployment across sectors, including data centres, energy, insurance and aircraft leasing, both in the country and abroad. (The Logic)
The privacy commissioners for Ottawa, Alberta, B.C. and Quebec said current laws are not up to the job in the age of AI. Their joint three-year investigation found that OpenAI indiscriminately scraped Canadians’ private information without consent from every corner of the web to train its models in its rush to launch ChatGPT. (The Logic)
Suncor CEO Richard Kruger said in the Calgary company’s annual general meeting that it had been “rebuilt brick by brick” in the last three years, adding that the conversation among policyholders is “moving from whether Canada should more fully develop its resources to how Canada should do this.” Still, its 30 per cent year-over-year uptick in net earnings per share failed to hit analyst estimates compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence in the first quarter. Shares fell more than seven per cent on Wednesday. (The Logic)
The Canadian Telecommunications Workers Alliance (CTWA) said that masking the accents of workers in overseas call centres using AI tools keeps customers from realizing that companies they’re doing business with aren’t hiring Canadians. (The Logic)
The Japanese automaker has reportedly decided to halt its $15-billion project to build an electric vehicle factory and accompanying battery plant in Ontario as Honda shifts its focus to plug-in hybrids amid sluggish U.S. demand for zero-emission vehicles. (Nikkei Asia)