The Peak Daily

The Canadian Real Estate Association and the Toronto and Vancouver real estate boards are gearing up to fight a proposed ban on ‘blind bidding’ for houses—which keeps potential homebuyers in the dark about the other bids on a property.

Netflix has reported that its earnings dropped last quarter, but it’s hardly the only video streaming service struggling to attract new subscribers and some are even considering adding an advertising tier for the first time.

Coachella the music festival (dubbed the SuperBowl of fashion) for the who’s who of influencing returned this past weekend, giving fashion brands a boost after two years of stay-at-home chic (sweatpants).

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

A new report from PitchBook found that venture capital investment in Canadian startups surpassed $13.6 billion in 2021, crushing the previous record of $5.8 billion in 2019—and the good times are rolling on, with investment set to match that pace this year. Here’s an obstacle Tesla may not have seen coming: a crackdown by US regulators on its self-driving technology that could make consumers think twice about the promise of autonomous vehicles and threaten the company’s sky-high valuation. Quebec became the first jurisdiction in the world to ban oil and gas extraction and exploration last week, with all current drill sites shutting down within the next three years.

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

The federal government is writing off $20 million paid to Ottawa-based Spartan Bioscience for COVID tests that didn’t work. OpenAI’s widely hyped DALL-E AI image generator can now edit pictures, too. Zoom, the omnipresent conference call platform is venturing into sales automation software (SAS), a space that could grow to a $7.3 billion industry by 2028.

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

Last month, Ontario became the first province to create a law that protects everyday investors from unqualified financial professionals, per The Globe and Mail. “All that and a bag of chips” isn't the compliment it once was, as bags of chips contain fewer salty morsels than ever thanks to “shrinkflation.” The Bank of Canada (BoC) is set to hike interest rates further today, with experts agreeing it will likely be the first “oversized” hike in over two decades—going up half a percentage point instead of the typical quarter percentage point.

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

As Etsy tries to graduate from niche online marketplace status to the e-commerce big leagues, a public battle over fee increases is heating up between the company and its sellers. Two Canadian employees for GlobeNewswire are under investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission for allegedly using their access to unpublished corporate press releases to carry out advantageous trades. Canada is the world’s largest lobster exporter, shipping out a whopping 86% of the world’s supply and making a record $3.26 billion from these exports last year. This number could be even bigger in 2022 with lobster prices currently nearing an all-time high as global demand soars.

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

According to The Logic, Goodfood let go of 70 employees this week (the third round of cuts affecting a quarter of its workforce since last year) and has announced it’s closing its Ontario distribution centre. Following Robinhood, Snap, Roku and Uber, Shopify has moved to give employees more choice between cash and equity compensation in addition to their base salary. There’s a new kid on the motorcoach block—FlixBus, the world's largest-reaching bus provider, is rolling out three routes in Southern Ontario and more in Quebec and BC later this year.

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

Meta draws up plans to introduce virtual coins (dubbed ‘Zuck bucks’) and other financial services to diversify its ad-based revenue system. The federal transportation regulator has determined that Edmonton-based Flair Airlines may be in violation of the law that requires it to be controlled by Canadians. Minister Freedland’s budget commits to doubling the number of new homes that are built in the next decade and includes a range of new measures designed to make housing more affordable, but analysts are concerned that they’re not enough to make owning a home more accessible.

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

At 4:00 p.m. today, Minister (of so many things) Chrystia Freeland will unveil the 2022 federal budget, the first budget announcement since the 2021 election.

A new survey of Canadian office workers found that ‘meaning’ and ‘flexibility’ are now the biggest job incentives, with 71% of respondents saying they’d never take a frustrating or unrewarding job—even if the pay was higher.

Wealthsimple is giving Canadian retail investors access to a venture capital (VC) fund investing in tech and health care companies—for as low as $5,000, per The Globe and Mail.

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

Canada’s federal employment ministry has annouced changes to a Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program that will increase the number of TFWs allowed into Canada. Amazon is going to head-to-head with SpaceX in the satellite-internet service arena, by securing 83 planned rocket launches that would bring satellites into low-Earth orbit and establish a new satellite-internet service called Kuiper. The Canadian government has spent over $650 million over the past 11 years on an IBM payroll system for federal employees that, much like a kid who’s been given too much money, hates working but loves acting up

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.

Just one week after Elon Musk tweeted about giving “serious thought” to building a new social media company, he has become one of the biggest shareholders in Twitter. Famed futurist Nikolas Badminton (who is paid to consult companies like Google and Microsoft) has published a list of the top-paying jobs of 2040. A US$1 billion biotech fund backed by over 20 major drugmakers has made two investments worth tens of millions in startups looking to fight against the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, commonly known as “superbugs.”

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The Peak Daily is produced by 306 Media Productions. Hosted by Brett Chang and Jay Rosenthal.