Free Lunch by The Peak : Recent Episodes
The Peak
Free Lunch by The Peak breaks down what’s happening in the economy and markets, and why it matters to Canadians. Join us every week for deep-dive interviews that go beyond the headlines with the country’s most interesting minds in economics, business, tech, and finance.
If you look at a chart of global nuclear energy output over time, what you see is hockey-stick growth from the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s—and then nothing. After growing from zero to around 2600 THw, we just stopped building more of it. But that’s starting to change. Around the world, new nuclear projects are starting up, and plants scheduled for shutdown are being refurbished to last for decades to come. And one of the places at the forefront of this nuclear renaissance is Ontario. Ontario already produces an outsized share of the world’s nuclear energy—around 3.7% of the global total, ahead of Germany and the UK. And in the last couple of years, it announced plans to increase that dramatically, with new reactors and refurbishments at its plants in Bruce Country, Darlington, and Pickering. We recently had the chance to tour the Pickering facility and see firsthand the work that’s going on there. Afterward, we sat down with Riley Found, a Senior Manager for New Nuclear Growth at Ontario Power Generation, to talk about what's driving the renaissance in Ontario's nuclear sector and what's changed since the last time we built nuclear in the 1980s.
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
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The Online News Act, or Bill C-18, has already radically changed how Canadians get their news. First and foremost, we can no longer get it on Facebook or Instagram. Google may be the next to go, depending on what the final regulations look like. But Canada isn't the first country to attempt to bring in regulations like C-18. Several European countries have tried to force Big Tech to pay publishers, too, and in some cases have been subject to news blocks that are still in effect. Ricard Gil is an Associate Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Business Economics Smith School of Business of Queen’s University, and has studied the impact of these regulations on the media industry in European countries. He joins us to explain what happened in Europe and how Big Tech's response has impacted the sector there.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
A recession is coming. A soft landing is around the corner. Inflation is here to stay. Inflation is transitory. Rates are going to stay elevated indefinitely. Central banks are going to cut rates soon. These are all messages that investors have heard at some point over the past two years or so, as every new bit of economic data seems to bring new forecasts about where the economy is heading. In such a confusing environment filled with mixed signals, how can the average person hope to manage their money effectively? On this episode, Andrei Bruno, Director, Exchange Traded Funds for Fidelity Canada, joins us to bring some clarity to this muddled picture and share his view on how to make smart investment decisions when the future is so unclear.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
The economy has been through a pretty turbulent period over the past few years, and one of the sectors that’s experienced that the most has to be the restaurant industry. Pretty much all the big macro trends we’ve lived through show up here. Whether it’s the supply shocks of COVID, the inflation of the past 18 months, or disruptions in the labour market, restaurants have experienced all of these things in a really dramatic way. And through it all, they’ve had to go on opening their doors and serving customers every night if they wanted to stay in business. Today we talk to someone who has lived and worked through this firsthand to find out what it’s been like to be in the trenches running a restaurant during all of this, and what that can teach us about what’s going on in the economy more broadly. Our guest Yannick Bigourdan is the owner and operator of some of the best restaurants in Toronto, including The Carbon Bar and Lucie, and was also behind two local institutions, Nota Bene and Splendido.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
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This episode originally aired on January 24, 2023. Anyone who has dealt with Canada's healthcare system knows that it's under incredible strain. Part of that is because of the pandemic and the backlogs that piled up over the past three years. But many of the factors that led to the crisis we're now facing have been building up for much longer than that. Dr. Saad Ahmed, a family physician based out of Vancouver and lecturer at the University of Toronto's Department of Family & Community Medicine, joins us to break down how exactly our healthcare system works and explain the root causes of its biggest problems.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
The wildfires Canada has experienced this year have been the worst on record, and it's not even close. Most of us have been impacted in one way or another. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes, and—tragically—a number of people have lost their lives. In this episode on Canada's wildfires, we are joined by Derek Nighbor, President of the Forest Products Association of Canada, to look at their impact on the forestry industry, how businesses in the sector are responding, whether we're facing another supply shock that will drive up prices in the lumber market, and what role the industry can play in mitigating the harm of wildfires in the future. We also talk about why this year's fires are so much worse than past seasons, and what other countries have done to reduce the risk of forest fires that Canada could look to for lessons.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
A lot has happened since 2018, but if you think back to that time, you might remember that Canada’s cannabis industry was booming. There were multiple Canadian cannabis businesses that were valued at multiple billions of dollars. People were getting rich trading weed stocks and starting weed companies. And this wasn’t just money moving around, like with meme stocks during the pandemic. The largest companies, like Canopy, Aurora, and Aphria, were spending money to build massive facilities across Canada and hiring thousands of people. Then it all came crashing down. Last week, the Nasdaq stock exchange said it would delist Canopy Growth Corp because its stock, which once traded for around $60, has been below the Nasdaq’s $1 threshold for too long. So what happened? On today’s episode, Jay Rosenthal joins me to explain what went wrong in the cannabis industry and talk about what’s next for the sector both in Canada and the US. Jay is the Director of Content at Dutchie, a leading tech partner for cannabis retailers around the world, and the co-founder of the Business of Cannabis.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
Last week the Bank of Canada hiked its policy interest rate to 5%, a 22-year high and a 10x jump from where they sat just over one year ago. By now, everyone is familiar with the Bank's rationale for aggressively raising rates: It has a mandate to ensure price stability and bring inflation down to a target of 2%. But how are higher rates actually pushing inflation down? When prices are driven up by supply shocks in Eastern Europe or labour strikes at ports, how much control over inflation does Canada's central bank actually have? On today's episode, economist and Columbia Business School professor Brett House joins us to explain how the Bank of Canada is thinking about interest rates and inflation today, what factors motivated them to raise rates again last week, and his view on whether we're now entering a new era of persistently higher inflation.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
Fun fact: Canada used to be something of a semiconductor manufacturing power. Ottawa was a centre of innovation in the space, with local telecom companies like Nortel Networks at one point employing nearly 100,000 people around the world. Things have changed since then, of course. Nortel and Ottawa's other telecom giants are gone (or shadows of their former selves), either bought out or put under by foreign competition. And Canada is no longer a big semiconductor player. Meanwhile, the importance of semiconductors (or chips) in the global economy has grown dramatically, with virtually all electronics depending on them to one degree or another. And for many years, Canada (and much of the rest of the world) has been happy to rely on semiconductors made abroad in manufacturing hubs like Taiwan. But that has begun to change, as tensions with China have raised the spectre of suddenly losing access to a strategically vital piece of hardware. That's ignited a "chip war" over who will make the most advanced semiconductors, and control the technology needed to do it. Set against this backdrop, does Canada have a role to play in semiconductors? Benjamin Bergen thinks so. He is the president of the Council of Canadian Innovators, one of the groups that recently came together to launch SILICAN, an organization focused on advocating for Canada's semiconductor industry. He joins us on this episode to make the case for turning Canada into a semiconductor power once again.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
Canada's population is growing quickly. Really quickly. Last month, we surpassed the 40 million mark, and we're growing faster than any other G7 country. Between 2016 and 2021, Canada has grown twice as quickly as the US. And the reason for that growth is simple: Immigration. Of the growth we saw in 2022, immigration accounted for around 95% of it. And this is by design. By 2025, the federal government wants to add 500,000 new permanent residents to Canada every year. So how our immigration system works matters quite a bit. But a growing number of economists and experts are warning that it might not be working so well anymore. One of those people is Mikal Skuterud, a professor in the economics department at the University of Waterloo and the Director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum. Mikal has argued that the economic case for immigration policy has begun to break down as Canada has tried to scale up the number of people coming here. On this episode, he joins us to explain exactly how our immigration system works and why, in his view, it has started to fail.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, the importance of the biotech sector suddenly became very clear to everyone. Things we have taken for granted for our entire lives—ready access to vaccines and medicine—became a scarce commodity, and the supply chains to deliver them became a top priority. But the biotech sector is far larger than just vaccines (or even pharmaceuticals). Biotech companies in Canada are working on products for customers in agriculture, manufacturing, and more. On this episode of Free Lunch, Andrew Casey joins us to explain how the biotech sector works, who the key players are, and preview some of the big innovations in the space. Andrew is the President & CEO of BIOTECanada, Canada's national biotechnology industry association.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
By many measures, men aren't doing so well right now. Suicides and deaths of despair among men are rising. 15% of men report having no close friends. In a recent survey, 65% reported agreeing with the statement, "no one really knows me well." Men have fallen behind women when it comes to educational attainment, and most young men report feeling no sense of purpose. So, what's going on here? Matt Jeneroux thinks we have, among other things, a communication problem, and he joins us on this episode to explain why. Matt is the Member of Parliament for Edmonton Riverbend, the Shadow Minister for Supply Chains, and the founder of the Hi Dad Foundation, a non-profit set up to provide resources for young men and fathers in need of mental health support.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe
Toronto is one of the epicentres of Canada's housing crisis. And while you may not care about the city's housing regulations (unless you live there), they are impacting you. Buyers priced out of the city end up scooping up homes elsewhere, driving up prices in other parts of the country. For a long time, Toronto hasn't done much to increase its own supply of homes. But that just changed: The city passed a new law making it possible to build multiplexes—up to 4 units in a single building—across the entire city. It's a big change in theory, but how will it play out in practice? Chris Spoke, a Toronto-based developer and real estate investor, joins us this week to explain how the change is playing out on the ground, and whether legal multiplexes can actually make a dent in our housing shortage.
Links:
More episodes of Free Lunch by The Peak: https://readthepeak.com/shows/free-lunch
Follow Taylor on Twitter: @taylorscollon
Follow Sarah on Twitter: @sarahbartnicka
Subscribe to The Peak's daily business newsletter: https://readthepeak.com/b/the-peak/subscribe