Air Canada and the pilots union reached a tentative deal just after midnight on Sunday. Air Canada pilots stand during an informational picket at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., on Aug. 27.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Getting caught up on a week that got away? Here’s your weekly digest of the Globe’s most essential business and investing stories, with insights and analysis from the pros, stock tips, portfolio strategies and more.
Air Canada and pilots union reach tentative deal, averting strike or lockout
Air Canada and its pilots union reached a tentative four-year agreement just past midnight Sunday, averting a strike or lockout at Canada’s largest airline. The pilots, represented by Air Line Pilots Association, will receive a 26-per-cent raise retroactive to September of 2023, then 4-per-cent raises in 2024, 2025 and 2026, according to the tentative agreement seen by The Globe and Mail. Pilots will also receive 84 hours’ pay if the deal is ratified, a bonus that would bring $85,000 for the most senior pilots and $20,000 for those at the bottom of the seniority list. The agreement, which replaces one reached 10 years ago that provided raises of 2 per cent a year, must be approved by more than 5,200 Air Canada pilots in votes over the next month.
International students who spent years finding a pathway to permanent residency are out of options
Tens of thousands of temporary residents who came to Canada as international students might be forced to return to their home countries in the next year, Vanmala Subramaniam reports. Between 70,000 and 130,000 international students holding postgraduation work permits will have expired visas in 2024 and 2025, according to estimates. Many will not receive visa extensions or an invitation to apply for permanent residency because of Ottawa’s shifting approach to immigration, specifically a series of policy changes aiming to cap the number of temporary residents and low-wage foreign workers in the country.
Decoder: Rent relief follows federal cap on foreign students
Canada is finally seeing some relief after years of surging rents. The asking price for rental units in Canada has stabilized and is even falling, in some cities, months after Ottawa placed a cap on international student visas. The average rental rate landlords in Canada were asking for in August was 0.7 per cent lower than three months earlier, according to real estate research firm Urbanation. The average monthly asking rent on Rentals.ca in Canada was $2,187 in August – flatlining since January. Jason Kirby takes a closer look at the figures in this week’s Decoder.
Canada’s living standards set to worsen without productivity bump: TD report
Some slightly concerning news from a recent economic report by Toronto-Dominion Bank: Canada’s living standards are set to deteriorate if the country’s productivity does not improve, Matt Lundy reports. TD chief economist Beata Caranci and senior economist James Marple write in their report, published Thursday, that productivity growth has ground to a halt. The slowdown has been especially bad in the construction industry, where productivity has tumbled to levels last seen in the 1990s. “Canada has seen its productivity go from bad to worse since the pandemic,” the TD report says. “Without improved productivity growth, workers will face stagnating wages and government revenues will not keep pace with spending commitments, requiring higher taxes or reduced public services.” What is productivity and why is it so low in Canada? Here’s a look at what it means, and how we got here.
Brookfield Asset Management considers moving head office to U.S.
Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. is considering moving its head office to New York to qualify for a wider roster of stock indexes, James Bradshaw reports. The Toronto-based asset manager floated a series of changes, which are still under consideration, to investors at a presentation in New York earlier this week. They would be the company’s next steps to broaden its access to capital markets, following a 2022 spinoff that listed 25 per cent of its shares in public markets. If Brookfield moves ahead with the plan, it could still keep its Canadian incorporation. The company would also undertake a share exchange that would make all of the asset manager’s shares publicly traded.
Revolution, interrupted: Why AI has failed to live up to the hype in drug development
AI was supposed to revolutionize drug discovery. It hasn’t – not yet, anyway. Take Deep Genomics, for example. The Toronto-based company, founded in 2015, and its AI models have test more than 200 million molecules for their ability to treat disease. Today, Deep Genomics has zero drugs in clinical trials and many of its plans have blown up. “AI has really let us all down in the last decade when it comes to drug discovery,” said Deep Genomics founder Brendan Frey. “We’ve just seen failure after failure.” Joe Castaldo and Sean Silcoff report on AI’s promise to revolutionize drug research – “better drugs, faster” – and why it has failed to live up to the hype.
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