Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making the headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
This week: WestJet and the union representing its airplane mechanics returned to the table on Thursday to try to negotiate a contract. Three days earlier, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association had issued a 72-hour strike notice on behalf of WestJet’s 670-plus mechanics. But with the deadline mere hours away, both sides said they would return to negotiations. Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford called for tariffs that mirrored those recently imposed by the U.S. on Chinese imports, including a 100-per-cent tariff on electric vehicles.
And speaking of China, TikTok and its Chinese parent ByteDance urged a U.S. court to strike down a law they say will ban the app in the United States on Jan. 19. They contend the U.S. government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks for more than two years.
c. They are 14 per cent higher. Prices for domestic flights from July through September are 14 per cent higher on average than they were 12 months ago, according to figures from the Flight Centre Travel Group.
b. About 70,000 complaints. The CTA has a backlog of more than 72,000 air traveller complaints.
a. Canada’s supercharged population growth. Canada’s population has never grown faster over a four-quarter period than it did during the fiscal year ending in March. The country added a net 1.273 million people during that period, an influx that is straining the economy’s ability to keep up.
d. Safely developing superintelligent systems. Mr. Sutskever, who left OpenAI last month, said his new company would be called Safe Superintelligence, or SSI, and have offices in Palo Alto, Calif., and in Tel Aviv.
b. Jensen Huang. Mr. Huang is a 61-year-old electrical engineer known for his signature leather jacket. He was dubbed the Taylor Swift of tech by Meta Platforms boss Mark Zuckerberg.
d. The Canadian dollar. Currency traders think the loonie is headed down, down, down. Part of their pessimism reflects the belief that the Bank of Canada will aggressively cut interest rates this year to help stimulate a slowing economy. Lower interest rates make it less attractive for investors to hold loonies.
a. It filed for bankruptcy. Fisker’s bankruptcy filing follows that of several other electric-vehicle makers, including Proterra and Lordstown.
c. US$400-billion higher than forecast. What’s a few hundred billion between friends? The CBO estimated the deficit will jump to US$1.915-trillion for fiscal 2024, about US$400-billion more than it forecast in February. The 27-per-cent increase over the previous forecast reflects many factors including higher outlays for student loan relief, higher Medicaid expenditures and higher Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. costs to resolve bank failures.
b. A mineral-rich area of Northern Ontario. The Ring of Fire region has deposits of some of the critical metals needed for electric-vehicle battery production.
c. Fidelity Investments. Fidelity Investments Canada already manages and sells mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. It is aiming to create a full-service wealth manager that will provide a new source of financial advice in a market that has been dominated by the big banks.
d. 2.8 million. The share of temporary residents has nearly doubled over the past two years, surging to 6.8 per cent of Canada’s population from 3.5 per cent in 2022. Canada’s population is growing at its fastest rate in decades and the country’s housing market is struggling to accommodate the influx.
a. Protect call-centre workers from verbal abuse. The “Emotion Cancelling Voice Conversion Engine” aims to remove the angry tones from a caller's voice so that the call-centre worker hears only a softened version – the same words but spoken in less furious, more sedate tones. The software is still under development but SoftBank expects to deploy it before March, 2026.