Banks have been using machine learning and data science for a long time. But Eric Morrow, BMO's Managing Director of the bank's Enterprise Data Science & AI group, believes new advances in AI tech are expanding the range of what can be done. On this episode, he explains how Canadian banks are using AI, what the limitations are, and how AI gets adopted at large companies with a low tolerance for risk.----- 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

Jean-François Tardif, president of Timelo Investment Management, sees the Canadian and American economies diverging and thinks it could lead to the loonie falling to 50 cents against the U.S. dollar. In this episode, he explains why he believes that's a likely outcome, why Canada's currency is becoming detached from commodity prices, and how these changes are shaping his investment decisions.----- 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

Tyler Meredith has been one of the driving forces behind no fewer than six federal budgets and served as the top economic advisor to Prime Minister Trudeau and two finance ministers, so he knows a thing or two about how budgets are made. Today he joins us to explain how exactly the federal government's budget (like the one released last week) is put together, where the ideas come from, who decides what makes it in, how plans turn into policy, and how the money actually gets distributed. ----- 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

Our official statistics dramatically underestimate how rich the richest Canadians are. That's the finding of a new report by Dan Skilleter at Social Capital Partners, a think tank that studies Canada's economy. In fact, when it comes to wealth inequality, Canada isn't much more equal than the United States. Dan joins us today to detail what he found in his new report and explain why Statistics Canada doesn't give us an accurate picture of wealth in our country.----- Read the report: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5edfe6ed26bc3e59001d42d7/t/660d936553bb3e4b2d8bbded/1712165735599/2024.04.04-SCP-Billionaire+Blindspot+-+FINAL.pdf 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

If you want to make yourself mad about the state of transportation in Canada, all you have to do is go to Europe. Anyone who’s made the trip can tell you that in almost every European country, it’s faster, more convenient, and more comfortable to take public transportation than it is here. And the same is true now in many parts of Asia—places that not long ago were much poorer than Canada, with much less well-developed infrastructure. So why is public transportation in Canada so far behind these other parts of the world?Why does it seem to take forever to get anything built here (and cost way more)?And what would we need to do differently to fix it?To answer these questions, we’re joined by Reece Martin, who is a public transport expert, consultant, and creator of the wonderful and fascinating YouTube channel RMTransit, which has 250,000 subscribers and hundreds of videos all about different transportation systems around the world. ----- 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

If the world is going to pull off a clean energy transition, we need way more batteries. And we need them to be more efficient, more affordable, and more powerful. That's where Dr. Michael Metzger and the Canadian Battery Innovation Centre at Dalhouse University come in. They're working at the cutting edge of battery technology, and on this episode Dr. Metzger joins us to explain how batteries work, what their limitations are, and some of the innovations scientists are working on to make them better.-----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

Indigenous communities were more or less shut out of fully participating in Canada's economy for centuries, but that is beginning to change. Quietly, First Nations and Indigenous communities across Canada are beginning to take ownership stakes in major clean energy, resource development, and infrastructure projects. But this isn't happening without complications and challenges. On this episode, we talk with Mark Podlasly, a member of the Nlaka’pamux Nation and Chief Sustainability Officer for the First Nations Major Projects Coalition, about why it's happening now, the history that has led to this point, the size of the opportunity for Indigenous communities, and some of the obstacles that still remain.-----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

This episode originally aired on October 17, 2023.Many of us have a vague sense of what industrial policy means, and we might even have an opinion about the specific forms it can take. But that fuzziness around even the definition of industrial policy has made studying it — and learning what makes industrial policy succeed and fail — difficult.Dr. Réka Juhász is trying to change that. Through her innovative academic work (and that of her collaborators at The Industrial Policy Group), she is advancing our understanding of how governments are using industrial policy, and what specific policies they are adopting.On this episode, Réka walks us through how she took a new approach to researching this topic, what actually constitutes industrial policy, and why she believes more governments have turned to these policies in recent years.----- 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

It's a big year for elections, with voters heading to the polls in 64 countries representing nearly half of the world's population. How some of those votes turn out will have a major impact on Canada. In this episode, Graeme Thompson, senior analyst with Eurasia Group's Global Macro-Geopolitics practice, joins us to break down what's happening in elections in India, Mexico, the UK, and — of course — the United States, what the likely outcomes are, and what it means for Canada.Ed. note: The audio is a bit messier than usual on this one, but it should still be listenable. Sorry about that!-----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 semiconductor industry is dominated by giant companies like TSMC, Intel, and Nvidia. But more and more startups are beginning to emerge in the space, and one promising example is based Canada. Untether AI is a specialized chipmaker focusing on applications where energy efficiency and speed are critical. To date, it's raised more than $200 million. Untether's CEO Chris Walker joins us on this episode to talk about the chip business, how smaller players can compete with the Nvidia's of the world, and (patiently) explain to us how the actual hardware of chips works.-----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