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

Our hosts are off this week, so we're bringing you one of our favourite episodes (just our third-ever) from back in January. Enjoy!Canada's housing market has become our national obsession, and with good reason. Years of skyrocketing prices are now meeting surging mortgage rates, and the result is some of the least affordable housing in the world. What's driving that affordability crisis, and what comes next?On this episode of Free Lunch by The Peak, we speak with Mike Moffatt, a Senior Director at the Smart Prosperity Institute and Assistant Professor at Ivey Business School. Mike argues that a lack of supply is the key driver of expensive housing in Canada—we get into the details of why that is and some of the ways our dysfunctional housing market warps our economy.

Basic income has been pitched as the solution to so many of our problems. Eliminating poverty, sparking entrepreneurship, empowering people to pursue their passions—all of these would be, its boosters claim, outcomes of a basic income. But not everyone is so optimistic about the idea. Lindsay Tedds is an associate professor at University of Calgary’s Department of Economics, and co-authored the book Basic Income and a Just Society: Policy Choices for Canada’s Social Safety Net. On this episode, she joins us to break down the pitfalls of a basic income, what the research shows its effects would be, and why she believes it's an idea that could, in many ways, actually make things worse.-----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

Every aspect of our economy—every transaction, every contract— is ultimately shaped by our laws, which are enforced by the police. But how policing actually works is, for many of us, a black box. Who makes decisions about what the police should do? How much do we spend on the policing we get? Is our policing system working, and for who? How could it work better?On this episode of Free Lunch by The Peak, Kent Roach, University of Toronto law professor and author of the 2022 Donner Book Prize-nominated book Canadian Policing: How and Why it Must Change, joins us to discuss all these issues and more.-----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