‘Bright’ future: RCAF chief says spike in defence spending is boosting flight times

OTTAWA - One year into her new job as commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Lt.-Gen. Jamie Speiser-Blanchet said she could see an immediate effect of the federal government's defence spending boost: RCAF pilots are spending more time in the air.

In a recent interview with The Canadian Press, Speiser-Blanchet also acknowledged that preparing the entire service for what she described as a rapid and "giant transformation" — rebuilding the whole plane while it's flying, so to speak — sometimes gives her pause.

"It's that pace of change sometimes that worries me a little," she said.

She said while she’s "very comfortable" with the decisions made preparing for modernization, it's "the thought that there's something we should be doing now to make sure that we're set up for success in the future and that we're missing it" that keeps her up at night.

Automation reaches new heights on farm

LANGHAM, Sask. — The thousands of farmers from across the Prairies who flock to the annual Ag in Motion show every July seem oblivious to the possibility the technology on display could one day replace many of them.

Families with children in tow, Hutterite colony workers, grandparents and young couples just starting out roamed through the 600 or more exhibitor displays, amazed at how everything about farming just keeps getting bigger, more efficient and increasingly more automated.

It’s now possible to seed using a 100-foot-wide drill — a 12-foot jump over the widest available a few years ago — provided the farmer can afford a tractor with enough horsepower to pull it. Those sell for around $850,000 and up.

Granted, the number of farms with enough acres to justify that kind of width and drawing power is still relatively small, but farms continue to grow. And it’s no secret the number of people who have the interest, skills and financial wherewithal to run them continues to shrink.

Banks seek to implement AI tools for customers … who love them until they don’t work

Few consumer-facing industries illustrate the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence more than the financial services sector.

Generative AI — the technology powering chatbots that can seemingly think and provide reasonably correct, if not insightful, answers to our questions — is arguably a wonder of the modern world.

The potential for providing financial advice is indeed palpable. Then again, it’s not hard to imagine the technology running amok especially with people’s money.

A recent report on digital banking services provides insight on the risks and opportunities.

Human toll of drug crisis hurts everyday citizens, too: biz leader

The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce has given a thumbs-up to the recent 10-day police crackdown on open drug use and trafficking downtown, and says governments should follow up the effort with a public safety strategy.

The chamber released a statement Friday that says the enforcement initiative, which began June 24, was required owing to the city’s growing safety concerns.

“Businesses, employees are scared to come to work. Businesses are talking to me about closing their doors,” said president and CEO Loren Remillard in an interview. “There’s a human toll being exacted through this crisis, and it’s not just on the homeless community.”

Remillard said the news release was issued weeks after the crackdown to allow for the dust to settle.

‘Existential’: Community papers struggling to survive amid Canada Post flyer delivery

MONTREAL - Community newspaper owners claim Canada Post is helping to drive some of them out of business thanks to an expanded partnership it forged with the country's largest printing firm.

Last month, the Crown corporation launched the countrywide rollout of a joint venture with Transcontinental Inc. known as Raddar, which saw Canada Post start delivering discount-deal leaflets in all 10 provinces.

Community newspapers have traditionally relied on flyer bundles to fund their publications, which are delivered free to millions of readers in urban and rural communities.

Paul Deegan, CEO of News Media Canada, which represents scores of community papers among the 550 news titles it advocates for, says those outlets are now losing ad clients after being undercut by a government-backed enterprise. The revenue loss threatens to shutter news outlets and leave residents less informed about their communities, he said.

Winnipeg-developed new app Hostly seeks to bring community together

Stephen Hua enjoys making connections.

“That’s my calling or my passion here, so to speak: to find ways to bring people together and plan events,” he said.

Over the last 25 years, Hua has pursued that passion as a live events promoter and restaurateur in Winnipeg. He’s the founder of the annual electronic music festival Summer of Sound, he’s organized local concerts by major musical acts such as Drake and Lady Gaga, and he co-owns Commonwealth Kitchen and Bar on Main Street.

Now, Hua is helping people make connections via a new app.

OpenAI says its AI technology acted on its own in an ‘unprecedented’ hack of another company

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Tuesday that its artificial intelligence system hacked into another AI company on its own in what the company called an “unprecedented cyber incident.”

“We had a significant security incident during evaluation of our models,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement posted on social media.

AI startup Hugging Face said last week that it had detected an intrusion into its data processing systems that it suspected was caused by an AI agent autonomously acting on its own.

“We suspected last week’s cyberattack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent,” Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue said in a statement. "Turns out it did!”

Tariffs threaten Canadian retailers and their U.S. sales — again

TORONTO - When customers in the United States place orders with Toronto jewelry company Suetables, Sue Henderson does something unconventional for a business owner: she asks them if they're really sure they want to make the purchase.

Henderson double checks because on-and-off again tariffs have driven up fees on products crossing the border.

"Just to give you an example, someone would order a $200 pair of earrings and click through saying yes, I'll pay the tariffs, yes, I'll pay the tariffs, yes, I'll pay the tariffs, but then the order would arrive to the concierge and you've got a $70 tariff on a $200 pair of earrings," Henderson said.

"They'd say, 'Well, I don't want them.'"

Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.

About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.

Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was "the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

Opposition brewing as data centre capacity is set to explode across Canada

OTTAWA - Across Canada, plans are underway for a massive boom in construction of the huge new data centres needed for artificial intelligence technology.

But opposition is also building as residents worry about how the facilities will affect their communities — and as the data centres themselves become a symbol of the anxieties swirling around AI.

"An AI data centre is like the physical avatar of AI. And so it's just like concrete and steel, physical space of a technology that increasingly I think Canadians are worried is going to have a really disruptive impact on their lives," said David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data.

"The local concerns are tied to the resources that these data centres consume. So it's about electricity, it's about water, it’s about noise."

Winnipeg Beach vinyl boutique helps lake-goers get in the groove

Carlson Teakle is the owner of Beachside Vinyl, a 400-square-foot shop located at 18 Main St., a (Rolling) stone’s throw away from the shores of Lake Winnipeg. The 53-year-old father of four and grandfather of two admits to having fielded the question, “Why Winnipeg Beach?” a number of times since his grand opening earlier this year. His stock reply: why not Winnipeg Beach?

Ottawa invests $3.5M in EMILI growth

GROSSE ISLE — A Winnipeg-based non-profit committed to advancing digital agriculture is receiving a multimillion-dollar investment from the federal government that coincides with the organization’s 10th anniversary.

Liberal MP Doug Eyolfson (Winnipeg West) announced Prairies Economic Development Canada is investing $3.5 million in the Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative.

“This investment will help more Canadian companies test and validate new technologies, attract investment, develop skilled talent and bring innovative solutions to the market faster,” Eyolfson said Wednesday morning at EMILI’s Innovation Farms facility northwest of Winnipeg.

“Most importantly, it will help ensure that producers have access to practical tools that make their farms more productive, more sustainable and more resilient.”

Bank of Canada says food inflation likely to remain high for rest of 2026

OTTAWA - The Bank of Canada says food inflation is likely to remain high through the second half of the year as the war in Iran pushes the cost of fuel and farming higher.

In its monetary policy report, the central bank says higher energy prices will continue to weigh on the cost of fertilizer, which is highly dependent on natural gas, as well as other agricultural input costs.

Overall, the central bank is forecasting inflation will slow to 2.5 per cent over the second half of 2026, after hitting 3.2 per cent in May.

The central bank says its forecast for inflation is highly dependent on developments in the Middle East, and although oil prices have come down from their recent peak in April, they remain volatile as hostilities between the U.S. and Iran picked up again last weekend.

Feds, most provinces get top marks on internal trade — but more work to be done

OTTAWA - The federal government has gone from a C student to top of the class in its work to advance internal trade between provinces, says the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

In the federation's latest annual report card on internal trade, the federal government jumped to an A-plus from the C grade it got in 2025.

The report card released Wednesday by the advocacy group for small businesses said Canada has made unprecedented progress toward breaking down internal trade barriers long considered a self-imposed drag on the domestic economy.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that removing internal trade barriers could boost Canada's real gross domestic product by $210 billion over the long term.

What a way to fly — if you’re rich

When my husband and I were catching a flight from Roatán, Honduras, to Toronto earlier this year, we shared a taxi to the airport with an acquaintance.

He was an amiable guy and we made small talk. I noticed he got jostled travelling over the bumpy island roads same as we did, even though he was one of those annoyingly well-put-together travellers who seemed unfazed by the crushing humidity that was making my hair stick to my neck and forehead. Perhaps he was wearing one of those breathable fabrics that wicks away moisture.

And though I had heard he had travelled to many parts of the world, I noticed his luggage wasn’t quite as “seasoned” as ours.

We shook hands at departures, and the light rhythmic whir of his pristine wheelie bag quickly faded as he melted into the throng at Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport while we were still gathering our bags.

Manitoba firm fills merch tables

Fans of California-based rock band Mammoth who purchase one of the group’s T-shirts tonight at Canada Life Centre will be purchasing clothing that was screenprinted in Manitoba.

bet365 expands Canadian footprint with launch in Alberta’s gaming market

Trip Stoddard and bet365 are expanding their Canadian footprint.

Alberta officially opened its regulated sports betting and iGaming market Monday, becoming the second Canadian province to do so. Ontario became the first to offer a regulated, private market for online gaming April 4, 2022.

And like it did in Ontario, bet365 is among the operators that will set up shop in Alberta.

“Canada is a key market for bet365, and cementing our brand’s presence in Alberta marks another milestone in our long-term commitment to Canadian sports fans,” said Stoddard, head of development at bet365. "We're proud to work alongside Alberta's regulators to give fans a trusted platform to engage with the sports they love through a responsible, world-class experience."

Hundreds of economists say ‘we must act now’ on AI’s economic impact and job displacement risks

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hundreds of economists say in an open letter that institutions “must act now” to address how artificial intelligence could transform the economy and could put many people out of work.

The statement released Monday was signed by top economists, along with computer scientists and some executives at tech companies including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.

“AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years,” says the letter organized by Stanford University's digital economy lab. “This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards.”

The letter, which has only four sentences, says leaders must “build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society.”

If it works in Ontario, why not in Manitoba?

Grid-scale battery storage has fundamentally changed the global energy landscape — and Manitoba needs to get on board.

Battery systems store large amounts of excess electricity for when it’s most needed. While they can be charged from any generation source, they are especially beneficial for integrating wind and solar power, which vary with weather and time of day. Batteries allow electrical grids to meet the need for firm, dispatchable and affordable capacity using renewable energy, rather than relying on coal, nuclear and fossil gas. They also provide numerous other benefits, including reducing overloading of transmission infrastructure and helping to regulate the grid’s frequency and voltage.

Average costs for grid-scale batteries plummeted by more than half between 2023 and 2025 and installations have skyrocketed in China, the U.S., Australia and Europe. Texas now has 16,500 megawatts (MW) of battery storage, while California has 15,200 MW. Closer to home, Ontario recently awarded 640 MW of contracts to three battery storage projects in a competitive auction, with batteries beating out fossil gas-fired power plants on cost every time. One of these projects will be built near Dryden, only four hours east of Winnipeg.

Each battery system will provide eight hours of capacity but will cost considerably less than Ontario’s previous battery procurements, which provide only four hours of capacity. With this latest auction, Ontario has now secured 3,600 MW of battery storage capacity, including the operational Oneida (250 MW), Hagersville (300 MW) and Napanee (250 MW) projects. Almost all have significant Indigenous participation, with the latest procurements boasting 50 per cent First Nations ownership.

‘Not a fun time’: Quebec video game industry in limbo as studios cut back

MONTREAL - At 10:30 a.m. last Monday, about a dozen employees at Bethesda Game Studios in Montreal learned they would be laid off.

The group, part of a larger team of 120 at the Xbox-owned company, had been riding high with the ongoing success of action role-playing video game “Fallout 76” and another one called “The Elder Scrolls VI” in the works.

Instead, roughly 10 per cent of them were told via video conference by a director in Maryland they would be laid off in two months and locked out of company systems until then, said one worker who was present.

The Canadian Press is not naming the source because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared it would harm their future job prospects. Xbox and Bethesda did not respond to questions on the layoffs.