Veggie Van to bring fresh produce to inner city residents

A farmer’s market on wheels is hoping to put a dent into the problem of food deserts in Winnipeg’s inner city

Fireweed Food Co-op has launched its new Veggie Van pilot program, which brings subsidized local produce into Winnipeg’s inner city neighbourhoods through a mobile market on Thursday afternoons. The West Central Women’s Resource Centre was the first stop on the Veggie Van’s inaugural tour last week.

“We have zucchini, beets, yellow onion, carrots, sweet corn,” says Fireweed’s food hub delivery co-ordinator Janelle Wride, while standing behind a table piled high with colourful vegetables. “Those are most of the basic items that we have available from the producers right now and each week it’ll change a little bit.”

The goal of the program, she says, is to combat food insecurity by offering cheap, nutritious produce for sale in underserved communities.

Investors behaving badly

Finance professor Chi Liao’s background in mathematics often comes in handy in her line of work.

After all, both corporate and investment finance are built upon numbers. Yet financial reporting — balance sheets and cash-flow analysis — is not her area of interest.

In fact, her expertise has less to do with the numerical side of money and more to do with how our emotions affect how we manage our hard-earned cash.

“I’ve always been fascinated by people-watching and why it is we do what we do,” says Liao, who studied mathematics and finance before completing a PhD in behavioural finance from the University of Toronto in 2014.

Canadian, U.S. stock markets notch new record highs amid continued AI boom

TORONTO - Stock markets in Canada and the U.S. reached new highs, powered by gains in energy and AI, respectively.

Theresa Shutt, chief investment officer at Harbourfront Wealth Management, said themes around higher risk appetite driven by “AI fervour” helped lift the U.S. market. She said this was somewhat counterbalanced by lingering tensions between the U.S. and Iran and concerns that the market has risen too high.

The S&P/TSX composite index was up 434.57 points at 35,169.46.

In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 228.91 points at 51,307.79. The S&P 500 index was up 9.82 points at 7,609.78, while the Nasdaq composite was up 7.09 points at 27,093.90. The S&P 500 rose 0.1 per cent after drifting between small gains and losses through the day.

Manitoba makes strides on poverty, but EIA rates must increase: report

When Jayline Bursey gets her monthly Employment and Income Assistance cheque, it’s gone almost immediately.

Think you can beat the game? Don’t bet on it

Trying to watch sports on television these days means accepting a basic and deeply annoying reality: the game itself is no longer the main event.

No, the main event is the endless parade of ads for gambling apps marching across every commercial break, crammed into every spare inch of space not occupied by actual hockey players.

And man, are these ads terrible. Not morally — well, yes, morally too — but we’ll come back to that. I mean esthetically. These things are obnoxious.

If you’ve watched any amount of hockey lately, you know the drill: betting on games can turn you into a legend, a hero, the life of the party.

Investors can roll dice on emerging technologies that may or may not shape future, portfolios’ net worth

We live in hyperstitious times.

A philosopher named Nick Land coined the word hyperstition in the 1990s, describing the sense of living today in science fiction of the past.

Investors may have that same sensation, given the dominance of artificial intelligence in their portfolios.

Yet AI is arguably more than an advanced chat-bot/search engine. It is “the fabric that’s binding” together a lot of other science fiction-like technologies, moving them closer to viable commercialization, says Mickey Ganguly, associate portfolio manager for the CIBC Technology Innovation Fund.

Gamification and memes lure young people to sports wagering apps, prediction markets

When Rory McIlroy won the Masters for the second year in a row, Kalshi shared a photo of him on Instagram with the words, “Wait he’s goated.” When a video of NBA player Damian Lillard recovering from an injury circulated online, Kalshi’s main competitor Polymarket posted, “The league is cooked.”

If you don’t know what either of those phrases mean, it's because you may not be the target audience.

The posts and hundreds of others like it are exposing younger people to prediction market platforms, where users can put money on the line for the outcomes of real-world events — or absurd ones like when the U.S. will confirm that aliens exist or whether Jesus Christ will return before 2027.

Once on the platforms, companies keep users hooked with what they market as low-stakes, casual opportunities to make an easy buck, creating an environment that some say feels more like a game and less like a risky financial transaction with potentially harmful consequences. Indeed, recent academic research looking at 588 million trades on Polymarket found that profits were concentrated to just a very small group of top traders while the majority of users — 69% — lost money.

Funding transit is Manitoba’s future

When it comes to making decisions about how to spend our tax dollars, Manitobans want governments to spend on programs and services that tackle as many priorities as possible.

Manitoba delinquency rate rises amid cost of living strain: Equifax

Manitobans are increasingly missing credit card payments as the cost of living rises.

Non-mortgage debt in Manitoba jumped 1.84 per cent, when comparing January through March to the same time last year. Manitobans’ average non-mortgage debt hung around $18,568.

Meanwhile, the measure tracking when Manitobans pass payment deadlines by at least 90 days — called a delinquency rate — hiked 2.32 per cent year-over-year, according to new data from credit reporting agency Equifax Canada.

“It’s not the worst province, by a long way,” said Rebecca Oakes, Equifax vice-president of advanced analytics. “But … (there’s) also a little bit more financial stress than some of the other provinces.”

Investor strange love

Risk and reward seem like polar opposites. Yet when it comes to investing, greater risk yields greater potential reward. The other side of that coin, however, is the greater the reward you seek, the greater the risk of losing money.

Canada well positioned to face food inflation risks from fertilizer shortages: report

TORONTO - As shipping constraints in the Middle East disrupt global fertilizer supply and drive up prices, a new TD report says Canada is better positioned to face any inflationary pressures on its food production — at least in the short run.

Canada's fertilizer imports from the Gulf region are less than five per cent, limiting its exposure to the ongoing war in Iran. That's lower than Mexico and the United States, which import roughly 30-to-40 per cent of their nitrogen-rich urea from that region.

While high global oil prices have been in the spotlight since the effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the war in Iran has choked more than just oil supply.

Other essential commodities, such as fertilizers and aluminum, are also facing shortages and higher prices as tanker traffic remains halted. Roughly one-third of global seaborne fertilizer shipments of nitrogen and phosphate products pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the TD report. Demand for replacement fertilizer from alternative providers has gone up, raising prices globally.

Discount stores drive Loblaw’s Q1 profit and sales, raises quarterly dividend

An emphasis on discount stores continues to pay off for Loblaw Cos. Ltd. as shoppers search for affordable groceries amid intensifying economic headwinds.

"The ongoing outperformance of our hard-discount banners — Maxi and No Frills — was a key driver of (the) success, reinforcing their vital role in helping Canadians manage affordability," chief executive Per Bank told financial analysts on Wednesday after the retailer reported its first-quarter results.

The earnings report noted that the discount grocery banners outperformed for the owner of Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart, while its drugstore business saw growth in prescription drugs, particularly in sales of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic.

Loblaw also raised its quarterly dividend by 10 per cent to 15.5 cents per common share.

Winnipeg, U.K. economic experts team up to better understand poverty trap

Money know-how is essential to survival no matter where you live in the world. Without adequate financial literacy, it’s difficult to achieve what many experts in the field call “financial well-being.”

A growing field of research suggests one reason financial literacy initiatives have failed to make in-roads, especially for low-income individuals, is because they do not address the many facets of financial well-being, says one of the leading experts in the field.

“Financial well-being for most people is about a balance, and what you see quite strongly is that it really has a social component,” says Adele Atkinson, a professor at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

Atkinson, who will be in Winnipeg this week, is a member of the university’s well-respected Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM). She says financial well- being goes beyond long-term financial security.

The blunt — and massive — cost of forest fires

It’s a total that’s bound to go up — because all of the costs aren’t clear yet, and even when they are, not every cost can be quantified.

Healthy food subsidy might be on table over gas tax cut: Kinew

Premier Wab Kinew says he is still considering relief for Manitobans struggling with the high price of fuel but it may not be in the form of a gas tax holiday.

City offers real cost-of-living help while Ottawa, province pander for popularity

There’s no shortage of political enthusiasm these days for “cost-of-living relief.” Governments at every level are tripping over themselves to prove they feel your pain at the checkout counter and the gas pump. The problem isn’t the intent, it’s the execution.

Toy company Spin Master bracing for rising production, shipping costs from war

TORONTO - The war in the Middle East will soon make your kid's favourite toys more expensive to produce and deliver to store shelves.

Spin Master Corp., the Toronto-based firm behind Paw Patrol, Gabby's Dollhouse and Ms. Rachel toys, said Thursday that a blockage of one of the region's key shipping routes is pushing up its freight, resin and packaging costs.

The impact has so far been minimal because the company had several contracts with suppliers that locked in commodity prices before the conflict began on Feb. 28.

But chief financial officer Jonathan Roiter said that will soon change.

Ottawa outlines plans to tackle financial crime, ban crypto ATMs

OTTAWA - The federal government plans to ban cryptocurrency ATMs as part of a suite of measures in its spring economic statement targeting financial crimes.

The government says scammers use the ATMs to defraud victims, while criminals use them to convert the proceeds of crime.

There are currently just under 4,000 cryptocurrency ATMs in Canada — the most per capita in the world, finance officials speaking on background said. The document says Canadians will still be able to buy cryptocurrencies from "brick-and-mortar" businesses.

The financial update outlined other measures to tackle criminal use of businesses that provide services like currency exchanges and digital payments. They include new powers around ministerial directives, stricter rules on registration and more criminal record checks for those businesses.

Funding to boost early childhood educators’ pay helps some, not others, longtime workers in field lament

Although the federal and provincial governments are boosting early childhood educator wages by more than $14 million this year, some who’ve been working in the field a long time are feeling somewhat overlooked.

Prime Minister Mark Carney announces Canada’s 1st sovereign wealth fund

OTTAWA -

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the country's first national sovereign wealth fund on Monday, pitching it as a way for Canadians to invest in nation-building projects.

Carney said the Canada Strong Fund will invest in major Canadian industrial projects in areas such as energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and technology.

The prime minister said the federal government will put up funds starting at $25 billion to invest alongside private investors. He said individual Canadians can also put money into the fund and suggested it would be similar to purchasing a government bond, where the initial investment is protected.

Rent control killing jobs: landlords

Companies are laying off staff and pausing major investments ahead of changes to Manitoba’s rental market.

One Manitoba company that works primarily on apartment buildings has had four projects put on hold and had to lay off roughly a dozen staff.

“That’s been a common theme with my peers… They’re all having to do the same,” said Con-Restor Technologies owner Stephane Phaneuf.

The Manitoba government plans to change how rental property managers can apply for above-guideline increases this spring. If implemented, landlords won’t recoup renovation costs through rent as quickly.

On schedule: provincial minimum wage to rise to $16.40/hr in October

Manitoba’s minimum wage is set to rise 40 cents in October, leaving labour and business advocates split on the benefit of continuing to tie the baseline to the rate of inflation as the cost of living grows.

The minimum wage will rise to $16.40 per hour from $16/hr on Oct. 1. (The provincial government is required to announce the incoming minimum wage by April 1 each year.)

Provincial legislation ties the mark to inflation — the 40-cent increase is in line with Manitoba’s 2.7 per cent inflation rate in 2025 — and in 2022, the former Progressive Conservative government amended the rules to allow minimum wage be boosted beyond inflation, but only if inflation exceeds five per cent.

However, that same legislation prevents the province from closing the gap between the minimum wage and the cost of living, said Manitoba Federation of Labour president Kevin Rebeck.

Apple’s 50-year odyssey has redefined technology, pop culture and comeback stories

CUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — A scrawny hippie and a nerdy engineer who became prank-playing friends vowed to change the world when they founded a Silicon Valley startup on April Fools' Day 50 years ago and then — no joke — pulled it off.

The improbable odyssey began April 1, 1976, when a then-shaggy Steve Jobs and his gadget-tinkering friend Steve Wozniak signed a two-page partnership document that created Apple Computer Co.

Jobs, a 21-year-old college dropout, and Wozniak, a 25-year-old Hewlett-Packard employee, each received a 45% stake in Apple, with the remaining 10% going to their 41-year-old adviser, Ron Wayne.

The company got off to such a shaky start while trying to build a personal computer in the Los Altos, California, home of Jobs' parents that Wayne relinquished his stake for $2,300. It proved to be a $370 billion mistake, based on how much his holdings would have grown now that Apple boasts a $3.7 trillion market value.