Business Brief: Meet the Canadian Excel champion of the world

Good morning. Donald Trump is calling Justin Trudeau “Governor” of the “Great State of Canada” as the Prime Minister and premiers meet over the U.S. president-elect’s threatened tariffs. The ratcheting up of rhetoric is coming at a tender moment on Parliament Hill, as tensions emerge among the highest ranks of the governing Liberal Party ahead of a federal election in 2025. More on that below, as well as an introduction to Canada’s spreadsheet superstar, but first:

In the news

Canadian telecommunications firms are monitoring their networks for signs that they may have been targeted as part of a global cyberespionage campaign from China.

Imperial Metals Corp. is facing charges of violating the federal Fisheries Act stemming from a tailings dam spill at a British Columbia mine that caused massive damage to trees and polluted local waterways.

Parkland Corp. began pumping jet fuel made from canola and animal fats into Air Canada planes, marking the first use of domestically produced low-carbon fuel to lower an airline’s emissions.

On our radar

• The Bank of Canada announces its lending-rate decision today at 9:45 a.m. ET. You can follow along here.
• A key U.S. inflation report this morning is expected to underscore a rate cut is on the way from the Federal Reserve next week.

Data validation

Canadian crowned Excel champion of the world

This is cause for sum cell-ebration. Canadian Michael Jarman has been crowned the new spreadsheet champion of the world after winning out over 64 finalists at the Microsoft Excel World Championships in Las Vegas.

Held at the HyperX Arena in Vegas, “flashy lighting, huge screens and loudspeakers fill a room packed with people whose passion for spreadsheets extends beyond their day jobs,” Pippa Norman writes. There’s even a theme song that wouldn’t be out of place in a movie montage of someone training their whole life for this chance.

Jarman might not have trained his whole life, but he began competing in spreadsheet competitions in 2017. He placed third in his debut at Modeloff, the predecessor to today’s competition, and has returned ever since in the hopes of finishing in top. While he won Modeloff in 2018, he said that victory felt hollow since many of the sport’s top competitors had been disqualified to give others a chance to win.

“That’s why I was so happy to win this one. All of the old big names are back, and it’s a fair fight,” he said.

Keep reading the story here.

In focus

The 51st state of affairs

Say what you will about Donald Trump, but the president-elect knows how to push buttons. A day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would respond to tariffs with levies on U.S. imports, Trump took to Truth Social to say how much he enjoyed having dinner recently with “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.”

The Canadian government last week brushed off Trump’s 51st-state comments as a joke made during a lighthearted dinner conversation, Steven Chase reports. But in the wake of Trudeau’s comments to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce on Monday, it’s unclear how lighthearted those postdinner relations have lasted.

“I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all!” Trump wrote yesterday on his social-media network.

In the run-up to Trump’s inauguration, political and economic observers seem mostly convinced he won’t immediately impose his promised 25-per-cent tariffs on imports of Canadian and Mexican goods and services. Their logic being: Those tariffs would result in higher prices in his own country. But Trump has his own logic and more than 77 million Americans who subscribe to it. And he has recently left open the possibility that those experts might be right about the inflationary effects of tariffs.

Either way, Trump is poking Canada at a politically tender moment. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said yesterday her government will blow past its most recent deficit target when she tables the fall economic statement next week. She didn’t comment on a report by The Globe and Mail yesterday that she and the Prime Minister’s Office were at odds over spending levels.

The internal friction is emerging on the eve of a federal election in which the Conservative Party is leading in the polls by a wide margin. So Trump’s ire could be directed by the end of 2025 at Pierre Poilievre, who has also vowed to “fight fire with fire” with tariffs on U.S. imports. A potential war of levies would add to a year in politics that was already poised to weigh on Canada’s economy, according to a piece by our economics team in the most recent edition of ROB Magazine:

↑ The upside

If the polls hold, Canada will have a new government next year. Whether that’s an upside or a downside depends on your politics. The Conservatives promise lower taxes and less regulation. The Liberal economic vision revolves around clean energy, industrial tax credits and growing the work force. Whoever forms the government will need to get a handle on deficits, which ballooned through the pandemic. But the fiscal picture is rosier than in other countries. The International Monetary Fund sees Canada’s general government deficit equalling 1 per cent of GDP in 2025, compared with 7.3 per cent in the U.S. and an average across the G20 of 5.3 per cent.

↓ The downside

Election years tend to be big on spending. That could strain Ottawa’s fiscal guardrails and open the door to further tax hikes. The fiscal outlook is already clouded by a slowdown in population growth (which suggests less tax revenue) and new spending commitments for the military, housing and pharmacare. The government’s promise to keep deficits below 1 per cent of GDP and the ratio on a downward path may require new sources of revenue. The levy on bank profits in 2022 and the capital-gains tax changes in 2024 show the Liberal government is prepared to ding Bay Street and high-income individuals to fund its spending.

(FWIW)

With a population of about 40.1 million, Canada would likely be allotted about 50 seats in the House of Representatives.

Charted

The skyrocketing cost of U.S. health care

Why has the killing of a U.S. health-insurance CEO caused so much online glee? It’s partly because people become their worst selves on social media, and the algorithms reward extremists, Tony Keller writes. “Nothing new there. But it’s also because private hospitals and private insurers, the gatekeepers of the U.S. health system, are sources of enormous popular anxiety, bitterness and anger.”

The outlook

On our reading list

In Silicon Valley: Behind the scenes at a nuclear fusion startup’s ‘insane, top-secret opening ceremony.’

For sale: Buyers and sellers cautious amid a generally ‘horrible’ condo market.

Finding a new home: Stolen ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ have been auctioned for US$28 million.

Morning update

Global markets drifted ahead of key U.S. inflation numbers this morning as investors looked for signals on the Federal Reserve’s next interest-rate move. Wall Street futures were mixed, while TSX futures were little changed in advance of the Bank of Canada’s interest-rate decision.

Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was up 0.06 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 advanced 0.14 per cent, Germany’s DAX rose 0.08 per cent and France’s CAC 40 gained 0.2 per cent.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 0.01 per cent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng declined 0.77 per cent.

The Canadian dollar traded at 70.55 U.S. cents.