Plus: the spy who sold us donuts June 6, 2022 Made in Canada IN THIS ISSUE 🦫 Canadian internet 🦖 Movie dinosaurs 🌊 Not enough lifeguards WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK Steve Russell/Toronto Star | Ontario Premier Doug Ford led the Progressive Conservative Party to their second consecutive majority in the provincial election last week. IMPORTANT Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario won their second consecutive majority in the provincial election last Thursday, nabbing 83 seats to the NDP’s 31 and the Liberals’ eight. Now all Ford has to do is manage inflation woes, negotiate with teachers’ unions, retain burned-out health-care workers, and pass the budget the PCs introduced in April. Easy, right? Interest rates? Still climbing. As expected, team Tiff raised rates another half a percent to 1.5% in the ongoing battle to bring down inflation. The consensus is that like Avatar sequels, there are likely more rate hikes to come. Higher rates are hurting zombies! (Not that kind of zombie.) When a company doesn’t make enough money to cover the interest on its debt, let alone its LaCroix bill, it’s called a zombie, since it looks alive but should probably be dead. As much as 70% of the Nasdaq fits this definition, thanks to a heavy prioritization of growth over profitability. Now that borrowing has gotten more expensive and VCs don’t feel much like investing in a company just because they have a lot of Instagram followers, this could leave a lot of companies (sorry, Peloton) ripe for acquisition — or worse. INTERESTING Hortons hears a…bunch of things it shouldn’t have. The beloved seller of Timbits is facing four lawsuits claiming that its app, which is used by (honestly, a surprisingly low) one in 10 Canadians, gathered personal data even when the app was closed. In the words of our favourite Timmies collaborator, it’s too late now to say sorry. Does insider trading exist in crypto? The U.S. DOJ thinks so — even if, technically, the term applies only to traditional securities. In a case that could open the door to regulation, Nathaniel Chastain, a former exec at NFT platform OpenSea, was indicted on charges of fraud and money laundering after he allegedly made a ton of money by secretly buying NFTs on the cheap days before deciding to prominently feature them on OpenSea’s homepage. The week in markets (in emoji) 🐂 💤 🛢️ ⬆️ 👾 🥲 Stocks had a pretty quiet week, with both the S&P 500 & TSX staying flat. A reminder of how nice boringness can be. Once you dig in, though, you see that oil companies continued to outperform as oil prices marched higher. At about 3%, bond yields are nearly as high as they’ve been in a decade — and they moved even higher in Canada after the recent rate hike. And crypto investors finally got a reprieve, with BTC just under $30,000 and ETH just over $1,750. THE FOMO INDEX IMPORTANT 👋 Sheryl Sandberg leans out — all the way out — of Facebook after 14 long and, uh, eventful years. Source 🙃 Facebook is also leaving Facebook, changing its ticker symbol to META. Source 🩺 Machine simulates human body conditions to keep donor livers viable for transplant longer. Creepy, but good. Source 🏊🏼‍♀️ Beaches and pools nationwide are desperate for lifeguards. Apply fast but NO RUNNING! Source CRASH & BURN TO THE MOON 😬 Tesla Chief Vibes Officer Elon Musk got a “super bad feeling” & decided to fire 10% of the company’s workforce. Source 🤷🏻‍♂️ 56.5% of eligible Ontario voters voted “who cares?” by staying home on Thursday, making this the lowest turnout ever. Source 🚙 Great Scott! Not only does DeLorean still exist, it unveiled images of a new EV. Specs indicate it will easily reach 1.21 gigawatts. Source 🌯 Engineering students with the munchies invent “Tastee Tape,” an edible adhesive for fastening burritos. Source WHO CARES - Rusty Foster WHAT’S UP THIS WEEK THURSDAY June 9 Are movie theatres the new living room couches? After Top Gun: Maverick’s record-setting $156 million USD Memorial Day weekend opening, studio execs and people who prefer their popcorn served in enormous tubs sure hope so. Jurassic World Dominion — with Jeff Goldblum still spelling out morals for anyone not paying attention — is the next summer blockbuster to try to keep the streak going. FRIDAY June 10 May’s employment numbers are here! They’re expected to follow U.S. numbers, where hiring is still going strong, despite the Fed’s moves to slow the economy (but it seems like only a matter of time). THE BIG IMPORTANT STORY COMPETITION Canada’s Telecom Oligopoly — And Why It’s Not Going Anywhere There’s a 90% chance that the internet connection you’re using right now comes from one of Canada’s Big Three carriers: Bell, Telus, or Rogers. (Maybe not coincidentally, all three have meaningfully outperformed the TSX in recent years.) You’re also probably paying roughly twice as much for it as you would in France or Italy. We wish we could tell you that the future lies in that other 10% — made up mostly of small regional ISPs that piggyback off of those major carriers’ networks and offer you lower rates and better customer service. But they might not be around for long. Last week, Ottawa proposed a new policy directive for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). It reinforces the need for big telcos to offer space on their networks to smaller resellers. That sounds like a good thing — and it would be, if the government weren’t also refusing to uphold a previous decision that made the Big Three sell that space at reasonable prices. Since the reversal of that policy a year ago, smaller ISPs have struggled to compete due to the higher wholesale rates. Some have already shut down. What hope is there for lowering those rates? Other than working from the free Wi-Fi of a Timmies parking lot, not much. OpenMedia, the internet advocacy organization, sent a petition of 50,000 signatures to cabinet asking it to reverse the decision. If you buy into the whole pen > sword thing, people who want their voices heard can weigh in too: the government’s taking comments until July 19. There’s also the hope that the next CRTC chair, who will be appointed this year, will be a bit more interested in making internet affordable for more Canadians — and a little less likely to hang out in pubs with Bell’s incoming CEO. - Sarah Rieger TOTALLY GOOD READS 🏃 How I Learned to Love Finishing Last Sometimes it’s healthier to be the tortoise than the hare | The New York Times 🍼 The Funk of Poverty A story of motherhood, money, and bureaucracy | Catapult 📺 The Superficial Diversity of Canadian TV How risk avoidance shapes our entertainment | The Walrus THE WISDOM OF TWITTER When the Fed Chair and the guy who will (maybe?) buy Twitter have a bad feeling about the economy the same week: THOUGHTS ON TODAY’S ISSUE? 🤑 Love it 🙂 Good 🙁 So so TThis week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Sarah Rieger (news writer), Rusty Foster (editor), Ambrose Martos (fact checker), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Ciara Rickard (copy editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), and Kat Angus (managing editor). Full disclosure: contributors to this newsletter own ethereum and stock in Tesla and S&P. Correction: Last week, we included a story about families of the Uvalde tragedy under “nonessential good reads” — but of course, that story is anything but nonessential. We apologize. Wealthsimple Media Inc. 80 Spadina Ave Suite 400 Toronto, ON, M5V 2J4 Replies to this email address are not monitored. Have questions? Visit our Help Centre or submit a request to our Client Support team. VIEW IN BROWSER PRIVACY POLICY UNSUBSCRIBE TLDR is offered by Wealthsimple Media Inc. and is for informational purposes only. Any views expressed are those of the individual author and/or of Wealthsimple Media Inc., not of Wealthsimple Financial Corp or any of its other subsidiaries or affiliates. The content in TLDR is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell assets or securities, nor any other kind of professional advice. 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