HEADLINES
Transcontinental Shares Jump on Packaging-Unit Sale, Special Dividend
Transcontinental shares surged after the company announced plans to sell its packaging division for C$2.1 billion and return a sizable cash payout to shareholders.
Shares rose 19.1% to C$23.66.
The Canadian packaging-and-printing company on Monday said it agreed to sell the segment to ProAmpac Holdings, a flexible-packaging manufacturer headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, and certain of its subsidiaries.
Transcontinental's packaging business makes flexible plastic packaging for food, consumer goods, and industrial products. It generated about C$1.6 billion in revenue in the twelve months ended July 27.
Maple Leaf Foods to Distribute C$75 Million in Special Dividend
Maple Leaf Foods will distribute about C$75 million to shareholders by way of a special dividend.
The Canadian packaged meats company on Monday said the board declared a special dividend of C$0.60 a share that will be payable on Dec. 19 of this year to shareholders of record as of Dec. 15.
Chief Executive Curtis Frank said the special dividend marks the company's transition from a period of deleveraging to a balanced capital allocation strategy that supports greater shareholder returns alongside continued investment in growth.
Company Could Return More to Shareholders
Dye & Durham Jump on Settlement With Large Shareholder, Board Refresh
Dye & Durham shares rallied after the company struck a settlement with activist investor OneMove Capital and unveiled a board overhaul, including a new chair.
Shares ended the trading day 44.2% higher at C$4.01.
The embattled Toronto-based legal-practice-management software company said late Friday that Edward Smith, veteran of electronics maker SMTC, will succeed Anthony Kinnear on the board and be named as chair. His appointment is part of OneMove's push to have several nominees on the board that it had put forth earlier this year.
OneMove has been calling for sweeping changes on the company's board, claiming it allowed for a share-price collapse and made other strategic missteps.
U.S., Canadian Housing Markets Expected to Slow Next Year
Activity in the housing markets in the U.S. and Canada is expected to slow in 2026, with demand slightly weakening due to low affordability, Fitch Ratings said.
Home price growth in the U.S. will be miniscule, while Canada will see prices grow in the low single digits, Fitch said. Parts of the U.S., led by the South, may see a decline in prices, Fitch said, adding "easing mortgage rates and insufficient supply support price growth in Canada, although economic uncertainty, high mortgage rates and inflation limit affordability."
Globally, home prices are set to rise modestly next year, Fitch Ratings said in its Global Housing and Mortgage Outlook 2026.
Rosenberg Turns 'Outright Bullish' on Canada Dollar
Economist David Rosenberg said his namesake firm is moving "outright bullish" on the Canadian dollar, and forecasts USDCAD to reach C$1.30 in 2026, from its current C$1.38 level.
The head of Rosenberg Research said the Bank of Canada and Federal Reserve are now moving in opposite directions, with the BOC now firmly on hold while the Fed contemplates cuts. Furthermore, Rosenberg said the amount of slack in the economy is close to evaporating, citing recent GDP revisions dating back to 2022. Those revisions, which lifted the level of GDP, also mean improved productivity, and a flattening in domestic unit-labor costs.
"This means that Canada likely no longer needs the competitive crutch from a weak currency," Rosenberg said.
Air Transat's Pilot Strike Could Add Short-Term Stock Volatility
Air Transat's pilot strike could add some short-term volatility to the shares, but TD Cowen's Tim James said that there are fundamental positives to look toward instead.
The analyst said that at this point, the lead up to Sunday's 72-hour notice of strike action is expected to have a financial impact on 1Q/F26, but he thinks it can be resolved without longer-term impairment. This is thanks to some tailwinds ahead, such as forecasted Canadian economic growth in 2026 which he says should lift air travel demand as well as Transat's cost-saving opportunities and revenue benefits from its Porter Airlines partnership.
TALKING POINT
Canada Wants to Excel in AI, But its Funding Model is Frustrating Tech Leaders
By Joe Castaldo and Sean Silcoff of The Globe and Mail
When the federal government announced a plan in April, 2024, for Canada to catch up in the artificial intelligence race, there was no time to waste. A key element was a $300 million fund to help companies pay for the cost of building and running AI models.
Ottawa held consultations, published a report, and after the fall of one Liberal government and election of another, announced in June, 2025, that the program, dubbed the Compute Access Fund $(CAF)$, was open to applications. Last month, some applicants received rejection notices offering no explanation, while others still in the running to receive between $100,000 and $5 million apiece learned they are moving to another evaluation stage. No funds have been disbursed, and the process could spill into 2026.
This might be the speed of government but it's woefully behind the speed of AI, where new developments happen weekly. The disparity has left some Canadian AI entrepreneurs frustrated and concerned that Ottawa is moving too slowly. What's more, some say the program could now be missing a bigger opportunity for Canada to catch up.
"When you have a program that's a year-and-a-half in the making, you are a dinosaur by the point funds are released," said Moody Abdul, co-founder of Klarify in Toronto, which makes AI tools for therapists to handle notes and other tasks. "We don't have the time to do business-as-usual." Klarify applied to CAF, which is targeted at small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), but was rejected.
Expecting government to move as fast as a speeding industry is a tall order. That's exacerbated by the fact that AI minister Evan Solomon's department is not only new but has a lot on its plate, including developing a new AI strategy, a quantum strategy and boosting digital sovereignty.
"Before we start criticizing -- oh gosh, who got it and who didn't -- I completely understand and appreciate SMEs that have spent a lot of time on an application," Solomon said in an interview. "But I will also say that there was absolutely no way that a $300 million compute access fund will be able to satisfy every single compute need."
The CAF is part of a $2 billion initiative announced in spring 2024 to stimulate the construction of AI data centres and compute infrastructure in Canada. The government has so far allotted up to $240 million to Toronto-based Cohere Inc., which builds large language models for enterprise users, and committed $42.5 million to University of Toronto for compute infrastructure for the research community. Many applicants to CAF are still waiting to find out whether they will receive funds.
"My initial impression was light, scrappy and fast," Simon Eskildsen said of the CAF process. Eskildsen is a co-founder of Turbopuffer in Ottawa, which makes a search engine for companies to connect massive amounts of data to AI models. "Now it's been months and all we've heard is that we're still in."
Some worry that CAF is not only moving slowly, but too focused on the wrong thing. The CAF application guide lists a few AI activities eligible for funding. That includes both building AI models (referred to as training) and using existing models as part of software. Think of it this way: OpenAI has built a model called GPT-5, which helps power ChatGPT, an application that can answer questions.
The concern some experts have is that while these foundational AI models are important, that is not where the economic gains will be. These models, along with data centres, will likely be commoditized and companies will have to compete on price, said Daniel Wigdor, chief executive of AI venture studio Axl in Toronto. "They're all just going to get into a race to the bottom," he said.
Instead, companies that make use of this infrastructure to build new applications to solve problems will be the winners, he said. The same was true of the internet era. Software companies such as Alphabet Inc. (Google), Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook, Instagram) and Shopify Inc. proved to be more successful than telecom carriers and network equipment vendors such as AT&T, Cisco and the defunct Nortel Networks.
Canada should instead find ways to support AI software companies -- the future Shopifys, not the Nortels. "It's like looking at electricity and saying we should build a bunch of hydro dams without saying, wait a minute, what are we using electricity to do?" Wigdor said. "We could be the ones building the applications years ahead of anyone."
Scott Stevenson, CEO of AI legal-software company Spellbook, said bureaucrats have an outdated notion of AI. He has been left frustrated after his interactions with some federal programs, including CAF. Government, he said, is too focused on backing companies that say they are doing intense research and development and building their own AI models.
"The assumptions that these panels make are really incorrect -- and based on how AI worked in 2015," he said, where "you need a bunch of researchers, a bunch of hardware, and you need to burn all this cash training models. It's a terrible waste of money."
Spellbook doesn't need to train models. Stevenson's company has secured around 4,000 customers by using existing models from the tech giants to build software that automates tasks for lawyers, such as drafting contracts. Competitors that have built their own models are struggling, dead, or "just sitting on these completely useless models," he said.
Only a handful of large, well-funded companies such as OpenAI, Google and Cohere are capable of building general-purpose AI models and Stevenson said that custom models will underperform.
"I don't think funding training makes a lot of sense," said Ryan Wilson, founder of legal AI company Walter Software in Vancouver, which does no model training. Doing so may have been a good idea a couple of years ago, but the industry has changed, he said. "There will only be five or six winners in that game."
"Not every application included model training. That is important to note," said Deloitte Canada partner Brendan Cooper, who worked with companies to submit proposals to the program. "But it is a pretty prevalent area of focus for a lot of companies."
Some AI researchers have challenged the industry's focus on building huge foundational models, arguing that it could be crowding out other approaches and that smaller models still have a role. Vancouver's Variational AI, for example, is pursuing that route for drug discovery.
Solomon said it is premature to draw conclusions about the government's preferences. "The idea that we are overindexing on foundation models versus applications, how would anyone have any idea?" he said. "There's not been a single announcement. What you probably have is a couple of people who didn't get it and have complained."
Last month's federal budget also contains "signals," he said, that the government is moving to support companies building AI applications. That includes changes to speed up the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program (SR&ED) and sweeten the tax benefits.
Solomon acknowledged CAF has moved slowly, but said that's because it was deluged with applications. "The diligence process on each application took much longer than we thought," he said. "We want to make sure that these applications are real."
Wigdor said other solutions are needed for Canada to build AI application companies. One idea is to rejig SR&ED so that the funds do not go directly to successful applicants, but instead to their customers to subsidize the purchase of their offerings. That would help startups win orders and let the market pick winners. He has also called for public funding of AI institutes focused on commercialization, not just research.
Adam Keating, CEO of St. John's-based CoLab and a member of the federal government's AI task force, has also advocated for supporting AI application companies. "That's what we can do quickly," he said, adding the government appears serious about moving faster. "As much as there may be some folks frustrated about this right now, I do think they are trying to change things," he said.
Expected Major Events for Tuesday
00:01/UK: Nov BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor
00:01/UK: Nov UK Nations and Regions Growth Tracker
00:01/UK: 1Q Manpower UK Employment Outlook Survey
05:01/US: 1Q Manpower U.S. Employment Outlook Survey
06:00/JPN: Nov Preliminary Machine Tool Orders
07:00/GER: 3Q Labour cost index
07:00/GER: Oct Foreign Trade
09:30/UK: 3Q Mortgage Lenders and Administrators Return (MLAR) statistics
11:00/US: Nov NFIB Index of Small Business Optimism
13:55/US: 12/06 Johnson Redbook Retail Sales Index
15:00/US: Oct Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey
17:00/US: World Agricultural Supply & Demand Estimates (WASDE)
21:30/US: API Weekly Statistical Bulletin
23:50/JPN: Nov Corporate Goods Price Index
All times in GMT. Powered by Onclusive and Dow Jones.
Expected Earnings for Tuesday
Academy Sports & Outdoors Inc $(ASO)$ is expected to report $1.03 for 3Q.
AeroVironment Inc $(AVAV)$ is expected to report $-0.41 for 2Q.
American Outdoor Brands Inc (AOUT) is expected to report $-0.01 for 2Q.
AutoZone Inc $(AZO)$ is expected to report $32.03 for 1Q.
Braze Inc $(BRZE)$ is expected to report $-0.28 for 3Q.
Caleres Inc $(CAL)$ is expected to report for 3Q.
Campbell's Co $(CPB)$ is expected to report $0.72 for 1Q.
Casey's General Stores Inc $(CASY)$ is expected to report $5.21 for 2Q.
Children's Place Inc $(PLCE)$ is expected to report $0.70 for 3Q.
Cognyte Software Ltd (CGNT) is expected to report for 3Q.
Core & Main Inc $(CNM)$ is expected to report $0.69 for 3Q.
Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc $(CBRL)$ is expected to report $-0.61 for 1Q.
Dave & Buster's Entertainment Inc $(PLAY)$ is expected to report $-1.05 for 3Q.
Designer Brands Inc (DBI) is expected to report $0.18 for 3Q.
Frequency Electronics Inc $(FEIM)$ is expected to report $0.27 for 2Q.
G-III Apparel Group Ltd (GIII) is expected to report $0.21 for 3Q.
GameStop Corp - A Share (GME,GMEB) is expected to report $1.50 for 3Q.
Genasys Inc $(GNSS)$ is expected to report $-0.02 for 4Q.
Korn Ferry $(KFY)$ is expected to report $1.24 for 2Q.
Lakeland Industries Inc $(LAKE)$ is expected to report $0.23 for 3Q.
Lands' End Inc $(LE)$ is expected to report $0.12 for 3Q.
Loop Media Inc (LPTVQ) is expected to report for 4Q.
MIND Technology Inc $(MIND)$ is expected to report $-0.01 for 3Q.
North West Co Inc (NWC.T) is expected to report $0.82 for 3Q.
Ollie's Bargain Outlet Holdings Inc $(OLLI)$ is expected to report $0.75 for 3Q.
SailPoint Inc $(SAIL)$ is expected to report for 3Q.
Vince Holding Corp $(VNCE)$ is expected to report $0.08 for 3Q.
Wilhelmina International Inc $(WHLM)$ is expected to report for 3Q.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 08, 2025 16:31 ET (21:31 GMT)
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