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Prime Minister Mark Carney makes an announcement at HMC Dockyard in Halifax on Monday.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
Getting caught up on a week that got away? Here’s your weekly digest of The Globe’s most essential business and investing stories, with insights and analysis on the biggest headlines, stock tips, personal finance strategies and more.
Canada picks Germany’s TKMS over South Korea’s Hanwha to build submarine fleet
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Prime Minister Mark Carney, right, and TKMS CEO Oliver Burkhard, centre, tour a submarine-building facility in Kiel, Germany, in August, 2025.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Monday that Canada has picked Germany’s TKMS to build its first significant submarine fleet over South Korean defence contractor Hanwha. He said the purchase of up to 12 diesel-electric submarines will be the largest defence procurement in Canadian history.
The agreement will give Canada an unprecedented ability to patrol its coastal waters undetected and create a new defence partnership for Canada with Germany and Norway. But it is an early step in a long procurement process, especially since TKMS’s selection does not guarantee a final contract. The German company is now the preferred supplier, and negotiations for a contract will get under way.
Meta to spend $13-billion to build AI data centre in Alberta
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Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced a new Meta AI data centre will be built in Sturgeon County.AHMED ZAKOT/The Globe and Mail
On Wednesday, Meta Platforms Inc. confirmed plans to build a massive artificial intelligence data centre in Sturgeon County, north of Edmonton. The tech giant behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp says it’ll spend $13-billion on the facility, which would consume 1 gigawatt of electricity. For scale, the entire city of Edmonton draws about 1.4 gigawatts. It’ll be built on 1,750 acres of land, well over the size of Stanley Park in Vancouver.
To meet the facility’s electricity needs, a $4.6-billion natural gas plant will be built in Sturgeon County by Pembina Pipeline Corp., Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and Kineticor Asset Management.
Around 70 data centre proposals have been announced in Canada since 2024, but only a handful have started construction, according to data from Aterio, a Vancouver-based company that tracks the industry. Bell is building a 300-megawatt data centre campus in Saskatchewan, while Telus is constructing two in Vancouver, including a 100-megawatt facility.
Air Canada names Scandinavian Airlines chief Anko Van der Werff as next CEO
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Scandinavian Airlines CEO Anko van der Werff, pictured last week in Copenhagen, Denmark, was named Air Canada’s next CEO on Wednesday.Tom Little/Reuters
Air Canada has named Anko Van der Werff as its next chief executive officer. Mr. Van der Werff, who is Dutch, has been the CEO of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) since 2021, and has held senior roles at several other international airlines. He replaces Michael Rousseau, who announced his retirement in March after coming under fire for an English-only condolence video after a fatal LaGuardia crash.
Air Canada said in a statement that Mr. Van der Werff was chosen in a “comprehensive global search” that included “a number of performance criteria, including the ability to communicate in French.” The airline said he has also learned Spanish, Italian and Swedish at different levels over the course of his career. Mr. Van der Werff assumes his new role by the end of January.
Revenge of the TSX: How the Canadian stock market quietly became a world beater
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Canada’s place at the top of the global stock market leaderboard is unexpected for a country many thought was doomed.Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Canadian Press
Over the past two years, the Canadian stock market has gained nearly 55 per cent, after factoring in inflation. That ranks among the very best two-year stock rallies in history, such as the dot-com boom of the 1990s and the rebound from the global financial crisis beginning in 2009.
That’s far better than global stocks have managed over the same period. And it’s nearly double the growth in the S&P 500 index, even though it’s stacked with trillion-dollar giants.
Canada’s place atop the leaderboard is an unexpected twist for a country many thought was doomed. But the story the stock market is telling is that corporate Canada has learned to thrive in an era of perpetual crisis. Here’s a closer look at some of the big-name Canadian stocks that have defied the odds.
How Halifax’s ‘defence city’ dreams are running into a riptide of infrastructure risks
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Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore walks along the Halifax Harbour waterfront. He says the city is stretched thin because of it’s recent growth spurt, due in part to an influx of new residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
Halifax is being touted by local politicians as “Canada’s defence city.” It is poised to anchor a generational economic boom driven by the federal government’s plan to invest billions of dollars into its defence sector, including this week’s submarine fleet announcement.
There is a widespread conviction across Halifax that the region will ultimately capitalize on this massive influx of defence spending. It represents a chance to catch strong economic wind – more jobs, more investment, more growth.
But Halifax is fighting institutional undercurrents that risk proving just as strong. The region’s basic civic infrastructure can barely handle the status quo, leaving serious questions about whether a city built on a 19th-century foundation can support the weight of its newest national ambitions.
Companies are competing to expand cryptocurrency trading in Canada, but what is not yet clear is how investors will respond. How has bitcoin, the best-known cryptocurrency, performed over the past year?
a. It has lost about 40 per cent of its value
b. It has gained about 20 per cent
c. It has held its value but with considerable volatility
d. It has held its value with next to no volatility
a. Bitcoin has lost about 40 per cent of its value in Canadian dollar terms over the past 12 months, but that hasn’t stopped companies from seeking to cash in on investors’ willingness to trade digital tokens. On June 30, Webull Canada announced it would offer cryptocurrency trading after receiving approval from the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization. One day later, the U.S-based brokerage Robinhood Markets, officially launched its popular trading app in Canada with a focus on crypto.
Get the rest of the questions from the weekly business and investing news quiz , and prepare for the week ahead with The Globe’s investing calendar.