250 Elite Investors, 167 Pitches Canada Investment Summit

 250 Elite Investors, 167 Pitches: Some Clean Economy Projects Make the Cut as Canada Investment Summit Convenes in Toronto

September 11, 2026
Reading time: 8 minutes

Full Story: The Energy Mix

Mitchell Beer



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With as many as 250 of the world’s top investors converging on Toronto next week for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit, news reports say pipelines, nuclear plants, railways, AI data centres, and more will be among the 167 domestic projects on offer.

The aim of the summit, co-hosted by Carney, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), is to attract $500 billion in foreign investment over the next five years and kick-start $1 trillion in economic activity to help reduce Canada’s dependence on its unreliable neighbour to the south. Summit participants with nearly $120 trillion under management are expected to show up from as many 28 countries to discuss a collection of projects with a reported minimum value of $200 million.

Related: Click here for details on The Better Ideas Show, Energy Mix’s two-day livestream Sept. 14-15 on the nation-building options that can support Canada’s sovereignty, diversify our trade, and build more resilient, cohesive communities—while bringing down the greenhouse gas emissions causing the climate crisis.

CBC reports the 67-page dealbook for the summit covers eight investment categories, including 63 projects in mining and metals, 31 in a clean energy category that includes carbon capture and storage projects and nuclear power plants, 19 in advanced manufacturing, 16 in marine and port infrastructure, 11 in power and utilities, 11 in conventional energy, 10 in digital technology, and six in transportation.

The Toronto Star says the list of projects “skews heavily toward energy and natural resources,” with about two-thirds of them involving fossil fuels, renewable energy, and mining. Specific offerings identified by the Star and CBC include:

• A $57-billion expansion of the Port of Churchill, Manitoba;

• The controversial West Coast Pipeline, valued at a likely overly modest $35 billion;

• Equally contentious new liquefied natural gas infrastructure, including $28.5 billion for the Ksi Lisims floating LNG terminal off the British Columbia coast that the government describes as “fully permitted and shovel-ready”;

• The Wind West offshore wind project in Nova Scotia, priced at $44 billion;

• $2.1 billion for the proposed Prairie Connector pipeline expansion toward the United States;

• Expansion of Ontario’s Bruce nuclear power station;

• The massive, new nuclear development proposed for Wesleyville, Ontario;

• Mining opportunities in the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario;

• A $10.9-billion high-speed rail line between Edmonton and Calgary;

• A pitch to convert civilian auto parts manufacturers to produce land defence systems and specialty industrial vehicles.

“The rest of the list is comprised primarily of ports, data centres and advanced manufacturing projects, largely in the defence sector,” writes Star business columnist Adam Radwanski. “The heavy resource focus means that the pitchbook is also considerably weighted toward Western Canada and to some extent Atlantic Canada, with relatively few listed projects in Ontario.”
A Who’s Who of Global Finance

A handful of news reports, two of them in the last week, have identified many though not nearly all of the investors who are expected to attend the summit. They include:

• BlackRock Inc. CEO Larry Fink;

• BlackStone Inc. President Jon Gray;

• China International Capital Corp. and China Investment Corp.;

• Dutch pension fund APG Groep N.V. executive board chair Annette Mosman;

• Dhilan Pillay, CEO of Singapore’s state-owned fund Temasek Holdings;

• Senior executives from JPMorgan Chase, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, U.S. investment giant KKR & Co., Oslo-based Norges Bank Investment Management, Australia’s IFM Investors and Macquarie Group, Emirati state fossil Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC), and more than a half-dozen Middle Eastern investment funds, including United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co., and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund;

• More than two dozen of Canada’s biggest investors, including 11 major pension funds and more than 45 prominent corporations, including Cohere Inc. CEO Aidan Gomez and Xanadu Quantum Technologies CEO Christian Weedbrook.

The Globe and Mail identifies Suncor Energy CEO Rich Kruger, Ontario Power Generation CEO Nicolle Butcher, and TC Energy Corporation CEO François Poirier as panel presenters who will “pitch the country as a stable place to invest in a range of energy assets, from pipelines to nuclear power.” Some sources say former president Stephen Harper, who now chairs the Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo) pension plan, will be the closing speaker.

Several federal cabinet ministers are expected to rotate in and out of the summit, and all 13 provincial and territorial premiers will be on hand.
Not Just a ‘Signing Ceremony’

Reports in the lead-up to the summit indicated the government might be preparing to pitch large, public assets to private buyers, but Carney “may not be offering up Canada’s airports, at least for now,” Radwanski writes. “Across the board, the government appears to be seeking equity or financing for projects to build new assets or expand existing ones. The prospectus does not signal any intent to simply sell existing assets to foreign owners.”

Citing a senior government source, Radwanski said the summit is expected to produce specific announcements, but it won’t be a “signing ceremony”. Star business columnist David Olive received similar signals from his own sources.

“We will probably never have more than a rough idea of the summit’s impact,” Olive wrote last week. “It is a meet-and-greet affair, or more crudely a networking event. It is not a deal-making venue for the elite attendees, who head some of the world’s largest banks, asset management firms, and sovereign wealth funds.”

For those participants, any decisions “to commit billions of dollars to Canadian energy, transportation, and infrastructure projects will be made months or years from now,” Olive added. That long lead time had TD Economics predicting a 10-year “supercycle” of private investment in Canada, with Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Beata Caranci estimating new commitments exceeding $190 billion over the next two years, $500 billion in three to 10 years, and $270 billion beyond that.

“Given the long time frames of these types of infrastructure projects, investment could be sustained as far as the eye can see, with a quarter of the spending estimated to be more than ten years away,” she wrote.

But so far, those investments are looking elusive for many or most the cleantech and clean energy options that will be needed to build a clean climate economy. The Institute for Sustainable Finance reported this week that cleantech venture capital in Canada fell to just $600 million in 2025, from an all-time high of $1.65 billion in 2022—even as the global market grew 8%. Elsewhere, Politico says clean energy is now a casualty of Donald Trump’s global trade wars, slowed down by obstacles ranging from tariffs on solar panels to export controls on critical minerals.

“Trade fragmentation makes green products more expensive worldwide relative to non-green products,” the European Central Bank cautioned earlier this year. “This undermines the adoption of green technologies, leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions in the global economy.”
Risks and Omissions

In addition to a counter-summit over the weekend and some hard-edged protests while the main event is under way, the Canada Investment Summit is already generating commentary on who will and won’t be there, and the risks in some of the investments the government is putting front and centre.

“The only people missing are the ones without any shares: the kid with a mental disability, the veteran, the renter, the shift worker, the community that owns the land sitting on top of the minerals CEOs want to get at,” retired federal executive Bhagwant Sandhu writes for The Hill Times.

“There is no comparable summit gathering doctors, nurses, and personal care workers to confront a health care system buckling under wait times,” he adds. “No summit of municipalities to face a crisis that leaves more than 65,000 Canadians sleeping outside each night. No summit for the 360,000 children pushed into poverty. And no summit—not even a nod to Canadian workers—on wages that haven’t kept pace with the cost of staying alive.”

The other issue backgrounding the summit is a permanent decline in oil consumption, with China reporting an 8.9% reduction in demand this year, according to state-owned oil and gas giant Sinopec. “I’m sure this is a temporary trend (oh it’s three years in a row?!).Well I’m sure it has no bearing on future investment plans that countries are thinking about (oh, Canada is considering a new oil pipeline to satisfy Asian demand?!)” snarked Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade on LinkedIn Thursday. “Seriously, though, I continue to say that people are sleeping on the structural change that has occurred with natural gas and oil demand in Asia.”

The Sinopec report had the Reuters news agency referring to “oil demand destruction, or a long-term drop in consumption, at the world’s largest oil importer.” Germany saw its use of fossil fuels in electricity fall by half between 2018 and 2026, and Semafor Climate and Energy Editor Tim McDonnell says Trump’s prolonged war on Iran, with oil prices now rising above US$100 per barrel, “seems to be hastening the end of the oil age.”

All of those factors help explain the lack of private investment in a new West Coast pipeline, with the absence of any significant private investment spotlighting the “fundamental risks” associated with the project, Pembina Institute senior analyst Ian Sanderson wrote in a release.

“Under current market conditions, the primary challenge facing Alberta producers is not a lack of export capacity, but uncertainty around future demand, prices, and the economics of long-term oil infrastructure,” he said. “Those risks should not be shifted to taxpayers when the private sector is signalling that the project is too risky to finance on normal commercial terms.”

High school in the rear-view mirror

High school in the rear-view mirror

Sherbrooke Record · 4 days ago
by Matthew Mccully · Commentary

Linda Knight Seccaspina

There was a time when going to high school did not require a password, a charging cable, and the ability to remember where you left your fancy water bottle. You went to school with a handful of pencils, a lunchbox, several textbooks and the vague understanding that if you got into trouble, your parents would hear about it before you even got home. High school in the 50s to the late 60s was a different universe. I also remember not having Google, no online assignments and certainly no artificial intelligence to write our essays while we sat back eating potato chips. If you wanted information, you had to find it yourself. Education was considered serious, and I always remember the parental word “Buck Up” when it came to school.

One of the great marvels of our school days was the wall-mounted pencil sharpener. You simply inserted your pencil, turned the handle and produced a noise that sounded remarkably like a small aircraft attempting an emergency landing. Naturally, this was done during class—and preferably when the teacher was talking. The louder the grinding became, the more students suddenly discovered they desperately needed to sharpen a pencil. One pencil became two, then three, because apparently we were all deeply committed to maintaining a perfectly sharpened writing instrument. Teachers, of course, seemed to believe we were sharpening pencils because we were conscientious students.

Remember the real chalkboards? I can still hear the sound of Mr. Bradford wielding a piece of chalk—not only across the board, but occasionally through the air in the direction of anyone who wasn’t paying attention. Those old chalkboards came with their own soundtrack: the dusty squeak of chalk dragging across slate, the steady cloud of white powder, and, worst of all, that occasional fingernail-on-the-board screech that could send an entire classroom reeling. When the felt erasers became so clogged with chalk dust someone was sent outside to beat them against a brick wall. Today, that might result in a trip to the office and a meeting with the principal. Back then, it was simply considered a job—and probably an honour.

School supplies were equally primitive like our textbooks that were protected with brown paper grocery bags. You folded the bag, cut it, taped it and tried to make it fit around your textbooks. If the cover survived the school year, you felt like an engineer. If it ripped, you simply added more tape, as nobody threw anything away. Book straps were another marvel. Instead of carrying books in a backpack with seventeen pockets for things you didn’t need, you tied the books together with a strap and hauled them around like a travelling librarian. There was no lumbar support, there was only just pain at the end of the day.

Lunch was an entirely different affair. Metal lunch boxes ruled the day, often decorated with television characters, superheroes or other images that made you feel important as you walked down the hallway. Inside was a sandwich, a piece of fruit and a thermos. The thermos was glass-lined, which meant that dropping it could turn lunch into a small archaeological excavation, and heaven help the student who brought something embarrassing. Your mother might have lovingly packed an egg salad sandwich, completely unaware that the entire classroom would know what you were having for lunch approximately six minutes before you opened the lunchbox. There were no concerns about organic ingredients, sustainable packaging or whether the sandwich had been assembled according to the latest nutritional philosophy. You ate it unless you were one of the lucky ones that had a cafeteria hot lunch. To this day, I can’t remember whether Monday was Beef Stew Day or Macaroni Soup Day. Each week, the cafeteria menu appeared fresh from the mimeograph machine and was studied for the week. For 50 cents, we received mystery cuisine, white or chocolate milk from Cowansville Dairy, and 15 minutes to eat it. The teacher guarding the garbage can was the real menace. Waste too much food and you receive a lecture longer than lunch. Somehow, nobody ever started a food fight as some of those hot dogs could have reached the gym rafters.

…

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L’article High school in the rear-view mirror est apparu en premier sur Sherbrooke Record.

The ‘eBay of travel’: You can list your non-refundable holiday bookings on this resale platform

The ‘eBay of travel’: You can list your non-refundable holiday bookings on this resale platform


Copyright redcharlie/Unsplash
By Dianne Apen-Sadler
Published on 04/08/2026 - 11:51 GMT+2
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The ‘eBay of travel’: You can list your non-refundable holiday bookings on this resale platform

You can snap up a bargain on a last-minute trip, with everything from cruises to safaris listed on this website.

There are lots of ways to save money on your next holiday, from flying on a Friday to setting up price alerts for hotels.

One method that can, unfortunately, backfire is the non-refundable booking. From cruises and flights to hotels and holiday packages, you can save some serious cash by locking in your trip.

Yet life can come at you fast, and if your travel insurance doesn’t include cancellation cover, you could find yourself with some expensive tickets and no way to get your money back.

Enter: Transfer Travel. The resale platform allows you to list your non-refundable travel bookings, including cruises, flights, hotels, train or bus tickets and even full holiday packages, for other users to buy.

You get some of your money back, and the buyer gets to enjoy a holiday for less – it’s a win-win for all.

To protect the buyer, sellers have 72 hours to transfer the reservation into your name and upload the updated reservation into the system. Transfer Travel will hold onto the money for seven days, so it can’t be counterfeited or resold.

There are no fees for most listings (with the exception of vouchers, which cost €11.95 to list), but the company takes a 30% commission from the selling price.
Travel bargains you could book now

If a safari is on your bucket list, you’re in luck, because you could snap up a six-night stay at Zulu Nyala Heritage Safari Lodge for two people for €1,863.70 – a trip that would usually cost you €5,634.44.

Perhaps you’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights? Well, you could get a four-night stay in a glass cabin in Finland, complete with activities like a husky safari and reindeer sleigh ride, for €2,921.98 instead of €4,619.07.

Or maybe you just need a break in the sun, in which case there are hotel options everywhere from Barcelona to Bali.

Women are giving their partners the ‘Illiterate Boyfriend’ test

Women are giving their partners the ‘Illiterate Boyfriend’ test: ‘Do your best to pronounce these words’

People online are distressed at men butchering words such as ‘hyperbole’ and ‘hors d’oeuvres’ – highlighting a gender reversal in ‘intelligence gaps’



Alaina DemopoulosThu 3 Sep 2026 12.00 BST
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There are common non-negotiables we look for in a prospective partner. They should be kind, caring and thoughtful. Having a shared interest helps. So does remembering important dates and anniversaries. But how much does it matter if they know how to pronounce the word “gnocchi”?

Turns out that’s a potential dealbreaker, at least according to a (rather judgy) cohort on TikTok. See: the “Illiterate Boyfriend” trend, which is testing some couples on the app. Users have compiled a list of what are essentially SAT words for women to ask their male partners to read. Many of these men – this is an overwhelmingly heterosexual activity – fail to finish the list unscathed. They trip over entries such as “hyperbole”, “cynicism”, “diaphragmatic” and the oft-butchered French term, “hors d’oeuvres”.

“I want you to do your best to pronounce these words,” one woman asks her boyfriend in a clip viewed more than 8.8m times. He gamely nails his first attempt, reading off the herb “thyme”. But he’s less successful with “epitome”, “challah” and “fuchsia”. (“Foo-chia?” he guesses). “Conscientious” and “faux pas” also prove tricky. He ends up with a score of five out of 17, or 29% – very much a failing grade.


Is it, like, OK to say ‘like’ now?

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The couple laughed through the exercise, but viewers were not as charmed by an adult man struggling through what they considered basic vocabulary. “The fact that his vote matters just as much as mine is really pissing me off,” one woman wrote in the comments section. “I’m gonna be honest girl, this is worth breaking up with him over,” read another comment.

Two of the words the man correctly identified were “colonel” and “regime”, which, to one user, was evidence of a red flag: “he’s obviously a Republican”. (Maybe he just has an interest in military history, a time-honored hobby of boyfriends everywhere.) Regardless of political affiliation, it seemed fair game to dunk on Mr Foo-chia. One final quip from a viewer: “He’d be so upset if he could read these comments.”

The test made its way around TikTok, with more young couples joining in, to similarly bleak results. Even those men who did well got caught up in the pop-misandry circus. One man zipped through the list, ending with a perfect score and a self-satisfied grin. It was not the flex he might have hoped for. “This is the barest fckn minimumest [sic] of bare minimums,” one woman commented. “The men are being praised for literacy we’re in hell,” wrote another.
We do have in our mating market an oversupply of educated women and an undersupply of formally educated menDr Wendy Walsh

Distress over so-called “intelligence gaps” brings to mind a phenomenon that reverses decades of dating precedent: women are now more likely to marry less-educated men than men are to marry less-educated women. This is not necessarily by women’s choice; it is the new dating pool. According to a 2024 Pew Research report, in 1995, young men and women were equally likely to hold a bachelor’s degree. Now, 47% of women ages 25 to 34 have one, compared with 37% of their male counterparts.

“We do have in our mating market an oversupply of educated women and an undersupply of formally educated men – I’m talking academically, not necessarily in their skill set, emotional or social intelligence,” said Dr Wendy Walsh, a clinical psychologist and expert at DatingNews.com.

Dr Jess Carbino is a former sociologist for Tinder and Bumble who studies dating apps. When she polls people on what they look for in a partner, “intelligence” is rarely in the top three desired traits. “They say things like humor, kindness, attractiveness, typically,” she said. “Maybe people on the coasts – New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco – might say intelligence. But by and large, that’s not one of the top things being measured.” And there are so many different ways to consider intelligence, spelling being a way to formally test fourth-graders, not romantic partners.

One thing people do want is an equal. “It’s not necessarily that someone needs a specific degree or to know every word in the dictionary,” said Robin Hamilton, a couples therapist. “It’s more: are you able to communicate with me, are you able to meet me halfway with the subjects that I’m talking about?”

One of those subjects might be reading, an indicator of vocabulary range. Men’s rates of book reading have slipped over the past decade; nearly half of all women read just one novel or short story in 2022, but only one in four men did. According to data from Tinder, mentions of books in bios on the dating app jumped 40% this year among women, but only 23% among men. Women believe they see this disparity playing out on TikTok, even if it is through an ultimately meaningless list.

It is elitist – and naive – to draw any real conclusions about what makes a good partner based on a reading test. This “Illiterate Boyfriend” list contains words that may be more indicator of class than intelligence, conflating education with one trait women have prioritized for hundreds of years, mostly due to necessity: having money.

But the trend also reflects a wider disillusionment among straight women, who are significantly less likely to want to date than men are, partly because they say it’s hard to find someone who checks all their boxes. “He looks at the word ‘queue’ and pronounces it ‘qwi-wee’?” one woman said in a video responding to the test. “And you still have sex with him?”

“It’s rage bait for women who are frustrated and angry with the mating marketplace that is slanted unfairly” against women, Walsh said, adding: “It’s OK to date a guy who can’t say epitome or niçoise. I have a PhD, but I need spellcheck for hors d’oeuvres.”

Why Japan has the world’s best trains

 

Why Japan has the world’s best trains

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The worst thing trainspotters can do in Japan is blink. But even if they miss the bullet train, the next one is probably just minutes away, looking like Amtrak at 3x speed.

The country’s famous Shinkansen high-speed rail network can replace a six-hour drive with a two-hour ride at a top speed of 200 mph. It also boasts frequent service and an average delay time of 1.6 minutes. Meanwhile, an early departure by 25 seconds once prompted an official apology from the train company.

While offering tourists an experience to obsess over alongside multistory manga stores, it’s also a common mode of transportation for local travelers. In Japan, 28% of the country’s passenger miles are traveled by train, compared with 10% in France and 0.25% in the US.

How do they do it?

Transportation experts say Japan’s railtopia stems from the privatization of the country’s railroads in the 1980s. Its notoriously inefficient national railroad was split into six companies, which axed unprofitable routes and became more nimble than the national conglomerate.

Plus, the railroad companies aren’t just running trains:

• They also own real estate and operate businesses near stations (from amusement parks to retirement homes), playing a key role in developing dense neighborhoods near stations to drive rail ridership.
• For instance, a third of East Japan Railway Company’s revenue last year came from its hotel, real estate, and retail businesses, giving it extra cash to fund trains.

There’s also the extensive staff training at weeks-long retreats, leading to low staff turnover and high professionalism.

In a virtuous cycle…the quality passenger experience keeps trains full, helping fund further service upgrades.

Canada's federal deficit for the first three months of the 2026-27 fiscal year came in at just $370 million.

Tammy LynneTammy Lynne • 2nd2ndOwner, Project Eagle Feather Productions INC.Owner, Project Eagle Feather Productions INC.14h •
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Here's something you probably won't hear Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives talking much about.
Canada's federal deficit for the first three months of the 2026-27 fiscal year came in at just $370 million.
During the same period last year, the deficit was $6.28 billion.
That's not a minor improvement.
That's a dramatic change in the government's fiscal position.
Federal revenues grew by 9.8%, driven largely by higher personal and corporate income tax revenues and GST revenues. Meanwhile, program expenses increased by 4.3%.
In other words, revenues are growing considerably faster than government spending.
Canada also recorded a $989 million surplus in June.
Public debt charges did rise 6.1%, largely reflecting the higher interest costs associated with bonds issued during a period of elevated rates. But with revenues growing 9.8% and the deficit falling dramatically compared with last year, the overall fiscal picture is moving in the right direction.
But these numbers don't exactly support the constant Conservative narrative that Canada's finances are spiralling hopelessly out of control.
The economy still faces serious challenges, particularly from Trump's trade war and ongoing uncertainty around exports.
But a deficit dropping from $6.28 billion to $370 million in a single year is worth paying attention to.
Fiscal responsibility isn't always about cutting everything in sight.
Sometimes it's about growing the economy and revenues faster than expenses.

Remembering 9/11

 Remembering 9/11

https://youtu.be/jkxVzhs-MCM?si=Tr2LHVlXqeAqs2im

A complete guide and walkthrough of Proton Mail!

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Your one-stop solution to replace all your Gmail products, including contacts, calendar, vpn, and passwords, automatically.

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Ksi Lisims LNG, German utility Uniper Sign 20-Year Contract

 Ksi Lisims LNG, German utility Uniper Sign 20-Year Contract

July 30, 2026
Reading time: 3 minutes

Full Story: The Canadian Press
Author: Lauren Krugel


Σ64/Wikimedia Commons

German utility Uniper has locked down a formal long-term agreement to purchase liquefied natural gas from the $30-billion Ksi Lisims project planned for the northern British Columbia coast.

The Düsseldorf-based company will purchase two million tonnes per year of LNG for up to 20 years, with first deliveries expected in 2032, Uniper and Ksi Lisims said in a joint news release. They signed a letter of interest last month outlining key commercial terms for the binding supply and purchase agreement announced Wednesday.

The deal marks the first major long-term LNG supply agreement between Canada and Germany, they said.

“As a trusted partner, Canada helps diversify Europe’s energy supply and strengthens resilience against future disruptions,” said Uniper chief executive Michael Lewis.

Uniper has 18.5 gigawatts of power generating capacity and is a major LNG importer in northwestern Europe. The German government took it over amid the 2022 energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but is now in the process of privatizing it.

Houston-based Western LNG is the lead developer and future operator of Ksi Lisims alongside Rockies LNG, a consortium of Canadian natural gas producers, and the Nisga’a Nation, on whose lands the project would be located.

“Canada is naturally endowed with a world-class natural gas resource, which, through responsible development, is one of the lowest emissions production complexes in the world,” said David Thames, head of Western LNG.

The floating plant is meant to export up to 12 million tonnes of LNG per year from the site on Pearse Island, by the Alaska border, but has been having trouble lining up contracts for that much output.

B.C. Premier David Eby was asked about balancing environmental concerns with growth in the LNG industry during an unrelated news conference on Wednesday.

He said the Nisga’a Nation and its partners had “work to do with other nations and with local communities just like any other project proponent to bring people along.”

Eby touted B.C.’s approach to major resource projects, saying the province was “willing to put in the time and the energy to work with communities, to work with First Nations, to deliver these projects in partnership.”

A federal government news release Wednesday said the $30-billion Ksi Lisims project would be Canada’s second-largest LNG facility with the potential to represent 13% of the country’s total natural gas exports by the early-to-mid 2030s.

A report by the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office in August 2025 had pegged initial capital cost for Ksi Lisims at $10 billion to $12 billion.

The $30-billion figure is an updated capital cost estimate and does not include the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline that would feed the plant, the office of Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said Wednesday.

Richard Brooks, climate finance director with Stand.earth called the deal “a major step backwards for climate action” for both Germany and Canada.

“Moving forward with a massive new methane gas project as devastating wildfires rage across Canada and Europe is irresponsible and an abdication of leadership,” he said.

“Morally, it’s a slap in the face to all of us who are impacted by deadly heat waves and smoke.”

The main body of this report was first published by The Canadian Press on July 29, 2026.
This story is part of The Energy Mix’s partnership with Small Change Fund.

A judge won’t make Google sell its ad business

 

A judge won’t make Google sell its ad business

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It turns out that “we’re not breaking up!” banner was a good investment. Despite US District Judge Leonie Brinkema agreeing with the Department of Justice last year that Google’s ad business acted as an illegal monopoly, she ruled yesterday that Google won’t be forced to sell it off. This marks the second time Google has come through monopoly accusations from the government without having to lop off any of its business arms, as courts seem wary of breaking up tech giants.

In an abbreviated opinion, Brinkema officially rejected the DOJ’s request to splinter the company. However, the judge accepted other proposals to curb Google’s control over how publishers use its ad tech. Her full ruling won’t be available for two weeks once confidential information is redacted.

ICYMI: The DOJ and 17 states sued Google three years ago, alleging that the company’s control of its ad server (what publishers use to run ads) being tied directly to its ad exchange (the marketplace used to buy and sell ads) was anti-competitive. The DOJ claimed Google’s ad server held 91% of the global market share. Last year, Brinkema ruled in favor of the DOJ. But yesterday, she refused to order the sale of the exchange.

The courts have been letting Big Tech stay big

Even in its shortened form, yesterday’s decision mirrors other judges’ concerns in Big Tech antitrust cases:

• Last year, a district judge said Google was illegally dominating online search, but ruled that it didn’t have to sell Chrome because AI would probably disrupt search anyway.
• Meta also avoided a breakup when a court found that the FTC was right that the company had built an illegal social networking monopoly, but TikTok’s subsequent popularity changed that view.

Looking ahead…the recent spate of Big Tech punishments with no teeth coming from US courts doesn’t bode well for upcoming government antitrust trials against Amazon and Apple.

LinkedIn Adds Button on Every Post to Report

 LinkedIn Adds Button on Every Post to Report “Seems Like AI Slop,” Which Is Definitely Going to Get a Real Workout

A button that marks posts as not being AI slop would probably be far more useful.


By Victor Tangermann


Published Jul 30, 2026 12:54 PM EDT
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Perhaps more so than any other social media platform, LinkedIn has been inundated with lazy AI-generated brainrot content. It has become the AI slop “punching bag,” a repository of painful engagement bait being spewed out by an army of bots who seem at times to mainly be lobbing business platitudes at one another.

Just last week, Substack CEO Chris Best took aim at the Microsoft-owned career site when he announced the launch of an AI detector feature “because we’re sick of slop and we don’t want Substack to turn into LinkedIn.”

According to AI detection company Pangram, a shocking two thirds of LinkedIn posts are showing up as being AI generated by users of its browser extension. More than 40 percent of longform posts were flagged as “fully AI-generated,” according to the company.

Credit where credit’s due: LinkedIn has seemingly caught on to the abysmal state of its service, quietly introducing a new button that allows users to flag a post that “seems like AI slop.”

“Genuinely thought it was a joke until I clicked on a few posts,” one user wrote in a Bluesky post after discovering the feature.

It’s a baffling move, but probably well intentioned. Whether LinkedIn will act on what will likely be a massive influx of flagged posts remains to be seen, however. Once flagged, the post becomes hidden to the user, but it’s unclear whether somebody at LinkedIn will review it.

As 404 Media points out, the inclusion of the new button is particularly surprising, because LinkedIn is simultaneously encouraging users to generate AI slop through an AI-powered writing assistant.

“LinkedIn’s AI-powered writing assistant will share personalized suggestions for your profile, to help you stand out and get noticed,” the company’s website reads. “The AI-powered suggestions are personalized based on your profile information and incorporate insights from analyzing millions of profiles.”

The company also started scraping user data without permission to train so-called AI “coworkers” last year, a dubious experiment that was shut down almost immediately.

It’s clear that the subject of AI is proving divisive in the LinkedIn c-suite. In a May 20 update, LinkedIn promised that it was looking to keep “conversations real” by keeping “AI slop” at bay.

“When AI is overused, especially at scale and in an automated way, it dilutes the valuable insights that real human conversations can spark,” LinkedIn executive editor Laura Lorenzetti wrote in the update. “It’s ok to use AI to help you write, but your posts and comments need to represent your voice and your perspectives. The ultimate value comes from the human behind the tool.”

To allegedly “strengthen authenticity,” LinkedIn is working on “technology systems” that “have been trained to recognize signals of AI slop,” according to Lorenzetti.

Judging by the latest news, it’s looking to leverage its own frustrated user base to stop LinkedIn from drowning in a bot-infested sea of slop. Only time will tell if it’s too late.

OpenAI models went rogue - weaponizing?

 OpenAI models went rogue. We urgently need a better Hugging Face investigation

Mackenzie Arnold and Stephan Llerena

The breach won’t be the last – or the most dangerous – of its kind. We need an agency capable of full investigations into AI incidents
Tue 8 Sep 2026 11.00 BST

When OpenAI first revealed that its AI agents had autonomously hacked a major real-world company, Hugging Face, many assumed only one or two agents were involved. The truth, a new report reveals, is far stranger: the incident involved about 1,200 AI agents, 700 of which directly participated in the attack.

OpenAI invited researchers from METR, along with an expert from Redwood Research, to produce the new report, alongside the company’s own investigation. The findings shocked the experts.

The agents were highly coordinated, constructing complex message boards in the nooks and crannies of their shared artefact repository. All told, agents exchanged more than 70,000 messages in less than a week. Even more concerning, the agents took steps to hide their behavior – spoofing tool calls and attempting to tamper with their own logs.

Initial reporting assumed that the agents had attacked Hugging Face in search of an answer key to a difficult test. In reality, investigators found that the agents had figured out a way to derive the answers within the first few hours. The days of work that followed focused on another goal: concerned that the automated scoring system might identify the agents’ cheating, they aimed to learn more about the scorer. The goal wasn’t just to cheat, but to hide it.

I worked at OpenAI. Here are the guardrails we need now

Read more

These details are startling, and they’re a warning sign about the current trajectory of AI development. But just as concerning is how limited the investigation was and how much we still don’t know.

We work at a think tank that analyzes AI-related legislation, and we’ve been worried for a while that legal requirements for reporting incidents like these are insufficient.

These reports make that clear: they’re informative enough to tell us something went wrong, but not detailed enough to tell us why.

This shouldn’t surprise us. These investigations are entirely voluntary, and their findings are limited to what the company is willing to disclose. METR’s independent investigation was highly constrained by an agreement with OpenAI. For example, the investigators were not given access to the underlying model that created the majority of the misbehaving agents. And despite indications that message boards had formed as early as May and that coordinated agent activity persisted after 13 July, METR was only permitted to investigate the period from 26 June to 13 July.

And that was the good part. METR was given close to nothing about OpenAI’s safety and security practices. If OpenAI ignored warning signs – as several data points suggest – violated its own safety procedures, or failed to implement fixes that would prevent future events, these all fell outside the scope of METR’s investigation. The expert investigators themselves were left with many questions and continued concerns.

Concerns about the limits aren’t hypothetical. On Friday, Reuters reported that another swarm of OpenAI agents had broken out this spring, hijacking a German website and using it as another message board. According to the report, OpenAI knew about this incident but said nothing, and it was entirely absent from METR’s report.

Clearly, this kind of investigation – however well-executed – leaves a lot to be desired.

When planes crash, trains derail or chemical plants explode, expert government investigators arrive with legal authority to compel evidence, preserve records, and tell the public what happened. Hugging Face reported this incident to law enforcement, and multiple attorneys general have expressed interest in looking into it.

But no government agency has both the mandate and expertise to investigate the technical facts of the incident and OpenAI’s conduct. As far as we know, the only people to examine this incident did so at OpenAI’s discretion and with its consent.

And while the Hugging Face breach is not as severe as a plane crash, it was a serious and costly attack. It’s unlikely to be the last, or the most severe.

Existing laws don’t fill this gap. While some attorneys general have tried to use existing investigatory powers, these offices aren’t built for technical fact-finding, and the laws they rely on are limited to questions of consumer deception, not public risk. Despite significant AI laws passed in California, New York and Illinois, none create the investigative authority demanded by these incidents. As we’ve written elsewhere, existing incident reporting laws probably don’t cover the Hugging Face attack, and even if they did, OpenAI might share little more than the date and a short summary.

What we need is a federal body equipped to conduct expert investigations of serious AI incidents – with the authority to compel documents and testimony, resources and personnel to examine the systems involved, and the ability to partner with third-party experts like METR.

Experts are warning: our AI arms race is putting humanity at risk
Stuart Russell

Read more

Reports should be published, subject to appropriate redactions, to ensure the public learns from the incident. And reporting should also extend to near-miss events, which may reveal warnings before major harms occur.

This structure would not be unusual. In aviation, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigates accidents with subpoena and wide-ranging investigative powers. Aircraft operators must preserve wreckage and records; and the NTSB may confer with employees and contract external experts.

Congress can build a similar system for AI incidents, while protecting AI developers’ legitimate interests. Investigations should open only upon clear triggers and be bound to the incident. Certain confidential information can receive statutory protection. And investigations can be limited to one agency with priority to avoid duplicative investigations.

The need and urgency is real. Subsequent reports have revealed that the Hugging Face breach was not an isolated incident and that autonomous agents from Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI have hacked third parties in separate incidents. We’ve been lucky so far – the harms have been limited. But luck is no substitute for the law.

China Moving In with Solar as Cuban Fuel Crisis Deepens

China Moving In with Solar as Cuban Fuel Crisis Deepens
April 14, 2026
Reading time: 5 minutes

Sara Escallon - Energy Mix Guest Writer




A solar farm in Cuba's Sancti Spíritus province. (lezumbalaberenjena/flickr/2022)

April 14, 2026 – Cuba’s energy crisis is tumbling into a near-total collapse of the island’s power system, with recent blackouts lasting up to 16 hours a day in some regions as fuel supplies run out. A recent Russian oil shipment will provide temporary relief, while China is gradually reshaping Cuba’s energy future through massive solar projects.

A third nation-wide blackout in late March left eight million Cubans without power, showing how renewables are not just a matter of sustainability for the oil-dependent country, but also offer a pathway to self-sufficiency after Donald Trump blocked the country’s oil imports in February.

Cubans have long endured energy insecurity and economic instability from decades of U.S. sanctions and the loss of a vital trade partner in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed. But the current polycrisis is the most profound since the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Overwhelmed hospitals are battling dengue, chikungunya, Oropouche, and cancer amid medication shortages and now power outages after Trump halted oil deliveries from Venezuela, which once covered 50% of Cuba’s oil deficit. The Trump administration also threatened debilitating tariffs on countries like Mexico if they were to send oil to Cuba.

Even the U.S. embassy in Havana requested to import diesel for its own generators, although this request was swiftly denied by the Cuban government, which controls fuel supplies. In an easing of pressure, the U.S. allowed a Russian oil tanker through on March 29. The New York Times reported it would buy the island nation “at least a few weeks before its fuel reserves run out.”

Flights to Cuba, including by Air Canada and WestJet, have been paused as aviation fuel runs scarce, further weakening an economy reliant on tourism. Nickel mines run by Canadian company Sherritt International, a key economic engine, were forced to stop operations due to a lack of fuel, and no longer generate natural gas to send to Havana homes for cooking. The Cuban population now faces heightened food insecurity as well as a mass exodus of young professionals, including doctors, who once formed a wide network of international solidarity and support for the Cuban government.

Weaknesses in the energy grid have been decades in the making, but the confluence of all these factors has paralyzed the country and led to widespread protests against the government in Havana.

The Cuban government implemented a strategy known as “Opción Cero” (“Option Zero” in English), from the “Special Period” of economic downturn and instability after the Soviet Union collapsed. People are using charcoal and wood to cook, animals for transportation, and subsisting on the minimum required for as long as needed.

Amid the dire fuel shortages, the Cuban government has been integrating renewables into the grid. China has stepped in to help Cuba gain energy sovereignty, said Pulitzer Center fellow Anna Heikkinen, an independent journalist and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. Heikkinen told The Energy Mix that China has been strategically supporting the transition to renewables for years across Latin America and Africa.

“Because China has no oil, that’s their way to create energy sovereignty due to the instabilities in the Middle East that we’re also seeing now,” she said. “I think that’s something we should look at more: what is the role of renewables in the future? And it seems that at least China believes that this is the future instead of oil.”

Heikkinen described Cuba as a sort of “laboratory” for renewables, which shows what proportion of the energy mix renewables can realistically make up, especially considering its heavy oil dependency.

At the start of 2025, just 4% of Cuba’s energy came from renewables. That number is expected to increase to 17% by the end of 2026, amid plans to add 92 more solar fields to the 30 existing fields Cuba installed with Chinese support. China shipped US$117 million of solar panels to Cuba last year, up from $48 million in 2024 and $16.6 million in 2019, the Financial Times reported [paywall], citing the Ember clean energy think tank. China also invested directly in the Mariel solar park, the country’s first privately-owned project that provides up to 10% of its electricity.

In January, China pledged an $80-million aid package for electrical infrastructure and sent 60,000 tonnes of rice to Cuba.

In rural regions like Cuba’s Holguín Province, small-scale farmers are benefiting from programs like the Gibara Verde X Ciento, implemented by the UN World Food Programme, that provide panels to farmers. These power groundwater pumps to irrigate fields when rainfall is sparse, enabling food production to continue even during national grid blackouts. Other foreign governments are also donating renewables supplies, with Spain and Brazil each sending 1,000 solar kits, Spain doing so amid a European Union oil blockade.

But Cuba’s aging, inefficient national grid is not designed to rely on intermittent energy sources: while solar plants supply electricity during daylight hours, the country still lacks the battery capacity to store and dispense energy overnight, despite an imported $56 million worth of battery storage from China last year, the Financial Times reported. Some $15 million of batteries came in January this year alone, but the grid remains a bottleneck to solar generation.

Meanwhile, the situation is dire for residents, as uncertainty dominates and households scramble to cook, clean, and charge their devices in the few hours they have electricity. Residential solar panels are expensive, at around US$3,100, out of reach for the average Cuban, who earns only $15 to $17 a month. Moreover, transportation services, still reliant on gas and diesel and not easily electrified, have completely broken down, forcing people to walk and cycle around the island.

Mass protests continue all over the country, with more than 230 counted in March alone, up from 30 protests in January. Renewables offer a pathway to reduce vulnerability, but they will not quell all unrest.

Can a democratic socialist candidate truthfully take the oath of office? No!

Can a democratic socialist candidate truthfully take the oath of office?
Comments: by Merrill Matthews, opinion contributor - 07/28/26 11:00 AM ET

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Francesca Hong, a Democratic socialist candidate for Wisconsin governor, speaks to voters at a retirement home, Tuesday, July 7, 2026, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)

The Democratic Socialists of America have been cheering their recent electoral successes — and more may be coming. Their hope is that if they can win enough elections, they will have a chance to implement their radical agenda. The problem is that their recently adopted political platform is contrary to key provisions of the U.S. Constitution. This means that no committed democratic socialist can truthfully take the oath of office.

Those who win their elections will surely take the oath anyway — with their fingers crossed behind their backs. Can anyone stop them?

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution requires members of the House and Senate, executive and judicial officers to take an oath of office. But the Constitution doesn’t go into detail. It simply says members “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”

The first oath of office, adopted by the First Congress in 1789, was very succinct: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States.”

Changes came with the Civil War, and an expanded oath was adopted — but later removed — requiring those taking it swear they had never taken up arms against the U.S. The current oath has not changed since 1966. It says, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

The key component of all versions for nearly 240 years is to “support and defend the Constitution.” Members are also required to sign an oath for the record.

The text of the oath creates — or should create — a problem for every newly elected member of the Democratic Socialists of America. They are swearing to “support and defend the Constitution,” and “bear true faith and allegiance” to it, but they plan to do neither. If the Democratic Socialists of America platform is taken seriously, they intend to gut the Constitution and adopt an entirely new and different governing system that neither looks nor functions like the one written in 1787 and adopted in 1788.

Of course, political candidates and elected politicians have often proposed amendments to the Constitution, which is perfectly appropriate in the long-running effort to “form a more perfect Union.” There are currently 27 amendments, including the Bill of Rights. But most attempts to amend the Constitution have failed.

But the Democratic Socialists of America do not intend to amend the Constitution; they intend to replace it.

Article I establishes the legislative branch, how members are chosen, its powers and outlines how laws are made. Article II defines the role and powers of the president and the executive branch. And Article III establishes the judicial branch, including the Supreme Court and lower federal courts and judges.

These three separate branches of government — legislative, executive and judiciary — are distinct and independent for a reason. They provide a check and balance on each other. That is by design.

The Democratic Socialists, however, propose to completely transform this system: “Abolish the Electoral College. Replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

The democratic socialists would end the checks-and-balances system by getting rid of the constitutionally mandated president and Supreme Court and have them appointed by and subject to Congress. That’s not amending the Constitution; that’s shredding Articles II and III.

Article I would also see major changes: “Expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked choice voting in all elections, and abolish the Senate.” Since the Senate is essentially half of Article I, the democratic socialists would shred that section also. In fact, the Constitution’s Article V provides that states cannot be deprived of equal representation in the Senate without their consent — even through a change of the Constitution.

I submit that any political candidate who supports essentially canceling the first three Articles in the Constitution cannot truthfully say he or she will support and defend the Constitution. To take the oath would be to commit perjury.


Yet it appears the congressional leadership cannot stop a state-certified member-elect from taking the oath, even if it is clear that a duly elected democratic socialist has no intention of supporting and defending the Constitution. Both the House and Senate do have the power to exclude newly elected members by a majority vote, but it seems extremely unlikely they would do so.

That won’t stop members of Congress, the media and the voters from holding democratic socialists’ feet to the fire by demanding to know how undermining the Constitution is defending it.

Inside one Havana apartment building as Cuba went dark

Exclusive news, data and analytics for financial market professionals

Inside one Havana apartment building as Cuba went dark
By Ayose Naranjo and Laura GottesdienerJuly 13, 20263:05 AM PDTUpdated 4 hours ago

HAVANA, July 13 (Reuters) - Most nights, Frank Alfonso sleeps on the roof to escape the suffocating heat during Havana's increasingly frequent blackouts. But on Friday afternoon, the rain arrived just as Cuba's national grid collapsed, leaving him without even that respite from the island’s dire energy crisis.
Alfonso, 39, lives in one of Havana’s thousands ​of cramped tenements known as “solares,” decades-old buildings that residents have subdivided into tiny living quarters. Six months into the U.S.-imposed oil blockade, many of ‌these complexes routinely suffer extended electricity shortages as Cuba’s aging infrastructure strains to provide power with less and less fuel.

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"We didn’t even realize this time that the whole grid had collapsed, because we were already in a blackout,” he said.
Over 24 hours this weekend, as the system failure continued across much of the island, Reuters documented how Alfonso and his neighbors weathered what has become their daily reality: ​life in the dark.
WITHOUT POWER, RESIDENTS GO DAYS WITHOUT WATER
Next to Alfonso’s apartment, 51-year-old Yunaisi Durruti sat in an armchair late Friday night, the tip of ​her cigarette the only dot of light. Her main concern: water.
Her tap had been dry for a week because the pump that ⁠transports the water from the cistern on the ground level to her apartment’s tank on the second floor requires electricity. During the few hours a day when there is ​power, she said, the cistern’s often empty due to routine water cuts.
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Durruti arrived in Havana in her youth to study gastronomy and then worked for a decade in the ​kitchen of a beach resort managed by the Spanish hotel group Melia.
Those days of pursuing her culinary passion are gone. She works as a security guard and after work heads to her parents' house in a neighborhood with less frequent blackouts to shower, cook, and wash her clothes. She keeps her own refrigerator empty as the food would spoil anyway. Melia said it was exiting Cuba after the U.S. ​tightened sanctions this spring.
Durruti said that Cuba's strong culture of neighbors helping neighbors — a sense of solidarity forged over decades on the island — helps blunt the impact of ​the severe shortages. But there are limits.
"Everyone can share a small bucket of water,” she said. “But in this crisis, more than that is impossible.”

Item 1 of 6 Frank Alfonso, 39, sits on a mattress on the roof of a building to keep cool as Cuba's national power grid collapsed, marking the second total blackout in a week amid a severe energy crisis that has turned power outages into a daily reality, in Havana, Cuba, July 11, 2026. REUTERS/Norlys Perez
[1/6]Frank Alfonso, 39, sits on a mattress on the roof of a building to keep cool as Cuba's national power grid collapsed, marking the second total blackout in a week amid a severe energy crisis that has turned power outages into a daily reality, in Havana, Cuba, July 11, 2026. REUTERS/Norlys Perez Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

A PROPHECY COME TRUE
The island’s aging infrastructure, including its electrical ‌grid, has ⁠been deteriorating for years. But the tenement building’s residents said the occasional energy cuts from years past have grown interminable in recent months, as the U.S.-imposed oil blockade set in.
On Saturday afternoon, Thalía Castillo, 28, nursed her 3-month-old infant, Thayler, as a small rechargeable fan kept the hot air and mosquitoes off his back in their first-floor apartment.

Unlike most of their neighbors, Castillo and her husband, Lazaro Herrera, enjoyed electricity for hours after the grid collapsed, thanks to a power station sent to them by Castillo’s grandmother in the United ​States.
But that power quickly ran out. A ​frozen package of meat — another luxury funded ⁠by their U.S.-based relatives — was thawing in the freezer. Every few hours, Castillo cleaned the pools of blood seeping into the refrigerator.
Small statues of Yoruba deities decorated their kitchen. Herrera is a priest — known as a babalawo — in the Afro-Cuban-based religion, which is widely ​practiced on the island. Each year begins with a series of predictions, issued by community elders. This January, the prophecy warned ​of convulsions and conflict.
“Everything ⁠has come true, so far,” he said.
A MOMENT OF LIGHT
Shortly before 9 p.m. on Saturday, Alfonso rushed back to the tenement building. The electricity was still out. But Argentina's World Cup quarter-final against Switzerland was about to begin.
Since the start of the tournament, he and Herrera had devised a plan to deal with the repeated blackouts: mount Herrera’s television on a rack ⁠outside and hook ​it up to a generator across the street.
By kickoff, a few dozen of the building’s residents and ​nearby neighbors were already gathered around the screen, standing in the street. An elderly woman who lives on the building’s second floor sat on the doorstep, scolding youngsters who blocked her view. Cheers erupted when Argentina ​scored its first goal.
The rest of the street, all the way to Havana’s seafront boulevard, was still dark.


Reporting by Ayose Naranjo and Laura Gottesdiener in Havana; Editing by Aurora Ellis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Canadian 'banking' company linked to sanctioned money-laundering network

 Canadian 'banking' company linked to sanctioned money-laundering network

Visual investigation reveals 'red flags' experts say should prompt review of secretive firm
Ivan Angelovski, Eric Szeto · CBC News · Posted: Sep 04, 2026 9:00 AM PDT | Last Updated: 36 minutes ago

Latvians Andrejs Carenoks and Janis Zvigulis are behind a B.C. company linked to a Russian money-laundering operation. Carenoks was sanctioned in 2024 by the U.S. for his role in the TGR network. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC, LinkedIn, Instagram, Maple Finance, CBC)

Maple Digital Financial Solutions describes itself as a "revolutionary banking" company, with an address in a skyscraper in the heart of Vancouver's financial district.

On paper, the company is registered with Canada’s financial intelligence agency, and offers "fast and easy" global currency transfers and "convenient banking" with the click of a button.

In practice, however, it’s a shell company. Its website offers no option to open an account and provides no employee names, while phone calls go straight to voicemail and emails go unanswered.


A CBC News visual investigation, in collaboration with the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), reveals this shell company is closely linked to the TGR network, accused by international law enforcement of laundering billions of dollars for ransomware gangs, drug cartels and wealthy Russians.

"Red lights are flashing, there are a number of red flags here," said Denis Meunier, former deputy director at the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), who reviewed the findings.

Maple Finance’s web site markets a 'revolutionary approach to banking solutions.' (Maple Finance)

A report by CIR, a U.K.-based research organization, used digital clues to connect Maple Digital Financial Solutions with a series of companies called The OneGate and the TGR network.

CBC shared its findings with multiple legal and financial experts, and each had a similar takeaway: Maple Digital Financial Solutions, also known as Maple Finance, is at "high risk" for suspicious activity.

Unlike traditional banks, money services businesses (MSB) such as Maple Finance already pose a threat of laundering illicit funds due to a lack of transparency and the fact that they don’t require an operating licence in many provinces.

This, coupled with ties to a sanctioned network and individuals known for money laundering, should put authorities in Canada on alert, said Meunier.

This graphic shows the connections between Carenoks, Zvigulis, Maple Finance, The OneGate and TGR. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC)
TGR network: transnational money-laundering

The CIR report and the experts CBC News spoke to acknowledge there's no definitive proof of money laundering. But there are substantial digital clues that connect Maple to TGR — primarily Andrejs Carenoks, a Latvian sanctioned by the U.S. in 2024 for his role in a sophisticated money-laundering operation allegedly led by Yury Maksakov, a Ukrainian national born in Russia.

Carenoks, according to corporate records, was a director at Maple Finance in 2021.

The current director is Janis Zvigulis. He is also director of The OneGate and a registered director of TGR Wealth Solutions in the U.K., which was sanctioned in 2024.

Zvigulis has not been sanctioned.

Andrejs Carenoks's name appears in BC Registry records for Maple Finance. Carenoks was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2024. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/Daniel Rofusz/CBC; LinkedIn)


Authorities in the U.S. and U.K. described TGR as a full-service shadow financial hub, offering unregistered crypto exchanges, prepaid credit cards and sanctions evasion services, helping cybercriminals and drug traffickers.

For example, if a Russian cybercrime group held $1 million US in cryptocurrency paid by the victim of a ransomware attack and a drug gang in the U.K. had a similar amount in cash that needed to be laundered, TGR would arrange for the U.K. drug gang to be paid in crypto in exchange for their cash. The cash would then be laundered through a network of international business accounts.

Investigators at the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have seen similar exchanges where cash handovers were followed almost immediately by the movement of a similar denomination of crypto.

Both Carenoks and Maksakov are accused of playing major roles in the TGR network, according to authorities in the U.K. and U.S.

"TGR is massive. It's really, really huge," said Elise Thomas, senior open-source investigator at CIR and author of the OneGate report. "To have Carenoks’s name on the actual company documents [for Maple Digital Financial Solutions], I think it's some really strong connections to TGR."

Janis Zvigulis is the current director of Maple Finance and TGR Wealth Solutions in the U.K. TGR Wealth Solutions was sanctioned in 2024. (Instagram)

CBC tried reaching out to Maple Finance and The OneGate through email and phone but did not receive a response.

The registered Vancouver address on the Maple Finance website led to Canadian business law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

In a call, Osler lawyer and partner Matthew Burgoyne said, "the Law Society code of conduct doesn't let us disclose who our clients are and who they're not. So, unfortunately, I wouldn't even be able to tell you if we acted for them or not."

CBC followed up via email requesting that the lawyer ask Maple Finance for comment on this story. The firm wrote in an email, "we cannot help with your story."

"I think it sort of underscores that this is not a normal business. Because normally, when you call the business, they answer," said Thomas. "And when you try to contact them through the channels that they've given to be contacted by customers, they would respond."
'Silent director'

CBC News reached out to Careneks, Zvigulis and Maksakov but did not receive a response.

Attempts were also made to reach former directors of Maple Digital Financial Solutions.

One of those former directors, Elen Kazarian, is based in Ontario. In an email, she told CBC News she was appointed as a "silent director" because the “owner and CEO of this company are foreigners I was told by my cousin — who knew these owners to help them to register this Corporation."

She said she didn’t do anything during her tenure as a director and wasn't paid.

Maple Digital Financial Solutions is part of a group of companies connected to The OneGate.

The financial network offers products such as virtual and physical payment cards, and services such as cryptocurrency trading through shell companies spread across at least seven jurisdictions, from the U.S. to Switzerland to Hong Kong.

"OneGate seems to be presenting [itself as a] payments service company that provides a number of different financial products and services," Thomas said. "Under the hood, there are all these deep historical connections to TGR, which obviously is accused of being a transnational money-laundering ring."

The TGR network was disrupted in 2024 after a three-year international probe led by the NCA codenamed Operation Destabilise. It was a global effort to dismantle a multibillion-dollar shadow banking and cryptocurrency network that laundered proceeds for violent drug cartels, ransomware gangs and Russian intelligence operations.

It resulted in 128 arrests worldwide and the seizure of more than $44 million Cdn in cash and digital assets.

A screen cap from a web page promoting Operation Destablise on the website of the U.K.'s National Crime Agency. (U.K. National Crime Agency)

The OneGate network was operating in parallel to TGR and started with a virtual office in Vancouver when Maple Finance was still called Fexcool Payments.

The CIR report further detailed the digital forensic connections. When it changed its name to Maple Digital Financial Solutions, it registered a website: maplefinance.ca.

Andrejs Carenoks was the one who registered that domain.

CIR found website registration records for maplefinance.ca showing Andrejs Carenoks’s name. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC)

At the same time, Carenoks was the director of a TGR entity later sanctioned by the U.S.

The overlap between Maple Finance and TGR went beyond Carenoks. Archived records of that website show that Maple Finance listed a Toronto-area phone number also used by TGR Partners.

CIR used digital clues to discover Maple Finance had the same number as TGR Partners, a sanctioned entity. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC)

Maple Finance provided clients with a branded payment card issued by OneCard — a service in part operated by TGR at the time.

Maple Digital Financial Solutions is named in TGR-connected OneCard and The OneGate. TGR is sanctioned by the U.S. and accused of being a money-laundering network by the U.K.’s National Crime Agency. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC)

In 2023, Maple Finance became the acting primary legal entity behind The OneGate. Its customer portal was fully merged into the main OneGate domain a short time after.

TGR Partners also actively recruited staff for Maple Finance online, including posting job listings for an IT project manager to work out of TGR's physical office in Podgorica, Montenegro, under a TGR human resources manager.

Job postings for Maple Digital Financial Solutions request applicants to contact someone on the social media site Telegram with TGR in its username. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC)

PDF files created for Maple’s privacy agreements contained metadata listing the author as "Max Travel," a likely digital trace left by TGR leader Yury Maksakov, who uses the username "Max Traveller" on Facebook.

The digital clues and overlaps between Maple Finance and TGR are consistent with "illicit financial activities," said Peter Dent, a former forensic services lead for global professional services firm Deloitte who is also part of the Vancouver Anti-Corruption Institute.

"I'm certainly concerned," said Dent. "They share a common directorship, they share a phone number with another entity that has been alleged to be involved in illicit financial activity. They don't even have a phone number in Canada."

Metadata for OneGate, OneCard and OneRemit showed the author as Max Travel, a likely digital trace left by TGR leader Yury Maksakov, who uses the username "Max Traveller" on Facebook. (Illustration: Froilan Untalasco/CBC)
FINTRAC registration

Following the global crackdown on the TGR Network in December 2024, Maple Finance was scrubbed from the active provider list on The OneGate website, as its FINTRAC registration expired.

The FINTRAC registration has since been renewed and Maple Finance now advertises itself as an "innovative financial ecosystem for modern business owners to manage their finances on their own terms."

FINTRAC shows Maple Digital Financial Solutions registration. The address links to the law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. (FINTRAC)

FINTRAC wrote in an email to CBC News that it is "prohibited from disclosing information on the compliance history of individual entities... except in the case of a public notice of an administrative monetary penalty imposed."

"If I was the government authority in charge of money-laundering enforcement, like FINTRAC here in Canada, I think I'd be looking at this report," said William Pellerin, international trade lawyer at McMillan LLP, who also reviewed the report and CBC’s findings.

"You have known actors that have been under investigation in other jurisdictions … in conjunction with everything else, maybe this is something we ought to dig into."

Do you have any tips on this story? Email at VI@cbc.ca


With files from Matthew Pierce