 Monday, November 03, 2025 | | | Welcome to Mind Your Business ! Consider this your weekly guide to understanding what’s happening in the worlds of economics, business and finance. By Peter Armstrong
|  | Prime Minister Mark Carney will unveil his budget on Tuesday. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press) | | | I'm headed back to Ottawa.
The federal government is set to table its budget on Tuesday. We already know much of what will be in it.
What I'm still struggling to get my head around is what story the Liberals will try to tell with this budget.
It's not going to be one of those budgets that provides big tax cuts or spending on programs most of us use every day.
Indeed, if anything, you should expect to see some program cuts.
In a lot of ways, this budget is meant to keep the damage at bay as long as possible, while spending on new ways to expand the Canadian economy beyond the U.S.
This is much needed, of course.
Updating our ports, building new pipelines and adding export infrastructure is vital.
And it will make us all richer. But these investments will take time — in some cases, decades before they materially make your life better.
So, who is the budget trying to tell a story to?
One line in Mark Carney's pre-budget speech stood out to me.
"The core of our Budget strategy will be to catalyse unprecedented investments in Canada over the next five years," said Carney in a speech a couple of weeks ago.
Investors around the world are looking for places to put their money. And yes, while Canada is going to add to its deficit this year, take a look at how this country compares to other major economies. | | |  | | | | | That chart is from this fantastic budget preview from Cynthia Leach, assistant chief economist at RBC.
It highlights Canada's spot as the safest port in a global storm, the cleanest dirty shirt.
Investors and pension funds from across Canada to Asia and Europe are looking around the world for a place to put their money.
That investment is direly needed. And the Canadian government still has a long way to go to convince them the regulatory environment that scared them off for the last 15 years has actually changed.
But where does that leave Canadian businesses and households today, next week and next year?
GDP numbers last Friday showed how perilously close we are to a recession (more on that in the final section of today's newsletter).
The fact is, absent a trade deal with the United States, the economy is going to be stuck in the mud for a while.
The Bank of Canada cut its forecast for growth again.
This chart from last week's Monetary Policy Report shows how the central bank had thought GDP would trend over the next few years.
The dotted blue line shows where the forecast is now. |  | | | All to say, this is going to be a weird budget.
And the circumstances are weird, too.
Normally in a time of crisis, a budget like this would be all about supporting Canadian businesses and families through a rough stretch.
The federal Liberals will try to thread a pretty thin needle as they offer some help, some cuts and a lot of investment toward building out Canada's export capacity.
We will have full coverage on CBC Radio, TV and of course online. I'll be involved in both the radio and TV specials from Parliament Hill.
I hope you'll tune in.
Email me at peterarmstrong@cbc.ca
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forwarded to you. | | |  | | The federal government will deliver its budget on Tuesday. The feds have vowed to spur "generational" investment, but are also expected to run a deficit that could be as high as $68.5 billion. | | | | | | Canadian jobs numbers will be released on Friday. Job growth has been slow and unsteady for months now. Economists expect to see jobs added, but also see the unemployment rate tick up. | | | | | | Canada's merchandise trade balance for September should be released on Tuesday. These numbers will highlight how much trade with the U.S. has dropped off since the trade war started. The US government shut down may delay the release though. | | | | | Three things to read, watch and listen to this week | | |  | Robots are (finally) going to dust your house. (1X) | | | 1. Robot dusting | | | I grew up in the 1970s and '80s.
So, if only because of The Jetsons cartoon, I was firmly expecting flying cars and robots dusting my shelves by now.
Well, there has been something of a development on the robot front. A company called 1X Technologies is selling a humanoid-style robot for a mere $20,000.
If I could choose a single human on all of planet earth to take said robot out for a spin, I would choose the Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern every single time.
She made this wonderful video as she and Neo (the robot) got acquainted.
Neo stands 5 feet 6 inches. It sports two (slightly creepy) cameras as eyes. And it wears a beige leisure suit.
Stern has Neo fetch her a bottle of water. The robot lumbers off to the kitchen but struggles to figure out how to open the fridge door while standing in front of it.
Once she gets that water, Stern tells Neo to put two glasses and a fork in the dishwasher.
Watching a robot struggle (and I mean, seriously struggle, the thing nearly fell over closing the dishwasher door) is actually kind of hilarious.
But then Stern drops the most interesting thing about Neo the robot. In some (maybe even many) cases, Neo is controlled by an actual human using a VR headset.
So, sure you have a personal robot, at your side ready to do what you wish. But you also have a young tech bro watching the robot and as often as not, jumping in to take control.
"Why does Neo need to be operated like this in the first place?" asks Stern.
Well, because, she says, the robot's brain needs to learn from more real-world experiences.
1X is both a robotics and artificial intelligence company. It records everything Neo does and uses those videos as the core of its program to make the AI model smarter.
That's why 1X is putting Neo in the homes of early adopters.
"I think it's quite important for me to just say that, in 2026, if you buy this product, it is because you're okay with that social contract," said Bernt Bornich, the founder and CEO of 1X.
In a way, I feel like Neo is an example of both how far we've come and how far we still need to go.
But above all else, I feel like Joanna Stern is the best tech reporter in the land.
Check out Joanna Stern's video as she tests out the 1X Neo. | | | 2. The key to critical minerals | | | A few months ago, I wrote in this space about the Build Canada project. In it, Canadian business leaders are writing memos laying out what they think needs to be done, you guessed it, to build the Canadian economy.
I said then I would keep an eye out and write about new ideas as they came.
This memo, from E3 Lithium CEO Chris Doornbos, lays out what he thinks needs to happen in the mining space.
"Canada is the undisputed mining capital of the world. But that leadership is slipping at the exact time that the world needs Canadian minerals the most," he wrote.
He says over the past 10 to 15 years, permitting delays have led to a mere handful of mineral projects actually getting approved.
As those delays drag on, Doornbos says private capital has started to look (and flow) elsewhere.
"Right now, the world is looking for new mines to provide the raw materials (including rare earths and other minerals) essential to clean energy technologies, AI buildouts and geopolitical security. The question is, where will they get built?" asks Doornbos.
IPOs in the sector have plummeted from $947.3 million in 2017 to just $13.79 million in 2024.
What I like about these memos is that they don't just lay out the problem, they offer solutions. And like they do in this case, they offer very specific solutions.
Doornbos suggests three steps. - Establish conditional pre-approval for strategic projects.
- Launch a co-ordinated financing mechanism.
- Create a single-window portal with the MPO to co-ordinate funding mechanisms.
These solutions, he says, would reset the permitting process without lowering any standards, just by removing duplication and building in loan programs (not grants) to help the junior mining companies get moving and get the bigger projects approved faster.
Check out the critical minerals memo from Build Canada here. | | | 3. More big business of the World Series | | | The Blue Jays loss on Saturday night is going to sting. For a while. It was such a good run. It was so fun to be a part of. But I dare say, it was also probably good for baseball. You remember the narrative heading into this series: the mighty Dodgers were going to walk all over the lowly Jays. The highest paid team in baseball was Goliath. The Jays were David. Well, David came mighty close to taking out the giant. Had the series gone the way everyone (almost everyone) expected, and the Los Angeles Dodgers took out the Jays in a five-game breeze, you can bet the off-season would have had some sharp and pointed conversations about the need to impose a salary cap. The Dodgers total payroll was $323,099,999 US this year. That's top in the league, by a good distance. The Toronto Blue Jays paid out a "mere" $239,642,532 US — but maintained fourth spot in the best paid teams in baseball. The Miami Marlins held onto last spot, spending just $67,412,619 US. That's definitely not an even playing field. The question this off-season is whether the league pushes for change or not. Just look at how broadcast revenues are shared. This piece from The Athletic makes a crucial point about fairness in the MLB. Take the Milwaukee Brewers, which made about $35 million US in a local TV deal this year. The Dodgers, by contrast, made about $335 million US. The Dodgers know everyone hates this imbalance. "Before this season started, they said the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let's get four more wins and really ruin baseball," said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts as his team celebrated the NLCS win earlier this month. Now that baseball hasn't been ruined, the question turns to what happens next. "Most owners see this as a problem, which is why the push for the first ever salary cap is expected. The Players Association doesn’t want a salary cap, and this all but guarantees a lockout between owners and players," said The Athletic's Michael MacKelvie in the video. | | | How the economy looks beyond Bay Street | | | GDP numbers | | | Last week, we were looking ahead to Canada's GDP numbers. We expected economic growth in August to come in flat.
But once again, the economy surprised us.
GDP actually fell 0.3 per cent.
The decline was pretty broad based and the weakness it highlights is everywhere.
This now marks six of the last 10 months that have fallen into negative territory. | | |  | On the upside, the advanced estimate for September shows the economy grew ever so slightly.
If that's the case, Canada will have avoided an outright recession.
A recession, of course, is defined as two back-to-back quarters of negative growth. The second quarter, running from April to June, contracted by 1.6 per cent.
If the preliminary numbers hold, Canada will have added a mere 0.1 per cent of growth during the third quarter.
So, yes, that would mean we likely dodged a technical recession. But it explains why for so many people, it sure feels like a recession.
What do you think?
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