 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
|  | Prices are suddenly driving higher. (dee karen/Shutterstock) | | | There's a new cost-of-living crisis unfolding around the world. And it's clear Canada will not be immune.
Gas prices are already shocking drivers. But they're just the beginning.
Inflation numbers this week will assuredly show the cost of living has sharply increased since the war in Iran began at the end of February.
Economists expect Monday's numbers will confirm what we've all seen with our own eyes.
"Higher gasoline prices in March in Canada — up 21 per cent from February — are expected to push year-over-year growth in the headline consumer price index up to 2.5 per cent from 1.8 per cent in February," wrote RBC economists Nathan Janzen and Claire Fan.
But how you feel pumping gas into your car or SUV is just the first hit in a chain of events that drives up prices everywhere.
Gasoline prices are high; diesel prices are even higher. Gas helps you get your kids to school. Diesel fuels an economy.
Farmers use it to plant and field their crops. Shipping companies use it to power their trucks and ships, their planes and trains.
So your food gets more expensive. Your airline ticket suddenly includes an extra charge. Your shipment is delayed or costs more.
So take this week's inflation numbers and think creatively about how inflation looks if the Iran war drags on any longer. | | |  | | | As you can see, inflation was in good shape before the war started.
It's almost hard to remember how things were shaping up at the end of 2025.
The trade war had taken a clear toll on the economy. Tariffs were still causing real damage in sectors that weren't afforded the CUSMA exemption.
Autos, steel, aluminum and lumber were getting clobbered. Jobs were lost. Production was down.
But the rest of the economy was beginning to wonder if the worst of the trade war was behind it.
The Bank of Canada's key surveys of consumer and business sentiment will come out on Monday. They are an important gauge of the economic landscape ahead of next week's interest rate decision.
Last quarter, the surveys found a growing number of consumers believed the worst of the trade war had come and hopefully gone.
The Business Outlook Survey found business sentiment was holding firm after a rough start to the year. | | |  | | | I'll be looking to see how much of the concern over the war in Iran has changed sentiment.
People know prices are rising. They know food costs were elevated even before the war.
And they know the problems won't be easy to solve. Even once oil flows out of the Persian Gulf again, it will start slow.
More than half a billion barrels have been taken out of circulation. Oil tankers that left the Gulf to go fetch North American oil are now in the mid-Atlantic trying to figure out if they should turn around.
Serious damage has been done to important energy infrastructure that will take months, and in some cases years, to rebuild.
So even if this latest version of a ceasefire holds and even if the Strait itself is officially reopened, it will be a long time before the damage to energy markets is undone.
The last ships that left the Persian Gulf before the war only just arrived at their farthest-flung destinations last week. It took them a good 50 days to get there.
So, it will take another 50 days or so for renewed shipments to arrive at the most distant ports.
That takes us to the beginning of June.
That's a long time for a family of four to manage higher prices. It's a long time for a business to find viable workarounds.
But in that weird way that economics works, it will take a while for the impact of all that to show up in the data.
What do you think will happen?
Email me at peterarmstrong@cbc.ca. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | |  | | CPI numbers will be released on Monday morning. Economists expect to see the annual rate of inflation increased to 2.5 per cent. | | | | | | The Bank of Canada will release two key measures of confidence this week. The Business Outlook Survey and the Survey of Consumer Expectations will be released on Monday. | | | | | | Retail sales figures will be released on Friday. Early indicators like banks tracking debit card spending show the Canadian consumer has not scaled back yet. | | | | | Three things to read, watch and listen to this week: | | |  | The war in Iran is renewing interest in electric vehicles. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) | | | 1. Will higher prices drive renewed interest in EVs? | | | Full disclosure, I drive an EV. A 2019 Chevy Bolt, to be precise.
And I'm here to tell you I had a very different reaction to rising gasoline prices as a result.
EVs were all the rage a few years ago. But their popularity faded, then automakers scaled back production. Now, with gas prices so high, there's a renewed interest.
CNBC had a great piece looking into whether that surge in interest is sustainable.
"AutoTrader, an online vehicles marketplace, reported on March 26 a 28 per cent jump in inquiries about buying a new EV and a 15 per cent increase in inquiries about buying a used one, since the war in Iran started on Feb. 28. EV specialist Octopus Electric Vehicles said on March 25 it had seen EV leasing inquiries rise 36 per cent since the start of the conflict," wrote CNBC's Michael Wayland and Sam Meredith.
They quoted Cox Automotive in saying that gas prices would need to be inflated for six months or more for any notable increase in consumer buying patterns.
But they also found that sales of electrified vehicles (led by Toyota hybrids) are expected to account for a record 26 per cent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. during the first three months of this year.
The Wall Street Journal's editor-in-chief Emma Tucker sat down for an exclusive interview with Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa that you can watch here.
Espinosa said EV adoption has proven more gradual than the industry first imagined, but that adoption rates are growing.
"We think in the long term, there will be more and more popularity for EVs. Probably not at the level we were anticipating a few years ago, but we do see that particularly customers that already bought an EV, they stay with an EV and they continue buying EVs," he told the WSJ.
Check out the Wall Street Journal's interview with Nissan's CEO here.
Read the CNBC article here. | | | 2. The undeniable economic pull of the playoffs | | | The season is mercifully over for my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs. The team had a terrible year. Which means my spring will not be nearly as angst-ridden as it normally is.
I can wander over to my local pub and chat amiably with Kristin the owner about baseball and the Raptors (who started their own playoffs this weekend).
Indeed, I spent most of the last 10 seasons watching playoff hockey through gritted teeth with fingers over my face as I stressed that my team would lose in the first round again.
Maybe this year, I will join my gang of friends for wings and hockey and just enjoy it.
That calculation is being made by restaurant and bar owners across the country.
The surge in spending around the playoffs is real.
Sean McCormick, vice president,of business development and data services at Moneris, crunched the numbers in this segment on BNN Bloomberg.
He used Montreal as an example. During Round 1 of the playoffs last year, Habs fans flooded out to watch the games together.
"City-wide spending in bars and restaurant increased 30 per cent in the first home game and 35 per cent in the second home game," said McCormick.
Remember, it takes an awful lot to move the needle even one or two per cent. So an increase of a third makes a huge difference for bar owners and workers.
And, of course, a deep playoff run is very good for the business of your favourite team. The Blue Jays' wonderful and heartbreaking run to the 2025 World Series helped boost revenue at parent company Rogers by an astounding $547 million from the year previous.
So, go buy a jersey, hit your local bar, see your friends and enjoy the playoffs.
Check out the BNN Bloomberg segment on playoff spending here. | | | 3. From shoes to AI | | | At the peak of the bitcoin craze (er, well, the first big surge in the long and ongoing craze that is bitcoin), there was an odd trend of companies that had nothing to do with cryptocurrency at all adding bitcoin or something like it to their name. The most fanciful of the bunch was when Long Island Iced Tea suddenly changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp. in 2017. That "pivot" (as the company called it at the time) to blockchain technology sent its share price spiking as much as 380 per cent. It didn't last, of course. Regulators would eventually claim the name change was at the heart of an illegal scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged three people with insider trading. I was reminded of that incident last week when a shoe company called Allbirds announced it was carrying out a pivot of its own. The San Francisco-based company announced that had struck a $50-million US deal to become an "AI compute infrastructure" business and that it would change its name to NewBird AI. "The announcement sent the firm's shares surging by more than 580 per cent, though its stock market value is still more than 90 per cent lower than when the company was first listed in 2021," wrote BBC business reporter Osmond Chia. The New York Times spoke with Bill Kleyman, an AI infrastructure expert and the chief executive of Apolo.us, which builds tools to develop AI. “At first it read like a really well-executed April Fools’ joke,” Mr. Kleyman said of the Allbirds announcement. But, he added, “given the craziness of this industry right now, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.” Newbird certainly isn't alone among businesses trying to find a way to get in on the popularity of AI, and they start from a position as a company that was very tech-focused in how they sold shoes. So, watch this space. I'll keep an eye on Newbird to monitor how this pivot works out. Check out the BBC piece on the pivot here. Check out the New York Times article here | | | How the economy looks beyond Bay Street | | | Downgrading Canada's housing forecast | | | Canadian housing numbers last week were predictably terrible.
The national real estate market has been in steady decline. This is the fifth straight month in which home sales fell. Prices have been falling since 2022.
"It’s been an especially soft start to the busiest house hunting season across most of Canada, with 38,700 resales in March (unadjusted for seasonality) the weakest in 17 years for this period," wrote RBC's Robert Hogue.
This chart shows monthly sales and you can see for yourself just how steep the dropoff has been from that frothy peak when everyone was buying more space and new properties in 2021 and 2022. | | |  | | | But that's not the news. Everyone knows home sales are floundering.
Until last week, the Canadian Real Estate Association's forecast showed the market was set to turn around.
Now it has downgraded its 2026 forecast from its January estimate and at least part of the blame is going to the war in Iran.
CREA says homebuyers are trying to navigate a world awash in uncertainty. That uncertainty has deepened and made potential buyers think twice about the economy and, more specifically, interest rates.
"It's not a matter of getting a forecast wrong. It's a matter of these massive global disasters, really, that continue to unfold," said Shaun Cathcart, CREA’s senior economist. "I think we just have to cross our fingers that maybe this is the last big one for a while."
What do you think?
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