Maclean's

When most people think about innovation in banking, they think about the apps and tools they use every day: mobile cheque deposits, faster service and AI-powered features that simplify routine tasks. Behind each of those experiences are years of research. At TD, many of those ideas begin as patents: technologies developed inside TD to solve real problems for clients and colleagues. “For us, patents do more than protect ideas. They reflect the innovative spirit behind how we make banking better.

On a Thursday afternoon in August of last year, Malcolm Brodie, the mayor of Richmond, B.C., got a call from one of the city’s lawyers. He had news: the province’s Supreme Court had reached a decision in Cowichan Tribes v. Canada, the longest trial in Canadian history. The verdict wasn’t what Brodie wanted to hear.

Canadians have had two main reactions to President Trump’s trade wars and 51st-state threats. Collectively, we’ve responded to them like a declaration of war, as though it demanded nothing less than the mobilization of our entire society to confront the threat of a hostile foreign power. We watch Doug Ford dump a bottle of Crown Royal onto the ground, like the Boston Tea Party in reverse.

The biggest policy failures often start with a faulty diagnosis. Prime Minister Mark Carney and B.C. Premier David Eby’s plan to convert thousands of vacant condo units into rent-to-own housing treats a symptom of Canada’s housing crisis instead of its underlying disease. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, there were 5,849 new and unsold apartments across B.C. in May, with roughly 75 per cent in Metro Vancouver.

Many governmental organizations as well as companies, advocacy groups, worker unions and professional organizations offer funding for post-secondary studies through bursaries. Unlike scholarships, which often emphasize academic achievement, bursaries are typically awarded based on financial need. We’ve gathered bursaries from across the country for students to add to their list.

I’ve had a first-class ringside seat to the enshittification of air travel in Canada. My most recent industry job was leading Air Canada’s 1,500-worker customer-service operations team at Pearson Airport in Toronto, but I started out as one of the airline’s ramp agents at Montreal–Trudeau Airport way back in 1975. Around that time, in an effort to reduce bureaucracy and create competition, the U.S. decommissioned its Civil Aeronautics Board, deregulating pricing across the aviation industry.

For too long, Canada has been comfortable with the convenience of living next door to the world’s largest economy. But no country should depend on one partner for roughly 80 per cent of its trade, with a negligible dependence in return. Canada is learning that lesson the hard way. We’ve been tariffed to oblivion by the Trump administration, our economy is teetering toward a recession and our dollar has fallen to a paltry 70 U.S. cents.

In my neighbourhood in London, Ontario, residents spent years watching their intersection fail them. Most crossings along the street were four-way stops, except this one, where traffic on one road flowed straight through. Drivers assumed through-traffic would stop, and that assumption often had serious consequences. Near-misses and honking were routine. In 1998, a 12-year-old boy was struck by a car and nearly killed.

This March, days after the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech at France’s Île Longue naval base. Standing in front of a nuclear-armed submarine, he announced that his country would extend the protection of its nuclear umbrella to European NATO allies. Traditionally, the U.S. had provided this protection—but after Donald Trump threatened to seize Greenland and withdraw from NATO, American beneficence seemed less certain.

In April, the federal government announced that it was time for the armed forces to be properly armed again, and that Canadian companies would be at the heart of the effort. We’ve spoken to leaders at five companies jockeying for a place in that new Canadian defence firmament. Some are veterans in the industry; others are just breaking in. All are hopeful that a new era of defence spending will mean new opportunities for them—and all warn of the consequences if we don’t get this right.