Happy Friday, TGIF, everybody’s working for the weekend, Rebecca Black was right, and any other end-of-the-workweek platitudes you prefer. I’m using my space this week to demand justice for this furry criminal, who was cruelly trespassed from a grocery store in Hanna, Alta., earlier this month. What, so he can eat most things in the building, but he makes the slightest gnaw on a table leg and you call the cops?! For shame.

There’s no GoFundMe or anything, but knock on wood, the lil’ guy is gonna be all right.

– Kat Angus, Deputy Editor

The takeaway: North American indices are slightly lower than last week, with the TSX falling just over 1% as oil prices spiked back toward US$100 a barrel. The optimism that fuelled last week's gains has curdled into uncertainty following a breakdown in U.S.-Iran ceasefire talks and the looming threat of another closure of the Strait of Hormuz. While the US markets saw more tempered declines thanks to an 8% jump in UnitedHealth, Canada’s index bore the brunt of the volatility as a sharp drop in precious metals wiped out recent gains in the heavyweight materials sector.

Washington is demanding what amounts to an “entry fee” from Canada in order to engage in the planned review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) scheduled to start July 1. The demand is vague on specifics, but one of the US's most consistent complaints heading into these talks has been alcohol. The provincial alcohol bans in Ontario and BC are one of the few cards Canada can still play – and it's a real one, given that the Liquor Control Board of Ontario alone is one of the largest purchasers of alcohol in the world. With Canada already making significant concessions, including dropping many of the reciprocal tariffs it invoked last year and scrapping the digital services tax, Ottawa should hold on to whatever advantages it has left.

This is an excerpt of an article originally run in full on The Margin.

When Asad Chaudhary and his wife purchased their first home in 2019, they took a familiar concept in their sprawling city – drive until you qualify – and tried a different route.

The couple was renting a two-bedroom 1,100-square-foot condo in downtown Calgary, close to work and their son’s daycare. They wanted more space, ideally another bedroom and a small yard. To find a home within their $400,000 to $600,000 budget, they’d have to move farther from the city core, a trade-off familiar across Canada.

But Chaudhary estimates a second car would have cost them hundreds of dollars a month. As young professionals with student debt and little kids, he and his wife found that maintaining a car-light lifestyle was a big part of making their mortgage work. He points to the cost of maintenance alone: over five years, he’s spent about $1,500 total on two e-bikes, compared to the $1,400 to $1,500 Canadians typically spend maintaining a single car in just one year. Add in financing, insurance, fuel, and registration, and the savings from avoiding a second vehicle speak for themselves.

According to Ratehub.ca, the average car costs about $1,373 per month, covering car payments, gas, maintenance, insurance, administrative fees, and parking. For a new car, that number climbs to $1,504. Those figures are on par with a mortgage payment in some parts of Canada, except the asset is losing value the whole time.

Over nine years, which is the average period Canadians own a vehicle, those costs add up to roughly $139,716. That’s not a rounding error. Nearly $140,000, and almost no one thinks to weigh it against what they’re spending on a home.

Read more

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Fixer-uppers aren’t the deal they used to be. Since 2020, renovation prices across Canada have risen by as much as 43%. Here’s what fixing up that run-down home could actually cost you. Read more

Kat Angus, Deputy Editor: Whenever I discover a new hyperfixation, I always try to get my friends to join in – to the point that I'm essentially the Pluribus hive mind, insisting that they'll be so much happier if they just give in and joiiiiiin ussssss. My friends have learned to ignore me (which: fair enough), so I'm now going to shoot my shot with you, lovely newsletter readers: You should read the Dungeon Crawler Carl book series.

A guy named Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat Princess Donut are forced into a real-life video game, where they must level up, strategize, and fight to survive. Across the seven books so far in the series (with the eighth, A Parade of Horribles, due out May 12), author Matt Dinniman writes on such topics as found family, generational trauma, reality show politics, an AI with a foot fetish, the possessed head of a sex doll, and the secret genius of Gossip Girl. You know, Pulitzer-worthy stuff.

Want even more? Good news! There’s almost too much. Discover the incredible voice work of the audiobooks, lose a weekend to playing the tie-in Spotify playlists on repeat, and annoy all your friends by talking about the books incessantly! When it comes to the Dungeon Crawler Carl fandom, I promise that you’ll be so much happier if you just pick up Book 1 and joiiiiiin ussssss.

Disclaimer: Please note that Kat holds no investments with Matt Dinniman, Carl, or Princess Donut, and receives zero commissions outside of her own happiness levels should you choose to read these books.

From The Margin meme chat:

Last week, we asked: What's a so-called “dumb” purchase that you actually use all the time? Here are a couple of our favourite responses:

This week, we want to know:

Send your responses to [email protected] by next Thursday, April 30 at 12 p.m. ET and we might feature it in next week's issue.

This week’s contributors: Tyler Haw (audience engagement), Douglas Dunlop (content lead), Jenna Zaitchik (senior creative designer), Shazia Khan (social media strategy manager), Kat Angus (deputy editor), and Eric Wainwright (editor in chief).

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