Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are finally married! The world's biggest star and her NFL hunk wanted privacy for the big day, so naturally they got married at… Madison Square Garden. On July 3. The day before America's 250th birthday. Shutting down blocks of traffic on a weekday. The estimated cost to rent MSG is over US$1 million, but for the total wedding costs? Once you account for flowers, catering, and decorations, the overall price tag is estimated to be between US$35 million and US$50 million. Despite the very public venue, guests were still expected to give up their phones for safekeeping during the ceremony.

With everything shrouded in secrecy, it's been hard to separate fact from fiction. Fact: Adam Sandler officiated (hopefully they got The Wedding Singer, not Little Nicky). Fiction: the AI-generated photos Snopes had to debunk – as of this writing, no official pho_tos have been released.

Your invitation may have gotten lost in the mail, but don't worry: there's always the annual wedding renewal concert tour, the Netflix special, or the coffee table book, or…

– Tyler Haw, Audience Engagement and Education

The takeaway: Markets seesawed after Trump declared the Iran ceasefire "over" on Wednesday (more on that below), sending the Dow down 577 points as oil spiked and investors started side-eyeing Big Tech's AI spending spree. We saw a partial rebound on Thursday as chip stocks rallied, lifting the Nasdaq and S&P 500, though the Dow didn’t fully recover its Wednesday losses. Meanwhile, the TSX mostly stayed level, likely helped by Canada's trade surplus hitting a four-year high on high oil and metals prices.

NATO’s annual summit/hugfest in Ankara, Türkiye this week was immediately thrown off the rails when Donald Trump took aim at everything from Iran and Spain to the alliance itself. On Wednesday, he unilaterally called off the fragile Iran ceasefire, and by Thursday both countries resumed trading missile strikes, once again imperilling trade through the Gulf of Hormuz. 

Not content to set just one corner of the world on fire, Trump also took the opportunity to declare an end of trade with fellow NATO member Spain, whose left-wing government has been feuding with the US over Iran. However, it was all smoke: Spain is part of the EU common market, making an embargo practically impossible. No wonder that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez brushed Trump’s comments off like rain on the plain. 

Just when it looked like Trump attended purely to cause trouble, he switched from negging to love-bombing, surprising Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with the rights to produce Patriot missile interceptors. (Also surprised: Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, the American manufacturers who hold those rights, apparently unaware of Trump's gift.) He praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then declared: “If there’s one word that comes out of today, it’s 'unification.'“ …Okay, sure.

While Trump made noise in the living room, Canada and Europe were smooching in the kitchen. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mark Carney's been working his rolodex, pulling his buddies across the pond away from the US and towards Canada – and it seems to be working. This week, Canada named Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS), a German company, as its preferred supplier for 12 new submarines, the largest defence procurement in Canada’s history. No numbers have been disclosed yet, but the figures are said to be in the billions. Sounds like a honeymoon to us.

by Daniel Foch

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

The federal and B.C. governments have proposed converting more than 2,200 vacant condo units into affordable homes. They're leaning toward a rent-to-own structure, though Carney said they're considering multiple models and will settle on details come autumn. The response has been mixed: B.C. Housing Minister Gregor Robertson described it as one tool in "a broader toolkit" for building affordable homes faster, while Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre says it's a bailout for developers, "a transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the have-yachts."

The frustrating truth is that it's too soon to tell if this is a bailout or not. To figure that out, there are questions we need to answer: What price will the government pay? Who will eat the loss? Who cashes in if prices recover? And will these homes still be affordable in five years, or just until the scissors snip through the ceremonial ribbon?

A government spending money isn't automatically a bailout, no matter what your uncle's Facebook feed says. A bailout is specifically when public taxpayer money is used to cover private losses that were supposed to belong to developers, lenders, or investors.

In this case, developers built and listed these units when the rates were lower and investors were eager, and now a chunk of that inventory is sitting there, empty. CMHC data shows 4,376 completed and unabsorbed apartment units in the Vancouver area in May, and 6,149 unabsorbed units across all dwelling types. Furthermore, Greater Vancouver Realtors reported that May 2026 apartment sales were down 7.2% year-over-year, with the apartment benchmark price sinking 7.9% to $697,800.

There's no shortage of finished condos in Vancouver, but there is a shortage of people willing to buy them at their current price. So it doesn't matter whether the government buys below the old presale price, below the appraisal, or even below construction costs. The actual test of whether this is a bailout relies on what a private buyer would pay for a condo today, with no government involved.

Read more

Tyler Haw, Audience Engagement and Education: For many, July marks the start of summer – barbecues, longer days, and the passive-aggressive mowing of exactly where the invisible line is between you and your neighbour's lawn. Me? I'm excited for NHL free agency, the period when players' contracts expire and other teams can bid for them. And boy, NHL general managers can be just as petty as you and your neighbour, but with millions on the line.

Late last week, Anaheim Ducks superstar Leo Carlsson signed an offer sheet with the Philadelphia Flyers for five years at US$18 million a season, which would make him the NHL's highest-paid player. But with an offer sheet, the original team can match it to keep the player, and Anaheim did just that Thursday afternoon, opting to keep their star rather than lose him in exchange for four first-round picks.

So why did Philadelphia do this? Signing Carlsson to a very expensive offer sheet forces Anaheim to either overpay for their own player or lose him outright. And there might be a backstory: In 2023, star prospect Cutter Gauthier completely refused to play for Philadelphia, forcing them to trade him to another team – that team being Anaheim. He's also up for a new contract this year, and with Carlsson’s big contract locked in, Anaheim has only a little over US$9 million in cap space left to re-sign Gauthier.

Is this all an elaborate revenge plot by Philadelphia against a prospect who spurned them? Does your neighbour skip that one patch of lawn on purpose, just to annoy you? The answer to either question is: Hmmmmm, tough to say. But summer's back, baby!

Please welcome our new content lead Anthony, who joined the Margin this week:

If you liked this newsletter, hated this newsletter, or are totally indifferent to it, hit the reply button and tell us why! We’re so lonely.

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

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