📩 THE OPENING POSITION
Deep sympathies if you’re among the hundreds, possibly thousands, of people whose World Cup tickets were cancelled by StubHub this week. Some fans, including one guy who spent $11,380 on his imaginary tickets, weren't alerted about the cancellation until minutes before kickoff, leaving them to find alternate forms of entertainment. (If you're in Toronto, the stage adaptation of Paranormal Activity is playing until July 5, basically the same thing.) Insiders cite a sketchy manoeuvre called “speculative ticketing” for the cancellations, where resellers list tickets they don’t actually own and just hope they can nab some and complete the sale by game time.
A bird in the hand and all that.
– Kat Angus, Deputy Editor
🔔 BEFORE THE BELL
Index | Week (June 22–25, 2026) |
TSX | ▲ +1.19 (+0.01%) |
S&P 500 | ▼ -140.51 (-1.87%) |
Nasdaq | ▼ -1126.74 (-4.25%) |
Dow | ▲ +378.58 (+0.73%) |
The takeaway: Pour one out for our brethren on the Nasdaq Composite index. While the Dow had a perfectly fine week and the TSX basically hunkered down and stayed put, it was an absolutely brutal showing for the Nasdaq – down 4.25% since Monday’s open, triggering louder fears about an AI bubble. The gang’s all here: Nvidia, AMD, Google, and Microsoft all took big hits, and outside North America, South Korea’s Kospi fell nearly 10%, with SK Hynix and Samsung dropping more than 12% each. So, is the AI bubble actually popping? We asked Claude what it thinks, and it said: "Great question! 🚀 While market fluctuations are a natural and healthy part of any innovation cycle, the long-term trajectory of artificial intelligence remains incredibly exciting!" And Claude would have no reason to lie to us.
🔎 THE CONTEXT
What even is a “bailout” when you really think about it, right?
Photo credit: Loop Images/Getty Images
You still can’t afford a house, and developers can’t give their finished condos away! Welcome to yet another episode of the Canadian housing market, where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.
The deal this time? As of May 2026, there were 4,376 finished, empty condos sitting all on their lonesomes in Metro Vancouver, a not-insignificant 76% increase year over year. And Toronto’s own crisis soldiers on, with 4,295 vacant, unsold units as of last month, almost double from the year before.
Mark Carney’s solution: announce a new program to spend $3.2 billion over the next decade to cut developer fees and buy more than 2,200 vacant units to convert into affordable housing. Carney clarified on Thursday that the goal is to turn “distressed” condos into “rent-to-own” units, and that they’re only seeking to purchase condos “at a discount at the right time,” but didn’t specify how big a discount. An important detail to omit, considering a two-bedroom condo in South Vancouver’s River District can run about $1.1 million.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the word “bailout” has been tossed around a bunch. Pierre Poilievre called it a transfer “from the have-nots to the have-yachts” (a gold star to whatever communications intern came up with that one), and Carney himself admitted the rollout hasn't been handled well. Ontario rolled out a similar program earlier this year using private funds, which faced less pushback – taxpayer money is just a different beast.
While politicians and pundits bicker over how exactly to define a “bailout,” University of Ottawa economist and housing researcher Mike Moffatt says the test is simple: If the government buys the condos at or near market price, it’s a bailout, case closed. Get a discount, and that’s something else. It’ll all come down to how big that discount turns out to be.
What this means…
For developers: Congrats on the windfall! This is likely the best outcome for developers barring a complete market reversal, and they’ll be gunning to give the government as small a discount as possible, which would kind of ruin the good vibes Carney’s trying to foster here. As UBC economist Tsur Somerville told Canada’s National Observer: “If all you're going to do is buy a lot of stuff at a list price that people can't sell, that looks very lousy."
For housing: We’re sorta in “wait and see” territory right now, though some warn Carney’s plan could have the opposite effect than intended: The Globe and Mail’s Robyn Urback argued that if the only reliable purchaser of condos is the government, developers could decide it’s not worth the hassle and new construction projects could continue to wither.
For any condo neighbours: As urban planner Andy Yan told CBC, "What happens to the pricing of that unit for the government, but also for that particular owner who bought into that building?" If the feds buy the condo next to yours for way less, what’ll that do to your sell price when you’re looking to move? Nothing good.
Also:
Meta copies Polymarket’s homework. The New York Times reports that Mark Zuckerberg’s company has built its own betting platform called Arena, essentially hoping to steal some of Polymarket and Kalshi’s lunch. At the moment, successful wagers win users points, not literal dollars, but “at the moment” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, as Zuckerberg didn’t rule out monetary betting down the line. We bet you won’t even notice when Arena enters full enshittification.
Canada’s inflation hits 3.2%. Ouch. This one hurts. That’s from May’s numbers, the highest since December 2023, and driven ever higher by a 4.3% increase in grocery costs and a [checks notes] 33.2% spike in gas prices. Yeesh. No wonder two-thirds of Canadians cite cost of living as their biggest concern, way ahead of even the economy (39%), healthcare (35%), and housing (34%). The vibes aren’t just off; they’ve curdled.
RIP to “the Maestro.” Legendary economist Alan Greenspan died this week at age 100. He spent nearly 20 years as Fed chair and even longer arguing that banks needed less regulation, not more… a belief he held all the way up to the 2008 global financial crisis (and a while after, too). You either die a hero or live long enough to admit that maybe a few regulations would have been a good idea.
Then again, maybe everything we've told you is wrong. Canada's facing a "data quality crisis" – at least, that's the warning from Desjardins economists this week. Economists had predicted 1.5% GDP growth for the first quarter of 2026, but Statistics Canada's data showed a 0.1% decrease instead. Economist Randall Bartlett calls it an "open secret" that Canada's data may not be accurate, but StatsCan chalks it up to the economy itself being a hot mess, which, fair. Plus, they got all their info from their sister's friend's boyfriend who knows a guy, so you know it's legit.
Source: Statistics Canada
🤿 ROLLING IN THE DEEP
Photo credit: @bobby.yanagawa via Instagram / The Margin Staff
Why this surgeon chose to stay in Canada over a bigger paycheque in the US
by Dr. Bobby Yanagawa, head of cardiac surgery at St. Michael’s hospital in Toronto. As told to Teagan Sliz.
This is an excerpt of an article originally run in full on The Margin.
If you ask most people who earns more, American doctors or Canadian doctors, they'll almost certainly say Americans – by a landslide. And by some measures, they’d be right. Doctors in the US are some of the highest paid physicians in the world; on the high end, specialized doctors like neurosurgeons can earn around C$1 million a year, depending on where they live and how many years of experience they’ve got. That’s nothing to scoff at, and for Canadian-trained doctors like myself, the move to the US can look very tempting on paper – lower debt coming out of school, and then a higher salary if you head south.
But the calculations change quickly once you factor in what American doctors have to spend in order to earn that salary, and Canadian doctors like myself aren’t as far behind as you might think. When you take things into account like malpractice insurance, business overhead, student debt, and other related costs, the pay gap between American and Canadian doctors actually shrinks, and in some cases, nearly closes.
A common misconception posits that most American doctors earn 50% more than, or even double, what their Canadian counterparts make. But the real-life gap is only about 10% to 20%. Canadian neurosurgeons, for example, earn C$850,000 or more on the high end, just 16% shy of a million. Experienced cardiac surgeons like me earn around C$650,000 in Canada, while a comparable American cardiologist would bring in a little over C$850,000. All things considered, we Canadian physicians average around 22% less than American ones.
Of course, Canadian doctors can also pay much higher income taxes, especially compared to doctors operating in states with no income tax, like Texas or Florida. But most of us are incorporated, meaning we’re taxed at the small business rate, which ranges from a more palatable 9% to 12.2%, depending on the province.
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👀 UNSOLICITED OPINIONS
Photo credit: The Game Bakers
A love letter to Cairn, the most 'boring' game of the year
Kat Angus, Deputy Editor: A few weeks ago, I started playing a video game called Cairn, one of those frustrating games whose description won’t come close to doing it justice. I keep explaining it to people as "meditative,” which makes it sound like you’ll be running a spa, and that’s not remotely accurate. You play as Aava, a professional climber attempting to be the first to reach the top of Mount Kami, a peak that’s killed every other person who made the same attempt. The game’s mechanics are built around moving one limb at a time: left hand here, right foot there, over and over, for as long as it takes you to conquer the wall or fall off a ledge and start again.
See what I mean? That sounds like the most boring game in history. If we were still in school, you’d bully me for recommending it (hey, I get it). But against all odds, Cairn is one of the best games I've played this year.
The actual climbing is legitimately challenging – I’m not denying a few rage quits on my part, but the satisfaction of finally clearing a section where I’ve died 10 times is sublime, on par with cancelling plans at the last minute. But what sticks with me long after I’ve stopped playing is the mountain itself. As you climb, you slowly discover the remains of a civilization that once inhabited Mount Kami, and you start to understand its history and what the mountain has cost those who loved it, climbed it, and lost people to it. Aava is unhealthily obsessed with reaching a summit no one’s ever reached, and the magic of Cairn is that it makes you just as obsessed as she is.
I’m still working on making it to the top. Whenever I get there, I’m pretty sure that’ll be the least important part.
🧾 INSIDER TRADING
From The Margin group chat:
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: Dr. Bobby Yanagawa (contributor), Teagan Sliz (writer), Tyler Haw (audience engagement), 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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