Canada's Economic Shifts and Major Business Deals: Emera, Weston Family, and Stelco
Canada’s unemployment rate rose to 6.5% as the public sector shed jobs, while major business moves included the Weston family's Boots acquisition and a massive merger between Emera and Canadian Utilities.
Newsnibs Staff
- 2026-10-11
- Updated 3:55 PM UTC
Canada shed 68,000 jobs in September, Statistics Canada reported Friday, pushing the unemployment rate to 6.5%. The losses split between full-time and part-time work and were concentrated in the public sector, which has now lost jobs for four straight months and is down 119,000 positions from a year earlier. The public sector cuts follow a trade dispute between Canada and the United States. The Bank of Canada will weigh the report before its next interest rate decision on October 28.
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. added to the week's labor news with plans to lay off as many as 500 workers at its Canadian operations, drawing a sharp response from Ottawa. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly told the company to comply with employment guarantees it made under the Investment Canada Act or face legal action. Cleveland-Cliffs chief executive Lourenco Goncalves rejected the idea of nationalizing Stelco, the steelmaker his company controls, and argued that a "Fortress North America" trade arrangement with the U.S. would do more for the industry than government ownership.
In Britain, the Weston family is buying Boots, the country's leading drugstore chain, in an $8.9 billion deal. The acquisition, made through the family's Wittington Investments Ltd. with financial backing from Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., covers 1,800 stores and 51,000 employees, and a customer base that reaches 80% of the U.K. population. Galen Weston, chairman of both Wittington and Loblaw, called the deal a fit with Canada's expanding global ties and will become Boots' chairman once it closes.
Emera Inc. announced a merger with Canadian Utilities Ltd. and its parent, ATCO Ltd., valued at $35 billion, creating a combined entity with an enterprise value of $72 billion. The merger joins Emera's networks in Nova Scotia, Florida and the Caribbean with Canadian Utilities' operations in Alberta and Australia, positioning the new company to compete with U.S. rivals on energy projects.
Elsewhere, startups including Mecka AI are paying gig workers roughly $3 an hour to record themselves doing household chores, footage used to train robots on manual tasks. Mecka AI has raised more than $120 million and is projecting a $300 million revenue run rate by the end of the year.
Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash
