Ottawa plans up to $1.6 billion equity stake in Cohere

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that the federal government will invest up to $1.6 billion in equity in Cohere, a company founded in Toronto that builds secure AI systems for businesses and governments. The question is what Ottawa gets in return.

BetaKit reported that the stake is part of Cohere’s planned Series E, a funding round in which investors buy shares. Cohere is seeking up to $7 billion, which would be the largest round in Canadian startup history. Germany’s Schwarz Group, owner of the Lidl and Kaufland retail chains, is leading the round, Ontario Construction News reported.

In return, Cohere must keep its Canadian incorporation and headquarters, create at least 1,000 new technical jobs in Canada by 2030, and commit at least $1.7 billion to more computing infrastructure in Canada by 2030. The money will be paid in stages, with regular public reporting on jobs and investment in Canada. Minister Evan Solomon said jobs and revenue targets are key to the staged investment, but he declined to share the commercial terms.

Ottawa has backed Cohere before: in 2024 it awarded the company up to $240 million for an AI data centre. The new commitment of up to $1.6 billion is more than six times that. Mr Carney said Cohere has grown from a Toronto startup into a global company in seven years.

For context, Toronto’s professional, scientific and technical jobs rose from 249,000 in 2006 to 532,000 in 2024, according to Statistics Canada.

Sources: Government of Canada, Prime Minister’s Office · BetaKit · Ontario Construction News · Statistics Canada · Cohere

Brookfield's third-quarter profit rises to US$1.31 billion

BNN Bloomberg reported that Brookfield Corporation, a global investment firm, earned a profit of US$1.31 billion in the third quarter, up from US$219 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 9% to US$20.69 billion from US$18.92 billion, and the reported figures do not explain why profit grew so much faster.

Nick Goodman, Brookfield’s president, said asset management raised $25 billion and wealth solutions, its retirement-products arm, grew earnings 22%. Fee-bearing capital, the client money on which Brookfield earns fees, reached $682 billion.

After quarter-end, commitments to its flagship infrastructure fund, a pool of client money, rose $13 billion to $26 billion. It expects the first close, when a fund accepts its first committed money, in coming weeks.

Brookfield Corporation is merging with Brookfield Wealth Solutions; shares of both will swap one-for-one for a new Brookfield Corporation Ltd. when the deal closes, expected on December 1. Its shares are expected to trade as BN on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) from December 3. Brookfield’s predecessors began trading on the TSX in 1902.

Sources: BNN Bloomberg · Brookfield Corporation · SEC EDGAR (Brookfield Wealth Solutions Form 6-K)

U of T rejects own working group's discrimination report

CP24 reported that on November 12 the University of Toronto (U of T) said it cannot accept the report or recommendations of its working group on discrimination against Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians. The university says some recommendations clash with collective agreements and academic freedom protections, and others fall outside its jurisdiction.

The nearly 300-page report itself found a general pattern of over-policing and under-protecting Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians at the university. It lists 57 recommendations, including a review of safety and risk metrics.

The university’s work on Islamophobia is older than the report: it began in 2017 with an Institutional Advisory Table. Ontario has since amended its universities law, in 2024, to require publicly assisted colleges and universities to have policies on racism and hate, including Islamophobia.

The university did not reject the problem itself: in its written response it acknowledged that anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian discrimination exists at the school. It also promises more work on Muslim prayer spaces and multi-faith spaces on all three campuses, and an e-module on such discrimination.

Sources: CP24 · University of Toronto

Ontario plans enrolment caps and fines for career colleges

Ontario said in a Toronto release on November 12 that it plans to introduce a bill on November 16 to tighten oversight of private colleges in OSAP, the Ontario Student Assistance Program, which gives students grants and loans. The bill, not yet introduced, would cap growth in OSAP-funded enrolment at private institutions. Mostly online programs would lose OSAP eligibility, career colleges would need a physical campus, and institutions would be liable for their students’ loans, letting the province recover OSAP money. New fines would apply to breaches of the Ontario Career Colleges Act, 2005.

Global News reported that provincial OSAP grants to career colleges nearly doubled to about $1 billion in 2024-25. Concerns about rising private-sector applications led the province to pause related OSAP payments and begin an audit. CP24 reported that Minister Nolan Quinn said the audit’s preliminary findings point to serious systematic concerns about the integrity of OSAP in this sector.

The pause, which covers all private institutions, has led some students to drop out. It is not yet clear when payments will resume: Mr Quinn hopes for the new year, but there is no guaranteed timeline. But Peggy Sattler, the NDP colleges critic, said the bill comes too late, calling it “a classic case of closing the barn door after the horses are gone”.

Sources: Government of Ontario · Global News · CP24

Ottawa gives Stellantis 30 days to fix Brampton funding default

Global News reported that a letter from Industry Minister Mélanie Joly, dated November 12, says Stellantis, an automaker, is in default of its 2022 federal funding agreement. Ms Joly said Ottawa will sue if the funds, which she put at hundreds of millions of dollars, are not repaid. Stellantis also has 30 days to show it will correct the conditions in the letter, or face penalties, including ending the deal and repaying all or part of the funding. Ms Joly held a meeting in Toronto with Stellantis, the union and an Ontario minister.

The funding dates from 2022, when Ottawa committed up to $529 million to retool Stellantis’s Brampton and Windsor plants for electrified vehicles. But Ontario, which committed $513 million, says no money has flowed to Stellantis for Brampton; the $55 million paid went to Windsor. Stellantis says it has offered to return the support received for Brampton’s original retooling plan.

Stellantis plans to sell the Brampton plant to Roshel, a defence manufacturer, and the sale is expected to close by the end of 2026. Unifor, the union, says the takeover will jeopardize the jobs of more than 2,000 laid-off Brampton workers waiting to return.

Sources: Global News · CP24 on X

The city in brief

BNN Bloomberg reported that Apotex, which makes generic drugs, cheaper versions of brand-name medicines, and whose shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange, made a second-quarter profit of $100.8 million, up from $82.9 million a year earlier. Revenue rose only 1% to $852.9 million, because last year’s quarter included revenue from generic Revlimid, Apotex said, but in Canada it rose 14% to $413 million, about half the total, on new products including the first-to-market launch of semaglutide. Apotex now expects full-year revenue growth of 9% to 10%, up from 7% to 8%. (BNN Bloomberg)

BNN Bloomberg reported that rivals Cogeco, Eastlink and SaskTel told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that Rogers is making fans pay $12.99 a month extra for Monday night hockey, unless they already subscribe to Sportsnet on Rogers TV or to Sportsnet Plus. They say the move breaks conditions of Rogers’ 2023 merger with Shaw, which the CRTC approved on requirements that Rogers preserve competitive market dynamics, and they want the CRTC to order Rogers to offer the Monday content to independent distributors immediately, for free. Sportsnet spokesperson Jason Jackson said all TV providers, including the three, could carry the games in their own packages but have so far chosen not to. (BNN Bloomberg)

Toronto: 162.8 cents a litre on November 9, 2026, up 18% from 138.2 on November 10, 2025. It is 24% below the peak of 214.0 on June 6, 2022.

Source: Government of Ontario, fuel prices

Tonight and this week

• Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Various venues, from Fri Nov 13. Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival returns for its 30th Anniversary this year, with selected feature films.
• Richard Avedon: Immortal: Portraits of Aging, The Image Centre, Fri Nov 13, 11 a.m. Richard Avedon’s Portraits of Aging confront one of portraiture’s enduring taboos, at The Image Centre. Free.

Listings: City of Toronto Festivals & Events.

Thomas David Morrison, the doctor mayor, 1836. Thomas David Morrison, a doctor licensed in 1824, was chosen by council in January 1836 as Toronto’s mayor for a one-year term. His council took up building a water-works and lighting the streets with gas. A reformer, he refused to back William Lyon Mackenzie’s plan for revolt, but was arrested on December 6, 1837. Tried for high treason, he was found not guilty and left for the United States. He came back in 1843 after an amnesty and practised medicine again.

Sources: Dictionary of Canadian Biography: Morrison, Thomas David

Diligence is the Mother of Good-luck

Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth (1758). American printer, scientist and statesman (1706-1790), who set up the first postal service in British North America as deputy postmaster.

Reply to this email with a tip or a correction.

Researched, written and fact-checked by AI agents, under rules set by the editor.

360 College Street Unit 104, Toronto, ON, M5T 1S6

Published by The Toronto Society