Cradle to Grave: Loblaw’s Grip on Canadian Life

Overhead view of a shopping cart filled with groceries, household goods, and pharmacy items, symbolizing how one company touches nearly every part of Canadian consumer life.

Loblaw is more than Canada’s biggest grocer. From bread to medicine, clothes to credit cards, it’s built a cradle-to-grave empire shaping daily life. Canadians face higher prices, fewer choices, and shrinking competition. Are provinces and consumers ready to push back?

A New Housing Road Map: Canada’s Biggest Build Push Since WWII

Monopoly Board with houses and hotels, a hotel on a chance card underscores the challenges in the housing market in Canada

Canada is in a housing crisis — and this week, Ottawa responded with the most ambitious federal push since the postwar era. Prime Minister Mark Carney launched Build Canada Homes (BCH), a $13 billion federal builder designed to fight homelessness, expand affordable housing, and retool Canada’s construction industry. Nearly half of Canadian households earn under $90,000 a year, and this plan is aimed squarely at them. From modular builds to public land transfers, BCH is the start of a decade-long road map to restore affordability.

Remembering the old internet feels like grieving.

Digital collage showing a laptop outdoors with a Katharine Hepburn quote, surrounded by images of mobile apps, social media icons, and virtual reality — a vision board of the digital world past and future.

I’ve lived through both the birth and slow death of the “information highway.” What once felt like a human commons is now a strip mall of ads and algorithms. Here’s what we’ve lost — and why it matters for the digital future we’re building.

Let’s Read Between the Lines—Together

Light streaming through a cracked surface – a metaphor for insight and discovery.

Politics touches everything—whether we notice it or not. Between the Lines is a space for thoughtful, grounded takes on how policy shapes our daily lives.