Canada

Lion Electric Co., the Canadian maker of electric school buses, has failed to find new investor backing ahead of a deadline on the expiry of its credit agreements, the Globe and Mail. The manufacturer will therefore file for bankruptcy protection in a bid to restructure, it confirmed in a statement Tuesday. The Saint-Jérome, Que.-based company, one of the province’s big industrial hopes in the shift to electric vehicles, had been scrambling to secure new capital from new or existing investors and figure out a way to deal with a debt that’s ballooned to nearly US$300-million.

The Canadian government is weighing an export tax on certain commodities to the U.S. if President-elect Donald Trump fulfills his pledge of slapping a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports, the Wall Street Journal reported. Among the commodities that could be affected are energy products, most notably crude oil, potash and uranium, but no final decision has been made, the person said. Nearly all crude oil exported from Canada is bound for the U.S. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week that Canada would retaliate against the U.S.

The Bank of Canada lowered its key interest rate by half a percentage point today but signalled a slower pace of rate cuts moving forward, the Canadian Press reported. The decision marked the fifth consecutive reduction since June and brings the central bank’s key rate down to 3.25 per cent. Forecasters were widely expecting the jumbo interest rate cut after the November labour force survey showed the unemployment rate rose to 6.8 percent.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa would retaliate with its own set of tariffs should President-elect Donald Trump follow through on his pledge to slap a 25% levy on imports from Canada, the Wall Street Journal reported. “We will, of course, as we did eight years ago, respond to unfair tariffs in a number of ways, and we’re still looking at the right ways to respond,” Trudeau said Monday at an event organized by the local chamber of commerce in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Vancouver may try to integrate Bitcoin into city finances just as the digital token’s value is surging, a rally fueled by US President-elect Donald Trump’s support for crypto, Bloomberg News reported. City council will consider a motion on Dec. 11 from Mayor Ken Sim titled “Preserving of the city’s purchasing power through diversification of financial reserves – becoming a Bitcoin friendly city.” Sim’s ABC Vancouver party has a majority of the 11 votes on council.

The Canadian government rolled out C$49 billion ($34.8 billion) in loans to businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic without “due regard for value for money,” the country’s auditor general said, Bloomberg News reported. About C$3.5 billion was paid out to more than 77,000 ineligible businesses that applied to the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA), Karen Hogan concluded in a report on Monday. That’s 9% of the nearly 900,000 Canadian businesses that received loans through the program, which was introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government in 2020.

Electric bus manufacturer Lion Electric Co. is temporarily laying off about 400 workers and halting operations at its Illinois factory to save cash after receiving a short-term lifeline from its lenders, Bloomberg News reported. The Saint-Jerome, Quebec-based company made the announcement after a Saturday deadline to meet its obligations to key creditors passed. The extensions until Dec. 16 apply to a credit agreement with a syndicate of lenders and a loan provided by the Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec and Finalta Capital Inc., Lion said in a statement Sunday.

Donald Trump’s new tariff pledges send a clear signal that he wants to rewrite the terms of North America’s free-trade pact and follow through with plans to hit China with tariffs, demonstrating to allies and adversaries alike that he is serious about renewing confrontation over a global trading system that he believes costs the U.S. dearly, the Wall Street Journal reported.