A new report by insolvency firm MNP Ltd. suggests Canadians are expecting their household finances will come under pressure this year, the Canadian Press reported. The report says 71 per cent anticipate higher living costs heading into the new year, while 59 per cent anticipate a worsening economy and 52 per cent see job market weakness coming. MNP president Grant Bazian says Canadians expect most aspects of daily life to worsen rather than improve in 2026.

Wood lot mix-ups, slow permitting processes, and extreme cold have made it a difficult winter for some of Yukon's firewood harvesters, CBC.ca. Bill Whimp, owner of Bill's Woodcutting, said he's been harvesting firewood for over a decade and he isn't sure his business will survive the rest of the season. "I can't pay the bills anymore," Whimp told CBC News. Last month, Whimp moved his operation from his home community of Watson Lake to Haines Junction, 600 km away, because, he said, all accessible woodlots around Watson Lake had been picked over.

Western oil companies have been fighting to recoup tens of billions of dollars that they say Venezuela owes them — debts that could play a prominent role in efforts by President Trump to compel U.S. businesses to produce more oil in the country, the New York Times reported. Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips top the list of oil companies with big financial claims against Venezuela, whose president, Nicolás Maduro, was captured by U.S. forces over the weekend in Caracas.

Company executives, customs brokers and trade lawyers are bracing for a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of President Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs - and a potential fight over obtaining perhaps $150 billion in refunds from the U.S. government for duties already paid by importers if he loses, Reuters reported.

The U.S. ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has jolted Cuba, which has long relied on Venezuela for oil imports that have barely kept its tiny economy from collapsing, the Wall Street Journal reported. It opens a new and perilous chapter for the island’s Communist regime during an economic implosion that already rivals the crisis suffered by Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago. Cuba has been in a perpetual economic crisis, which has intensified since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Trump administration plans to control future sales of Venezuelan oil and hold the proceeds in U.S. accounts, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, making the clearest statement yet on Washington’s strategy to bring the impoverished nation’s crude to market and control its most valuable resource, Bloomberg News reported. Wright, who spoke at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. conference in Miami Wednesday, said initially the barrels would come from crude Venezuela is holding in storage, which has been filling up amid the U.S. blockade and threatening to force some production off line.

Canada’s retail landscape is entering a new chapter, according to some experts, BNNBloomberg reported. After a year of stubborn inflation, shifting consumer priorities and retail innovation, 2026 could see significant change in how Canadians shop. Donna Smith, director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU’s) School of Retail Management, says the turbulence of 2025 reshaped both spending habits and business models across the sector. “We seen inflation on a number of fronts,” the professor said in an interview with CTVNews.ca in November.

For activist hedge fund Elliott Investment Management, Nicolás Maduro’s swift exit comes at an auspicious time, the Wall Street Journal reported. A U.S. judge in November backed a roughly $6 billion bid by Elliott for Citgo Petroleum, the refining firm owned by Venezuela’s state-run company Petróleos de Venezuela, known as PdVSA, in a forced sale to satisfy creditors. Citgo, based in Houston, owns a U.S. network of refineries, pipelines and terminals that some analysts have said could be worth between $11 billion and $13 billion. The deal was controversial in Venezuela.

An American oil and gas giant is preparing to mothball one of Britain’s last remaining oil refineries after buying the business out of administration, The Telegraph reported. The Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire, one of the last five major oil refineries in the country, will not restart standalone operations after it was sold to Phillips 66 on Monday. The Texas-based oil and gas giant said that the site’s limited size meant it was “not viable in current form”, instead claiming it would integrate some smaller parts of the site into its nearby Humber refinery.