Sales of U.S. spirits in Canada plunge 66%, industry groups say
Article content
In a joint release, Spirits Canada and the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States says U.S. hard alcohol sales dropped 66 per cent in the March 5 to April 31 period compared with a year earlier.
Article content
Article content
It says that sales of Canadian and imported spirits were also down, leading to a 12.8 per cent total decline in spirit sales for the nearly two-month stretch compared with last year.
Article content
The statistics come as several Canadian premiers stand firm on buy Canadian, and push back against comments made by U.S. ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra who told a conference Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump thinks Canada is 'nasty' to deal with, in part because of bans on American alcohol.
Article content
Article content
B.C. Premier David Eby said Hoekstra's remarks show Canadians' efforts to stand up to Trump are 'having an impact,' and he encouraged people to 'keep it up.'
Article content
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Globe and Mail
8 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Why Globe Life Stock Was a Winner Today
Key Points An analyst upgraded her recommendation on the stock. She now feels it's a buy. 10 stocks we like better than Globe Life › Insurance conglomerate Globe Life (NYSE: GL) was a safe bet of a stock on Friday, as investors snapped it up following a bullish analyst move. With that tailwind at its back, Globe Life closed the day nearly 3% higher in price, easily beating the 0.4% increase of the S&P 500 index. CFRA now feels the stock is a buy That move was made by CFRA analyst Catherine Seifert, who upgraded her Globe Life recommendation to buy from her previous hold. She accompanied this with a significant price-target increase to $155 per share from the preceding $130. According to reports, Seifert's change was due to two recent developments -- the second-quarter results Globe Life posted on Wednesday and the resolution of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation. The probe, which concluded on Thursday with the SEC electing not to recommend enforcement action against the company, concerned allegations from short seller reports alleging fraud at both the company and its subsidiary, American Income Life. As for the Q2 earnings, the analyst was cheered by management providing encouraging guidance on anticipated reserve releases in its current Q3 and in the following frame. She also waxed optimistic about the development of underwriting in certain categories, such as mortality. A solid second quarter Those earnings, published on Wednesday, were encouraging in many respects. Globe Life managed to boost its revenue by nearly 3% year over year to $1.48 billion. Although net income was down slightly (by 2%), it beat the consensus analyst estimate. Put another way, it's business as usual for the insurer, and in that rather conservative industry, that's a heartening development. Should you invest $1,000 in Globe Life right now? Before you buy stock in Globe Life, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Globe Life wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $636,774!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,064,942!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,040% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025
CTV News
8 minutes ago
- CTV News
CTV National News: Are tariffs an unavoidable reality for Canada?
Watch U.S. President Trump says he has not been focused on reaching a final trade deal with Canada. Abigail Bimman on what that might mean for the economy.
CTV News
8 minutes ago
- CTV News
Meta is shelling out big bucks to get ahead in AI. Here's who it's hiring
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks on before the luncheon on the inauguration day of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term in Washington, U.S., January 20. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters/File via CNN Newsource) New York — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is on a mission for his company to be the first to reach so-called artificial superintelligence — generally considered to mean AI that's better than all humans at all knowledge work. It's a nebulous and likely far-out concept that some analysts say may not immediately benefit the company's core business. Yet Zuckerberg is shelling out huge sums to build an all-star team of researchers and engineers to beat OpenAI and other rivals to it. Zuckerberg's recruiting spree, which has reportedly included multimillion-dollar pay packages to lure top talent away from key rivals, has kicked off a talent race within the AI industry. Last month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed Meta was offering his employees US$100 million signing bonuses to switch companies. And just this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked during an earnings call about his company's status in the AI talent war, a sign that Wall Street is now also invested in the competition. The stakes are high for Zuckerberg — after Meta's pivot to the metaverse fell flat, he's reoriented the company around AI in hopes of being a leader in the next transformational technology wave. The company has invested billions in data centers and chips to power its AI ambitions that it's now under pressure to deliver on. Unlike other tech giants, Meta doesn't have a cloud computing business to generate immediate revenue from those infrastructure investments. And the company is coming from somewhat behind competitors, after reported delays in releasing the largest version of its new Llama 4 AI model. 'That's the Llama 4 lesson: You can have hundreds of thousands of (GPU chips), but if you don't have the right team developing the model, it doesn't matter,' said D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria. But more than anything, Zuckerberg appears to be in a circle of Silicon Valley 'AI maximalists' that believe the technology will change everything about how we live and work. Becoming a leader in the space is essential to Meta and other companies whose leaders follow that line of thinking, Luria said. 'For our superintelligence effort, I'm focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,' Zuckerberg said in a Threads post earlier this month. Meta last month invested $14.3 billion in data labeling startup Scale AI. Scale founder and then-CEO Alexandr Wang joined the social media giant as part of the deal, along with several of Scale's other top employees. Wang is now leading the new Meta Superintelligence Labs team, along with former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. 'My job is to make amazing AI products that billions of people love to use,' Friedman said in an X post earlier this month. 'It won't happen overnight, but a few days in, I'm feeling confident that great things are ahead.' On Friday, Zuckerberg announced that Shengjia Zhao, one of the co-creators of ChatGPT who Meta hired away from OpenAI several weeks ago, will be chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Zhao will 'set the research agenda and scientific direction' for the team, Zuckerberg said. (Meta's existing chief scientist, Yann LeCun, who has been with the company for more than a decade, will remain in his position leading the company's Fundamental AI Research team, a spokesperson confirmed.) In recent weeks, Meta has also attracted top researchers and engineers from Apple, Google and Anthropic. Multiple news outlets, including Bloomberg, Wired and The Verge, have reported that Meta has, in some cases, offered pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars to new AI hires. It's a sign of just how far Zuckerberg is willing to go in his quest to win the AI superintelligence race, although the Meta chief has pushed back on some of the reporting around the compensation figures. It is with that mission that Meta's new team will be working to build superintelligence. Here are some of the most prominent recent hires to the team. This list was compiled based on public statements, social media profiles and posts, and news reports, and may not be exhaustive. Meta declined to comment on this story. Zuckerberg's drive to get ahead on AI may be rooted in part in his desire to own a foundational platform for the next major technology wave. Meta lost the race to control the operating systems for the mobile web era in the early 2000s and 2010s, which Apple and Google won. In recent years, he has not been shy about expressing his frustration with having to pay fees to app store operators and comply with their policies. Meta recently partnered with Amazon Web Services on a program to support startups that want to build on its Llama AI model, in an effort to make its technology essential to businesses emerging during the AI boom. Although AI has benefitted Meta's core advertising business, some analysts question how Zuckerberg's quest for 'superintelligence' will benefit the company. Emarketer senior analyst Minda Smiley said she expects Meta executives to face tough questions during the company's earnings call next week about how its superintelligence ambitions 'align with the company's broader business roadmap.' 'Its attempts to directly compete with the likes of OpenAI … are proving to be more challenging for the company while costing it billions of dollars,' Smiley said. But as its core business continues to grow rapidly, Meta has the money to spend to build its team and 'steal' from rivals, said CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino. And, at least for now, investors seem to be here for it — the company's shares have risen around 20 per cent since the start of this year. And if Zuckerberg succeeds with his vision, it could propel Meta far beyond a social media company. 'I think Mark's in a manifest destiny point of his career,' said Zack Kass, an AI consultant and former OpenAI go-to-market lead. 'He always wants to point to Facebook groups as being this way that he is connecting the world … And if he can build superintelligence that cures cancer, he doesn't have to talk about Facebook groups anymore as being his like lasting legacy.' By Clare Duffy, CNN
