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Churchill Falls: A 15% Power Bill Rebate, $10 Billion From Ottawa — What It Means for Your Wallet

  Thursday, August 20, 2026 Last Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney stood on a pier in St. John's alongside Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Tony Wakeham and Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette to announce what Ottawa is calling the largest clean energy investment in North American history. Buried in the headline numbers — $273 billion in nominal contract value, $10 billion in federal financing, 14,000 megawatts of new hydro capacity — is a much simpler story for ordinary Canadians: who pays what for electricity, for the next 50 years. Here's what actually changed, and what it means for your bills whether you live in St. John's, Montreal, or Ajax, Ontario. The deal it's replacing was historically lopsided To understand why this is a big deal, you need the old one. Under the original 1969 Churchill Falls contract, Quebec locked in the right to buy the vast majority of the plant's power from Newfoundland and Labrador at roughly 0.2 cents per kilowatt-hour — a price th...

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Small Businesses in Canada Face Bankruptcy Risk Amidst Pandemic-Era Support Withdrawal

 


According to a recent report, thousands of small businesses in Canada are at risk of bankruptcy after the government ended pandemic-era support last month with the economy slowing at a time of high interest rates. 

Small firms that employ fewer than 100 people are critical to the Canadian economy as they give jobs to almost two-thirds of the country’s 12 million private workers. A spike in bankruptcies, which jumped 38% in the first 11 months of 2023, would weigh on economic growth, lobby groups and economists warn. 

Last month, small businesses faced a deadline to repay interest-free loans of C$60,000 ($44,676) made available to each of them during the pandemic. Of the 900,000 who had taken the government support, a fifth have not yet repaid their loans, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Monday. Katherine Cuplinskas, a spokesperson for the Finance Minister said in an emailed response that the Department of Finance did not expect there will be a negative impact on the economy on account of repayment of the loans given as support during the pandemic. She said loan recipients have long had full information on timelines and have been able to plan accordingly.


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