What is Doug Ford doing about high Blue Jays World Series ticket prices? Take our business and investing news quiz
Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
This week: Gold prices were up, but not as high as the resale price on Toronto Blue Jays World Series tickets. What is Ontario Premier Doug Ford planning to do about it? Take our quiz and find out.
1It was not a good week for Canadian auto workers. Which U.S. vehicle maker announced it was ending production of an electric parcel van in Canada – a move that will cost 1,100 workers in Ingersoll, Ont., their jobs?
a. General Motors
b. Ford
c. Stellantis
d. Paccar
a. General Motors said it was ending production of the Chevrolet BrightDrop electric parcel van. Its decision deals another setback to a Canadian automotive sector upended by U.S. trade policies.
2Say it again: It was not a good week for Canadian auto workers. Which U.S. vehicle maker announced it was slamming the brakes on truck production in Sainte-Thérèse, Que., and laying off about 300 workers?
a. General Motors
b. Ford
c. Stellantis
d. Paccar
d. Paccar. The truck maker is laying off Canadian workers ahead of a 25-per-cent U.S. import tariff scheduled to start next month. Paccar, based in Bellevue, Washington, told employees at its truck factory in Sainte-Thérèse that it will repatriate production of trucks sold in the United States back to its U.S. plants.
3It was a good week for Japanese stocks. What prompted a surge in Tokyo’s Nikkei stock index?
a. A new U.S.-Japan trade deal
b. The election of Japan’s first female prime minister
c. The unveiling of a made-in-Japan artificial-intelligence engine
d. A Bank of Japan decision to drop interest rates
b. The election of Japan’s first female prime minister. Japanese stocks jumped after right-winger Sanae Takaichi became the country’s first female prime minister. Ms. Takaichi is a big fan of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and her Thatcher-like promises of stimulative spending, tax breaks and low interest rates have been catnip for global investors.
4Raise your hand if you’re delighted by the treatment you receive from the taxman. According to a new study, what proportion of callers to the Canada Revenue Agency get prompt, accurate answers to their tax questions?
a. About three in four
b. About one in two
c. About one in four
d. Less than one in five
d. Less than one in five. The study, conducted by the Office of the Auditor-General, was scathing. It found that the Canada Revenue Agency answered only 18 per cent of calls from taxpayers in a timely manner. Worse yet, the quality of answers provided by CRA call centres was dismal: Only 17 per cent of general inquiries about individual tax matters received accurate responses.
5Markets are so very, very rational. On Monday, gold hit a record high. On Tuesday, the precious metal suffered its biggest fall in:
a. One year
b. Two years
c. Five years
d. Ten years
c. Five years. Gold sustained its steepest one-day decline in five years – a drop of about 5 per cent – but its fans don’t seem to be sweating. Even after factoring in the decline, the metal is still up more than 50 per cent so far this year.
6AWS was in the headlines this week. What the heck is it?
a. A right-wing party urging Germany to slash immigration
b. The organization responsible for a major internet outage
c. The Canadian government department responsible for vaccine education
d. An Absolute Wealth Stablecoin backed by the Trump family
b. The organization responsible for a major internet outage. Ever wonder if we are becoming just a bit too dependent on fragile computer networks? This week demonstrated some of the potential risks when AWS, the cloud-computing service operated by Amazon.com, went down for several hours. Its absence sparked global turmoil, knocking workers from London to Tokyo offline and preventing many consumers from conducting everyday tasks such as paying hairdressers or changing their airline tickets.
7Canada’s anti-money-laundering watchdog set a record this week! For what?
a. Most fines handed out
b. Largest recovery of stolen funds on record
c. Biggest fine in the agency’s history
d. Most transactions handled
c. Biggest fine in the agency’s history. FinTRAC, Canada’s anti-money-laundering watchdog, has levied its largest-ever penalty – more than $176-million – against cryptocurrency exchange Cryptomus for failing to flag transactions allegedly linked to serious crimes such as the trafficking of child-abuse material. You may want to ponder this the next time someone tells you the crypto industry is maturing.
8Times are tough all over. Kering, the luxury-goods giant that owns the Gucci fashion brand, has been struggling with high debt. This week it raised €4-billion ($6.5-billion) by selling what?
a. Its beauty business
b. Its resort business
c. Its cruise business
d. Its housewares business
a. Its beauty business. Kering agreed to sell its beauty business to L’Oreal in a major shift in strategy by new CEO Luca de Meo. He is essentially reversing the big strategic pivot made by his predecessor Francois-Henri Pinault, who set up its beauty business in 2023. The goal back then was to cut the company’s reliance on its star brand Gucci. But the French conglomerate has struggled to ramp up the money-losing beauty business and now it is wrestling with slumping sales at Gucci as well.
9Travis Kelce, the football star better known as Taylor Swift’s fiancé, emerged this week as the unlikely ally of an activist investor demanding change at which company?
a. Beyond Meat
b. Plug Power
c. Hims & Hers Health
d. Six Flags Entertainment
d. Six Flags Entertainment. The NFL tight end has teamed up with Jana Partners, an activist investor, to agitate for change at Six Flags Entertainment. The Kelce-Jana group say they want the theme park operator to improve its marketing and customer experiences. Mr. Kelce has described himself as a theme park “superfan.”
10Prime Minister Mark Carney said this week that his government’s fall budget will vow to do what?
a. Double exports to non-U.S. markets over the next decade
b. Reduce the deficit
c. Institute gender quotas for corporate boards
d. Invest heavily in artificial intelligence
a. Double exports to non-U.S. markets over the next decade. Prime Minister Mark Carney says his government’s fall budget will pledge to double exports to non-U.S. markets in the next 10 years, shift the focus of Canada’s climate and immigration policies and make spending cuts to boost investment in major projects. Economists expect the budget will feature much larger deficits than the Liberals projected during the April election campaign.
11Who did U.S. President Donald Trump impose sanctions on this week?
a. India’s two largest banks
b. China’s two largest chip makers
c. Russia’s two largest oil companies
d. Canada’s two largest grain handlers
c. Russia’s two largest oil companies. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil as it called on Moscow to agree to an immediate ceasefire in the war with Ukraine. The sanctions against the firms, as well as dozens of subsidiaries, followed months of pressure on Mr. Trump to hit Russia with harder sanctions on its oil industry.
12Let’s end on a high note: The Toronto Blue Jays are in the World Series! The only downside to this rare occurrence is that resellers are demanding obscene prices for tickets. What was Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s response to reports of those high prices?
a. “It’s the free market at work”
b. He’s considering a new law
c. It doesn’t matter because it’s mainly companies that buy the tickets
d. He wants reasonably priced seats set aside for “normal, hard-working Jays fans”
b. He’s considering a new law. Sometimes it’s difficult to know who to cheer for. This week, Mr. Ford accused Ticketmaster of “gouging” Blue Jays fans and said his government will consider putting price caps on event tickets. This all makes perfect sense – except that we’ve been here before, with the positions reversed. It was Mr. Ford’s government that, in 2019, discarded new rules by Liberal lawmakers to regulate prices for events and concerts.
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