Good morning. The Bank of Canada is facing a delicate balancing act as it decides whether to keep lowering its benchmark lending rate or hold until clarity emerges. But as trade threats and retreats continue to roil markets and cloud key economic touch points, Tiff Macklem and Co. might find themselves waiting a while.

More on that below – along with my first dispatch from a cross-country trip to see how small towns and business owners are experiencing these forces in real terms.

In the news

Economy: Market watchers are split on whether Macklem will deliver another quarter-point interest-rate cut on Wednesday.

Manufacturing: A sense of betrayal festers in Windsor, where Trump’s tariffs could wreak havoc on the local economy.

Technology: Ottawa’s competition watchdog is investigating Express Scripts Canada, a large player in managing insurance claims at drugstore checkouts, after a pharmacists’ group accused the company of anti-competitive practices.

In the know

A nuclear play in New Brunswick is facing a fragile outlook

• What’s happening: The British owner of New Brunswick’s small modular reactor startup has entered insolvency, throwing its assets on the auction block.
• Why it matters now: The Canadian subsidiary says it’s forging ahead, but with delays, money troubles and fading momentum, Ottawa’s nuclear play is wobbling.
• The broader view: It’s a gut check for Canada’s SMR strategy – and a reminder of how fragile government-backed innovation can be when the scaffolding cracks.

A Quebec-backed drugmaker is on the selling block

• Catch up: Montreal drugmaker Theratechnologies says it’s in talks to be sold – just as a U.S. packaging company went public with a rival US$255-million offer.
• Cast ahead: With others now invited to step up, the company could find itself in a bidding war for control.
• Big picture: The move puts one of Quebec’s publicly backed drugmakers at the centre of a takeover battle.

In focus

Canada at a crossroads

I didn’t think, standing at the rental-car counter in the Vancouver airport a day later than planned, that I’d need winter tires. The sun was warm on my back. I could feel the season shifting – the planet turning gently into the light. More to the point: I didn’t have time to waste.

The agent insisted that I’d need those tires, and that I’d have to wait another hour for a new car. Not long into the drive, white-knuckling it through the high passes of the mountainous southern Interior of British Columbia, rain and snow and hail are hammering the windshield as the road slickens beneath me. I’m thankful the agent made me wait. I’m irritated the agent made me wait.

But, as they say, I was already feeling my feelings: My plane had been delayed three hours the day before; the rental agency’s payment machine didn’t like my credit card; as a result, I’d spent the night at an airport hotel with an obnoxiously fantastic view onto the tarmac. And now, because of the wait, I’m more than an hour further behind schedule.

The signs whipping by taunt me. In a parallel world – one without hangups or holdups – I’d have time to stop for the “good” grits advertised by a roadside pub. (Not the world’s best. Not even great. Just good. I love humility in advertising.) I’d duck into the only store I’d seen in forty kilometres – a small shack offering “unusual gifts.” In awe of the sights along my first real trip through B.C., I’d pull over at every overlook.

Instead, I keep driving – weighed down by the guilt of running late, of being rude to the people who’d agreed to speak with me; distracted by the great credit-card crisis of the day before; thrown by the car’s alien controls; tired from jet lag; tired of finding melodrama in mundane complications; worried I’m worrying too much.

Wait. Get a grip.

These aren’t catastrophic problems. On their own, nuisances at most – the kinds of things I normally have an easier time keeping at bay. But – and maybe I’m projecting here – this is the kind of unease, the ambient strain, that feels symptomatic of a larger dislocation hanging over the economy, and over daily life. The stakes of the upcoming federal election are enormous – affordability, productivity, independence. Yet the very scale of these problems, compounded by a global reordering of trade, makes them harder to grasp in the terms laid out in leaders’ debates and analyst briefs.

That’s partly why I’m here: to trace the gap between politics and daily life, global shock and local response. I have just a few guiding principles:

• To drive as far as I can across Canada before time is called on the federal election campaign.
• To go off the beaten path and hear how people are making sense of it all – in business, in life, in their own words.
• No planning ahead. (Although, I’m in Okanagan Falls for a couple of nights. It’s beautiful here!) In a period defined by uncertainty, it felt like the only honest way to do this.
• I only have my phone to take pictures – though a better camera probably wouldn’t improve my artistic output.

Wheeling through hail and rain along the winding roads of the Cascade Mountains, eyeing my phone for cancellation messages that never came, I realize I might be projecting. The sense that forces beyond my control are making everyday concerns harder to manage – that what used to feel temporary now feels structural – is settling in. A creeping sense of being rudderless in an economy shaped less by our own choices than by foreign policy, market shocks and decisions made far from home.

Recent headlines would suggest that I’m not alone in finding my sea legs: A new poll from Nanos Research found that Canadians overwhelmingly believe this election matters – more, perhaps, than any in the country’s modern history. Most respondents say they are “certain” to vote. But when asked to identify the top ballot-box issue, the most common response wasn’t housing, inflation or climate. It was leadership – and, more specifically, which leader is best positioned to deal with Donald Trump and the disruptions he brings to markets and trading routes.

Even the Bank of Canada has said that it can no longer rely on traditional models to forecast the near future. “We need to set policy that minimizes the risk,” Governor Tiff Macklem said last month. “That means being less forward-looking than normal until the situation is clearer.”

Market watchers are almost evenly split on whether the bank will hold or cut again on Wednesday. Either move would be measured – a small domestic adjustment in the face of a much larger global storm. No rate decision will resolve a geopolitical trade war or repair frayed supply chains. But it may offer a signal, however modest, of how the institution is reading the road ahead.

And that’s the shape this campaign is taking. The election is among the most consequential in modern Canadian history. But it is being reframed – not by dramatic turns or late-breaking attacks, but by the gravity of the moment itself. Each party is offering divergent plans to address affordability and economic insecurity. But the contours of those visions are being pressed flat by global forces that aren’t bound by campaign platforms or national borders. As Prime Minister Mark Carney has said, the era of U.S.-led economic leadership is over — and Canada is learning how to move without the cover it once relied on.

The country is trying to steer its own course. The road is as slick and unpredictable as the journey eastbound from Vancouver, winding through the soaring mountains, to the high-desert climes of the Okanagan Valley, to parts unknown, until time runs short, the road thins out, or some unforeseen force sends me down a path I hadn’t set out to follow – in a country no longer shielded by the mantle of global economic certainty.

Charted

We have reservations

Speaking of: Canadians looking to travel closer to home might need to act fast, consumer affairs reporter Mariya Postelnyak finds. Some regions are seeing soaring demand for rental vehicles with both patriotism and domestic travel on the rise.

Bookmarked

On our reading list

On the campaign trail: Carney and Pierre Poilievre have promised they’ll get major resource projects done faster, but is that actually possible?

In the gym: Do these high-tech, pricy post-workout recovery tools really work?

Between periods: No slaps and nary a tickle, there’s nothing entertaining about Hockey Night in Canada these days, Cathal Kelly writes.

Morning update

Global markets were higher, lifted by a rally in technology stocks after U.S. President Donald Trump granted exclusions from steep China tariffs on smartphones and computers, though gains were limited as he warned levies were still likely. Wall Street futures were in positive territory, and TSX futures followed sentiment higher.

Overseas, the pan-European STOXX 600 was up 2.25 per cent in morning trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 1.83 per cent, Germany’s DAX advanced 2.5 per cent and France’s CAC 40 climbed 2.22 per cent.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei closed 1.18 per cent higher, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng advanced 2.4 per cent.

The Canadian dollar traded at 72.13 U.S. cents.