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Canadian shoppers are out deal-hunting during a muted Black Friday as decades-high inflation weighs on consumers and prompts some to rein in spending. Retailers have stretched deals over several weeks and offered similar discounts online, taking some of the frenzy out of the holiday shopping event. Several big box stores in the Toronto area, such as Best Buy and Walmart, lacked the usual early morning lineups that once epitomized Black Friday. Malls in the area appeared busy around lunchtime, but not swarming with the crowds and queues seen in previous years. Few stores appeared to have lines of waiting customers. “We’re seeing a dilution of Black Friday as a physical shopping event where you go to the store early in the morning,” retail analyst Bruce Winder said Friday. “It’s finally sort of hit that tipping point where it’s much less about the day and it’s more about the shopping period.” Inflation-weary shoppers were expected to turn out in record numbers for deals on Black Friday...

Bank towers are shown from Bay Street in Toronto's financial district. Adrien Veczan/The Canadian Press Canada’s major banks wrapped up their fiscal year on an uneasy note, with a boost to profit margins from rising interest rates offset by inflated costs and gradual increases in loan losses as customers start to feel the strain from higher borrowing costs. Five of the six largest lenders reported fiscal fourth-quarter profits that were flat or lower than a year ago, and three of them – Bank of Montreal, BMO-T Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CM-T and National Bank of Canada NA-T – fell short of analysts’ earnings estimates. The outlier was Toronto-Dominion Bank, TD-N a lender that is rich in deposits and posted large increases in the margins it earned on loans – the difference between what it charges borrowers and pays on deposits. That helped drive retail banking revenues higher. In the 2023 fiscal year, banks are expecting to be dealt a tougher economic hand. Several bank CE...

Bank towers are shown from Bay Street in Toronto's financial district. Adrien Veczan/The Canadian Press Canada’s major banks wrapped up their fiscal year on an uneasy note, with a boost to profit margins from rising interest rates offset by inflated costs and gradual increases in loan losses as customers start to feel the strain from higher borrowing costs. Five of the six largest lenders reported fiscal fourth-quarter profits that were flat or lower than a year ago, and three of them – Bank of Montreal, BMO-T Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CM-T and National Bank of Canada NA-T – fell short of analysts’ earnings estimates. The outlier was Toronto-Dominion Bank, TD-N a lender that is rich in deposits and posted large increases in the margins it earned on loans – the difference between what it charges borrowers and pays on deposits. That helped drive retail banking revenues higher. In the 2023 fiscal year, banks are expecting to be dealt a tougher economic hand. Several bank CE...

Bank towers are shown from Bay Street in Toronto's financial district. Adrien Veczan/The Canadian Press Canada’s major banks wrapped up their fiscal year on an uneasy note, with a boost to profit margins from rising interest rates offset by inflated costs and gradual increases in loan losses as customers start to feel the strain from higher borrowing costs. Five of the six largest lenders reported fiscal fourth-quarter profits that were flat or lower than a year ago, and three of them – Bank of Montreal, BMO-T Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce CM-T and National Bank of Canada NA-T – fell short of analysts’ earnings estimates. The outlier was Toronto-Dominion Bank, TD-N a lender that is rich in deposits and posted large increases in the margins it earned on loans – the difference between what it charges borrowers and pays on deposits. That helped drive retail banking revenues higher. In the 2023 fiscal year, banks are expecting to be dealt a tougher economic hand. Several bank CE...

Poland withdrew its objections to a minimum corporate tax at an EU summit on Thursday, unblocking a whole package of linked agreements that includes €18-billion ($19.16-billion) in financing for Ukraine in 2023, diplomats said. Leaders had been held up on several fronts at the Brussels summit, at the end of a tumultuous year which saw the EU close ranks to support Ukraine after Russia’s invasion but also often struggle to agree how much pressure to put on Moscow. Diplomats said Poland had blindsided EU peers who had not expected its objection to a carefully negotiated package, but Warsaw’s veto had now been dropped. “There is a deal,” one said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier addressed leaders by video link and urged them to approve the aid his country needs nearly 10 months into the war. “I am asking you very much to ensure that our struggle for peace for Ukraine and for the whole of Europe does not depend on misunderstandings and controversies between some EU mem...

People look through the window of a store in Montreal, on Dec. 26, 2021. Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press Stores in Canada are gearing up for Boxing Day sales, with some rolling out deals early in the hopes of enticing budget-conscious shoppers. The Canadian promotional retail event has been overshadowed in recent years by its American counterpart, Black Friday. But experts say Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales fell short of expectations last month, leaving some stores with inventory to clear before the end of the season. “Black Friday is the most important day of the year for retailers and it was a bit of a bust,” said Lisa Hutcheson, managing partner at retail consulting firm J.C. Williams Group. “We’re going to end up seeing some deep discounts around Boxing Day because it’s been a bit of a slower sales season. It hasn’t been those crushing crowds of December that we’ve seen in the past.” Even with big discounts, consumers might be hesitant to open their wallets, she said. “Infl...

Photo : Orapruek ( Shutterstock ) The camera is one of the iPhone’s best features. It takes great photos, and shoots some of the best video on any smartphone. That’s why, when my iPhone’s camera broke, I was pretty bummed, yet hopeful the Apple Store could fix me right up. Unfortunately, breaking your iPhone camera isn’t like breaking the screen, and the fix likely isn’t as simple as you’d think. Not all broken iPhone cameras are the same In my case, I was working with two broken cameras on my iPhone 12 Pro Max, both requiring different solutions. The first issue came when my iPhone flew out of my pocket and slammed into concrete, instantly cracking my wide angle lens (the default 1x zoom camera). Lucky for me, the crack didn’t affect photos and videos unless there was a bright, intense light source directly above me, which usually only happened on particularly sunny days or when in a room with a strong light in the ceiling. These circumstances are rare enough that I decided t...

The Canadian dollar CADUSD strengthened against its U.S. counterpart on Friday, recouping losses from earlier in the week, as equity markets rallied and investors turned attention to an upcoming interest rate decision by the Bank of Canada. The loonie was trading 0.6% higher at 1.3382 to the greenback, or 74.73 U.S. cents, rebounding from its lowest intraday level in nearly two weeks at 1.3520 on Thursday. For the week, the currency was up 0.1%, for a fifth consecutive week of gains, the longest such sequence since May 2021. “To a large extent the squeeze higher we had in U.S. equity markets today explains the strength in the Canadian dollar that we’ve seen,” said Shaun Osborne, chief currency strategist at Scotiabank. “There is still a quite strong short-term correlation between the CAD and U.S. equities.” Canada is a major producer of commodities, including oil, so the loonie tends to be sensitive to the signal from stocks about the economic outlook. Wall Street’s main indexes rose...