The new rapid transit system proposed for 1st Avenue in Saskatoon has some businesses concerned.

The plan includes removing 61 parking spaces on the street and making designated bus lanes.

“They’re turning 1st Avenue into one lane of traffic for motorists and two lanes of traffic each way for the bus lanes. We’re curious as to how snow removal is going to work with this one lane,” said Keith Moen, North Saskatoon Business Association executive director.

“In regards to parking, we all know how much of a sore spot that is when it comes to parking downtown,” said Shawna Nelson, Downtown Saskatoon Business Improvement District executive director.

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NSBA and Downtown Saskatoon BID represent a combined 1,700 businesses in Saskatoon.

They are bringing their concerns into the spotlight, saying the city hasn’t considered businesses in the area.

“Why it matters is because the 1t Avenue is a major, critical downtown corridor. It connects obviously businesses, offices, restaurants and services to customers and employees every day. Changes to the traffic flow have real economic impact on businesses operating in this area,” said Moen.

Parking seems to be the main concern with businesses Global News spoke to on 1st Avenue, saying this will heavily impact them.

“We’ve gotten a lot of business through foot traffic, through people parking in front of our storefront and seeing our sign outside and seeing the craft we do once they come inside,” said Miguel Robles, a director of Robles Goldsmith & Jewellery, a business on 1st Avenue.

He said this affects not only their clientele, but delivery as well.

“So, couriers dropping, picking up, we don’t have in our location, at least along this strip, a rear area that we can actually have the depot.”

In a statement to Global News, the city says a design report is currently being worked on for April’s transportation committee meeting and the design team will continue to work with NSBA and Downtown Saskatoon BID in the future.

Watch above for more on what businesses on 1st Avenue in Saskatoon have to say.

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A new report from the Canada Energy Regulator is projecting significant growth in electrical generation between now and 2050, in part due to new artificial intelligence data centres’ thirst for power.

The report by the federal agency offers four supply and demand scenarios for Canada’s oil, gas and electricity markets: current measures, higher, lower and net-zero.

In all cases, the report says electricity will play an increasingly important source of energy, with power generation growing by 30 per cent, at the low end, to more than double today’s production levels by the year 2050.

“To meet rising power demand in all the scenarios, we see surging wind power alongside a diverse mix of other less variable supply sources,” CER chief economist Darren Christie told reporters Tuesday.

In all scenarios, wind energy makes up the bulk of the power capacity additions, with about 50 to 150 more gigawatts feeding into the grid by 2050, compared to 2023 levels.

While the increased demand for energy will be, in part, driven by economic growth, the report said that forecasting the future demand from data centres – enormous structures that house the vast computing firepower needed for artificial intelligence and other tech applications – poses a challenge because they can be quite large and unpredictable, depending on development in the emerging industry.

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In the lower scenario, data centres are predicted to increase electricity demand by as little as 0.5 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, while under the higher scenario they are predicted to add up to 12 GW of electricity demand to the country’s power grid by 2050.

The report also forecasts that more than 96 per cent of new generation will come from “non or low emitting sources,” with wind energy expected to be “by far” the largest additional source of renewable energy.

They predictions don’t include changes to Ottawa’s electric vehicle program in February, including the scrapping of a mandate to have all new cars be electric by 2035.

2:05
Alberta unveils strict new rules for renewable energy

The war embroiling much of the Middle East in recent weeks was also not explicitly factored into the CER’s projections.

The conflict has cut off shipments of crude from the Persian Gulf through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, driving global prices up roughly 45 per cent from their pre-war levels.

While the report forecasts Canada’s crude oil production  to grow in the near-term, output is forecast to peak at different points in time and is tied to global oil prices.

Canada’s oil production was 5.5 million barrels a day in 2024.

Under the status quo scenario, production would reach 6.1 million barrels per day around 2040 and level off to 5.9 million barrels per day by 2050.

In a high scenario buoyed by strong prices, production would peak at 6.7 million barrels a day in 2044, while in the lower case, production would gradually decline to 5.2 million barrels a day by the year 2050.

Oilsands crude is expected to dominate in each circumstance, with production from conventional and offshore resources being the first to drop off.

Natural gas production is predicted to increase to between 21 and 32 billion cubic feet per day by 2050, compared to the 19 billion cubic feet per day produced in Canada in 2025.

However, much of the growth is being driven by projects that chill the natural gas into a liquid (LNG) so it can be shipped in specialized tanker overseas.

By 2050, the CER says about a quarter of total Canadian gas production will be tied to liquefied natural gas exports.

Greenhouse gas emissions fall in all of the CER’s scenarios, but plateau around 2035 under current policies.

“Reaching net zero by 2050 would require an economywide transformation towards low carbon technologies, driven by additional climate action,” the regulator added.

With files from Global News. 

2:06
Will Alberta’s renewable energy changes help or hinder development?

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The Bank of Canada is set to update interest rates on Wednesday as the Iran war brings a dark cloud over the Canadian economy and as Ottawa prepares to release a fiscal update sometime this spring.

Oil price spikes globally have quickly led to higher gas prices for consumers, and economists expect inflation to tick up in the coming months. This means just about everything else is about to get more expensive for consumers and businesses alike.

“Whether it’s uncertainty or actual smoke, there’s a dark cloud hanging over the global economy thanks to the Iran war,” said Clay Jarvis, a mortgage expert at NerdWallet Canada, in a note.

“It’s fair to wonder if a rate cut would even move the needle for consumers and businesses; the current economic/political climate doesn’t feel all that hopeful.”

The Bank of Canada has a mandate “to promote the economic and financial welfare of Canada.”

To do this, one of its key goals is to maintain price stability by keeping the annual inflation rate between two and three per cent.

Other economic gauges the Bank monitors closely include the perceived strength of the job market and the rate at which the economy is expanding, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP).

To help achieve its mandate, the Bank of Canada’s main tool is adjusting monetary policy, or interest rates. This effectively changes the cost of borrowing money for consumers and businesses.

If inflation gets too high, then raising interest rates usually slows down the rate at which prices are increasing, while inflation getting too low means the economy could contract and even enter a recession. This would likely result in cutting rates to encourage more business activity and job hiring.

Getting monetary policy aligned with the immediate needs of Canada’s economy is a fine balancing act that the Bank of Canada’s governing body discusses on a regular basis at monetary policy meetings.

“The Bank [of Canada] can only act on what it knows, which is that inflation is near its two per cent target and that the economy hasn’t keeled over after a year of Trumponomics,” said Jarvis.

“Cutting the overnight rate right before a possible spike in inflation would be terribly uncharacteristic of one of the world’s most risk-averse central banks.”

6:51
Breaking down the impact of oil prices

Wednesday’s announcement will follow the Bank’s second meeting of the year, and several weeks into the Iran war. Although inflation in February cooled to 1.8 per cent, that was mostly before the war sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing.

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“Canada’s inflation cooled in February, but that is backward-looking now that prices at the pump have skyrocketed in the wake of the U.S./Israeli war with Iran. We expect higher energy costs will lift headline inflation close to three per cent in the months ahead,” said Leslie Preston, managing director and senior economist at TD Bank, in a statement.

“The Bank of Canada’s interest rate decision is coming up on Wednesday, and the Bank is universally expected to remain on pause. We will be listening closely for the Bank’s assessment of the impact of the oil shock on Canada’s economy.”

The Bank of Canada has not changed its benchmark interest rate since the quarter percentage point cut to 2.25 per cent on Oct. 29, 2025. Following the announcement last year, Governor Tiff Macklem said rates are “at about the right level.”

Although many economists expect the Bank of Canada to continue taking a wait-and-see approach, higher inflation as a result of price shocks stemming from the Iran war could add pressure to the central bank the longer the conflict goes on.

“Given the inflationary threat from higher energy prices, [financial] markets are pricing in a quarter-point rate increase from the Bank of Canada later this year. We deem this unlikely,” said Sal Guatuieri, senior economist and director of Economics at the Bank of Montreal in a statement.

“We suspect policymakers will look past the oil-driven rise in prices and remain wary of economic risks until the fog from both the Iran war and the trade war lifts.”

2:22
Business Matters: Iran oil shock spurs worldwide push to conserve energy

Wednesday’s rate announcement also comes just a few weeks before the end of the federal government’s fiscal year on March 31, and it’s expected to provide an economic update shortly after. This follows the Budget 2025 released in November, which marked a new timeline for budget and fiscal update releases.

By pushing the budget release from the spring to the fall, the economic update now occurs in the spring.

This means Ottawa will be expected to show Canadians how its spending plans outlined in the budget have been coming along and if they are on track to meet their goals.

Global News sent the Department of Finance a request for when the spring economic update will be delivered.

“The upcoming economic update will proceed as scheduled in the spring. The exact date will be announced in due course,” said John Fragos, press secretary for the minister of finance and national revenue in response.

Doug Porter, chief economist at the Bank of Montreal, says even with the potential of higher inflation on the horizon, the Canadian economy still needs room to grow.

“If anything, the threat of higher inflation has rekindled chatter of a potential rate hike in 2026. We still view that as a very long shot indeed, with the economy struggling to grow, employment weakening heavily in recent months, core inflation moving closer to the two per cent target, and [Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA] uncertainty still clouding the outlook,” Porter said in a note to Global news.

“Trade talks have finally restarted again after a four-month pause, but there are no guarantees of success. Against that backdrop, we look for the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates steady for an extended period, even as inflation temporarily flares higher on the oil price spike. “

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Experts say the war in Iran is having a rippling effect across the world, and B.C. is starting to see some impacts.

The pressure on oil supplies has pushed the price of gas in Metro Vancouver to record highs of more than $2 per litre.

“With few exceptions, the price has gone nowhere but up since the beginning of the conflict,” Dan McTeague with gasbuddy.ca and affordableenergy.ca told Global News.

He said oil is up about $30 a barrel, with gasoline up about 24 cents a litre.

“Just at the beginning of this, we were in the $1.67 to $1.70 range, so we’ve seen a pretty dramatic increase, especially on the diesel side, where diesel prices have gone up as much as 45 to 52 cents a litre, and that, of course, will leave a bit of an impact as it comes to all of the products that are made or serviced or, you know, part of the supply chain,” McTeague said.

He added that they expect to see fuel surcharges to reflect the higher costs of transportation across the board — including trucks, trains and jet fuel.

“All forms of energy have taken a pretty substantial hit from the high energy prices,” McTeague said.

He said that the longer the conflict goes on, the greater the impact on prices being driven even higher for everyone.

“When it comes to carriers and transport and distribution, it’s much more impactful because they have nowhere to go but to increase, pass those increases on the longer they go,” he said.

“What does that cost an average truck, depending on what they’re pulling, depending on what they’re hauling?”

2:30
US-Iran war: Trump demands other countries help protect Strait of Hormuz

But shoppers can expect to see higher prices at the grocery store.

“There’s a lot of pressure on energy costs, obviously, diesel, gas prices, and the food supply chain is a very energy-intensive sector,” Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, director of the AgriFood Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, told Global News.

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“I mean, so obviously when you have energy costs go up, it will impact the cost to move things around, to manufacture, to produce food, everything.”

Charlebois said they have seen similar scenarios in 2008 during the financial crisis, where energy costs went up and three months later, food inflation followed.

He said that if oil remains at $90 a barrel, shoppers can expect to see an extra two or three per cent increase across the board.

But any product connected with the coal chain or refrigeration is likely to become more expensive, Charlebois said, saying prices for meat, dairy and produce are expected to climb.

“Obviously, everything will be impacted, but those are the categories that are probably going to be more impacted,” he said.

“As far as food inflation goes, we did see in the numbers this morning that food inflation did drop to 5.4 per cent. We were expecting that drop to continue into March and April, but now it’s highly unlikely because of attacks in Iran.”

Charlebois advised shoppers that if they see something on sale, grab it.

“The thing about 2026 is that I do feel that Canadians are much more strategic about grocery shopping than just four years ago,” he added.

“Four years ago, food inflation came violently into our lives and I actually think that most Canadians weren’t ready for it. Now they’re much more ready, they’re more informed, they go to different grocery stores as well, they understand how much things cost now.”

2:02
How the Iran war is driving up the cost of flying

Travel is also expected to get more expensive.

Some airlines have already started adding fuel charges to tickets.

“I think what you’re seeing happening now is a volatility in jet fuel that hasn’t been seen in years,” John Gradek, a former Air Canada executive and McGill University faculty lecturer in aviation management, told Global News last week.

BC Ferries also told Global News in a statement that fuel is one of its most significant and unpredictable operating costs.

“To help minimize fare volatility and protect customers from sudden swings, BC Ferries operates under a fuel deferral mechanism approved by the BC Ferries Commissioner,” the organization said in a statement.

“As part of each performance term, the Commissioner establishes a set fuel price for the system. If market prices move above or below that level, the difference is tracked through the fuel deferral account rather than immediately impacting fares.”

BC Ferries said it will continue to monitor fuel markets closely.

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The Iran war is causing a global oil shock with energy prices skyrocketing across the world.

And in a bid to avoid running through supplies, governments around the world are instituting energy-saving measures, including asking employees to work from home or cut down on driving and other measures while the crisis continues.

In Thailand, an order for civil servants to work from home for the foreseeable future came with another request, as well – the Thai prime minister also ordered measures including suspending overseas trips and using stairs instead of elevators.

Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy has around 95 days of energy reserves left, officials have said, and it has been seeking additional sources of liquefied natural gas from the United States, Australia and South Africa.

Pakistan has mandated a four-day work week and work from home measures for a large swathe of its public service and ordered that all universities hold classes online, citing “resource conservation.”

Vietnam’s government has asked private firms to consider letting their employees work from home, while India has asked liquefied petroleum gas consumers to avoid panic buying.

Sri Lanka introduced fuel rationing on Sunday to extend the life of its supplies. Under the new system, motorcycles will be allocated five litres, cars 15 litres, and buses 60 litres of fuel per week.

The island nation has secured fuel shipments until the end of April, authorities at the state-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation told reporters in Colombo, adding that police will be deployed to reduce lines and minimize hoarding.

2:06
Iran’s new supreme leader vows to continue Strait of Hormuz blockage

“It’s supply and demand,” said Concordia University economist Moshe Lander.

“When supply of oil is being constrained and demand is not constrained with it, then the price is going to go sky high. And we’ve already seen that in Canada at the pumps,” he added.

While part of the effort to contain the price of oil involves raising supply, such as Canada and dozens of other countries agreeing to release 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves, the other part of the puzzle is lowering consumption, Lander said.

The Iran oil shock has the potential to be a “pivot point,” Lander said, forcing economies around the world to rethink the way they do their business.

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“Usually economies go full steam ahead until some shock comes along, whether it’s from the supply side or the demand side, that causes this pivot moment,” he said, adding that the lockdowns forced by the COVID-19 pandemic were such a pivot point.

“The idea of working from home is a lot more acceptable now,” he said, explaining why this made it easy for governments around the world to pivot to work from home recommendations.

While most of the countries that have put in place such measures are heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil, “Canada is not immune,” Lander said.

During the 1973 oil crisis, the U.S. and Canadian government put in place several measures to contain the price of oil, which rose by 400 per cent during the period of the crisis.

The U.S. imposed a national speed limit of 89 km/h (55 mph) on all highways in 1974, a limit that was not lifted until 1995.

In Canada, then-prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau set limits on the price that Canadians can be charged for oil at the pumps.

2:11
Fuel prices impacting flight costs

However, in the present day, it is unlikely that Canada will see any consumption controls, said Behrouz Bakhtiari, a professor at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business.

“I do not foresee any bigger mandates from the government towards consumers to lower their consumption,” he said.

“We’re not a country that does well with mandates. Mandates with respect to consumption, I don’t see it would fly at all,” Bakhtiari added.

For one, it would bring back the polarizing debates that came with the COVID-19 lockdowns, which the federal government might want to steer clear of, Lander said.

“A stay at home or work from home order isn’t necessarily going to be met with the greatest acceptance within (Canadian) society,” he said.

“I think that the easiest way to do it is to make a recommendation or at least indicate to firms, hey, it’s your decision and you guys decide what you want to do and work with your workers.”

However, it would take a lot for Canada to be in the same dire straits as some Asian economies, Bakhtiari said.

“For Canada to find itself in this position… before that, many other countries would have to be hit very, very, very hard,” he said.

Instead, Bakhtiari said the Canadian government might try to put in place some supply side measures by ensuring that oil is being pumped at capacity.

This could involve a number of measures from ensuring crucial energy lines, like Enbridge Line Nine from Ontario to Quebec, run at capacity to delaying maintenance on some lines to ensure they run full time, he said.

Another measure could include issuing an emergency rail priority order under Canada’s Railway Safety Act. This would essentially mean that oil transportation from Western Canada to the refineries in the East would take precedence over all other rail traffic, he said.

1:53
Canada’s role in historic emergency oil reserve release

This would ensure the “refineries on the east side are able to produce, to process the oil coming from the west,” and get crucial energy to Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, he said.

This would mean the federal government would have to act like a “handshake” between Western and Eastern Canada.

A result of the 1970s oil crisis was the creation of Petro-Canada, a national oil company. Canada could use this as an opportunity to find buyers other than the U.S., which buys most of its energy, Bakhtiari said.

“Canada should use this opportunity, just like we used tariffs, as an opportunity to diversify supply,” he said.

The 1973 oil crisis prompted structural, long-term shifts in industry, Lander said, pointing to cars and electronics becoming more energy efficient. This current oil shock presents a similar opportunity, he said.

“Do we go back to the old halogen-style light bulbs? No. Once you go one direction, you usually don’t go back,” he said.

–with files from Reuters

It’s official. Calgary and Edmonton have been chosen, along with Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic, as the host cities for the 2028 World Cup of Hockey.

The NHL made the announcement on Monday in a social media post featuring messages from NHL superstars Cale Makar, who was born in Calgary, along with Edmonton Oilers’ captain Connor McDavid and David Pastrnak, who is from the Czech Republic and plays for the Boston Bruins.

“I’m excited to announce that the 2028 World Cup of Hockey is coming to my very own hometown, Calgary, Alberta,” said Makar in a message posted on the social media platform X.

The event, featuring eight of the top hockey nations in the world in a best-on-best tournament, will take place in February 2028.

Calgary and Prague will host the round-robin games, while the semi-finals and finals will be played at Rogers Place in Edmonton.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to announce that the semifinals and finals of the 2028 World Cup of Hockey will take place in Edmonton, Alberta,” said McDavid in the social media post.

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The tournament made its debut in 1996 and was last played in 2016 in Toronto.

The World Cup’s return comes after NHL players competed at the Winter Olympics last month for the first time since 2014.

The announcement comes two weeks after NHL commissioner Gary Bettman visited Calgary to tour the construction site of Scotia Place, which is part of Calgary’s new $1.2 billion events centre development, will serve as the new home for the NHL’s Calgary Flames.

During his visit to the city, Bettman described the joint bid by Calgary and Edmonton as “a good bid” that “people could be very proud of.”

Scotia Place is scheduled to be completed in fall 2027 and is expected to seat about 18,400 people.

Rogers Place, in Edmonton, has a capacity of 18,347 for hockey. It opened in 2016 at a cost of $613.7 million.

More details about the event are expected to be released at a news conference in Edmonton on Monday afternoon.

— With files from The Canadian Press

2:10
Last minute goal gives Canada 2016 World Cup of Hockey title

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Consumer inflation cooled to 1.8 per cent in February compared to a year earlier, when the federal GST/HST tax holiday led to lower prices for many consumer goods and services.

The Consumer Price Index released Monday from Statistics Canada was 0.5 percentage points less than the annualized inflation rate of 2.3 per cent in January.

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The GST/HST tax holiday from December 2024 to February 2025 created a base-year effect, the agency said, which means year-over-year price comparisons may cloud the underlying trend of where prices are heading for consumers.

Statistics Canada said this base-year effect was concentrated in price changes for food purchased from restaurants, alcoholic beverages and toys.

The latest reading does not reflect the period since the start of the Iran war, which began on Feb. 28.

– More to come

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says a future Conservative government would pursue a tariff-free auto pact with the United States as part of a plan to revive Canada’s auto sector and double domestic vehicle production.

Poilievre said the plan would restore Canadian vehicle production to two million units a year over the next decade, arguing the industry is critical to jobs and the country’s industrial capacity.

“Canada needs a strong automobile sector, not just because it puts paychecks in pockets and food on the table, but because it is critical to our national security to have an industrial base,” he said during a stop in Windsor, Ont., on Sunday.

The proposal includes removing the GST from Canadian-made vehicles, tying duty-free vehicle sales in Canada to domestic production, and maintaining the requirement that vehicles contain at least 75 per cent North American content under the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement.

Poilievre said the approach would encourage automakers to increase manufacturing in Canada by linking sales to production.

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“For every car produced in Canada, the same manufacturer would get to sell a car in Canada duty free from a CUSMA partner on a dollar-for-dollar basis similar to the 1965 Canada–U.S. Auto Pact,” he said.

He argued Canada’s auto sector has declined in recent years, pointing to a drop in vehicle production from more than two million units annually to about 1.2 million.

“The goal is clear. We want to double our production to two million vehicles,” he said.

During the announcement, Poilievre also criticized Prime Minister Mark Carney’s handling of trade tensions with the United States and tariffs affecting the auto industry.

“Where is Mark Carney’s plan? He’s been prime minister now for a year. We still have no idea what his plan is to counter these tariffs. None,” he said.

Poilievre’s pitch comes at a critical time for the Conservative leader. A recent Abacus Data poll conducted between March 4 and 11 suggests the Liberals currently hold an advantage nationally, with 46 per cent support among decided voters compared with 35 per cent for the Conservatives. The poll also found 56 per cent of Canadians approve of the federal government’s performance under Carney.

Poilievre said the Canadian auto sector relies heavily on access to the U.S. market and warned that losing tariff-free trade could have major consequences for manufacturing jobs.

“We will bring our factories roaring back to life,” he said. “Our plants will be humming. Our mills will be stamping more aluminum and steel.”

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Weyburn is like any other small town in Saskatchewan, but one thing sets it apart from other cities across the country: it’s home to the last KFC All-Day Buffet.

Since 1988, Larie Semen, Weyburn KFC’s Manager, brought in an All-Day Buffet option — a move that initially ruffled some feathers. But after bringing in more business than ever, it was deemed a success and 27 KFCs across the country followed suit.

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With other locations closing down their buffet options for a variety of reasons, Weyburn’s KFC is now the only KFC in the country that offers all-day buffet, and hopes to keep it that way.

Sania Ali has more details in the video above.

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