An anxious electorate, a new look and a bite out of Liberal polling numbers have all boosted the profile of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who was picked by editors across the country as The Canadian Press 2023 Newsmaker of the Year. [CP]

The federal government has unveiled its roadmap to phase out the sale of gas and diesel passenger vehicles by 2035, marking the beginning of a big shift in Canada's automaker industry. Abigail Bimman explains why the move is fuelling concerns about whether Canada can pull its plan off. [Global National]

On Tuesday, Statistics Canada reported that the world now counts 40.5 million Canadians among its population and that population growth in the last quarter was the greatest relative growth since 1957. The first thing many of my colleagues thought when learning about that rapid population growth was: Where will they all live?
Indeed. If you're a politics reporter these days, you're a housing policy reporter.
So I've been crunching some other StatCan data recently about housing and wanted to share two charts I've made.
The first, above, shows average household size from 1981 to 2021. I've broken it down by province by the national trend is largely similar: Over the last forty years household sizes are shrinking. I asked Steve Pomery, a housing policy consultant who also teaches at McMaster University, about this and he told me shrinking household size is driven by demographics and the country's increasing affluence. Aging baby boomers - our country's senior citizens -- are often living in one-person or two-person households. Pomeroy said we now have 4 million dwellings in the country occupied by just one person. If average household size is to increase again, it will likely be as Boomers pass away and are replaced by the smaller Generation X cohort while other generations in different stages of life (with kids, e.g.) take the housing units once occuped by single senior citizens. For now though, declining household sizes means that, if all else was equal, we'd need more housing units for these smaller households. But all else is not equal. The chart below shows the relative change in the population inhabiting those private dwellings over the same period. Some areas of the country -- BC, Alberta -- have experienced tremendous growth in the last 40 years; others, -- NL -- not so much. But that growth, too, puts additional stress on housing supply.  - DA

Report No. 8 of the Standing Committee on Science and Research. [House of Commons]

The Q3 downside growth surprise has led us to downgrade both our 2023 and 2024 national annual average growth forecasts. Exports and consumption drove the downgrades and will likely disproportionately impact Quebec, Manitoba, B.C. and Nova Scotia. Even with these changes, relative growth rankings are mostly unchanged from our prior forecast. We still anticipate 2023 outperformances across the Prairies while, B.C., Quebec and Newfoundland & Labrador are set to lag. [TD Economics]

The U.S. sale of F-16 fighter jets, and the ease of Canada's arms embargo would help Turkey move toward ratifying Sweden's NATO membership bid, President Tayyip Erdogan says. [Global]

... we investigate the 2016 Brexit referendum as an event that has triggered extensive debates about both Europe’s experiences of the past and political expectations for its future. Conflicting assessments of history are crucial for understanding how and when Brexit became an event of European significance and why it then ceased to be so. [Comparative Studies in History and Society]

Meta has fixed a bug that temporarily prevented some Threads users in Canada from reading and sharing news on the app. [Endgadget]

The cost-cutting plan came in the wake of a brutal financial year for the paper and ahead of the official start of a new CEO. [Axios]

Journalists at the Times have been at odds with the NewsGuild over its involvement on issues from the Israel-Hamas conflict to debate over the outlet’s transgender coverage. [WSJ]

Volkswagen says it will use Tesla's charging standard in its North American EVs starting in 2025. The commitment also applies to its Audi, Porsche and Scout Motors brands. [Endgadget]

Want to be more efficient and proficient in Microsoft Excel? Here's a quick step-by-step guide to creating drop-down lists. [ZDNet]