Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - November 13, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba Anagram contest PRESENTED BY + LOCALLY OWNED FOR 40 YEARS!! PLAN YOUR OWN ADVENTURE TODAY WITH Scan for full trip details and photos. Your journey awaits! Unscramble the weekly anagram for your chance to win an unforgettable VIA RAIL TRIP TO THE CANADIAN ROCKIES Contest runs November 3 to December 7, 2025 Read the News & Ride the Rails VISIT OUR ONLINE CONTEST PAGE FOR FULL DETAILS SUBMISSIONS + REGISTRATIONS. HOW TO PLAY: • Read the Free Press each day from Monday to Saturday and look for our “Read and Ride the Rails” contest ad that contains our daily letters(s). The daily contest ad can be found in the Free Press print edition and on our Free Press E-Edition app. Be sure to download the app today! • Each week collect all the letters provided over Monday-Saturday and once you’ve solved the anagram, submit your ciphered anagram word(s) by logging in at “winnipegfreepress.com/read-and- ride-the-rails” or by scanning our Contest QR code. This website will contain our weekly submission form, our complete rules, and links to register for both our digital apps and a variety of our newsletters. Each correct answer will be awarded a single entry for our weekly draw. Every week, we will randomly draw 4 winners. EARN UP TO 3 BONUS ENTRIES! If you are a subscriber and submit the correct anagram word…. 1. You will automatically receive 1 additional entry! 2. If our records show that you are logged into our News Break App, you will receive a SECOND bonus entry! 3. If our records show that you are logged into our E-Edition App, you will receive a THIRD bonus entry! PRIZES Weekly Prizes. Each week, four (4) winners will be randomly drawn from all correct entries (including any bonus entries). Deadline to submit is 11pm Sunday November 9,16,23, 30 & December 7. Each weekly prize winner will receive a Canada Proud Manitoba Strong tote bag, t-shirt, mug, and sticker! Each winner will also be profiled in our Wednesday edition of our contest ad. Grand Prize. You MUST be one of our 20 weekly winners to be eligible for our grand prize draw. This draw is for our Grand Prize consisting of a 9-day Via Rial package for two to the Canadian Rockies! Value of this package is estimated at $8,000! A draw time and place will be communicated at a later date and the winner will be profiled inside the pages of our Saturday December 20th edition. This AMAZING grand prize consists of: • Two round-trip economy airfares from Winnipeg, Manitoba • Via Rail transfer from Edmonton-Jasper-Kamloops • Coach transfer from Kamloops-Kelowna • Hotel accommodation for eight nights • Walking “foodie” tour in Edmonton • Evening wildlife tour, Maligne Lake cruise, Jasper Sky Tram ride in Jasper • Zombie scavenger hunt in Kamloops • Wine tours of four wineries in Kelowna No purchase necessary to play. A complimentary daily copy of the Winnipeg Free Press will be available to read in the lobby of the Winnipeg Free Press at 1355 Mountain Avenue. TODAY’S LETTERS I N One word this week WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ● B7 BUSINESS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025 Holiday job postings up, finding job still challenge: report HOLIDAY job postings are a little more plentiful this year, but that’s hardly a respite for job seekers as competition for those positions is expected to be tough with unemployment still elevat- ed, a new report shows. Indeed Canada’s holiday hiring trends report released on Wednesday finds seasonal postings so far this winter are up 12 per cent from last year, though still weak relative to earlier years. “After two down years, we’ve seen the seasonal hiring appetite actually come in a bit stronger than last year,” said Indeed Canada’s senior economist Brendon Bernard, who also authored the report. Bernard said demand for seasonal workers generally mimics the broader state of the economy. The last two holidays were over- shadowed by high interest rates and inflation, which tempered businesses’ hiring appetite as households reined in spending. This year, however, consum- er spending seems to be stabilizing as many retailers report “a fairly solid year,” Bernard said. Sandra Lavoy, metro market director with Robert Half, agrees that the holi- day job market is looking a bit healthier this year. Lavoy said this comes after several industries — such as service and retail — have been running their businesses with lean staffing. But with the holiday season around the corner, it’s harder to maintain those levels. “When you look at seasonal work, it’s about two months, maybe, three months,” she said. “You have no choice because the business does increase sig- nificantly.” But landing a holiday job is not as easy as it was a few years ago. The re- port shows more Canadians are search- ing for work. The October labour market report from Statistics Canada shows the un- employment rate remains elevated at 6.9 per cent, despite a couple months of surprising job gains. Indeed Canada tracks holiday-relat- ed job postings on its website, parsing through listings for mentions of Christ- mas, Xmas, Santa, holiday and other related terms. It also tracks job seeker searches for these terms. The report says the share of job seek- er searches on Indeed containing sea- sonal job-related terms has increased. In early November, about three out of every 1,000 Canadian job search- es included a holiday-related term, up slightly from a year earlier, and mean- ingfully higher from November 2023 and 2022, at 2.5 and 2.2, respectively. “Stronger interest in seasonal work isn’t a great sign for the health of the overall labour market,” the report said, adding that it could indicate some are considering seasonal work to make ends meet. That has likely made it more difficult to land a temporary job when compared to previous years, Bernard said. “That might cause folks, who would in other times prefer to work a more stable permanent job, needing to look for tem- porary work just for now,” he said. The weak labour market created a competitive environment for seasonal jobs in the summer, but Bernard said it’s hard to gauge whether the holiday hiring season will also be that fierce. While there are some similarities in economic conditions, the labour de- mand and types of hiring are starkly different for the summer season, Ber- nard said. “There’s a lot more hiring that hap- pens in the summer than around the holidays, just because there’s so much more work that gets done over the sum- mer months,” he said. — The Canadian Press RITIKA DUBEY Canadians continue to shun U.S. travel MONTREAL — Canadians continued to steer clear of the United States in October, with the month marking yet an- other major drop in year-over-year visitors. The number of Canadian residents who returned by car from the U.S. fell to 1.4 million in October, a 30.5 per cent drop from the same period in 2024, according to preliminary data from Statistics Canada. The decrease marked the 10th straight month of lower volumes, beginning the month after U.S. President Donald Trump was elected. The number of Canadians returning home from south of the border by air sank to 437,300, down 24 per cent. Growing aversion to America can be chalked up to polit- ical tensions over Trump’s tariffs and 51st-state rhetoric, fear of potential treatment at the border as well as exchange rates — the loonie is worth about 71 cents US. Many travellers are looking beyond the States for get- aways abroad. More than 964,000 Canadians flew back from overseas last month, a year-over-year increase of nearly sev- en per cent, StatCan said. The ramp-up is such that Canadians gave a big boost to otherwise sagging profits at Air France-KLM in its latest quarter, with bookings from this country up 30 per cent from a year earlier. With Canadians avoiding stateside trips, Americans are feeling the pain. The United States will see travel spending by foreign visitors drop by US$5.7 billion or 3.2 per cent this year, ac- cording to the U.S. Travel Association. “Significantly fewer visits from Canada are the primary driver of this decrease, and the volume of visits from coun- tries other than Canada are expected to be flat,” the associ- ation said in its travel forecast last month. “Outdated systems, excessive visa wait times and new travel deterrents are driving global visitors elsewhere,” it added, with no explicit reference to the trade war. Multiple states have rolled out tourism campaigns de- signed to win Canadians back. In California, Canadian visitors are expected to spend US$3 billion this year versus US$3.7 billion in 2024, said Ryan Becker, a senior vice-president at Visit California, a non-profit corporation that launched the “California Loves Canada” campaign with Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year. “That’s a gut punch to the industry,” Becker said last week from Toronto, where he accompanied a delegation of more than a dozen Golden State tourism executives on a tour that included Calgary and Vancouver. “This is not something that we are taking lightly.” For their part, Americans are starting to turn up north of the border more frequently after a notable dip through much of the year. The number of U.S.-resident trips to Canada by car amounted to one million last month, down less than a per- centage point from October 2024, StatCan said. Overall, non-resident arrivals totalled 784,800 in October, up 4.2 per cent from a year ago. The preliminary total of international arrivals to Canada in October including both returning Canadian residents and non-residents by air and automobile was 4.6 million, down 12.6 per cent from October 2024. — The Canadian Press CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS DAVID PAUL MORRIS / BLOOMBERG FILES A Waymo autonomous taxi patrols the streets of San Francisco. Such units have started taking to the highways around the California city. Waymo launches first driverless robotaxis on American freeways W AYMO will become the first ro- botaxi provider in the United States to offer driverless rides on highways, a milestone that positions it to better compete with ride-hailing companies and traditional taxi services. Beginning on Wednesday, the Alpha- bet Inc. unit will begin offering some riders routes that include freeways in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los An- geles, it said in a statement. Freeway service will be available 24 hours a day. Users who have opted in to Waymo’s new services and features will be the first to be able to try this kind of trip. Waymo will gradually make the new service available to more users over time, the company said. It declined to share a timeline for expanding it to other markets where it operates. Waymo’s expansion beyond test- ing into commercial freeway service marks a turning point for the company and cements its position as a leading U.S. robotaxi provider. The launch of freeway services has the potential to make Waymo more competitive with rideshares and traditional taxis, which aren’t restricted from operating on freeways. And customers can potential- ly enjoy shorter trips now that Waymo vehicles don’t have to plan a route that avoids freeways. Waymo’s U.S. rivals are also testing highway driving and in some cases charging customers, but until now the presence of a human in the car was a given. Tesla Inc. recently launched its self-driving cab services in Austin, Texas where it offers some highway rides, with a safety monitor in the driv- er seat for those kinds of routes. (It also has human monitors present for non-highway rides, but they sit in the passenger seat in those cases.) Separately, the Elon Musk-led com- pany is testing a purpose-built self-driv- ing “Cybercab,” which Musk said will go into production in April. Outside the U.S., Chinese robotaxi company WeRide Inc. already offers some rides on highways in Abu Dhabi, also with safety drivers. Mountain View, Calif.-based Waymo said it’s relying on the same software stack and sensor suite for freeway driving it uses for urban roads. But to augment its systems for motorway con- ditions, it used a combination of closed course and simulation testing. The sys- tem has been trained to handle both “rare” and “inevitable” driving condi- tions, it added. The cars are designed to keep up with traffic, travelling up to the speed limit on highways, according to the company. If there is a need to pull over, the cars aim to exit the freeway and find a safe spot on a nearby road, it said. Waymo is also expanding its cover- age zone in the Bay Area to San Jose. That region will include new access to San Jose International Airport, where Waymo cars will charge the same air- port access fee as other taxis. Waymo said it is also actively work- ing with San Francisco International Airport, where it’s currently permitted for testing. The company said it does not expect the freeway service to add meaningful- ly to local congestion. Its fleet current- ly includes 1,000 cars in its San Fran- cisco Bay Area service area, 700 in Los Angeles, 500 in Phoenix, 200 in Austin and 100 in Atlanta. — Bloomberg News ZOE THOMAS Discount stores still (no) name of game for Loblaw in Q3 LOBLAW Cos. Ltd. saw its third-quarter profit rise as shop- pers continued to favour its dis- count banners over full-service stores. CEO Per Bank said customers know how to navigate price in- creases and find value where they can. For example, many custom- ers switched to buying chicken as shortages and drought drove red meat prices higher, he told analysts during an earnings call Wednesday. “That’s how customers continue to navigate through inflation and keeping their costs low, and of course, as well, shifting to discount (stores),” he said. Annual price hikes at grocery stores have largely trended higher since a low in April 2024, as Sep- tember food inflation came at four per cent, according to Statistics Canada. However, Bank said con- sumer demand for hard discount banners has largely stabilized. Loblaw reported a profit attrib- utable to common shareholders of $794 million or 66 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Oct. 4. The result compared with a profit of $777 million or 63 cents per diluted share in the same quarter last year. Revenue for the 16-week period totalled $19.40 billion, up from $18.54 billion a year earlier. Loblaw counts No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore and Shoppers Drug Mart among the chains many under its banner. The effects of tariffs on Amer- ican imports have also started to wane, particularly after Canada’s counter-tariffs were dropped, Bank said. However, that has dampened the momentum of the Buy Canadian movement as prices return to normal levels, he added. “We are seeing some customers who are going back to those prod- ucts that they love now that they are much cheaper than they were, and that will have some impact on Canadian sales,” he said. — The Canadian Press Manulife reports $1.8B in Q3 earnings TORONTO — Manulife Financial Corp. reported $1.8 billion in net income attributed to shareholders during the third quarter, down slightly from $1.84 billion during the same period a year earlier. The insurer says adjusted earnings, or what it calls core earnings, came in at $2 billion compared with $1.83 billion during the prior year quarter. Manulife CEO Phil Witherington says the company’s core earnings in Asia and Canada reached record levels. Core earnings for Manulife’s Asia segment came in at US$550 million, while core earnings for its Canada segment came in at $428 million. Manulife’s earnings came as the company launched a new platform with the stated goal of helping people live longer and more financially secure lives, called the Longevity Institute. The company says it is committing $350 million to the platform through 2030. — The Canadian Press ;