Before Prime Minister Mark Carney jets off to Europe, here’s what we got from the final day of the Investment Summit.

Canada will privatize major airports and broaden tax breaks for business investment, the government announced Tuesday as it courts global capital.

The Carney government first explored airport privatization in Budget 2025 as a potential revenue source for the Canada Strong Fund.

At the investment summit, it confirmed plans to raise tens of billions through long-term concessions on four major airports — Toronto Pearson, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver — with both Canadian pension funds and global investors eligible to bid.

Under the model, Ottawa retains ownership of the land and assets while private operators keep the profits generated.

Opposition critics worry that private operators motivated by profit could raise travel costs.

“Privatizing airports is a terrible deal for travellers, workers, and the public purse,” NDP leader Avi Lewis said in a statement. “This is a mistake we do not need to make.”

Aya Dufour reports. 

Aidan Gomez, CEO of Canadian AI company Cohere, says a “small group of companies in Silicon Valley” shouldn’t be left in charge of ensuring AI is safe.

AI industry leaders have been warning about the dangers of the technology since an Anthropic researcher who quit last week said people in the industry fear AI could “kill us all.”

At the national investment summit in Toronto on Tuesday, Gomez pointed to a call by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for the U.S. government to loosen antitrust restrictions to allow companies to work on AI safety.

“I think any time you have a CEO asking for antitrust laws, which were developed to prevent cartels, to be temporarily and specifically relaxed for them that should raise a little red flag,” Gomez said.

“The risks with this technology are real, but the way to go about preventing those risks is not going to be a small group of companies in Silicon Valley telling the world how to keep themselves safe.”

The Canadian Press has more. 

Also, the latest U.S. tariffs on a small number of Canadian goods took effect Tuesday as Washington pressed its trade war against Canada.

The White House said last week it would impose 50 per cent tariffs on goods representing about 0.6 per cent of U.S. imports from Canada, including outboard motorboats and metal and paper products.

American officials also said 50 per cent tariffs on goods representing about 0.5 per cent of U.S. imports from Canada, such as cement, sugar, toilet paper and fishing rods, would be removed.

It’s the latest stage of an evolving trade war that erupted after Canada walked away from formal trade negotiations last month.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the Americans made last-minute demands that would have undermined Canada’s sovereignty.

CP’s got this one too. 

In Other Headlines

Internationally

Elsewhere, the poles of American politics are coming together over artificial intelligence. Left-wing socialist Bernie Sanders and right-wing strategist Steve Bannon have joined forces to push for more human control over the rapidly evolving technology.

Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, and Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser, will both appear at the “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, alongside a diverse set of speakers, to convince Congress to work faster to curb the impact of AI.

The rare pairing of a progressive leader and a MAGA voice is a sign of how AI is upending political alliances.

The assembly — an all-day event — is organized by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group that issued 33 principles in March to guide their pro-human movement. Those principles include that humans must remain in charge of AI, people should retain agency and liberty and AI companies should be held accountable.

NPR has more. 

Meanwhile, a Russian warship fired two emergency flares at a Danish helicopter in the Baltic Sea and an Italian Nato fighter jet shot down a drone carrying an explosive device over Lithuania in what the EU described as “reckless and dangerous” Russian behaviour.

Poland also scrambled fighter jets “due to the activity of Russian jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicles conducting strikes on Ukrainian territory”, the day after Polish security forces retrieved a suspected Russian drone adrift in its waters.

German authorities, meanwhile, were searching for more debris on Tuesday from a drone believed to have crashed on Monday near Lake Steinhude in the Hanover region, a little more than half a mile from the German Bundeswehr’s airbase in Wunstorf.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the incidents in Denmark and Lithuania were not isolated but “part of a broader pattern of Russian aggression and provocation against Europe testing our readiness and our resolve”. She added: “Russia will find our resolve only growing stronger.”

Read more from the Guardian. 

In Other International Headlines

The Kicker

To leave this newsletter on a positive note. Here’s PEI’s government showing “Build Canada Strong” at its most distilled form.