Good morning. We’re living in dark times. Everything in the news is scary – a non-stop tidal wave emanating largely from our neighbours to the south. Of course, we can’t escape the trade news that will continue to shape our lives. Even if U.S. tariffs were never implemented, the trust between our two nations would still be shaken.

To add some levity to the day, along with your expected updates on the Trump Front, we want to introduce you to the changemakers, the annual list of people who are shaping Canadian business for the better. But first:

On the ground: Trump’s tariffs are taking a bite out of Canada’s steel town, mining reporter Niall McGee writes from Hamilton

Overseas: It’s not just Canada. The European Union and the U.S. are on the verge of a drawn-out and nasty trade war, writes European bureau chief Eric Reguly

Banks: CIBC names Harry Culham as its next chief executive, as Victor Dodig plans to retire after 11 years at the helm

Interest rates: The Bank of Canada cuts key rate by a quarter percentage point to 2.75 per cent, but that won’t motivate buyers to wade into the housing market, experts say

• Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne is joining Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Ontario Premier Doug Ford in Washington today for talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
• Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly is hosting her G7 counterparts in Charlevoix, Que., this week, while North American trade tensions continue to rise.
• Earnings include Sobeys owner Empire Co.

In the face of this barrage of gloom, I’ve often found my mind wandering to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, arguably one of the most soul-nourishing bits of television ever created (tied with Mr. Dressup). In particular, I’ve been thinking about a quote from Fred Rogers that seems to pop up on my social media feeds during times of decided bleakness: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

Now more than ever, it feels like we all need to search for the helpers – small bits of light in these dark times.

For me, one of those rays of sunshine was the raft of submissions we received for our annual list of Changemakers, featuring young entrepreneurs, activists and academics who are reinventing how Canada does business.

Take Harrison Amit, the 29-year-old entrepreneur behind Hovr, a ride-sharing app whose motto is “100% Fare is 100% Fair.” According to a recent City of Toronto report, drivers who work for ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft earned a median hourly wage of less than $6 in the first four months of 2024. That’s just 35 per cent of Ontario’s minimum wage. The more Amit talked to drivers, the more incensed he became. The result was Hovr, which pays drivers a fixed base rate for each trip, plus additional pay for more time and distance. Hovr gets just a buck per ride, which is paid by the passenger, not the driver. So far, tens of thousands of drivers are on the waiting list, and 80,000 Canadians have downloaded the app.

Then there’s Sasha Luccioni of Hugging Face, one of the leading researchers on the environmental impact of AI. Check out this stunning stat: According to one of her studies, training an open-source generative AI model sucked up the same amount of energy as 30 homes over the course of a year and emitted nearly 25 tonnes of CO2. That’s like driving a car five times around the Earth. As AI reporter Joe Castaldo writes in his profile, her work is “bringing much-needed scrutiny to the climate footprint of our AI era and forcing companies, governments and regulators to grapple with the potential costs.”

Andrew White’s CHAR Technologies is turning forestry waste into biocoal for making steel, an industry that’s responsible for a staggering 9 per cent of global emissions. Tatiana Estevez of Permalution is makin’ it rain – literally: The company harvests fog to bring safe drinking water to some of the two billion global citizens who lack it.

Erin Bury’s startup Willful is helping Canadians draw up legal wills for a fraction of the cost – because 57 per cent of us don’t have one. As Bury puts it, “Our biggest challenge isn’t that we’re the David versus the Goliath. We mostly compete with complacency.”

Don’t stop reading here, you can catch up on more of the 20 emerging leaders reinventing how Canada does business.

That quote could be from a number of Canadian officials, but today it is attributed to Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, who was once again attempting to put pressure on Trump to rethink his trade war.