CUSMA Review Moves into a Cycle of Annual Talks

On July 15, the Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations met in Ottawa to review the state of the Canada-U.S. trade relationship, two weeks after the mandatory CUSMA joint review on July 1. At that review, the United States declined to renew the agreement in its current form, while Canada and Mexico both confirmed support for a full 16-year extension. Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Martin Moen, chair of the Canada-U.S. Trade and Economic Task Force, briefed the committee on the outcome of the July 1 trilateral meeting and on Canada's ongoing engagement with the U.S. and Mexico.

CUSMA remains fully in force regardless of the outcome, guaranteed until at least 2036. The non-renewal simply triggers annual joint reviews under Article 34.7.4 until all three parties agree to a longer extension or the agreement reaches its built-in expiry. The U.S. and Mexico begin a further round of bilateral negotiations the week of July 20.

Preferential access to the U.S. and Mexican markets is unchanged for now, but CUSMA has shifted from a settled 16-year deal to a file that gets reopened every year. If you ship into the U.S., build that recurring uncertainty into your planning rather than treating this month's outcome as final.

Google Quietly Shifts Some Demand Gen Campaigns to CPM Billing

Effective July 15, Google Ads moved a specific subset of Demand Gen campaigns from cost-per-click to cost-per-thousand-impressions billing. The change applies only to campaigns running on the Discover placement with view-through conversion optimization enabled, and it takes effect automatically with no action required. Google first notified affected advertisers of the change on June 16. Campaigns that don't use view-through conversion optimization on Discover see no change at all.

Under CPC, advertisers pay only when someone clicks. Under CPM, they pay for every thousand impressions whether anyone clicks or not, which changes the unit economics for a placement built on casual, low-intent browsing.

Check whether your Demand Gen campaigns use view-through conversion optimization on Discover. If they do, the budget math you built around cost-per-click no longer applies, and creative that was optimized for clicks may need to be reworked for impression-based pricing.

The AI Moment of Discovery Has Already Arrived for Canadian Shoppers

A new report from Retail Rewired founder, Chris Parsons, drawing on research from Caddle and the Retail Council of Canada, finds that more than one in four Canadian shoppers now use AI tools to help make purchase decisions, with AI already accounting for 13 per cent of how shoppers discover products overall. Parsons argues retail is moving through its third major shift in how customers begin a shopping journey, following the shelf era and the search era, and that shoppers are now describing situations to AI tools instead of typing keywords.

That shift changes what retailers need to optimize for. Product pages built around basic specifications give AI systems little to work with when a shopper asks a broader question. Parsons points to product content, how-to information, sizing detail and reviews as the raw material AI tools use to decide what to recommend.

If your product content only lists specs, you're invisible to a growing share of discovery traffic. Treat product pages, reviews and how-to content as inputs an AI system reads, not just copy for a human scanning a page.

Internal Trade Grades Improve, But Small Businesses Say Nothing Has Changed

CFIB's 2026 State of Internal Trade Report Card, released July 15, gave the federal government and ten provinces and territories a grade of A or higher for progress on reducing interprovincial trade barriers. Much of the improvement is tied to growing adoption of mutual recognition legislation, including a pan-Canadian agreement meant to let goods approved in one province be sold in another without extra regulatory steps.

The catch: in a survey of more than 1,000 member businesses conducted between March and May, 69 per cent said they haven't noticed meaningful change in doing business across provincial lines over the past year, and 16 per cent said it has actually gotten harder. CFIB flagged tax complexity, licensing differences, and transportation and logistics rules as the most persistent friction points.

If you sell or ship across provincial lines, don't assume this year's higher grades mean the paperwork and compliance costs have gone away. Budget for the same friction until you see it disappear in practice, not on a report card.