Oh, hi again. Today, we are diving into how “obituary pirates” are adding more pain for those in grief.

But before getting into that, here’s your last reminder that the RRSP deadline is March 2. Don’t dilly-dally!

Imagine this: Someone you love has just died, and you sit down to write their obituary. It’s posted on the funeral home’s website or in your local paper.

Then, you discover another website has copied it. Not only that – it’s been rewritten with errors. And the site is asking people for donations.

This is happening to families across Canada. I spoke with two families who went through it while they were still grieving.

Kathryn Van Ameyde’s father died last October. She wrote his obituary and had it posted on the funeral home’s website. Within hours, Ms. Van Ameyde, who is based in Winnipeg, found it copied onto another site. It had mistakes, and it was collecting donations.

Anne Marie Aikins’s family in Ontario went through something similar. Her nephew recently died in a tobogganing accident. Minutes after the funeral home posted details about the service, another website had scraped the information and reposted it.

It’s become common enough that the Funeral Service Association of Canada issued an advisory last year warning families and funeral homes about the practice. The group says some websites copy the opening lines of obituaries and use AI tools to rewrite them, sometimes spreading inaccurate information in the process.

This isn’t new. In 2019, the Federal Court of Canada ruled against a website called Afterlife Network, awarding $20-million in damages for reproducing obituaries and photos from funeral homes and newspapers without permission.

So, what can families do? One option is not posting an obituary online at all. But for many people, that’s not realistic. Obituaries help share funeral details, honour someone’s life and create a lasting record for family and friends.

There are, however, steps you and your funeral home can take:

If you see an obituary reposted without consent, contact the website and request that it be taken down. Many sites will remove content if asked. It’s also a good idea to set up Google Alerts for your loved one’s name so you’re notified if it appears elsewhere online.

You can work with your funeral home when you get an obituary posted. You can ask them to:

• Clearly label the official obituary, and state that other versions may be unauthorized copies.
• Make sure their website includes clear terms of use and copyright language.
• Encourage them to track and document cases where obituaries are copied.

For families already dealing with loss, this can feel like an extra blow. But knowing what to look for, and what steps to take, can help prevent further harm.

Privatizations of Canadian public companies jumped again in 2025, with 38 firms delisting from the Toronto Stock Exchange, including 15 that were taken private. That’s nearly double the typical annual pace and comes amid a longer-term decline in the number of publicly listed companies, even as the total market value of those that remain continues to grow.

Why? The trend is partly driven by the amount of money private investors have available to spend (known as “dry powder”) has recently started to drop from record highs as more of that cash is getting spent.

After a mid-career layoff, is Celina, 50, better off taking her pension in cash?

The situation: Celina, 50, and her husband Hector, 60, were laid off within months of each other after decades with their employers. They own a mortgage-free home, have three adult children, and are planning to sell a vacation condo. Now, Celina has to decide whether to take her defined benefit pension as a future monthly payment or as a lump sum she can invest today.

The numbers: The couple will rely on severance in the short term, along with Hector’s partly indexed $68,000 annual pension. They also have defined contribution pensions and a growing non-registered portfolio expected to reach about $2-million by 2027. Their retirement spending target is $155,000 a year after tax, and they hope to eventually gift each child $50,000 to $100,000 toward a first home.

The advice from a financial planner: Because Celina’s pension isn’t indexed to inflation, taking the lump sum and investing it may offer more flexibility and allow any remaining value to pass to Hector or their estate. In the meantime, topping up their TFSAs and using tax-efficient withdrawal strategies could help smooth income in retirement and preserve government benefits like CPP and OAS.