Good morning. The four-city brawl over who gets to host a new multilateral defence bank is heating up. In focus today, we weigh the fighting words from Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto.

Pipelines: Ottawa and Alberta have agreed to a $130-per-tonne carbon price by 2040, with the federal cabinet set to review the deal this morning, The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau reports, citing provincial and federal sources.

Deals: Calgary-based Keyera Corp. announced it had closed its $5.15-billion acquisition of Plains All American LP’s Canadian natural gas liquids business – even as the Competition Bureau is challenging the deal.

AI: Labour leaders are calling on Ottawa to enact legislation that would mandate employers to consult with employees and unions before they introduce artificial intelligence systems in the workplace.

Four cities. One prize. An escalating series of claims about who has the stronger realm.

Fight!

Okay, so it’s not quite as cut-throat as the new Mortal Kombat movie. But as far as municipal battles go, the competition to host the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank is turning into a bloody affair.

Last week, politicians in Quebec accused Toronto of waging a “fear campaign” by raising the possibility of another referendum. The Parti Québécois remains competitive ahead of the province’s October election and continues to lay the groundwork for another sovereignty push. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said yesterday that he wasn’t interested in criticizing other cities’ pitches – even letting loose a “Go Habs!” cheer at a news conference – but you can see how the race might be entering a messier phase in the months since Canada first learned it was in the running to host the bank.

It’s no wonder. The winning city can expect the bank to create about 3,500 jobs, raise its profile on the global stage, and place it at the frontier of a new sector of defence financing in Canada – one that Rod Phillips, vice-chair of Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. and chair of Toronto Global, described as “prospectively as big as mining was” for Canadian capital markets in the late 19th century.

The bank, expected to open by the end of this year, could eventually include as many as 40 participating countries, drawn from NATO members and allied nations. Created to provide long-term, lower-cost financing for defence, security and resilience projects, the bank would place its host city at the centre of a new allied effort to turn geopolitical anxiety into industrial capacity, procurement power and private investment.

The cities have released pitch decks and bid books; held press conferences highlighting access to capital, defence industries, diplomatic networks and specialized talent; rallied local companies and universities; and offered to lend employees from local institutions, The Globe’s Pippa Norman and Maura Forrest wrote earlier this week.

Here, drawn from the cities’ own proposals, are the elevator pitches and fighting words behind each bid.

The elevator pitch: A defence bank in a defence town.

Fighting words

“This is not a region preparing to build a defence economy; it is a region that already has one.”

“You cannot run a sovereign defence-finance institution from the periphery of sovereign financial authority.”

“Its effectiveness depends on daily proximity to Canada’s defence decision makers, integration with our allied diplomatic network, and access to the sovereign financial governance architecture that will regulate and backstop everything it does.”

“Those conditions only exist in Canada’s National Capital Region.”