Good morning. After years of lobbying Ottawa for more foreign workers, Tim Hortons now plans to ramp up its local hires – more on that below, along with Pope Leo’s AI fight and FIFA’s softened World Cup demands. But first:

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For years, Tim Hortons was particularly bullish on Ottawa’s Temporary Foreign Worker program. During the early pandemic, it lobbied hard for higher caps on immigrant labour – and the federal government obliged in 2022, expanding the program to let employers staff their businesses with up to 30-per-cent foreign workers. As public opinion toward immigration soured, the government dropped that cap to 10 per cent in mid-2024, but the coffee giant wouldn’t be deterred. According to federal lobbying records, Tim Hortons spent much of 2024 and 2025 pushing Ottawa to raise the limit on foreign workers once again.

It was the sort of move that sparked complaints across the political spectrum. The TFW program – which tethers workers to a single employer, and is meant to be used as a last resort when businesses can’t find local hires – has long been dogged by allegations of abuse. In December, Conservative Party immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner said that fast-food chains’ reliance on the program “removed entry-level job opportunities for youth.” Then-interim NPD leader Don Davies told the CBC that if companies like Tim Hortons can’t rustle up workers, they’re “ignoring market signals” and not paying enough.

Message received: Yesterday, Tim Hortons announced plans to hire 10,000 local employees, boosting its work force by nearly 10 per cent across Canada. A cheery recruitment campaign featuring fresh-faced staff has already started to roll out, with TV ads, social-media posts and in-store signs. The company also committed to dialling back its use of the TFW program – and to stop lobbying Ottawa about it altogether. Tim Hortons insisted that “today in 2026, with high youth unemployment rates nationally, lobbying for expanded access is no longer necessary.”

Except the job market for Canadian youth has been lacklustre for years. The unemployment rate for 15- to 24-year-olds climbed from about 10 per cent in mid-2022 to 14.3 per cent last month, more than double Canada’s overall jobless rate. Meanwhile, the employment rate – the percentage of youth who are actively working – hovered around 63 per cent in April, which isn’t great, but isn’t nearly as bad as it was last summer. By September, that number hit 53.6 per cent, the lowest youth employment rate since the late 1990s, other than the worst stretch of the pandemic.

It’s possible, then, that Tim Hortons’ TFW pivot signals a belated recognition that Ottawa’s cap on foreign workers isn’t likely to expand, and that temporary residents won’t be a reliable source of labour in the long term. And the company very much has its eyes on the future: On Friday, it said it’ll build 80 new stores in Canada this year, with another 400 tapped for renovation over the same period. That represents a $400-million total investment by Tim Hortons franchisees and its parent company, Restaurant Brands International.

Tim Hortons chief operating officer Naira Saeed told The Globe these new expansion plans have nothing to do with Dunkin’, which recently announced that it’s coming back to Canada after nearly a decade away. The massive U.S. rival has designs on hundreds of locations across the country, focusing first on the areas around Toronto and Montreal. Those stores won’t open until late 2026 or early next year, but if Canada’s unemployed youth can hold on a little longer, they’ll have a lot more choice about where they serve coffee and doughnuts.

Pope Leo used his first encyclical – a centuries-old form of papal communication – to warn about the many dangers of artificial intelligence in the modern world. Read more here about his calls for robust AI regulation and for its developers to ditch the “culture of power” in favour of the common good.

At home: Transport Canada took at least eight years to notify residents about the toxic chemicals leeching into groundwater near Atlantic Canadian airports.

Abroad: The World Health Organization warned that the Ebola outbreak is outpacing response efforts and that countries bordering Congo were at high risk from the disease.

Politics: Prime Minister Mark Carney dismissed concerns from environmentalists about the government’s policies, insisting his climate plan – and new pipeline – will make the country more affordable.

Sport: FIFA softened some of its demands on Vancouver and Toronto, incl