THE DISPATCH

The Friday Dispatch

Happy Friday.

The week's nearly behind us, and from where I sit it was a good one.

A quick word on DirtPays before the bigger thing on my mind. On Tuesday I told you the big job boards were broken and that I'd put your roles in front of the people who can actually fill them.

Since then the roles have been arriving. Operators, dealers, fabricators, service shops. One at a time, from people who gave up on LinkedIn and Indeed a while ago and never made a fuss about it.

None of that surprised me. You already knew. The good people in our industries aren't refreshing a feed, they're working, and the boards stopped reaching them a long time ago. So if you've got a role you need filled, send it my way. I'll get it in front of the right people and show you how this works differently with me. Just reply to this and we'll sort it out.

Now the bigger thing.

July 1 is five days away. CUSMA's first joint review. A lot of folks are bracing for it like bad weather coming up the coast. I'm not, and here's why.

Just because CUSMA is on the table doesn't mean we are. We dig the critical minerals the whole world suddenly can't get enough of. We build the machines, run the projects, and fix what breaks at forty below without being asked twice. For a long time the world took all of that for granted. Lately I get the sense they're starting to see we're worth chatting with.

That's not a weak hand. That's a good one.

I won't pretend the noise makes planning easy. Tariffs come off one week and get bolted back on the next, and nobody can tell you with a straight face which lines hold through the summer. But I've watched Canadians solve harder problems than this with less to work with, and come out the other side better for it. So I'm betting on us. I usually do, and it usually pays.

Keep making calls and keep showing up.
That part has never once let me down.

Which has me curious where your head's at. If you're buying equipment right now, that uncertainty lands square on your capital budget.

Are you pulling purchases forward to get ahead of July 1, sitting tight until the picture clears, or building the unknown into the number and getting on with it?