Morning. Today, we’ll capture the latest on the trade file – and see what we can uncover about the economy from a business facing profound change.

• Canada strikes back: Ottawa announces retaliatory tariffs on $27.6-billion of U.S. products.
• The corner office brigade: Andrew Willis on how CEOs are becoming Canada’s foot soldiers.
• From the vaults: BMO and Scotiabank signal caution, but say businesses are adapting well to trade unrest.
• Booze news: U.S. tariffs push Canadian alcohol producers to rethink their biggest export market.
• Spree the North: Want to brush up on how to buy Canadian? Check out our Big Guide to Canadian Shopping.

Strip clubs have been disappearing from Canadian cities, pressured by redevelopment, restrictive zoning rules and changing spending habits. Andrea Werhun, whose memoir was adapted into the 2025 film Modern Whore, recently wrote in The Globe about their decline. We talked about why stripping can appeal to performers, the limits of subscription-based creator platforms like OnlyFans, and what the “stripper indicator” says about the economy now.

What do people miss when they think about strip-club closures as an economic story?

I think they miss the fact that stripping is predominantly women’s work, and there are so many of us who make our entire livelihood as dancers.

It’s hard to underestimate the value of flexible, well-paying labour. I think of the strip club as the money factory. It’s a place I go to get money. I don’t really answer to anybody. I just go to the factory, get the money and leave.

And because of its flexible, well-paying nature, I don’t need to do it all the time. I can take a few days off. I can take a week off. I can take a month off. I could take a year off and I don’t actually have to tell anyone.

That means I can pursue my primary dream of being an artist and being a writer and being a performer, because otherwise I don’t know how anyone affords these pursuits without generational wealth.

People sometimes assume dancers can move online to something like OnlyFans. Why isn’t it that simple?

We’re talking about an oversaturated market with extraordinarily low price points. You need a large subscriber base to make it worth it for a content creator, which means constant self-promotion and advertising.

Unless you’re coming onto OnlyFans with a pre-existing fan base, the likelihood that you’re going to make any money whatsoever is basically nil.

In contrast, stripping is nearly an anonymous way of engaging in sex work. You clock in and you clock out. Whereas with OnlyFans, you’re always on. As long as you’re connected to the internet, you don’t get to unplug from your job.

I’ve done both. I had OnlyFans for a year and a half, and I feel like I sacrificed a lot and gained very little. It paid my rent every single month for that period, and for that I’ll always be grateful. But the images I produced are also going to be online forever, and there’s a lot of personal reckoning that comes with what that means.

You’ve mentioned the “stripper economic indicator.” What exactly is that?

You can ask a stripper, “What’s the club like and what’s the money like right now?” And it can be a general indicator of where the economy is and where the economy’s going.

Strip clubs rely on people having disposable income. So I worry about what tariffs are going to mean and what job losses are going to mean for people spending any extra money they have at the club.

If you talk to strippers who worked in the eighties and nineties, they talk about a golden age of total reckless spending and optimism. It just isn’t what it used to be.

But from where I stand and where I work, there is still money to go around. The clubs are busy. They’re packed. People are spending. I’m doing well. I am nervous about the long-term impact of the tariffs, though.

What happens to dancers as clubs disappear?

In the short term, the dancers I’ve spoken to are planning to commute to clubs in the GTA. There are still clubs in Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington, Niagara Windsor and Vaughan that are hiring and aren’t currently at risk of closing.

So there are still jobs. It just means Toronto dancers will have to commute longer distances, and whether or not they have vehicles becomes a question. If they have to take the GO train, that’s going to be tough.

More broadly, we don’t really have labour laws that respect our work as strippers. It’s kind of a quasi-legal grey area. We want to build new strip clubs to replace the ones that currently exist because we want to prioritize dancer health and safety in the workplace. That’s just not always the case now.

Are you currently still working as a performer, or are you focusing on the book and the film?

Yes, I’m always writing and performing, but I still make the bulk of my income as a dancer. I’ve been working at this particular club for the last three years, and I will ride it out until its last day on Dec. 31.