Good morning. There’s less than two weeks left to stake your claim in the bread price-fixing settlement. Today, we’ll look at who qualifies, how much you might get and how to apply before the clock runs out.

Mining: Barrick Mining Corp. is exploring an initial public offering of its North American mines, bowing to pressure from shareholders to take action after years of stock market underperformance.

• If you don’t mind spoilers, Andrew Willis has seen the ending of this drama already.

Culture: A joint bid by the Thomson and Weston families is set to prevail in their $18-billion bid to buy the 1670 Hudson’s Bay charter, and will donate it to four cultural institutions to keep it in Canada and accessible to the public.

Airlines: Pierre Karl Péladeau has launched a battle for control of Transat AT Inc., calling for the ouster of the company’s chair and a top-to-bottom review of its operations and direction.

Manufacturing: Algoma Steel is laying off more than a third of its work force as the U.S. trade war effectively blocks the company from exporting south of the border.

The deadline (breadline?) is just around the corner for Canadians seeking a piece of the $500-million settlement over an alleged bread price-fixing scheme. More than a million people have already filed claims ahead of the Dec. 12 cutoff.

Loblaw and its parent company, George Weston Ltd., agreed to the settlement to resolve two class-action lawsuits – one in Quebec and one representing the rest of Canada – that together addressed bread price-fixing across the country.

The two companies received immunity from criminal prosecution after reporting the conduct to the Competition Bureau in 2015. The bureau’s investigation into other businesses continues.

So what does this all mean for shoppers – and how much money could you actually get? Retail reporter Susan Krashinsky Robertson walks us through the basics.

First of all, where do I apply?

• If you live in Quebec, click here.
• If you live anywhere else in Canada, click here.

How much money is on the table?

About $268-million remains available for consumer compensation after accounting for the 2018 gift cards, legal fees and administrative costs. That said, it’s tough to do the math until we know how many people file before the Dec. 12 deadline, how many of them already received gift cards and how that all breaks down by geography.

The short answer: You’re unlikely to fund your next vacation with this money. Still, it’s not nothing.

To give you an idea of how it will work, here’s a hypothetical example: Let’s say three million eligible Canadians participate and half already got gift cards. (For our purposes, we’re going to assume the proportion of people in the settlement who applied for the gift cards in 2018 is the same in Quebec as in the rest of Canada. Remember, those are two pools of money that will each get their own calculation, so it almost certainly won’t be this cleanly divisible. But just to keep things simple.)

That would mean:

• about $102 each for those who never received a gift card
• about $77 each for those who previously received a gift card

But these estimates are far from precise. If fewer people register, the per-person payment would be higher – or lower if lots of eligible Canadians fill out the form. With over a million submissions in the first week alone after registration opened in September, expect the final figure to be more modest than some might hope.

Who is eligible to claim?

Any Canadian resident who bought packaged bread – at any grocery store in Canada, not just Loblaw banners – between Jan. 1, 2001, and Dec. 31, 2021, can apply. (For Quebec residents, the period ends Dec. 19, 2019.)

You do not need receipts.

If you redeemed one of those $25 gift cards in 2018, you can still apply – you’ll just receive a bit less than people who didn’t. Priority is given to shoppers who didn’t receive that initial compensation. Once they’ve been allocated up to $25 each, the rest will be divided among the entire group.

It’s unlikely those first in line would consume the whole settlement; more than 10 million eligible shoppers without gift cards would need to file claims for the money to run out.

How will the re