The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that for decades, the dividend investing playbook in Canada was simple: invest in dividend stocks. The Globe's Tim Shufelt wrties that Canadian dividend funds and portfolios all performed more or less the same -- that is, consistently beating the broader stock market over the long term. From 2000 to 2020, the Dow Jones Canada Select Dividend Index generated returns of 9.7 per cent. But the game has changed. In a higher interest-rate environment, the dividend space is a lot trickier to navigate. For the better part of 40 years, bond yields moved in one direction, from the double-digit peak of the early 1980s to the near-zero lows of the pandemic in 2020. This historic, structural downtrend served as a near-constant tailwind for dividend investors. Canadians have unconditional love for dividends for good reason. Few ideas in Canadian investing command that kind of loyalty. Most other hot themes have crashed and burned at some point, such as technology, marijuana, gold, forestry, or energy. Not dividends. Even over the last five years, as high inflation made an unwelcome return and ended the era of ultralow interest rates, dividend stocks have still done well.