Couples fight for refunds after COVID-19 cancels wedding events

Monday, March 22, 2021 – by John McHutchion

Here’s what you need to know to get the day started:

Couples fight for refunds after COVID-19 cancels wedding events

Joyce Fung and Calvin Chan thought they'd be newlyweds by now — partway through their first year of wedded bliss, not still locked in a months-long battle over $10,000 they can't get back.

The pandemic derailed their summer wedding plans — booked for last July in Kleinburg, Ont. Five months earlier, they'd seen it coming and asked for the deposit at their wedding venue to be returned. They've been locked in a battle ever since.

Countless complaints on social media and reports from various legal experts suggest they are just one of hundreds of couples across Canada struggling to negotiate refunds from vendors who refuse to pay up, citing their own dire finances because of COVID-19.

It's raising questions about how the pandemic will affect the interpretation of cancellation or postponement clauses that exist in most wedding contracts.

"We're navigating new waters," said Alycia Rose, a lawyer who specializes in consumer law and breach of contract based in Concord, Ont.

Rose says she knew the coronavirus would throw a wrench into many wedding plans, so she quickly created a website, The Wedding Lawyer; a strategy she says paid off, as she's been getting calls and emails "seven days a week" from couples locked in wedding disputes since the start of COVID-19.

"This is complex contract law," she said, "and we're dealing with an unprecedented pandemic."

More on this issue

Watch: Couples fight to get wedding deposits back.

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Eruption ends centuries of volcanic slumber

(Kristinn Magnusson/mbl.is/Reuters)

A volcanic eruption in Geldingadalur valley on Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula lights up the night in this photo taken March 20. The area hasn't seen an eruption in about 800 years. The fissure is about 32 kilometres southwest of the capital, Reykjavik. See more photos here.

In brief

The trial of former diplomat Michael Kovrig, the second of two Canadians accused of spying on China, began Monday in a court in Beijing. As with Friday’s hearing for entrepreneur Michael Spavor in the city of Dandong, today’s hearing was held in secret. "We've requested access to Michael Kovrig's hearing repeatedly but that access is being denied" over national security reasons, said Jim Nickel, chargé d'affaires at the Embassy of Canada in China. Twenty-eight diplomats from 26 countries showed up at the Beijing court in a show of solidarity. It was unclear how long Kovrig’s case would last or when a verdict would be issued. Kovrig and Spavor have been held in detention for more than two years. They were arrested after Canada detained Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech company Huawei, who is wanted by the United States. Read more here on Kovrig's court hearing.

The Canada Revenue Agency has been reporting hundreds of thousands of Canadian bank accounts to the Internal Revenue Service, despite the fact that they fall below the mandatory reporting level set in an agreement between Canada and the United States. According to information released by the CRA in response to an access to information request, the account balances in 615,000 of the 901,000 records the agency transferred to the IRS in 2019 were below $50,000 U.S. The year before, 610,000 of 900,000 accounts the CRA reported to the IRS fell below that threshold. Opposition MPs now say they want answers about why the numbers are rising and what the CRA is doing to protect the information of Canadians. Read more on this story here.

AstraZeneca said this morning that advanced trial data from a U.S. study on its coronavirus vaccine shows it is 79 per cent effective. The company said the vaccine had a 79 per cent efficacy rate at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and was 100 per cent effective in halting severe disease and hospitalization. The vaccine has already been approved for use in 50 countries, including Canada, but not yet in the U.S. The U.S. government plans to send 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford product to Canada, perhaps as early as this week. Read more about the results of the vaccine study.

As Israel holds its fourth election in two years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the right-wing Likud party, is currently on trial in three separate cases involving fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes. The last spate of opinion polls suggests Netanyahu's party is in the lead but is currently expected to win only about half the 61 seats required for a majority in Israel's parliament, the Knesset. Even counting likely coalition partners, his conservative and religious bloc may be just short of the support it needs to govern — an inconclusive result, as in the previous three elections. As CBC’s Saša Petricic writes, Netanyahu’s hoping that the country's vaccination program will help bring him victory on Tuesday. Read more ahead of tomorrow's vote.

Up until now, if you wanted leather that wasn't made from animals, you've probably had to settle for plastic "pleather," which comes with a different set of environmental problems. But a number of big brands, including Stella McCartney, Adidas, Lululemon and Hermes, in partnership with biotechnology startups Bolt Threads and MycoWorks, say later this year you'll be able to buy more products with leather made from another bio-based material that's grown by recycling waste. Manufacturers are aiming to scale up the products and applications made from mycelium, which is grown from fungi, which they tout as a more sustainable substitute for petroleum-derived plastics such as Styrofoam and vinyl; leather made with harsh chemicals from water-guzzling, methane-belching cows; and even other bio-based materials such as cardboard and wood. Read more on the use of mycelium.

Canadian teenager Leylah Fernandez captured her first WTA tour title on Sunday. The 18-year-old from Laval, Que., needed just 89 minutes to defeat Swiss qualifier Viktorija Golubic 6-1, 6-4 and win the Monterrey Open. "I played an incredible first set," Fernandez said. "The second set she started picking up her game, making less mistakes and being a little more offensive. I just tried to match that as much as I could.” Sunday’s win will boost Fernandez’s world ranking up to 69th. Her next tour stop is expected to be Monday afternoon at a qualifying match for the Miami Open. Read more about Fernandez's win here.

Now for some good news to start your Monday: Beverley Perrin has given out more than 1,000 thank-you cards to complete strangers in the last year. The Chatham, Ont., senior hands them out to truck drivers as a gesture, letting them know how much she appreciates their hard work during the pandemic. "If it wasn't for the truckers, our shelves would be empty in the stores," she said. She and her husband, Dick, give out the cards at the truck stop in Tilbury, Ont. Perrin's project started back in April, after she heard on the news about the conditions truckers were facing while trying to do their jobs in the pandemic, including long hours and having difficulty in finding a place to use the washroom. Read more about Perrin's thank-you notes.

Climate change divides Conservatives as election looms

Erin O'Toole said the debate was over on climate change during his keynote speech at the 2021 Conservative Party policy convention. Then, party delegates voted down a resolution to add language to the party's policy book saying, "We recognize that climate change is real. The Conservative Party is willing to act."

Today, CBC Parliament Hill senior reporter Hannah Thibedeau discusses O'Toole's first Conservative policy convention as leader and what it reveals about the rifts in the party's base.
Listen to today's episode

Today in history: March 22

1884: Elizabeth Smellie, the first woman promoted to colonel in the Canadian Army, is born at Port Arthur, Ont. She joined the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps in 1915 as a nurse and served in France and England. In between the wars, she headed the Victorian Order of Nurses, but in 1940 re-entered the army and supervised the organization of the Women's Army Corps.

1931: William Shatner, the film and television actor best known as Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek, is born in Montreal.

2006: The B.C. ferry Queen of the North sinks after going off course and hitting a rock about 90 kilometres south of Prince Rupert. Two people are killed although their bodies are never found.

2016: Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, whose scandal-plagued time in office propelled him to international infamy, dies of cancer at age 46.