 Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | Would you share a single room with 3 other people? Why student housing is in a crisis | | |  | University of Guelph student Alexandra Mussar, pictured here on May 23, says she struggled for six months to find housing. (Yanjun Li/CBC) | | | For the next year, this is what Alexandra Mussar will call home: a cramped bedroom with water damage and dysfunctional sinks, in a house shared with six other students. For this, she's paying $840 every month.
This isn't how she pictured her university housing experience, but after six long months hunting for somewhere to live, she says she felt she had to settle.
"There were no other options. This was my last resort," she said. "It was either that or I was couch surfing for the next year."
Across the country, students are sharing similar stories. The soaring rents that have hit some of Canada's biggest cities have also walloped college and university towns, with little relief in sight. Take Guelph, Ont., where the latest data shows the average cost for a one-bedroom apartment has spiked to $2,095 per month in June, up 27 per cent from the same time last year.
Rents have also soared in Victoria, Kingston, Ont., and Halifax amid stiff competition. And while students can lower their costs by sharing housing, even those rents can be staggering, posing a serious challenge for those planning for the fall.
Mussar is entering her second year at the University of Guelph. She lived in residence for her first year — though that isn't always a guaranteed option for students. After that, she was on her own to find something in the off-campus rental market. She looked at dozens of apartments but says it was rare that someone would actually get back to her.
There are many factors complicating the rental housing market. Canada hasn't built enough rental stock, with RBC warning that without more construction the country will be short 120,000 units by 2026. More recently, landlords have been raising rents to cover higher mortgage costs.
Economist Mike Moffatt, who studies housing issues as senior director at the Smart Prosperity Institute, said as provincial governments cut back on funding to higher education, colleges and universities across the country have increased enrolments substantially.
"The incentives for them are to bring in as many students as possible," he said. "International students pay international tuition so they tend to be a very, very profitable group." | | | | | Denver Nuggets, featuring Canadian Jamal Murray, win 1st NBA championship | | |  | (Jack Dempsey/The Associated Press) | | | | Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, centre, holds the Larry O'Brien NBA Championship Trophy after the team's victory over the Miami Heat in Game 5 of basketball's NBA Finals on Monday in Denver. Read the full story here. | | | | | | | | | In brief | | | Last month, an Ontario high school teacher wrote an anonymous open letter decrying student-on-teacher violence and calling on the school board to bring in a complete ban on cellphones. It's a tall order, but it's one that some schools across Canada are asking from their teen students in order to reduce bad behaviour, remove distractions and improve quality of life in the classroom. From St. Thomas High School in Montreal, to Elk Island Public Schools in Sherwood Park, Alta., school administrators are implementing cellphone bans that require students to lock up their phones at the beginning of the day or keep them turned off during lessons. Educators who are against a ban say phones can be included in teaching, but at least one school that tried that ended up banning the devices when those plans fell apart. Other say phones are an important link between school and home — especially for students at risk of violence. Read the full story here.
An evangelical group is preparing to take the Quebec government to court for allegedly breaching its fundamental rights, after the province abruptly terminated a contract to host an event in a public space. While some initially applauded the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government's show of support for women's right to choose at a time when abortion rights in the U.S. have been jeopardized, constitutional experts are saying the move casts doubt on the health of freedom of expression in Quebec. Quebec Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx cancelled the gathering by Kelowna, B.C.,-based Harvest Ministries International (HMI) — less than a month before it was to take place — because she said the event was anti-abortion, which goes against "the fundamental principles" of the province. The contract dated back to February. But HMI maintains that no anti-abortion content was part of the rally's program. Read the full story here.
Sweltering summers and bitterly cold winters have been hindering wine production in B.C., with one winemaker warning that climate change might be cultivating a crisis in the industry. "We won't see it impact wine supply right away, but give it a couple of years and there's going to be quite a shortage," said David Paterson, general manager at Tantalus Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley. That might mean emptier shelves at your local store, but could also affect tourism built around wineries, he said. "If this continues, then that's going to be quite devastating to the industry as a whole," he told The Current's Matt Galloway. Read more on this story here.
Scientists last year finished the momentous task of completely mapping the human genome — an accomplishment that, by comparing it with an individual's genetic information, helps catch problems that might cause disease. But that map was based on just a few dozen individuals. It doesn't capture the diversity of the human population and can lead to blind spots in biomedical research. Now, scientists have released a draft of a much more diverse map, called a "pangenome." It includes the genetic material of 47 people from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe. "People are going to be able to detect new, important genetic mutations that are in these regions that were hidden, and they're going to be able to understand new biology coming from these," said Guillaume Bourque, a professor in the department of human genetics at McGill University in Montreal who is part of the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium that created the first draft of the pangenome. Read more here.
Millions of people are contributing billions of views to chopped up movies and TV shows, parcelled up and delivered to TikTok users’ homepages in random order. It's a trend that industry watchers say is turning the video-sharing app into one of the pre-eminent mainstream piracy platforms. Because while apps like YouTube — which have copyright policies so strict and in favour of claimants that multiple users have called it broken — TikTok's algorithm-driven makeup has flown more or less under the radar. TikTok promotes the creation of original content, but a spokeperson told CBC News, uploading existing intellectual property violates its terms of service. A number of digital tools detect copyrighted material and are being updated, while rights-holders can send takedown requests for any content posted without permission. But the effectiveness of those efforts is up in the air. Read more on this story here.
Now here's some good news to start your Tuesday: What would happen if a massive asteroid was on a crash course directly toward Earth? Would it hit us? Or could we stop it in its tracks? Thanks to a 13-year-old from Ontario, our chances of protecting ourselves from such an object just got a lot better. On May 18, Arushi Nath became one of two top winners at the 2023 Canada-Wide Science Fair in Edmonton. She beat thousands of students from across the country to claim the prize. She did the same thing last year. Organizers say this makes her the first student in more than 30 years to win a best project award two years in a row. Read more on the young winner here. | | | FIRST PERSON | Even if coffee is atrocious, it's helped me find a seat at the table | Ever since Alyx Bui was a child, watching their father make Vietnamese coffee in their kitchen, coffee has been a foul-tasting but necessary evil that helped Bui find community, especially, as they got older, within the queer community. Read the column here. | | | | | | |  | As wildfires burn, climate debate stagnates | As wildfire smoke blankets more Canadian cities, the House of Commons has been sidelining climate for the economy. What will it take to move the debate forward?
Listen to today's episode | | | Today in history: June 13 | | | 1886: Fire razes the city of Vancouver, destroying almost all of its roughly 1,000 buildings. Dozens of people are thought to have died in the blaze.
1898: The Yukon Territory is established, with Dawson City as its capital.
1983: The Pioneer 10 space probe becomes the first spacecraft to leave our solar system as it crosses the orbit of Neptune (then the outermost planet).
2000: The leaders of North and South Korea meet for the first time in 50 years. South Korean President Kim Dae-jung met North Korea’s Kim Jong-il for three days of talks in the north's capital, Pyongyang. The peace initiative helped earn Kim Dae-jung the Nobel Peace Prize. | | | (With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters) | | | | |  | CBC NEWS APP | The most convenient way to get your news
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