 Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | Credit card holders out thousands after deal between company, bank goes bad | | |  | Constance McCall says she sank deeper into debt while waiting for a refund on her secured credit card from Plastk. (Sam Martin/CBC) | | | Constance McCall can't catch a break.
The Edmonton woman needed to fix her credit score after getting divorced, so she signed up for a secured credit card that promised to help her do that.
Instead, she's out thousands of dollars, and left with a credit score that's worse than when she started.
McCall, 59, is one of many cardholders stuck in the middle of a bitter legal battle between the credit card company and the bank it partnered with, Calgary-based Digital Commerce Bank, also called DC Bank.
She signed up for the Visa through Plastk Financial & Rewards after seeing it recommended on Credit Karma, a website she trusted.
Plastk promises cardholders the chance to improve their credit scores by reporting their transactions to the credit bureau Equifax.
As a secured card, the credit limit matches whatever customers prepay for a security deposit — between $300 and $10,000.
Plastk says customers can cancel any time and get their deposit back after a two-month holding period if the account is in good standing.
After cancelling in December, McCall was expecting $4,500 to be returned in February. Without it, she's had to borrow from family and friends to pay for the basics.
"It was extremely humbling — $4,500 is not a little amount of money, especially for someone like myself. It's huge," she said.
"That was going to pay my next two months' rent, buy my food."
After Go Public brought McCall's case to the company's attention, Plastk refunded her entire deposit — four months after she was supposed to get it back. | | | | | On top in Montreal | | |  | (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press) | | | Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands celebrates after winning the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal on Sunday. It was Verstappen's second consecutive victory in Montreal, and he is now tied with late Brazilian great Ayrton Senna with 41 career wins. Read more from the race here. | | | | | | | | | In brief | | | In a Montana courtroom, a young woman's eyes welled with tears as she explained how drought, wildfires and floods have put her family's cattle ranch at risk. "It's stressful,'' Rikki Held, 22, told the court last week. "That's my life, and my home is there and it impacts the well-being of myself, my family, my community." She is one of 16 young people suing the state for failing to take action to curb global warming. The climate change lawsuit, which continues in court this week, is the first to reach trial among dozens filed across the U.S. in the last decade. Experts say climate litigation against both governments and corporations is likely to become more common as the science of climate change and the grounds for a legal challenge become clearer. In Canada, there have been 35 climate-related legal challenges, according to Columbia University's climate litigation database. One of the most watched cases among them was brought forward in Ontario — and has yet to be settled. Seven young people filed a lawsuit against the Ontario government in 2019, alleging its climate plan fails to protect them and future generations. Read the full story here.
Legal experts say increasingly, victims of historical sexual abuse are turning to civil litigation when they can't find justice through the police or criminal courts, or lack faith in those institutions. It's one of several findings from a CBC podcast investigation that found 15 women who claimed they were sexually harassed, exploited or assaulted by William Douglas Walker at three different school districts in and around Toronto. The investigation reveals that starting in 1975 and continuing until 2000, several school authorities were told about the teacher's sexual behaviour with kids, but he continued to teach, moving to seven different schools over the years. For his part, the teacher has maintained his sexual encounters with his former students were consensual. He has never been convicted of a crime. Read the full story here.
The Ugandan school where attackers killed dozens of students Friday was built with the help of a Canadian non-profit, the group's co-founder and former vice-president confirmed to CBC News. The British Columbia-based Partnerships for Opportunity Development Association (PODA) helped build the school between 2010 and 2011, Peter Hunt told CBC News on Sunday by text message, confirming earlier statements made by Uganda's education minister and reporting from The New York Times. Hunt served as vice-president of PODA until 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile, and he says he and Natalie Hunt, his partner and the group's co-founder, stepped down from the board of directors and "haven't been involved for several years." The pair are in "disbelief" over the attack, Hunt said. "We're shattered that such a terrible thing would happen to innocent youth," he said. Read more on this story here.
The timing couldn't have been better for Calgary-based Kanin Energy to open an office in Texas last year. It was just as the U.S. government unveiled its massive climate bill, including tens of billions of dollars in new subsidies and other incentives for clean energy. Kanin Energy develops facilities that use high temperature waste heat from industrial facilities to produce electricity. The new U.S. subsidies now cover up to half the cost of those projects. "Not only are we seeing a lot of traction in Houston and Texas, and in the United States in general, now there's all these incentives that have really turbocharged our economics for our projects," Janice Tran, the company's CEO, said from Houston. U.S. President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act is driving many Canadian clean energy startups to shift their focus and resources south of the border to capitalize on the subsidies and the related influx of activity. Experts say this could result in the loss of investment in Canada, which could slow the development of clean energy and emission reduction projects north of the border and make it more difficult to achieve national climate goals. Read more on this story here.
Now for some good news to start your Monday: Not long ago, going to the beach seemed virtually impossible for Manitoba engineer Corey Mazinke, who uses a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury four years ago. Recently though, the 27-year-old wheeled onto the beach at St. Malo Provincial Park in a specialized wheelchair of his own creation — a stainless steel frame with UV- and water-resistant seating and balloon wheels meant to roll easily on soft sand. "This is such an amazing experience, because I haven't felt this way or been in a setting like this in many years," Mazinke said as he rolled into the cool waters of the lake. The specialized wheelchair, which he calls the Beach Explorer, is one of many products he has designed on his computer and brought to life using a 3D printer and the help of friends and business partners. Read more on this story here. | | | FIRST PERSON | Where am I from? Go ahead, ask. My history is as rich as the fabric of Canada | | | The question “where are you from?” can make a person feel like an outsider. But Bernice Fonseka says she chooses to see it as an invitation to tell a story. Read her column here. | | | | | For stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada. | | | | |  | | | Catch up on what you missed this weekend | | | On this episode, Bud Light's sales have taken a dive at the same time the brand is facing criticism over partnering with a transgender social media influencer in an advertisement. Also, consumer spending has frustrated and confused central bankers as they try to slow the economy. They need look no further than Taylor Swift's Eras Tour for evidence of who's spending and why.
Listen to our capsule episode | | | Today in history: June 19 | | | 1815: Artist Cornelius Kreighoff, famed for his portraits of life in 19th-century Quebec, is born in Amsterdam.
1903: The city of Regina is incorporated.
1914: Some 189 people die in the Hillcrest coal mine disaster in the Crowsnest Pass region of Alberta.
2009: Nortel Networks Corp. announces it will sell itself piece-by-piece rather than try to restructure under bankruptcy protection, winding down a company with a 127-year-old history in Canada. | | | (With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters) | | | | |  | CBC NEWS APP | The most convenient way to get your news
Breaking news alerts
Local, national & world news
In-depth coverage | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | |
