 Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | Some tenants facing eviction are demanding thousands from landlords | | |  | Rental units are pictured in Toronto. Some small landlords tell CBC's The National that they're facing outrageous demands from tenants before they agree to hand back the keys. (Evan Mitsui/CBC) | | | Pema Zela says she considered bankruptcy after her tenant refused to leave the home she owns.
When Zela and her husband needed to move back into the home in Toronto's east end, she says the tenant told them he would not leave even though his lease was up, stopped paying rent and soon tried to "make a deal" with them, asking for $50,000 to vacate the property.
"It was unimaginable to me when he first said 'No,' he won't leave. I thought: 'This is my house. How can someone do this?'" Zela said.
The situation Zela and her husband found themselves in is called cash for keys and it's legal, with a tenant seeking or a landlord offering money for a tenant to leave peacefully and at an agreed-upon time.
But paralegals and landlords say some tenants are taking advantage of long delays at the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board, which resolves disputes between landlords and tenants, and are asking for higher cash-for-keys demands than ever before.
After the tenant refused to vacate, Zela filed with the Landlord and Tenant Board seeking an order of eviction. That was in June 2022, but Zela soon found out she could be waiting up to a year to get a hearing.
In the meantime, she says, her tenant stopped paying rent and utilities. While he has since moved out, and she didn't end up paying the amount he requested, she said he now owes her more than $40,000.
The tenant declined to comment.
Geordie Dent, a tenant advocate and executive director of the Federation of Metro Tenants' Association in Toronto, said there are "absolutely" more tenants using delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board as leverage to get better cash deals.
But he also said that rents have never been higher in Toronto, so if a tenant is forced to move, they should be fairly compensated considering today's rental market.
Average rents went up across the country another 11 per cent in 2023, with Toronto remaining one of the most expensive cities in the country. According to Rentals.ca, the average one-bedroom apartment costs $2,594 a month. | | | | | The key to capturing wildlife images? Patience, says Canadian Geographic's Photographer of the Year | | |  | (Brandon Broderick) | | | | This lynx photo is among the images that helped Windsor, Ont.-born Brandon Broderick earn the Canadian Geographic Photographer of the Year title for 2023. Broderick is based in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. Check out more of his photos in this story here. | | | | | | | | | In brief | | | The federal government is planning to reduce the volume of international students in certain provinces, according to a senior government source. Ottawa shares jurisdiction over Canada's international student program with the provinces. The federal government issues visas for students while provincial governments are responsible for regulating colleges and universities.
The source told Radio-Canada that the government is looking at provinces that accept more international students than their housing stock can accommodate. The source specifically pointed to Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia as possible examples. CBC is not naming the source as they are not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. The source said the government has had discussions with some provinces about limiting the number of students in more dense areas and tightening regulations around which institutions can accept international students, but that those discussions have gone nowhere. The federal government has said Canada was on pace to host about 900,000 international students in 2023. Read the full story here.
Former Alberta premier Rachel Notley will step aside as provincial NDP leader as soon as party members choose her replacement. She told an Edmonton news conference Tuesday the NDP's failure to win Alberta's 2023 election means it's time for her to step down as leader. As CBC’s Jason Markusoff writes, the party that had long contented itself with a caucus of two or four MLAs developed new expectations in the Notley era — expectations of winning. In fact, Notley said in her announcement Tuesday that establishing the NDP as a powerful, victory-minded force in Alberta was likely her biggest accomplishment, and the reason she stayed on as leader after 2019's fall from power to fight again in 2023. As the race to replace Notley emerges from the backrooms in the coming weeks and months, this much will also be true: the party's next leader will face expectations that victory be kept within reach. Read the full analysis here.
Canada is seeing a record number of cases of invasive Group A strep, a bacterial infection that kills roughly one in 10 people who contract it, according to data obtained by CBC News. More than 4,600 cases were confirmed in 2023 at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, an increase of more than 40 per cent over the previous yearly high, in 2019, says the Public Health Agency of Canada. This trend emerges as a new report from Public Health Ontario shows six children have died of invasive Group A strep in the province since October. Over the final three months of 2023, the number of cases in Ontario and hospitalizations from the disease were nearly double those during the same time period the previous year, says the report. That's prompting warnings from public health officials and medical experts about the potential severity of the disease. "Whenever you see invasive group A strep, you have to be worried because usually the patient is quite sick," said Dr. Donald Vinh, head of infectious diseases at McGill University Health Centre in Montreal. "This is a serious infection and a potentially deadly one," he said. Read the full story here.
Some businesses in Canada who took out a CEBA loan may be hoping in vain for a last-minute reprieve and one more chance at free money from the federal government, but others involved say it's time to move past trying to shift the deadlines for repayment. The federal government has indicated the deadline to pay back up to $60,000 in loans issued as part of the Canada Emergency Business Account, or CEBA, program isn't going to be postponed again after being extended to Jan. 18. If the loans are paid back by that date, businesses could have up to $20,000 forgiven of the loan. Loans that are not paid back before the deadline will start to accrue interest. More than 885,000 small businesses and not-for-profits took out CEBA loans, totalling more than $48 billion. Read the full story here.
The revelation that Loblaw will end its 50 per cent discount on perishable foods like meat, fruit and vegetables as they near their best-before dates should attract the attention of Canada's Competition Bureau, says one industry expert. Prof. Sylvain Charlebois, the director of Dalhousie University's Agri-food Analytics Lab, believes the action taken by the grocery chain to align its policy with other food retailers might be considered anti-competitive behaviour. While such a move to scrap the popular discount may anger some consumers, some experts say there's nothing to suggest it runs afoul of competition laws. Instead, what Loblaw appears to be doing is known as "conscious parallelism" — the ability of competitors to watch what others are doing in order to copy them, according to Jennifer Quaid, an associate professor of law who specializes in competition and business regulation at the University of Ottawa. "It's not illegal," she said. "The fact that you watch what's going on in the market and you copy your competitors is not a criminal collaboration because there's no decision to get together and do something." Read the full story here.
Now here's some good news to start your Wednesday: Four ski patrol members at the Searchmont Resort in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., were awarded the John D. Harper Lifesaving Award for saving a person's life last season. Nancy Askin leads the team, and said they were proud to receive the recognition. "But more so than that, we are extremely happy for our patient to know that there's a positive outcome in this event and that the patient can get back to the pretty normal life that they had before," she said. The award is a given out by the Canadian Ski Patrol to recognize a first aid performance by patrollers whose application of first aid and rescue skills are deemed to be extraordinary. Read more here. | | | FIRST PERSON | I'm a lifelong learner but abbreviations are putting my skills to the test IRL | Desiree Kendrick considered herself to have mastered the English language but the growing proliferation of acronyms, initialisms and more has her feeling like she’s lost her fluency. Read her column here. | | | | | | |  | Immigration and housing costs. What's the link? | | Is Canada caught in a population trap? Why there’s growing consensus that high immigration is straining the housing market. Listen to today's episode | | | Today in history: January 17 | | | 1876: The Supreme Court of Canada sits for the first time, although there wasn’t a case to hear. That didn’t happen until April 1876.
1945: Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis, disappears in Hungary while in Soviet custody. Moscow authorities admitted years later that he died in custody, but the circumstances remain a mystery. Wallenberg was the first person named an honourary citizen of Canada.
1974: Pauline McGibbon is appointed lieutenant-governor of Ontario, the first woman appointed to a vice-regal post in Canada. She had also been the first woman to serve as chancellor of the University of Guelph and the University of Toronto.
1991: British tycoon Richard Branson and fellow adventurer Per Lindstrand complete the first crossing of the Pacific in a hot-air balloon. They landed in a blinding snowstorm near Lac La Martre in the Northwest Territories. When asked what inspired him to try the feat, Branson replied, "Pure stupidity." | | | (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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