Fallen leaves: Canadian cannabis company Aurora is laying off 12% of its staff, part of larger plans to cut spending by ~$90 million on its path to profitability (something that hasn’t come easy for Canadian pot companies as of late).

New digs: The Ottawa Senators have taken the first steps in potentially building a downtown arena for the team, a move NHL commissioner Gary Bettman believes is necessary to replace their distant Kanata arena. 

Face value: Instagram is testing new measures to verify users' ages and ensure they are over 13 (an official age limit that has been barely enforced in the past) including an AI face scan tool that estimates ages.  

Governing the metaverse: Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and other tech companies have formed a new body to develop standards and practices for the metaverse to make sure various future digital worlds are interoperable. One big name that hasn’t joined: Apple. 

Canadian airlines will soon need to offer customers a refund for cancelled or delayed flights, even if the reason for the disruption is beyond the airline's control. 

What happened: Under changes to Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations, customers whose flights are cancelled or delayed for over three hours for any reason must now be offered a refund if the airline cannot find an alternate flight in the next 48 hours.

Previously, airlines only had to refund flights if they were at fault for the disruption, but now factors like bad weather or closed borders (caused by, say, a global pandemic for one totally hypothetical example) will be covered too.  

• Some airlines like Air Canada already put similar policies in place last year after the federal government made refunds for cancelled flights a requirement for any carrier that wanted pandemic relief funding. 

Yes, but: Not everyone is a fan of the new rules. The vice-president of government relations for WestJet (which notably did not adopt similar measures last year) said it was unfair that airlines take all the burden of issuing refunds when recent delays have been caused mostly by understaffed government agencies. 

Meanwhile, the president of the advocacy group Air Passenger Rights called the regulations “a sham” believing the 48-hour window for airlines was far too lenient, especially compared to the European Union’s rules where airlines must provide a new flight leaving within five hours.

Why it matters: For anyone excited that their summer vacation is now safe, we regret to inform you that the new rules don’t come into effect until September 8th—just in time for the rampant delays plaguing our airports to finally ease up.

Quote: “Both Berlin and Austin factories are gigantic money furnaces right now. Okay? It’s really like a giant roaring sound, which is the sound of money on fire.”

Tesla CEO and (spins a wheel listing all his other titles) world’s richest man Elon Musk delivered this assessment of Tesla’s two recently-opened gigafactories while speaking to the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley club. 

Musk said that the factories were producing a paltry number of vehicles because batteries and tools used to make batteries are stuck in Chinese ports. He did reassure listeners that “this is all going to get fixed real fast, but it requires a lot of attention.”

Grab a hammer and nails, we’ve got work to do: according to a new report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp (CMHC), Canada needs to build 5.8 million homes by 2030 to make housing affordable again.

Why it matters: Housing hasn’t been affordable in Canada since 2004 (by the CMHC’s definition). Back then a typical family would have to spend around 40% of its income to buy an average house—now that number is up to 60%.

There’s more than one reason for Canada’s out-of-control housing market, but a major factor is a lack of supply: Since the early 2000s, we haven’t built enough homes to keep up with population growth. That created a housing shortage and drove up prices to the point where people are paying millions of dollars for a shack in Vancouver.

Fixing that shortage won’t be easy. The amount of buildings recommended by the CMHC’s report is unprecedented. 

“Building an additional 3.5 million homes in 9 years, over and above the 2.2 million we are projected to build, is unrealistic,” Mike Moffatt of the Smart Prosperity Institute told The Peak.  “However, we need to get as close as we possibly can, so we need policymakers at all 3 levels of government to begin to take the challenge seriously.”

• Other analysts put it in harsher terms: “Seriously we are very screwed,” tweeted Toronto-based urban planner Sean Galbraith. 

Bottom line: The report throws cold water on any hope that making housing affordable again would be simple or easy—solving the housing crisis is going to take a whole lot of old-fashioned building. 

⚽️ 250/1. Odds of Canada winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup, according to Bookmakers.com, the same odds as Eminem winning the next US presidential elections. While the chances are slim and that comparison is shady, we still have high hopes. 

🧓 55. Percentage of Canadians who are worried that they won’t have enough money to retire, per a new survey from the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan—a big problem in particular for under-35 workers living paycheque-to-paycheque without pensions.  

💻 29. Percentage of cyberattacks Russia has carried out against foreign governments, IT companies, and other critical infrastructure providers that have been successful since the start of the war, per new research from Microsoft.

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