Month: August 2020

A property which was previously used as a clubhouse by the notorious Hells Angels biker group is now available at the Toronto housing market for $2.189 million.

The two-storey house situated at 23 Kintyre Avenue has undergone several major renovations as it changed hands over the decades, with some of the most dramatic changes made after it endured a pipe-bomb attack in 1995.

“When the rocket attack went off down the street, all the neighbours’ windows were blown out and all the lightbulbs exploded. It was a pretty traumatic event,” said Mark Wilson, the property’s current owner and seller.

Wilson got acquainted with the property’s unique history through extensive research, which was spurred by multiple stories from neighbours.

“It kind of made sense,” Wilson said, referring to the house’s attributes. “It’s an unusual house. It’s built with these really big cinderblocks. The walls are very, very thick.”

Several unique design features also pointed to the property’s former purpose.

“There’s a big sort of parking pad at the back where you can kind of park three cars and there’s a big door that opens there and you realize now that’s, you know, where they could probably park 15 to 20 motorcycles back there,” Wilson told CTV News.

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The COVID-19 pandemic is placing gender equality in Canadian workplaces at grave risk, according to Pamela Jeffery, founder of The Prosperity Project.

“Five months into the pandemic, the warning lights for female participation in the workplace are flashing furiously as progress made toward gender equality over the past 60 years is at risk of vanishing,” Jeffery said in a contribution to The Globe and Mail.

Citing a recent study by the Royal Bank of Canada, Jeffery said that “women’s labour force participation is at its lowest level in three decades. As the economy recovers, women are returning to work at a slower pace than men and are more likely to fall out of the work force over time.”

These issues have a particularly large impact on women of colour, as well as First Nations, Inuit, and Métis women, Jeffery said.

“The problems facing marginalized women were bad before COVID-19; now they are unbearable,” Jeffery said. “Gender equality and the path to prosperity must focus largely on addressing the issues faced by a large majority of women.”

With the gradual reopening of the economy, Jeffery said that industries and governments alike must ensure that the hard-won equality is not lost.

“We call upon employers to set a target to achieve the pre-COVID-19 level of female representation across the entire work force and include this in management performance evaluations,” Jeffery said. “If female representation in corporate headquarters drops precipitously, it is even more likely decisions affecting employees on the front lines will be gender-biased.”

The significant shift in workplaces brought about by the coronavirus outbreak should take into account women’s specific needs, as well.

“Now more than ever, flexible work arrangements must be reconsidered and updated,” Jeffery said. “There are no reasons why more child care spaces cannot be created in our workplaces; it is already proven that this helps keep women in the work force. Gender bias cannot be allowed to creep into conversations about who is invited back into the workplace versus who continues to work remotely.”

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A new organization hoping to establish a new standard in financial data sharing launched nationwide last week. More than 30 financial service institutions have already signed on to implement the new standards put forth by Financial Data Exchange LLC.

The organization stated its mission as developing “a secure, common, interoperable, flexible, and royalty-free industry standard for financial data sharing,” according to a press release. The goal is to deliver consumers greater control over the financial services they receive. The initial FDX Canada Working Group of 31 firms includes BMO, TD, CIBC, National Bank, and RBC as well as Mastercard, Desjardins, Visa, Equitable Bank, and Blanc Labs among others.

“The technology behind consumer-directed finance, also called open banking, will drive innovation and the way lending services are delivered to borrowers,” says Dariush Zomorrodi, Chief Innovation Officer at Blanc Labs. “In the mortgage industry, we will see the emergence of several solutions.”

Zomorrodi says those solutions include self-service mortgage discovery tools that help borrowers shop for lenders, AI-driven advisors that can track consumer cashflow and manage debt payments, and credit approvals delivered instantly by third-party non-lender apps. He also says the new benchmarks can deliver credit-risk calculations based on the aggregation of a consumer’s digital financial footprint, as well as automatic document- and data-flow between every point of the mortgage circuit: borrowers, brokers, lenders, appraisers, lawyers, etc.

“The launch of FDX Canada proves the success of this industry-led initiative to bring leading organizations in the Canadian financial services ecosystem together around a common financial data sharing standard,” that protects consumers and businesses while simplifying their banking experiences, said Don Cardinal, FDX’s Managing Director.

FDX was initially organized in the United States, where its standards were adopted by over 100 firms. According to the company’s press release, it was organized to help consumers and small businesses securely achieve financial goals, access capital, and manage their finances. The release says FDX Canada’s work will be based on five core principles: control, access, transparency, traceability and security.

The FDX Canada working group is open to Canadian financial service organizations involved in secure, consumer-directed finance. The group has ensured that FDX standards align with Canada’s unique market conditions.

While many of these changes may see consumers and borrowers take greater direct control of their mortgage processes, Zomorrodi says there’s still room for brokers in this new world.

“These evolutions will take time. Automation will change the way we originate and underwrite mortgages in the future. However, we cannot completely remove the role of people in the mortgage industry,” Zomorrodi says. “I think the role of the mortgage brokers will evolve. Mortgage brokers can educate themselves on the latest trends and continue as trusted advisors to borrowers, particularly for consumers that do not easily adopt new technology readily and seek guidance through their lending journey.”

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