In the news today, June 13

Four stories in the news for Thursday, June 13

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FANS PREPARE FOR RAPTORS TO PLAY GAME 6

Fans across Canada are gearing up for the Toronto Raptors to play in Game 6 of the NBA Finals tonight as the team takes a second shot at clinching the championship. The Raptors lead the Golden State Warriors 3-2 in the best-of-seven series after losing by a single point on Monday. If Toronto wins, the team will secure the title for the first time in franchise history. The team is in Oakland, Calif., for the game, but city officials aren’t expecting that to dampen the party at Jurassic Park, the outdoor fanzone beside Scotiabank Arena in downtown Toronto. The city will shut down several nearby streets in anticipation of an overflow crowd.  

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MONTREAL’S UNLIKELY LOVE AFFAIR WITH TORONTO RAPTORS

Montreal is shutting down two downtown blocks tonight to allow people to cheer on a team from the city’s traditional bete noire — Toronto. The very notion would have seemed far-fetched, until Monday night when several thousand enthusiastic fans turned up for the impromptu “Jurassic Park” on Peel Street to cheer on the Toronto Raptors. For one of the key figures championing an expansion NBA franchise for Montreal, the gatherings have only served to help his own long-term goal. “It certainly validates our findings that basketball is indeed very popular in Montreal,” former senator Michael Fortier told The Canadian Press on Wednesday. “This run … has demonstrated to people that don’t live in Canada that our interest in basketball isn’t just concentrated in the GTA.”

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MINISTERS TO TALK DIRTY MONEY AND WAY TO FIGHT IT

British Columbia’s efforts to fight money laundering are expected to be front and centre today at a special meeting of federal cabinet ministers and their provincial counterparts to discuss national strategies for stemming the problem. The B.C. government says the meeting in Vancouver will highlight new legislative changes already underway in B.C. that could be replicated across the country, including laws to end hidden ownership. Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Organized Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair have scheduled a news conference after the meeting to provide details on Ottawa’s plans to combat both money laundering and terrorist financing.

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TORONTO CENTRE TO USE AI TO UNDERSTAND MENTAL HEALTH

A new research centre has officially opened in Toronto today where scientists hope to harness big data to improve mental health research. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health has announced that work at the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics is already underway. Director Sean Hill says his team will use a wide variety of data to create mathematical models to transform the mental health research field into a data-driven science. Hill thinks using artificial intelligence based on reams of data pulled from the hospital can help understand the field better. He says the scientists will focus on several areas, including computational genomics that will analyze the relationship between genes, cells and circuits in the brain.

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ALSO IN THE NEWS:

— The parliamentary budget officer will release its report entitled “Closing the Gap: Carbon pricing for the Paris target.”

— Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation will release its latest Housing Market Insight on homebuyers’ perceptions and risk attitudes in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

— Statistics Canada releases its national balance sheet and financial flow accounts report for the first quarter of 2019.

— The B.C. Supreme Court will review Coastal GasLink’s application to continue an interim injunction against pipeline opponents and members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation.

The Canadian Press