Catch up: Canadians have a new image of Alberta and other stories you may have missed today

Busy day? Here are five stories popular with Globe readers to help you catch up.

The myth that Alberta is an unapologetic right-wing outlier with eyes only for conservative-minded politicians has been crushed.

The NDP’s victory Tuesday is one that will reverberate across the country and may have implications for this fall’s federal election, Gary Mason writes.

The unprecedented New Democrat surge in Alberta was certainly abetted by a Conservative regime that looked out of touch. Even a year ago, many of these people likely could never have imagined themselves voting NDP.

But that is what building frustration and a sense of hopelessness can do - not to mention an NDP leader who captured the public’s imagination.

After an election, people who voted for the losing side can often be disillusioned for months.

And so few times has the Tories’ hold on power been threatened that the reverberations of this campaign will be felt in Alberta, and across the country, for years to come.

Canadian women make about $8,000 less a year than men doing an equivalent job.

That’s according to a study that highlights the persistence of gender inequalities in the workplace, Mary Beach reports.

Alarmingly, that gap is double the global average, according to researchers.

And while women’s decisions to take time off to have children or to choose jobs that don’t lead to advancement are often blamed for the pay gap, the study shows the gap exists even when those choices are factored out.

Even though women comprise nearly half of the Canadian labour force, they made up just 5.3 per cent of Canadian CEOs.

Ontario’s condo boom could prove to be a risk to the country’s economy, Fitch Ratings warns in a new report today.

The New York-based ratings agency said it considers home prices in Ontario to be 25 per cent too high, Tamsin McMahon reports.

That’s slightly above its estimate for Canada’s housing market as a whole, which it warned last year was around 20 per cent overvalued.

With more than 80,000 condo units under construction across Ontario - most of them in the Greater Toronto Area - condo prices have remained flat across the province.

Therein lies the problem: “As a large number of units come on line, prices may soften, which could reverberate throughout the Canadian economy,” says Fitch.

Best Buy is launching an online “marketplace” in the fall that invites rival retailers to sell their products on its e-commerce site.

It’s a move that can expand its product offerings into more categories than electronics and help it take on digital powerhouses eBay.ca and Amazon.ca, Marina Strauss reports.

Under the new strategy, Best Buy will receive a commission on sales of other retailers’ goods, while giving those merchants broader exposure than they can achieve on their own.

Teaming with rivals is an unconventional route to take in the highly competitive retail market - and one that reflects the urgency among merchants to find new ways to reimagine their businesses in a digital age.

Best Buy, the country’s largest electronics retailer, has struggled with declining sales at existing stores, having closed 66 of its 258 bricks-and-mortar stores just over a month ago.

A man attempted to smuggle more than 20 yellow-crested cockatoos in plastic water bottles through Tanjung Perak port in Surabaya, Indonesia.

Officials say the birds were seized from a man’s luggage aboard a passenger ferry and were to be smuggled for the exotic pet market, Layla Bozich reports.

The plastic bottles had their ends removed to insert the birds for travel.

The yellow-crested cockatoo is native to Indonesia and East Timor and is considered critically endangered.

If found guilty of smuggling, the man could face up to five years in prison.

The birds have been relocated to Indonesia’s natural resources conservation office, which deals with wildlife-trafficking cases.

Follow Kat Sieniuc on Twitter: @katsieniuc