Quebec — which started to reopen on Monday — will no longer proceed with a plan to impose a tax on people who aren’t vaccinated against COVID-19.
Premier François Legault said during an afternoon briefing that he heard that there was opposition to the idea and he didn’t want to cause further division.
“When we see what’s happening in our society and on social media, I have a certain worry about seeing Quebecers divided,” Legault told reporters in Quebec City.
The premier announced on Jan. 11 he planned to make the unvaccinated pay a significant financial penalty because they were over-represented in the health-care system.
About 10 per cent of people in the province’s eligible population are unvaccinated.
WATCH | Legault drops tax idea:
Legault confirms Quebec dropping controversial tax on the unvaccinated
10 hours ago
Duration 0:57
Citing the division it caused in Quebec, Premier François Legault said the province is scrapping its plan to tax those who are unvaccinated against COVID-19. 0:57
A situation report published by health officials in the province on Tuesday showed 2,852 hospitalizations — down by 36 from a day earlier — with 218 people in intensive care. The province also reported 63 additional deaths and 2,730 lab-confirmed cases.
In Ontario, which also began easing pandemic restrictions this week, health officials on Tuesday said hospitalizations in the province stood at 3,091 — up by 108 from a day earlier — with 568 people in intensive care units. The province also reported 63 deaths and 2,622 additional lab-confirmed cases.
Premier Doug Ford, who appeared at a news conference alongside his minister of long-term care on Tuesday, said the government is taking a “cautious” approach to reopening and pointed to its multi-phase plan.
The premier’s remarks came as the Ontario COVID-19 science advisory table put out new modelling to look at how that reopening might impact cases and hospitalizations.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said at the briefing Tuesday that Ontario does have capacity in its hospital system, noting that even if numbers do go up slightly the province will be ready to deal with it.
WATCH | Elliott on reopening plan:
Ontario opening ‘gradually and cautiously,’ health minister says
12 hours ago
Duration 2:06
Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott says the peak of Omicron has passed and the province now has the hospital capacity to deal with COVID-19 patients and resume surgeries and procedures that were postponed by the pandemic. 2:06
The province moved in early January to pause non-urgent procedures as Omicron surged, throwing many patients in limbo as they waited for word on when they would be seen. A plan is in place to resume some of the paused procedures, but concerns around backlogs remain after massive disruptions to the health-system caused by the lengthy pandemic.
-From CBC News and The Canadian Press, last updated at 1:30 p.m. ET
What’s happening in the rest of Canada
WATCH | Avoiding the next health-care catastrophe:
Pushed to the brink, exhausted hospital staff say lessons must be learned
1 day ago
Duration 7:08
Unprecedented COVID-19 hospitalizations have left staff at Toronto’s Humber River Hospital exhausted and struggling to care for a relentless wave of very sick people. They say lessons must be learned from this pandemic, so the next public health crisis is not as catastrophic. 7:08
With lab-based testing capacity deeply strained and increasingly restricted, experts say true case counts are likely far higher than reported. Hospitalization data at the regional level is also evolving, with several provinces saying they will report figures that separate the number of people in hospital because of COVID-19 from those in hospital for another medical issue who also test positive for COVID-19.
For more information on what is happening in your community — including details on outbreaks, testing capacity and local restrictions — click through to the regional coverage below.
In Atlantic Canada, New Brunswick on Tuesday reported 162 hospitalizations — an increase of 10 from a day earlier — with 17 people in the province’s intensive care units. The province also saw five additional deaths and 228 additional lab-confirmed cases.
Health officials in Newfoundland and Labrador reported 25 COVID-19 hospitalizations, a new high, with 11 people in critical care. Health officials also reported two additional deaths and 179 lab-confirmed cases.
In Prince Edward Island, the chief public health officer said Tuesday she will announce a loosening of restrictions next week. Dr. Heather Morrison said isolation requirements for travellers arriving on the island could be relaxed, as could restrictions on organized gatherings and recreational activities.
“Despite the cases in the last month, hospitalizations, and despite this Omicron wave, I think we have more hope and optimism now than even compared to a month ago as we continue to manage our way through this wave of the pandemic,” she told reporters in Charlottetown. “I believe we will be in a very different place in a few weeks.”
In Manitoba, there were 737 people in hospital with COVID-19 Tuesday — a new high — including 54 in the province’s intensive care units. The province also reported seven additional deaths and 491 new lab-confirmed cases.
Saskatchewan health officials reported a total of 370 people in hospital with COVID-19 on Tuesday, with 39 in ICUs. The province also reported one additional death and 661 new lab-confirmed cases. The premier says he wants to end the province’s proof of vaccine program by the end of the month.
British Columbia health officials said Tuesday that there are 1,035 COVID-positive patients in hospital, including 139 in intensive care. The province also reported 1,236 new cases and nine additional deaths.
B.C.’s top doctor said the province is planning to slowly ease its gathering restrictions starting later this month.
“We know the COVID-19 virus is going to be with us for some time, but we are progressing through this surge,” Dr. Bonnie Henry said during a briefing.
In Alberta, the total number of people in hospital with COVID-19 rose to 1,585 Tuesday, with 109 people being treated in ICUs. The province reported 13 additional deaths, along with 1,980 additional lab-confirmed cases.
Across the North, health officials in Nunavut say misinformation is to blame for an outbreak of COVID-19 in Igloolik. The region has been kept in lockdown while the rest of the territory has seen restriction eased. There were 83 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Nunavut as of Tuesday.
One person is in a hospital in Yukon, where health officials on Tuesday reported 22 additional cases.
Health officials in the Northwest Territories reported 208 additional cases on Tuesday.
-From CBC News and The Canadian Press, last updated at 8:20 p.m. ET
What’s happening around the world
A health worker pretends to give a girl’s stuffed animal a shot before giving her the Coronavac vaccine for COVID-19 at a sports centre in Asuncion, Paraguay, as children aged 5-11 start getting vaccinated in that country. (Jorge Saenz/The Associated Press)
As of Tuesday evening, more than 381.1 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracker. The reported global death toll stood at more than 5.6 million.
In the Asia-Pacific region, disaster-hit Tonga will go into lockdown Wednesday evening after the Pacific island nation reported that two port workers helping distribute international aid had become infected with the coronavirus.
The urgent announcement by Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni appeared to confirm fears among Tongan officials that the aid pouring in following a devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami last month could also bring COVID-19 to a nation that had previously been free of the virus.
A C-130J Hercules aircraft is unloaded of humanitarian aid supplies at Fua’amotu International Airport, Tonga, Monday, Jan. 24, 2022. The country’s fears of COVID-19 being brought in with the aid were realized as two port workers tested positive. (Sgt. Ben Dempster/Australian Defence Force via The Associated Press)
Indonesia’s holiday island of Bali will start welcoming back travellers from all countries later this week, more than three months after announcing it was open to selected nationalities.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 situation at the Beijing Winter Olympics is within the “expected controllable range,” despite increasing positive cases being detected, a senior official said.
WATCH | Beijing’s ‘closed loop’ system against COVID-19:
‘Closed loop’ designed to keep COVID-19 out of Beijing 2022
1 day ago
Duration 3:01
Olympic organizers in Beijing are closely guarding the ‘closed loop’ system, where athletes, personnel and the media are confined to a bubble that includes strict protocol and testing to prevent COVID-19 from infiltrating the Games. 3:01
People in China rang in the Lunar New Year on Tuesday despite pandemic restrictions, as small crowds gathered at temples to offer traditional prayers for the Year of the Tiger.
In Africa, leading South African scientists are set to investigate COVID-19 and HIV in tandem, given mounting evidence that the collision of the two pandemics could be generating new coronavirus variants.
Nigeria launched a $149 million US fund to help fight HIV/AIDS, especially targeting the prevention of mother-to-child transmissions, after foreign funding came under strain from the focus on COVID-19.
In Europe, Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who was re-elected for a second term on Sunday, has tested positive for COVID–19 and is set to isolate for seven days.
Denmark has become one of the first European Union countries to scrap most pandemic restrictions as the country no longer considers the COVID-19 outbreak “a socially critical disease.” The reason for that is that while the Omicron variant is surging in Denmark, it’s not placing a heavy burden on the health system and the country has a high vaccination rate.
The wearing of face masks is no longer mandatory as of Tuesday on public transportation, shops and for standing clients in restaurant indoor areas. Another restriction no longer required is the digital pass, previously used to enter nightclubs, cafés, party buses and to be seated indoors in restaurants.
A Conservative lawmaker in Britain said Prime Minister Boris Johnson should resign and that he had submitted a letter of no confidence, after a report found that alcohol-fuelled events had taken place at Downing Street during lockdown.
WATCH | Johnson lambasted over ‘partygate’ report:
British PM lambasted over ‘partygate’ report
1 day ago
Duration 2:39
Prime Minister Boris Johnson tainted the ‘heart-wrenching’ sacrifices of the British people, Opposition Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer told Parliament Monday. 2:39
In the Middle East, health officials in Kuwait on Monday reported 6,063 additional cases of COVID-19 and two additional deaths.
In the Americas, Mexico registered 12,521 confirmed cases and 198 more deaths from COVID-19 on Monday, according to health ministry data, bringing the country’s overall number of confirmed cases to 4,942,590 and the death toll to 306,091.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization says overuse of gloves, “moon suits” and the use of billions of masks and vaccination syringes to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus have spurred a huge glut of health care waste worldwide.
The UN health agency reported Tuesday that extra medical waste has strained waste management systems and is threatening both health and the environment, pointing to a “dire need” to improve those systems and get a response from both governments and people.
“Part of the message for the public is to become more of a conscious consumer,” said Dr. Margaret Montgomery, technical officer of WHO’s water, sanitation, hygiene and health unit. “In terms of the volume, it’s enormous.”
“It is absolutely vital to provide health workers with the right (protective gear),” Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies chief, said in a statement. “But it is also vital to ensure that it can be used safely without impacting on the surrounding environment.”
-From Reuters, The Associated Press and CBC News, last updated at 7 p.m. ET
VANCOUVER – A disciplinary investigation has found a former Vancouver police sergeant shared “disrespectful” commentary on a fellow officer’s court testimony about being sexually assaulted by a colleague.
The decision against Narinder Dosanjh, obtained by The Canadian Press, includes the running commentary on the woman’s testimony — apparently written by someone inside the courtroom — that calls her a “bad drunk” and says there was “no way” her case would be proved.
Former New Westminster police chief Dave Jansen, the external officer who rendered the decision against Dosanjh, says his assessment accounts for a culture of treating officers who testify against each other as “rats.”
Former Vancouver constable Jagraj Roger Berar was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to a year in jail for assaulting the woman, who can’t be identified because of a publication ban on her name.
Jansen says in his ruling, dated Oct. 11, that the comments in a Vancouver police group chat appear “supportive” of Berar and reflect “all-too-common myths” about women who make sexual assault allegations.
While Jansen found Dosanjh committed discreditable conduct by sharing the chats, a complaint against a more-senior Vancouver officer who was inside the courtroom, and who the victim and other officers believed wrote the commentary, were not substantiated.
The ruling says Jansen, who retired as New Westminster’s chief constable, would accept submissions before deciding how Dosanjh should be punished.
The woman who was assaulted was the complainant in the disciplinary investigation, and said in an interview she felt “vindicated” by Jansen’s decision because it “truly paints what I’ve been through,” after reporting a fellow officer for sexual assault.
She said many other women in municipal policing fear speaking out about ill-treatment at work, and some have told her about being assaulted and harassed but feared ruining their careers if they complained.
“This decision is important for those women to see,” she said. “It shows the tides are changing. Like, this is the first win I’ve had.”
A spokesman for the Surrey Police Service, where Dosanjh now works, did not immediately answer a question about how he was penalized, and said Dosanjh declined an interview request with The Canadian Press.
In his decision, Jansen said there was an “unfortunate but often pervasive” culture of treating officers who complain as “‘rats’, who betrayed their colleagues.”
“In terms of the messages themselves, Sergeant Dosanjh alleges that they are not degrading, humiliating or derogatory and do not attack the personal character of the complainant. I disagree,” Jansen wrote.
The decision includes a screenshot of the commentary about the complainant, who said the order of the messages appeared to refer to her evidence while she was being cross-examined and suggested the comments were written by someone listening to her testimony.
The commentary on a Vancouver police chat group on the Signal messaging app said the victim “wore a wire twice,” and “admitted in cross to possibly drinking way more alcohol than she originally claimed.”
“Her memory is super hazy and there’s no way you can prove beyond reasonable doubt,” the person wrote.
“And she admitted that she is really bad drunk,” they added.
Another message said it was a “nail in the coffin” of the case that video showed the complainant “cuddling, holding hands” with Berar.
The victim, who became aware of the commentary when a friend in the department showed them to her, was distressed by the messages and disputed their accuracy, said Jansen.
“The comments also appear to reflect some of the all-too-common myths around women making allegations of sexual assault. Some of these myths include the belief that because a victim socialized with the perpetrator, or engaged in some consensual activity with him, therefore she must have consented to the assault,” he wrote.
Jansen’s decision said Dosanjh shared the messages with a fellow officer after getting them from a “VPD chat group that he claims he knew little about, from a co-worker he claims not to be able to identify.”
The decision said other officers believed the commentary was written bya more-senior officer in the department who had been present at the trial, but Jansen said the discreditable conduct complaint against that person was unsubstantiated.
The decision said Dosanjh claimed he was the “fall guy” and “a pawn in a broader game.”
Jansen’s decision said Dosanjh was a senior officer and supervisor who was aware of the “vulnerability of victims of sexual crimes and of the myths that surround sexual assault victims.”
It said Dosanjh’s “distribution of these messages that were disrespectful of an alleged victim of sexual violence who was also a co-worker, should they become public, would likely discredit the reputation of the police force.”
The Vancouver Police Department did not immediately provide comment on Jansen’s decision.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
FREDERICTON – The offspring of beetles imported from British Columbia are ready to take up the fight against an invasive insect that is killing hemlock trees in Nova Scotia.
Last fall and spring, about 5,000 Laricobius nigrinus beetles — affectionately called Lari by scientists — made an overnight journey from the West Coast.
Lucas Roscoe, research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, says in the fight against the woolly adelgid that is destroying swaths of hemlock trees in Nova Scotia, the first step was to make sure the Lari beetle can survive a Nova Scotia winter.
The one-to-two-millimetre black flying beetles were released across six sites in Nova Scotia that had the woolly adelgids.
In one of the sites, scientists placed cages of imported beetles and about 60 per cent of them were able to survive the winter in Nova Scotia, which Roscoe says is an encouraging rate.
He says the woolly adelgid was first seen in southwestern Nova Scotia in 2017 and the peppercorn-sized insect, aided by climate change, has since spread north.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
Dozens of researchers across Canada, including renowned environmentalist David Suzuki, have joined a growing chorus of voices urging the federal government to halt the importation of an endangered monkey species for medical research in Quebec.
A letter signed by 80 scientists, academics, doctors and students says testing on long-tailed macaques from Cambodia should be banned due to ethical concerns and potential public-health risks.
“A decade ago, chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, ceased to be used for experimentation because using such animal ‘models’ could no longer be justified from scientific, ethical, and/or financial perspectives,” says the letter addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his environment minister and the premier of Quebec.
The researchers say they are also concerned about “the serious risks of transmission of zoonotic pathogens” that could be associated with transporting macaques.
Their letter urges the federal government to end charter flights that have been bringing the macaques into Canada, and to adopt regulations banning the importation of all primates for biomedical testing.
It’s the latest group to add more pressure on Ottawa to suspend the monkey imports by Charles River Laboratories, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant that has a sprawling facility in Montreal.
The company announced in 2023 that it was halting macaque imports into the U.S., after it was subpoenaed in a case that involved the indictment of two senior Cambodian officials over what authorities described as “multiple felonies for their role in bringing wild long-tailed macaques into the United States.”
No charges have been brought against Charles River Laboratories, or any of its officials, and the company has said it will fully co-operate with the U.S. investigation.
At around the same time, imports of monkeys from Cambodia into Canada dramatically surged, with Statistics Canada data showing a 500 per cent increase in 2023 from the year before.
Environment and Climate Change Canada, the federal department responsible for monitoring commercial trade in wildlife, confirmed to the Canadian Press that Charles River Laboratories has imported 6,769 long-tailed macaques into the country between January 2023 and August of this year. The monetary value of these imported macaques is around $120 million dollars, according to Statistics Canada.
The department previously said that officials rigorously and closely inspect imports of foreign animals, including those brought in by Charles River Laboratories, and that all macaque imports so far this year have complied with federal and international wildlife regulations.
The government and the company have both said that no Canadian laws have been broken.
Last month, the Canadian Transportation Authority issued a permit for another shipment on a cargo plane chartered by Charles River Laboratories. A flight tracker shows that a plane with the same flight number as what is shown on the permit departed Phnom Penh, Cambodia last Thursday, and arrived in Montreal on Friday.
Jesse Greener, a professor of chemistry at Laval University who signed the researchers’ letter to the government, said medical technology has developed to a point that makes it unjustifiable for the pharmaceutical industry to continue using live primates for testing.
“The government should take a leadership role and help researchers and surely the private sector to pivot from using these unethical, and I would say old and outdated and unreliable animal models, and embrace these much more efficient and ethical approaches that are … exploding right now,” said Greener, who has done research on methods to replace animals in such experiments.
“It is grotesque,” he said of the animal use. “It is time that we change the page on this chapter of terrible research and commercial activities.”
Canada banned the use of animals for cosmetic testing last year, but it is still legal to use live primates for drug testing purposes.
The federal government said a draft strategy aimed at reducing and replacing the use of animals in drug testing was published in September and open to public consultations for 60 days.
The strategy, which will be revised based on input from researchers, experts and others, is expected to be published in June 2025, it said.
“The government of Canada is committed to advancing efforts to replace, reduce, or refine the use of vertebrate animals in toxicity testing where possible,” Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a statement Tuesday.
Charles River Laboratories previously told The Canadian Press that while it is also committed to reducing its use of live primates, global regulatory bodies require drugs to be tested on animals before they are evaluated in humans.
The company said the use of non-human primates has been vital in developing treatments for various diseases and that the standards it applies in its facilities are exceeding global norms.
Matthew Green, a New Democrat MP who had previously called on the federal government to halt the latest shipment of macaques, said he has “great concern” about importing this exotic animal.
“Generally in Canada, Canadians like to believe that our government has higher regulations and more stringent enforcement protocols when it comes to protecting endangered species, yet this is not the case in comparison to what the United States has done,” he said.
Green and two of his NDP colleagues wrote a letter to three federal ministers last month, demanding an “immediate attention” to the issue.
The Animal Alliance of Canada also sent a letter to the environment minister in August, urging the immediate suspension of monkey importation from Cambodia.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
