Back at the beginning of April, Doug Ford made a promise to his province.
Faced with a rapidly expanding COVID-19 outbreak and a populace already chafing under shutdowns and restrictions, the Ontario premier agreed to share the scientific modelling of potential illnesses and deaths with the public. And he pledged full transparency going forward.
“You deserve the same information I have. You deserve to see the same data I see when I’m making decisions,” Ford told the camera during his daily Queen’s Park briefing on April 2.
“You deserve to know what I know when you’re making decisions for yourself, your family and community,”
More than two months later, the novel coronavirus remains a pressing crisis, having sickened almost 31,000 people in the province and caused close to 2,500 deaths.
But while Ford continues to invoke “expert advice” to explain his government’s U-turns on things such as testing protocols and the provincial reopening strategy, there has been little disclosure of who is providing it and just what they are saying.
This situation leaves both medical professionals and laypeople struggling to understand why Ontario is making the choices it’s making and where the science might be leading us, critics say.
“I don’t think [Ford] has an expert on speed dial,” said Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information.
“The decision making tells me it is not being driven by expertise.”
Command Table mystery
The premier often says that he is deferring to the advice he is receiving from Dr. David Williams, the province’s chief medical officer, and the COVID-19 Command Table, the government’s top advisory body on the disease, which reports directly to Christine Elliott, the minister of health.
Williams counts a joint masters in epidemiology and community health among his four degrees from the University of Toronto. However, it appears that he might be the only person sitting around the table with a specialized background in infectious diseases and outbreaks.
The co-leaders of the command group, Matt Anderson, president and CEO of Ontario Health, and Helen Angus, the deputy minister of health, both have vast experience in health-care administration but no scientific credentials. Anderson studied English at the University of New Brunswick, went on to obtain a masters in health administration before starting his career in information technology. Angus holds a master of science degree in planning from U of T.
The CBC asked both the Ministry of Health and Elliott’s office for the names of the other Command Table members. They weren’t provided, but the government says that representatives from several “relevant” ministries, such as Long-Term Care, Seniors and Accessibility, and the solicitor general also participate in the discussions.
A flow-chart of Ontario’s COVID-19 response, released in early March, suggests that it’s mostly deputy ministers. If so, the Command Table also counts bureaucrats with backgrounds in history, public relations and a former high-ranking Toronto cop among its members.
A flow chart detailing the Ontario government’s complex and multi-faceted response to the COVID-19 crisis. (Government of Ontario)
A ministry spokesperson told the CBC that the Command Table also draws on “external experts who each serve voluntarily” but declined to identify them.
Apart from some colleagues who participated in the early modelling of the disease, Furness said he doesn’t know anyone who has been asked to advise the government. He finds this situation curious given that so much expertise is concentrated in the hospitals and educational institutions in downtown Toronto, a stone’s throw from Queen’s Park.
“You don’t even need bus fare,” he said.
As the crisis drags on, he says, he has been mystified by the Ontario government’s reluctance to embrace random sentinel testing to try and get ahead of the disease and its failure to collect important sign post data, such as race and income, from those who have already fallen ill.
And he says some aspects of the first phase of reopening — such as allowing household cleaners and staff to return to their jobs — made no sense at all.
“I mean who is sitting around the table saying we’ve got to let butlers get back to work?” Furness said
Curious decisions with little explanation
Dr. Dominik Mertz, an associate professor at McMaster University’s medical school and expert on infection control, says he knows some people who have consulted on COVID at the local level, but he remains in the dark about what is going on provincially.
“I would love to know who’s advising them and what that advice was. And what the underlying assumptions are,” said Mertz. “I feel like sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”
He points to choices such as allowing adults to play golf and tennis but keeping playgrounds shut to children. And in particular, he wonders how the government came up with the oft-cited provincial benchmark of fewer than 200 new cases a day for a further loosening of lockdown rules and why this metric suddenly seemed to have been abandoned as Ontario moved toward a regional approach to reopening.
WATCH | Premier Ford announces regional approach to stage two of reopening Ontario:
Twenty-four of Ontario’s 34 public health units will be allowed to move into Phase 2 on Friday. The remaining 10, concentrated primarily in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) and near the U.S.-Canada border, will need to wait until new daily case numbers consistently decrease. 3:17
For weeks now, the Hamilton area has been on a “low burn,” says Mertz, averaging fewer than 10 new cases a day. Yet it is being lumped in with areas such as Toronto and Peel, which have much higher case rates, and denied permission to move to Stage 2 of the province’s reopening plan.
“I don’t know what the rationale is,” said Mertz. “I doubt that things will be any better locally in a few weeks, or months, from now.”
Mertz says a more scientific approach to reopening might look at things such as local health care and ICU capacity or the per capita rates of infection, rather than just the raw case numbers.
The province does employ its own epidemiologists and infectious disease experts, particularly within Public Health Ontario (PHO), which is mandated to provide scientific and technical advice to the entire health sector.
The government’s COVID response flow chart suggests PHO is playing a lead role in crafting strategy on things such as testing, surveillance and care and treatment. But those plans have never been communicated to the public.
Ford says he has a ‘host’ of unnamed doctors
After the publication of this story Tuesday morning, Elliott tweeted out the names of seven doctors who are sitting on her ministry’s public health measures table.
Today, I’d like to offer special thanks to Dr. Williams and our public health measures table: Dr. McKeown, Dr. Mowat, Dr. Feller, Dr. Gardner, Dr. Mackie, Dr. Roumeliotis and Dr. Spruyt. We are grateful for your input and ongoing expert advice on our <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a> recovery planning.
At his COVID19 update later in the day, Ford took umbrage at what he called an “unfair” and “insulting” story. The premier said that there are a “host” of doctors providing expert advice to the province, but again declined address specifics.
“We’ve brought a number of doctors … a lot of doctors. Personally, they don’t want their names out there,” Ford said.
“To say every single doctor involved, I’d give you a list of over a hundred doctors … they don’t want their names out there.”
However, both the Opposition New Democrats and the Liberals are now demanding that his government reveal where its expert advice is coming from.
“Ontarians deserve to know exactly how Premier Doug Ford is justifying his decisions about Ontario’s response to COVID-19. That includes basic information like who is sitting at the ‘Command Table,'” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said in a news release.
“Ontarians have worked hard and sacrificed in the battle against COVID-19 – they deserve all the facts.”
That sentiment was echoed by the new Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca.
“Time and time again Doug Ford has insisted he is getting the best help possible from the experts – but who are the experts? Doug Ford won’t say. How is that open and transparent?” Del Duca said. “If Doug Ford won’t reveal the team of experts he relies on – how can we trust his plans to move forward?”
Part of the problem might be the system that has been set up to fight Ontario’s COVID-19 outbreak.
Dr. Andrew Morris, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto’s Sinai Health and University Health Network, said the superstructure that Ontario created to tackle the coronavirus in early March, amid fears of supply shortages and overwhelmed hospitals, no longer seems fit for purpose. It’s far too opaque and bureaucratic, he said, to deal with the stubborn reality of a disease that will only be subdued through exhaustive tracing and testing, and continued social distancing.
“It’s not the right structure because it certainly doesn’t account for the blind spots that we’ve already identified,” said Morris. “We know that there have been challenges around behaviour change and communicating with the public.
“We’re asking a lot of the public. They deserve to have as much access to information as possible.”
Dr. Andrew Morris, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto’s Sinai Health and University Health Network, says the Ontario government’s COVID-19 response has been far too opaque and bureaucratic. (Turgut Yeter/CBC)
In response to the CBC’s questions about where the premier and the COVID Command Table are getting their expert, technical advice, the Ministry of Health did provide one outside name — Steini Brown, dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He is chairing a pair of scientific tables on modelling and evidence synthesis.
Brown declined a request for an interview but did respond to a series of emailed questions describing his role as largely administrative, clearing obstacles for the unnamed scientists who are doing “the hard work.”
Brown says the round tables he oversees have provided “numerical estimates and evidence syntheses” that have affected Ontario government policy but that they aren’t making specific recommendations. The reopening benchmark of 200 new cases a day, for example, didn’t come from his experts, he says.
Asked how the Ford government might improve its response to the COVID-19 crisis, Brown suggested greater openness.
“There is so much misinformation on COVID-19 that the more transparency we have around scientific advice and progress of the pandemic, the stronger foundation we’ll have for engaging the public in the fight,” he wrote.
WINNIPEG – Some 250 coloured tacks pepper a large-scale world map among bookshelves at Whodunit Mystery Bookstore.
Estonia, Finland, Japan and even Fenwick, Ont., have pins representing places outside Winnipeg where someone has ordered a page-turner from the independent bookstore that specializes in mystery and crime fiction novels.
For 30 years, the store has been offering fans of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot or Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes a place to get lost in whodunits both old and new.
Jack and Wendy Bumsted bought the shop in the Crescentwood neighbourhood in 2007 from another pair of mystery lovers.
The married couple had been longtime customers of the store. Wendy Bumsted grew up reading Perry Mason novels while her husband was a historian with vast knowledge of the crime fiction genre.
At the time, Jack Bumsted was retiring from teaching at the University of Manitoba when he was looking for his next venture.
“The bookstore came up and we bought it, I think, within a week,” Wendy Bumsted said in an interview.
“It never didn’t seem like a good idea.”
In the years since the Bumsteds took ownership, the family has witnessed the decline in mail-order books, the introduction of online retailers, a relocation to a new space next to the original, a pandemic and the death of beloved co-owner Jack Bumsted in 2020.
But with all the changes that come with owning a small business, customers continue to trust their next mystery fix will come from one of the shelves at Whodunit.
Many still request to be called about books from specific authors, or want to be notified if a new book follows their favourite format. Some arrive at the shop like clockwork each week hoping to get suggestions from Wendy Bumsted or her son on the next big hit.
“She has really excellent instincts on what we should be getting and what we should be promoting,” Micheal Bumsted said of his mother.
Wendy Bumsted suggested the store stock “Thursday Murder Club,” the debut novel from British television host Richard Osman, before it became a bestseller. They ordered more copies than other bookstores in Canada knowing it had the potential to be a hit, said Michael Bumsted.
The store houses more than 18,000 new and used novels. That’s not including the boxes of books that sit in Wendy Bumsted’s tiny office, or the packages that take up space on some of the only available seating there, waiting to be added to the inventory.
Just as the genre has evolved, so has the Bumsteds’ willingness to welcome other subjects on their shelves — despite some pushback from loyal customers and initially the Bumsted patriarch.
For years, Jack Bumsted refused to sell anything outside the crime fiction genre, including his own published books. Instead, he would send potential buyers to another store, but would offer to sign the books if they came back with them.
Wendy Bumsted said that eventually changed in his later years.
Now, about 15 per cent of the store’s stock is of other genres, such as romance or children’s books.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced them to look at expanding their selection, as some customers turned to buying books through the store’s website, which is set up to allow purchasers to get anything from the publishers the Bumsteds have contracts with.
In 2019, the store sold fewer than 100 books online. That number jumped to more than 3,000 in 2020, as retailers had to deal with pandemic lockdowns.
After years of running a successful mail-order business, the store was able to quickly adapt when it had to temporarily shut its doors, said Michael Bumsted.
“We were not a store…that had to figure out how to get books to people when they weren’t here.”
He added being a community bookstore with a niche has helped the family stay in business when other retailers have struggled. Part of that has included building lasting relationships.
“Some people have put it in their wills that their books will come to us,” said Wendy Bumsted.
Some of those collections have included tips on traveling through Asia in the early 2000s or the history of Australian cricket.
Micheal Bumsted said they’ve had to learn to be patient with selling some of these more obscure titles, but eventually the time comes for them to find a new home.
“One of the great things about physical books is that they can be there for you when you are ready for them.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Sept. 15, 2024.
MONTREAL – Canada’s labour minister is praising both Air Canada and the union representing about 5,200 of its pilots for averting a work stoppage that would have disrupted travel for hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Steven MacKinnon’s comments came in a statement shared to social media shortly after Canada’s largest air carrier announced it had reached a tentative labour deal with the Air Line Pilots Association.
MacKinnon thanked both sides and federal mediators, saying the airline and its pilots approached negotiations with “seriousness and a resolve to get a deal.”
The tentative agreement averts a strike or lockout that could have begun as early as Wednesday for Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge, with flight cancellations expected before then.
The airline now says flights will continue as normal while union members vote on the tentative four-year contract.
Air Canada had called on the federal government to intervene in the dispute, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that would only happen if it became clear no negotiated agreement was possible.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 15, 2024.
When it comes to plant-based alternatives, Canadians have never had so many options — and nowhere is that choice more abundantly clear than in the milk section of the dairy aisle.
To meet growing demand, companies are investing in new products and technology to keep up with consumer tastes and differentiate themselves from all the other players on the shelf.
“The product mix has just expanded so fast,” said Liza Amlani, co-founder of the Retail Strategy Group.
She said younger generations in particular are driving growth in the plant-based market as they are consuming less dairy and meat.
Commercial sales of dairy milk have been weakening for years, according to research firm Mintel, likely in part because of the rise of plant-based alternatives — even though many Canadians still drink dairy.
The No. 1 reason people opt for plant-based milk is because they see it as healthier than dairy, said Joel Gregoire, Mintel’s associate director for food and drink.
“Plant-based milk, the one thing about it — it’s not new. It’s been around for quite some time. It’s pretty established,” said Gregoire.
Because of that, it serves as an “entry point” for many consumers interested in plant-based alternatives to animal products, he said.
Plant-based milk consumption is expected to continue growing in the coming years, according to Mintel research, with more options available than ever and more consumers opting for a diet that includes both dairy and non-dairy milk.
A 2023 report by Ernst & Young for Protein Industries Canada projected that the plant-based dairy market will reach US$51.3 billion in 2035, at a compound annual growth rate of 9.5 per cent.
Because of this growth opportunity, even well-established dairy or plant-based companies are stepping up their game.
It’s been more than three decades since Saint-Hyacinthe, Que.-based Natura first launched a line of soy beverages. Over the years, the company has rolled out new products to meet rising demand, and earlier this year launched a line of oat beverages that it says are the only ones with a stamp of approval from Celiac Canada.
Competition is tough, said owner and founder Nick Feldman — especially from large American brands, which have the money to ensure their products hit shelves across the country.
Natura has kept growing, though, with a focus on using organic ingredients and localized production from raw materials.
“We’re maybe not appealing to the mass market, but we’re appealing to the natural consumer, to the organic consumer,” Feldman said.
Amlani said brands are increasingly advertising the simplicity of their ingredient lists. She’s also noticing more companies offering different kinds of products, such as coffee creamers.
Companies are also looking to stand out through eye-catching packaging and marketing, added Amlani, and by competing on price.
Besides all the companies competing for shelf space, there are many different kinds of plant-based milk consumers can choose from, such as almond, soy, oat, rice, hazelnut, macadamia, pea, coconut and hemp.
However, one alternative in particular has enjoyed a recent, rapid ascendance in popularity.
“I would say oat is the big up-and-coming product,” said Feldman.
Mintel’s report found the share of Canadians who say they buy oat milk has quadrupled between 2019 and 2023 (though almond is still the most popular).
“There seems to be a very nice marriage of coffee and oat milk,” said Feldman. “The flavour combination is excellent, better than any other non-dairy alternative.”
The beverage’s surge in popularity in cafés is a big part of why it’s ascending so quickly, said Gregoire — its texture and ability to froth makes it a good alternative for lattes and cappuccinos.
It’s also a good example of companies making a strong “use case” for yet another new entrant in a competitive market, he said.
Amid the long-standing brands and new entrants, there’s another — perhaps unexpected — group of players that has been increasingly investing in plant-based milk alternatives: dairy companies.
For example, Danone has owned the Silk and So Delicious brands since an acquisition in 2014, and long-standing U.S. dairy company HP Hood LLC launched Planet Oat in 2018.
Lactalis Canada also recently converted its facility in Sudbury, Ont., to manufacture its new plant-based Enjoy! brand, with beverages made from oats, almonds and hazelnuts.
“As an organization, we obviously follow consumer trends, and have seen the amount of interest in plant-based products, particularly fluid beverages,” said Mark Taylor, president and CEO of Lactalis Canada, whose parent company Lactalis is the largest dairy products company in the world.
The facility was a milk processing plant for six decades, until Lactalis Canada began renovating it in 2022. It now manufactures not only the new brand, but also the company’s existing Sensational Soy brand, and is the company’s first dedicated plant-based facility.
“We’re predominantly a dairy company, and we’ll always predominantly be a dairy company, but we see these products as complementary,” said Taylor.
It makes sense that major dairy companies want to get in on plant-based milk, said Gregoire. The dairy business is large — a “cash cow,” if you will — but not really growing, while plant-based products are seeing a boom.
“If I’m looking for avenues of growth, I don’t want to be left behind,” he said.
Gregoire said there’s a potential for consumers to get confused with so many options, which is why it’s so important for brands to find a way to differentiate themselves, whether it’s with taste, health, or how well the drink froths for a latte.
Competition in a more crowded market is challenging, but Taylor believes it results in better products for consumers.
“It keeps you sharp, and it forces you to be really good at what you’re doing. It drives innovation,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 15, 2024.
