More help from the Canadian Forces has arrived in an Indigenous community in northern Manitoba that is hard-hit by COVID-19, following a desperate plea from the Shamattawa First Nation’s chief.
About two dozen members of the military arrived in the remote community just after noon on Saturday and more were expected to arrive later, including medics and nurses, Shamattawa First Nation Chief Eric Redhead said in a Facebook post.
He said the team will set up isolation units at the community’s school and help with tasks like door-to-door grocery delivery, wellness checks and contact tracing. Redhead, who first called for military support on Nov. 30, said he is expecting an additional 30 military members to arrive Sunday.
We have approved an additional request for assistance for the Shamattawa First Nation. <a href=”https://twitter.com/CanadianForces?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@CanadianForces</a> personnel will deploy and assist the community in its efforts against <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a>. Our government will always be there to help people in need.
Nearly one third of Shamattawa’s population of about 1,300 has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, which is said to be spreading easily due to overcrowding in some homes.
In Alberta, a range of new restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19 went into effect on Sunday.
Restaurants, pubs and bars are closed, except for takeout and delivery. Hair salons, casinos, gyms, libraries, museums and movie theatres have also been shuttered.
WATCH | COVID-19 vaccine en route to Canada:
Canada’s first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine shipped out yesterday from a factory in Belgium. UPS is delivering the cargo. Officials with the company say all vaccine shipments are being treated as a top priority. 4:16
The restrictions also include a 15 per cent capacity limit for places of worship, as well as grocery and retail stores. The restrictions will be in place for at least four weeks.
Protests against the restrictions were held Saturday outside the provincial legislature in Edmonton and in downtown Calgary.
Demonstrators gather at an anti-mask rally in Calgary on Saturday. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)
Ontario, meanwhile, is also imposing stricter rules to combat the spread of COVID-19, beginning at midnight in York Region, just north of Toronto, and Windsor-Essex. People lined up outside the busy Vaughan Mills shopping centre in York Region for up to an hour on Saturday to do last-minute buying.
The two regions are moving into the province’s “grey” lockdown level of restrictions, meaning retail stores deemed non-essential will be operating with curbside pickup only. Businesses still open to customers must cap capacity at 50 per cent.
About 30,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioTech COVID-19 vaccine are expected to arrive in Canada by Monday. Last Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin said on Twitter that up to 249,000 doses are coming this month, with “millions more in the new year.”
Cases of COVID-19 were up significantly again across Canada on Saturday. Nationally, 6,772 new infections were reported from 81,481 completed tests on Friday, for a positivity rate of 8.3 per cent.
What’s happening across Canada
As of 6:30 a.m. ET on Sunday, Canada’s COVID-19 case count stood at 454,853 with 73,029 of those cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 13,350.
Sheila Chaisson, a 67-year-old from Courtenay, said she “can’t afford to go out and buy anything” after losing out on the monthly $300 relief, adding: “I’ve really had to stretch to afford masks and sanitizer and all the things I need through the pandemic.”
WATCH | What you need to know about repaying CERB:
Some Canadians are getting letters from the Canada Revenue Agency, suggesting they could have to repay thousands of dollars in CERB money because they may not have been eligible to receive it in the first place. 6:54
Meanwhile, the number of positive COVID-19 tests in a pilot project for international travellers at the Calgary airport and a United States border crossing in southern Alberta has been reasonably low after its first six weeks.
WATCH | Sask. woman on going from not feeling well to critically ill with COVID-19:
Hospitalizations continue to increase in our province. Kathy Ziglo is on the mend from the COVID-19 but she is still shocked about how quickly she became critically ill. Bonnie Allen delivers her story. 2:34
Of the deaths reported Saturday, eight are linked to outbreaks at personal care homes in Winnipeg, including three at Charleswood Care Centre, two at Oakview Place and three at Park Manor Care Home.
Ontario‘shealth minister on Saturday reported 1,873 new cases, with a record 65,300 tests completed. The province also reported 17 additional deaths.
New Brunswick reported one new case as the Edmundston region entered its first day in the orange phase of restrictions since the early days of the pandemic.
Newfoundland and Labrador reported three new cases, of which two are travel-related.
Nova Scotiaadded seven new cases on Saturday, but its caseload fell from 65 to 61. Health officials also urged residents who live near the Eden Valley Poultry plant in Berwick to be tested for COVID-19 as a precaution it closed amid an outbreak of cases.
Prince Edward Island recorded five new cases, all related to travel.
In the Northwest Territories, health officials confirmed a new case in Hay River and warned that passengers aboard two flights in the territory may have been exposed to COVID-19.
What’s happening around the world
As of Sunday morning, more than 71.8 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 46.9 million of those considered recovered or resolved, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 1.6 million.
Germany will close schools and non-essential stores from Wednesday until at least Jan. 10, cutting short the busy Christmas shopping season, as it tightens coronavirus restrictions and tries to rein in the spread of the disease, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday.
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 20,200 to 1,320,716, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Sunday. The reported death toll rose by 321 to 21,787, the tally showed.
In the United States, the first trucks carrying a COVID-19 vaccine for widespread use were set to pull out of a Michigan manufacturing plant Sunday, with the shots that are critical to curbing the spread of the pandemic destined to reach states a day later.
Workers can be seen on Sunday preparing boxes containing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for shipment from the company’s manufacturing plant in Portage, south of Kalamazoo, Mich. (Morry Gash/The Associated Press)
Shipments of the Pfizer vaccine will set in motion the biggest vaccination effort in American history.
Initially, about 3 million doses are expected to be sent out, and the priority is health-care workers and nursing home residents. The novel coronavirus is blamed for killing nearly 300,000 Americans.
In Japan, the country’s daily coronavirus cases have exceeded 3,000 for the first time while the government delays stricter measures for fear of hurting the economy ahead of the holiday season.
The 3,030 new cases, including 621 in Tokyo, took Japan’s national tally to 177,287 with 2,562 deaths, the country’s health ministry said Sunday.
Experts say serious cases are on the rise around the country, putting an extra burden on hospitals and affecting the daily medical treatment for other patients. They urged authorities to take measures such as suspending out-of-town trips and requesting stores to close early.
Religious persecution
Misguided religious and cultural traditions
Fear of those who challenge the established order
Long ago a horrid thing happened in Europe and in many European Colonies. It was called the Inquisition, an instrument of the Catholic Church and used by the present-day public authorities to quell political and social protest and challenges from those considered rebels(Heretics).
In that day the Church of Rome was seen as the very roots of Western society, that which kept society on a path of righteousness and functioning practice. The political rulers of the day, kings, nobles and lords allied themselves to the church with absolute reason for doing so. The church kept them in power you see. There was a hierarchy prescribed to the present-day society where authority flowed from God to the Pope, Noblemen, Cardinals, and Priests to the public. Church law was often edited for the benefit of the higher classes. Therefore rebels standing against local or regional lords were viewed as heretics who stood against the wishes of the pope, church laws and God himself. This church-established a council of the Inquisition roamed Europe looking for heretics, those different, rebels, witches and those in league with the devil. Any form of social, cultural or political wrongdoing was dealt with with a heavy hand. The rich may have been accused of a wrongdoing, but able to seek their freedom through financial donations. The poor faced the Inquisition with terror and fear since no one was there to represent them. The church-Lord alliance maintained the most severe of punishments.
The Inquisition evolved into the massive witch-hunting movement. Millions of people perished having been accused of witchcraft and being in League with the Devil. There actually existed witch hunters who simply went to a village, watching who was odd, different, threatening to the authorities and voila, a witch was found and declared. Strange methods of finding a witch were developed. One involved sticking a pin into the back side of a person, usually a woman and if she did not cry out in pain, she was possibly a candidate for interrogation. The interrogators usually got a confession leading to that person’s death.
There exists today religious authorities with similar powers to prosecute and punish those deemed different or contrary to established religious or cultural practices. Arrest, torture and disappearances happen daily in places such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many African Nations. Fanatical Religious Dogma has cost millions of people their lives, and for what? The Acquisition and use of power. Power encompasses every aspect of control of others whether it be through intellect, threat or violence.
Never should such horrors happen in a civilized world. Just one question needs to be asked. Do we live in a civilized world?
TORONTO – An arbitrator has awarded Ontario’s doctors a nearly 10-per-cent compensation increase for the first year of their new Physician Services Agreement.
The province is in the midst of negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association for the four-year agreement, but an arbitrator was tasked with setting increases for the first year, while the two sides work on the 2025-2028 period.
The OMA had proposed a five-per-cent general increase plus 10.2 per cent as a catch up to account for inflation, while the government proposed three per cent.
Arbitrator William Kaplan concluded that while the OMA’s target was unprecedented, the government’s suggested three per cent was “completely unrealistic.”
He writes that other health-care workers like nurses have received far more for the same time period, and they do not have to pay the overhead costs of running a practice out of their compensation, as doctors do, so he awarded a three-per-cent general increase plus a “catch up” of 6.95 per cent.
The Ministry of Health’s arbitration arguments angered doctors, as the government wrote that recruitment and retention of doctors was “not a major concern” and there was “no concern of a diminished supply of physicians.”
Kaplan wrote that there is a physician shortage.
“Somewhere between 1.35 million and 2.3 million people in the province are not attached to a family doctor,” the arbitration decision said.
“These are real numbers. The Ministry’s own documents – which we ordered disclosed – demonstrate that there is a problem to address.”
Kaplan cites a ministry document that showed the growth rate for family doctors was 1.4 per cent, which was below the growth rate for the population, at 1.6 per cent.
“What was being said, in other words, in the Ministry’s words, in this Ministry document, was that the problem is structural: the number of new family doctors needs to significantly exceed population growth and until and unless it begins to do so, the attachment problem will persist and deteriorate.”
The OMA said in a statement that while it is encouraged by the award, there is still much to be done to address the fact that more than two million Ontarians do not have a family doctor.
“The OMA also remains concerned about access to care, particularly in northern and rural Ontario, and ensuring that specialist consults, surgeries, and diagnostic tests are provided to patients in a timely manner so that people receive the best outcome possible,” the group wrote.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones said in a statement that the agreement also provides for specific funding to be allocated to “targeted investments” to help enhance and connect people to primary care.
“This agreement builds on the $17.5 billion the province currently spends to connect people to family doctors, primary care and other services across the province, 50 per cent more than when we took office in 2018,” she wrote.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Ongoing controversy over the documentary “Russians at War” has brought scrutiny to Ontario’s public broadcaster, which has said it will not air the film it helped fund.
One media expert says TVO is getting “the worst of all worlds” by investing in a project that can no longer be shown or monetized.
“TVO created a thing which their audience doesn’t get to see, other audiences will get to see and they’ve footed the bill and gotten no reward for it,” Chris Arsenault, chair of Western University’s master of media in journalism and communication program, said in an interview.
“I can’t think of a worse outcome for a network than what’s happened.”
“Russians at War,” a film rebuked by the Ukrainian community and some Canadian politicians, was part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s lineup until organizers suspended all screenings this week due to “significant threats” to festival operations. It shows the disillusionment of some Russian soldiers on the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
TVO had planned to air the story in the coming months, but the network’s board of directors withdrew support for the film on Tuesday, citing feedback it received. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Ukraine’s consul-general in Toronto and others have called the film Russian propaganda and a “whitewashing” of Russian military war crimes in Ukraine – claims the film’s producers and TIFF have rejected.
The TVO board’s announcement came just days after the network defended the film as “antiwar” at its core. It was an about-face the Documentary Organization of Canada said “poses a serious threat” to media independence and raises questions about political interference.
TVO has not responded to requests for comment and board chair Chris Day declined to elaborate on the decision to pull the film.
“Suffice it to say, we heard significant concerns and we responded,” Day wrote to The Canadian Press in an emailed response to an interview request.
Arsenault, who has not seen the documentary and could not comment on its content, said he’s nevertheless worried about the spectre of board intervention in independent editorial decisions, which he said “opens the doors” to further meddling in the production of documentaries and journalism.
“Russians at War,” a Canada-France co-production, was funded in part by the Canada Media Fund, which provided $340,000 for the project through its broadcaster envelope program. A spokesperson for the fund said TVO independently chose to use that money to support the production of the documentary.
One of the film’s producers, Cornelia Principe, said that TVO also had to pay a licensing fee to air the documentary. Such fees can range from $50,000 to $100,000, she said.
Principe, who has defended the documentary and its Canadian-Russian director Anastasia Trofimova, said she was shocked by the TVO board’s decision.
“Anastasia and I have been working with TVO on this for two and a half years.… I was a little bit out of it for hours. I just couldn’t believe it.”
What happens next, she said, is “uncharted territory” for TVO.
“This has, as far as I know, never happened before,” said Principe, who has worked with the broadcaster on various documentaries over the years.
TVO’s board has said the network will be “reviewing the process by which this project was funded and our brand leveraged.”
Ontario’s Minister of Education Jill Dunlop said in a statement that the decision made by TVO’s board of directors “was the right thing to do,” but did not elaborate.
As a non-profit government agency, TVO has a mandate to distribute educational materials and programs but the ministry is not involved with its broadcasting arm due to CRTC licensing rules.
Another public broadcaster, British Columbia’s Knowledge Network, has confirmed that it made a licence fee contribution of $15,000 for “Russians at War” so that it can be a “second window” broadcaster for the film.
Asked whether the documentary will still air at some point in British Columbia, a spokesperson for the network said it’s “working on a public response.”
Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has denounced the use of public funds for “Russians at War,” saying she shares the “grave concerns” Ukrainian officials and community members in Canada have raised about the film.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress has said it will keep protesting “Russians in War” since TIFF has said it will still screen the doc at some point. A demonstration in downtown Toronto was set to get underway Friday afternoon.
“Russians at War” is scheduled to screen at the Windsor International Film Festival, running from Oct. 24 to Nov. 3. The festival announced Friday that the documentary is among 10 nominees for its WIFF Prize in Canadian Film, worth $25,000.
— With files from Queen’s Park correspondent Allison Jones in Toronto.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
