TORONTO —
Many hard-hit areas of Canada have seen rapidly increasing rates in COVID-19 infections over the past few weeks, and experts are warning that the start of 2021 could include an even higher surge of cases.
Dr. Ronald St. John, former Director General for the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), told CTV News Channel on Thursday that our current case numbers don’t even reflect the past week, when many may have gathered over the holidays in contradiction of health advice.
“I’m concerned that we haven’t begun to see a spike from Christmas,” he said. “It’s only been about five, six days since Christmas, that’s not quite enough time for transmission that occurred on Christmas Day to start to show up in any significant numbers.”
Since it takes around two weeks in general for people who contracted COVID-19 to experience symptoms and get tested, we will likely only know how big the Christmas spike will be in early January.
New Year’s Eve brings poses a second risky time for large gatherings.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have another spike from New Year’s Eve,” St. John said.
Officials have stressed that any celebrations should be virtual, and households should not be mixing for the kind of parties that are common in any other year.
“Many of us will be ordering our favourite meals in, myself included,” Henry said. “Whatever your plans may be this evening, please remember how important it is to follow the public health orders and restrictions. The actions of a small group of people, as we have seen before, can have consequences.”
She added that health officials had been made aware of “holiday celebrations being planned, some for several hundreds [of] people.”
With Christmas and New Year’s Eve potentially impacting community spread, St. John believes we’re “looking at three weeks of increasing numbers,” in January, adding that this “may well have a major impact on our health-care system.”
We won’t see the effects of provincial lockdowns that occurred in December for weeks, making it hard to know how much they have helped or not.
Dr. Hassan Masri, an ICU specialist from Saskatchewan, told CTV News that “bold decisions should have been made earlier.”
“Unfortunately, they were not made early enough,” he said.
In Ontario, hospitals are being stretched to the limits in many regions. Within the province, COVID-19 patients in intensive care have doubled since the end of November, with 337 in the ICU today. In Scarborough alone, over 60 per cent of the ICU capacity is occupied by COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Albert Lauwers, chief of staff at Scarborough Health Network, told CTV News that they are bracing for an increase in cases in early 2021.
“We’re expecting spikes in January right through to mid-February,” he said.
While this is occurring, more shipments of vaccines will be making their way across Canada. But the vaccine rollout shouldn’t spur people to assume the pandemic is now over, St. John said — it should inspire us to be more careful than ever.
With the vaccine right around the corner for the general public, “now is not the time to get COVID,” he said.
“And now’s not the time to get COVID and then spread it to somebody, especially your grandparents, or your parents, or anybody else. Now is the time to really follow the measures and try to avoid becoming infected.”
He acknowledged that this is a “very difficult time.
“I’m afraid this epidemic is going to continue on into 2021,” he said. “It’s not over, and until we get enough vaccination to control the virus, we’re still going to have to follow these measures.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
