The border between Canada and the United States will remain closed to non-essential travel for at least another month.
Public Safety Minister Bill Blair announced late Friday that the closure has been extended to March 21 — precisely one year after the world’s longest undefended border was first shut down to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Since then, the closure has been extended month by month.
With more contagious variants of the coronavirus spreading across the continent, Friday’s extension is unlikely to be the last.
WATCH | Navigating Canada’s new restrictions on airline passengers:
From hotel quarantines to mandatory PCR testing, we hear from two panellists about how they are experiencing Ottawa’s latest and strictest travel measures. Rohan Jumani flew to India for his father’s funeral and now faces these new measures, and Richard Vanderlubbe is the president of the tripcentral.ca travel agency. 8:25
Blair tweeted that the government will continue to base its decisions on the border “on the best public health advice to keep Canadians safe.”
The border has remained open for essential travel throughout the pandemic in a bid to avoid disrupting the flow of food, medical supplies and other crucial goods between the two countries.
The Public Health Agency of Canada released modelling on Friday suggesting that while infections continue to decline nationally, the spread of virus mutations threatens to reverse that progress.
Canada’s chief public health officer said there are currently fewer than 33,000 active cases in Canada, a 60 per cent drop compared with a month ago.
But with more contagious variants now detected in all provinces, Dr. Theresa Tam said Canada may not be able to avoid a rapid acceleration of daily cases, predicted to hit 20,000 by mid-March, without continued vigilance.
What’s happening in Canada
As of 1:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, Canada had reported 842,635 cases of COVID-19, with 31,806 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 21,618.
Quebec City’s public health department says it may have detected the first local case of a COVID-19 variant, at an elementary school in the city’s Cap-Rouge neighbourhood.
The Marguerite d’Youville school has been closed indefinitely, and the school population of 283 students and more than 50 staff members are to be tested in the next 48 hours. They must remain in isolation until further notice from public health authorities.
New Brunswick saw three more cases, all in the Edmundston region.
Newfoundland and Labrador reported 38 new cases, all within the Eastern Health region. Health officials in that region are recommending COVID-19 testing for anyone in the Mount Pearl Senior High School community, after an outbreak was declared there on Feb 7.
WATCH | Testing ramps up as N.L. struggles to contain outbreak:
Janice Fitzgerald, the chief medical officer of health for Newfoundland and Labrador, says labs are now processing more than six times the number of tests every 24 hours than they were two weeks ago. 1:08
Nunavut confirmed six new cases in Arviat. It’s the eighth day in a row that new cases have been reported in the hard-hit community. With one recovery, Arviat now has 30 active cases.
The Northwest Territoriesannounced dozens of new clinic dates in communities across the territory where residents can receive their second dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine — or their first dose, if they missed the clinic’s first visit.
What’s happening around the world
As of Saturday, more than 110.8 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 62.5 million of those cases listed as recovered on a tracking site run by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 2.4 million.
In Asia, thousands of marshals have been hired to enforce mask wearing across India’s financial capital of Mumbai, which is battling a recent spike in cases.
A municipal worker gives a penalty to a commuter for not wearing a face mask inside a train in Mumbai on Saturday. (Rajanish Kakade/The Associated Press)
In Europe, Denmark has temporarily closed some border crossing points with Germany and stepped up checks at others due to a spike in COVID-19 cases and a rise in virus variants in the northern German town of Flensburg, near the Danish border.
In the Americas, Argentinian Health Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia resigned following reports that people had been able to use connections to get access to COVID-19 vaccines to which they were not entitled.
In Africa, Ghana is expecting a first delivery of just over 350,000 AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine shots by the end of next week.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
