BRANDON, MAN. —
The city of Brandon, Man. is dealing with an outbreak of COVID-19, according to the province’s chief public health officer.
A total of 34 cases have now been linked to a cluster in the western Manitoba city. Six others are considered community spread.
“What we see is that there’s a fairly large outbreak in that area right now, in the community,” said Dr. Brent Roussin, the province’s chief public health officer.
Six additional cases were confirmed Friday among workers at the Maple Leaf Foods pork processing plant but it’s not the only business in the community dealing with the virus.
A pylon perimeter surrounds the parking lot at the Tim Hortons along the Trans Canada Highway in Brandon.
The location temporarily closed after an employee who tested positive for COVID-19 worked while they were infectious but not symptomatic, according to Roussin.
While public health officials have said the risk of exposure at the coffee shop is low, it’s unsettling news for Alyssa Russell of Virden, Man, which is about a 40-minute drive west of Brandon.
“When they had to shut down Tim Hortons — where I was the day before they had to shut it down — I was there and that alarms me,” said Russell.
Russell was in Brandon getting tested for COVID-19, not from her visit to Tim’s, but because she came into close contact with someone else who had contact with a known case.
She’s worried about the growing number of positive cases in the area and so is Brandon resident Donald Blagden.
“We had flattened it for such a long period of time and now it’s kind of exploding, I guess you could say,” said Blagden.
Maple Leaf Foods said Friday afternoon a total of 10 people who work at the Brandon plant have tested positive.
Public health officials said so far it appears everyone’s contracted the virus outside the workplace.
“To be clear there is no evidence of workplace transmission at this time,” said Roussin.
In a statement posted on the company’s website, Maple Leaf said the plant continues to operate at normal capacity with strict protocols in place to protect workers and prevent the virus from spreading within the workplace.
Still, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 832, the union representing Maple Leaf workers, continues to push for a temporary closure to avoid a large outbreak like the ones in Alberta and the U.S.
“Our members are extremely frightened,” said UFCW local 832 president Jeff Traeger. “They don’t really want to go to work.
“Many of them are telling us in large numbers they want to see the plant shut down for a short period of time.”
UFCW said it would give employees a chance to get tested, allowing the company to get a handle on the situation and do a deep clean. UFCW also said it can be difficult to physical distance in certain areas of the plant, such as the lunchroom and change area.
But Maple Leaf said the plant was inspected by both public health officials and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Thursday and has been deemed safe.
“They said we were going above and beyond in everything we were doing to ensure safety and they support our decision to continue operating,” said Janet Riley, Maple Leaf’s vice president of communications and public affairs.
In a blog post on the company’s website Friday afternoon, Maple Leaf Foods president and CEO Michael McCain urged Brandon Mayor Rick Chrest to call on the community to strictly adhere to physical distancing and mask use in the community.
“We must work together as one to prevent the community spread of COVID-19,” McCain’s post reads.
In response, Chrest said the city has been carefully following the advice of public health officials and that people should be even more vigilant with public health measures to help contain the spread.
“We have consistently and strenuously advocated for our community to follow the practices of physical distancing, hand sanitizing, staying home if ill, get tested if you have symptoms and the advice to wear masks if physical distancing is difficult,” Chrest said in a text message do CTV News.
Meantime, a Walmart employee in Brandon who last worked Jul. 26 also recently tested positive for COVID-19. The store stayed open.
Prairie Mountain Health said the demand for testing has increased over the past week and additional screeners have been brought on to keep the city’s only testing site open over lunch. Health officials said it’s also possible the hours may be expanded, as the number of cases continues to increase. The testing site is currently open Monday to Saturday from 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.
Public health officials said anyone who recently visited the closed Tim Hortons in Brandon should monitor for symptoms and get tested if symptoms arise.
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.
