A healthcare worker administers a Pfizer/BioNTEch coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine to personal support worker Derek Thompson at The Michener Institute, in Toronto on Dec. 14, 2020.
CARLOS OSORIO/Reuters
Canada’s national vaccination campaign to stop the spread of COVID-19 began with joy and relief on Monday, while challenges facing the mass inoculation plan rose to the surface as hundreds of Quebec nursing-home workers passed on the shot for now.
Gisèle Levesque, an 89-year-old resident of a Quebec City nursing home, did not flinch as she received her needle in the arm at 11:25 a.m. A short time later and about 250 kilometres to the southwest, Gloria Lallouz, 78, received her dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a nursing home on the west side of Montreal. Anita Quidangen, a Toronto personal support worker who has worked with seniors since 1988, received the vaccine just after noon.
“I feel happy, I feel good,” Ms. Lallouz told reporters gathered outside her nursing home after her shot. “I’ve been stuck in my room for eight months. Eight months, without leaving my room. I hope everyone gets the vaccine. It’s important to live again.”
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Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu said she wept hearing Ms. Lallouz describe her wish to find her life once more. Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé chimed in, saying he choked up as well.
The campaign to bring the vaccine to Canada’s 38 million people started at a rate of about six people an hour at four locations in Ontario and Quebec on Monday.
Quebec received 4,875 doses this week, and Ontario got 6,000. Each Quebec site planned 150 injections on Monday and to ramp up to 500 a day, while Ontario started with five vaccinations in Toronto. Other parts of the country expect to begin vaccinating people later in the week.
In Montreal, Ms. Lallouz and most of the other 326 residents of the Donald Berman Maimonides Geriatric Centre in Montreal enthusiastically welcomed the vaccine, but workers proved more reluctant. While 95 per cent of residents signed up, only 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the home’s 500 workers did, according to Francine Dupuis, associate chief executive officer of the west-central health district of Montreal Island.
“They’re not against it, they’re hesitant. They don’t want to be first,” Ms. Dupuis said. “They said, ‘Yes, but not now. We’ll wait for the next wave when we see how people react.’ ”
Mr. Dubé said he is not concerned. “I don’t think we should read too much into those numbers,” Mr. Dubé said. “In the first groups we will see the most enthusiastic people. In coming weeks, I’m convinced more will sign up.”
The public shows more interest in getting vaccinated quickly, according to a poll from the Angus Reid Institute. Results published on Monday showed 48 per cent of Canadians want to be vaccinated as soon as possible, a rise of eight percentage points from one month earlier. Seventy-nine per cent of Canadians said they would get vaccinated soon or eventually, a rise of three percentage points from one month earlier.
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Noni MacDonald, a Dalhousie University professor who researches vaccine safety and policy, said it’s normal for some people to hesitate.
“For anything that’s new, it doesn’t matter if it’s technology, a health care intervention, a different car, whatever, there are early adopters, and there are people who want to wait and watch. It doesn’t surprise me that there’s some health care workers who want to wait and watch,” Dr. MacDonald said. But she added she was surprised by the number, because the vaccine is an important way for workers in health care facilities to protect themselves.
The federal public-health agency is planning an education campaign for the new year to target priority groups. Spokesperson Natalie Mohamed said the campaign will cover vaccine safety, the regulatory process, and the need to continue to follow public-health advice to limit the spread of COVID-19.
That campaign should target Canadians where they get their information, Dr. MacDonald said.
“Seniors are not on TikTok,” Dr. MacDonald said. “So how I might want to reach a 20- to 30-year-old is very different than how I would want to reach an over-80-year-old.” Similarly, she said some new Canadians and refugees are less likely to trust a government message, so the campaign has to be adapted.
Federal officials could not give a precise timeline for the arrival of 249,000 doses expected by the end of the month. Canada is to receive 30,000 doses this week, but officials are less certain about 30,000 that had been scheduled for next week.
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“We’re not expecting 30,000 next week,” said Major-General Dany Fortin, who is leading the logistics for the Public Health Agency of Canada. “But at this time, I’m not prepared to speak to the exact numbers.”
Christina Antoniou, a spokesperson for Pfizer Canada, said the company will be able to “deliver on our full committed volume and meet the needs of Canadian vaccination points by the end of the month.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford warned Ontarians of the long road ahead, asking people to follow public-health rules in the meantime. “This is a watershed moment — the beginning of the end of this terrible pandemic,” Mr. Ford said.
The province intends to vaccinate 2,500 health care workers in hospitals and long-term homes this week and save the rest of the vaccine for the second dose required in three weeks. The Ontario vaccine went to Toronto’s University Health Network and The Ottawa Hospital.
Quebec plans to give out all of its first shipment as first doses, concentrating on nursing home residents and workers.
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B.C. and Alberta each received 3,900 doses on Monday. B.C.’s will be administered on Tuesday at two sites in the Vancouver Coastal and Fraser Health regions, while Alberta’s will be administered on Wednesday at two hospitals in Edmonton and two in Calgary.
B.C. Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry said she expects the vaccine to be available to health care workers at nine sites next week, with plans to expand to 30. Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro expected his province to have eight vaccination sites in coming weeks.
Manitoba is expected to receive enough vaccine to immunize 900 people beginning on Wednesday. The first group will be mainly older health care workers. As of Monday, 668 health care workers had booked appointments, Premier Brian Pallister said.
With a report from Andrea Woo
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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.
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