OTTAWA —
Canada is on track to see a “strong resurgence” of COVID-19 cases across the country if the more transmissible variants continue to spread and become more commonplace, and if public health measures remain at current levels, according to new modelling.
New long-range projections being presented by Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) officials show that if Canadians increase, or even maintain the current number of people they come into contact with each day, COVID-19 cases are set to spike to levels not yet experienced during this pandemic.
This is prompting Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam to implore people and provinces to take more precautions and reassess current steps, such as new closures and ensuring people are using effective masks whenever physical distance cannot be maintained.
“Current community-based public health measures will be insufficient to control rapid growth,” she told reporters Friday. “It’s clear that we need to hold on together a bit stronger and longer until vaccines have us better protected,” she said, calling the latest figures “discouraging, after so many months of sacrifice.”
Seeking to offer an incentive to double-down now, Tam said that eventually easing restrictions will only be possible if current spread is brought under control.
Despite these warnings, at least one premier has already come out questioning PHAC’s data. Asked whether it’s time to reassess that province’s restrictions, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney cast doubt on Tam’s past predictions, saying that in his view they have been proved to be “spectacularly inaccurate,” though the most recent past modelling accurately predicted the current uptick in variant spread.
Kenney is continuing to call for the federal government to gain faster access to more vaccines as the way to prevent further lockdowns or the variants taking hold.
It’s a call that echoes Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s recent requests. In Ontario, restrictions were recently eased slightly in certain regions, though considerable variant spread is being detected. On Friday, Tam suggested that the frequent up and down of imposing and then lifting of measures as soon as the spread starts to come down, is the wrong approach at this time.
“It may not be stay at home for every area… You’ve got to implement measures that work in your community where people are going to stick to as few interactions,” she said. “If there are detections that this activity is ramping up, then definitely don’t relax.”
VARIANT SPREAD INCREASING
The modelling shows that the number of and proportion of variant of concern cases are “increasing rapidly” in several parts of Canada, and that the experience internationally demonstrates that stronger measures are needed if Canada wants to control the spread of more contagious variants.
“In parts of Canada where variants of concern represent an increasingly high proportion of cases and are associated with a greater number of outbreaks, we need to maintain high degree of vigilance to keep COVID-19 infections rates down as vaccine programs scale up,” Tam said Friday, noting Canada is currently in a “tight race” against the variants.
Following the modelling presentation, Health Minister Patty Hajdu pointed to the $53 million being spent on a national “variants of concern strategy” that includes funding for research into the variants, surveillance of their spread, and sequencing of the virus.
Daily case counts and severity indicators are once again on the rise, after an easing off of lockdown measures in major provinces west of Atlantic Canada, with an average of 4,057 new cases, 2,194 hospitalizations, and 29 deaths over the past seven days.
Source: Public Health Agency of Canada. Data as of March 24, 2021.
“Daily case counts have increased over 30 per cent in the past two weeks… Every 100 cases in Canada, passes the virus to more than 100 others,” said Tam, advising Canadians it is not safe to gather in groups in-person for coming celebrations such as Easter, Ramadan and Passover.
The highest incidences of COVID-19 are currently being experienced in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and parts of Ontario, while overall the incidence rates are highest among young adults aged 20 to 39 and have declined among older Canadians.
VACCINES ALONE WON’T FLATTEN CURVE
In a positive indication that vaccinations are working to tamp down new outbreaks among highly-immunized settings, the number and size of outbreaks in long-term care homes and other retirement residences continue to be on the decline.
However, Tam said seeing more people vaccinated will not be enough to ease public health measures and other restrictions, noting that virus transmission; efficient public health capacity to test, trace and quarantine new cases; sufficient health care capacity exists to respond to surges; and risk-reduction measures are in place in high risk settings, are all components that will need to be in place before life gets back to some degree of normalcy.
Source: Public Health Agency of Canada. Data as of March 24, 2021.
Summer “holds promise” and Canada is “closer now than ever” to a new-normal, according to Friday’s presentation, but Canadians should expect to maintain, for some time to come, the personal health precautions adopted in the last year.
The short-term forecast is predicting Canada will hit between 973,080 to 1,005,020 cases by April 4, and between 22,875 to 23,315 cumulative deaths.
As of the modelling being issued there have been more than 951,500 COVID-19 cases and 22,790 deaths in Canada.
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.
