OTTAWA —
The federal government is making plans to ship doses of Moderna’s vaccine candidate across the country — including to the North — on the assumption that Health Canada will soon be authorizing it the second COVID-19 shot safe for use in this country.
At the latest briefing on the status of Canada’s national COVID-19 vaccine rollout plans, Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the top military general in charge of Canada’s distribution, said that dry runs are underway under the assumption that Moderna shots will be administered before the end of the month.
“We’re taking deliberate steps to ensure the safe and efficient distribution of the Moderna vaccine candidate across the country,” Fortin said. “We’ll deliver the Moderna vaccine to the locations specified by provinces and territories, so that they can commence immunization as quickly as possible once it’s approved and available.”
On Tuesday, the federal government announced it had updated its contract with Moderna to access up to 168,000 doses of its vaccine in December, arriving between 24 and 48 hours after regulatory approval. It was also announced that, by next week, another 56 distribution sites will be set up to administer doses to prioritized groups of Canadians across the country.
“We’re continuing our planning with sort of the planning assumption that the Moderna vaccine will be available,” said Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Howard Njoo.
Health Canada is still evaluating the Moderna vaccine submission for safety and efficacy, after beginning that process on Oct. 12.
Health Canada Director of Medical Sciences Dr. Marc Berthiaume said Wednesday that the agency is still awaiting quality control information from the pharmaceutical giant, but expects the assessment to be completed “in the coming weeks.”
A key difference with the Moderna distribution plan from how things have been rolling with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine so far, is that Canada will be in charge of picking up, bringing home, and getting the shipments across the country. In the case of the Pfizer vaccine, the manufacturer contracted UPS to handle the delivery given the extreme cold temperature requirements of that vaccine.
On Wednesday, officials said that Moderna will be packing up its doses and putting them on dry ice with data loggers attached to monitor the temperature, but from there FedEx Express Canada and Innomar Strategies Inc. — Canada’s contracted distributors — will be picking up Canada’s Moderna doses in Europe, and flying them to a central location in Canada. Then, the allotments for each region of the country will be sent out.
For the territories, Moderna’s vaccine will be the first they receive, after the decision was made to not send up the -70 C Pfizer shots. Five freezers capable of keeping the Moderna doses stable at -20 C were delivered to the territories by the Canadian Armed Forces earlier this week.
Because the North didn’t receive the Pfizer shots, it’s expected they will receive more than the per capita percentage of Moderna vaccines. Additional Moderna doses will also be directed to vulnerable remote and Indigenous communities as well, in the weeks ahead.
Officials said that it’ll be the responsibility of the provinces to see that the doses allotted to Indigenous communities get there, though Indigenous Services Canada will be involved.
Chief Medical Officer of Public Health and Indigenous Services Canada Dr. Tom Wong said at the briefing that talks are ongoing about ensuring the equitable distribution of coming doses, though there isn’t a clear plan for what would happen if some provinces don’t agree with how the doses are being divided up.
Fortin also noted that the deliveries won’t be perfectly equitable every time, because of the differences in shipping vaccines to urban and remote locations.
“While we have a per capita distribution, it is entirely possible that a particular community gets an appropriate number of vaccines, all at once, while others do not until we have the next shipment. Only because of the practicality of delivering this over a very large country that’s sparsely populated, in the middle of winter, in places where there isn’t even daylight for months,” Fortin said.
As this planning continues, so does the administration of Pfizer vaccines, with more provinces beginning their immunization campaigns on Wednesday.
So far, according to Fortin, the vaccine effort has been “a success.”
“First deliveries went exactly according to plan. The National Operations Center at the Public Health Agency had positive in-transit visibility on each shipment… The level of cooperation between Pfizer-BioNTech, the logistics service provider UPS, and the Canadian Border Services Agency was excellent throughout,” said Fortin.
He said that while Canada doesn’t yet have a breakdown of the number of doses to be expected from Pfizer in January—as it’s something the company is sorting out amid numerous global orders—the government “have assurances that we’ll get the quantity that’s been earmarked for 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.
