As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread throughout several parts of Canada, the country hit more then 10,000 confirmed cases on Thursday.
Ontario announced 401 more cases on April 2, putting the total for country at over 10,000 cases. That’s a stark increase compared to where the country was on March 1, with only 24 confirmed cases at that time.
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer acknowledged the country reaching over 10,000 cases in a press conference on April 2.
“These represent infections from previous exposures and not what is happening right now necessarily,” she said.
“So even if you’re not hearing of cases in your community, it doesn’t mean there is no risk of exposure. We must all consider that anyone could be infected and keeping our two-metre distance is the safest bet,” she explained.
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The provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec have the highest numbers of COVID-19 cases.
There also continues to be ongoing concern for Indigenous communities along with retirement homes and correctional facilities, where vulnerable people are in close quarters with others.
So far, there have been outbreaks and deaths in some of these spaces, said Tam at a press conference on March 31.
Multiple provinces including B.C., Alberta and Ontario have seen a string of COVID-19-related deaths stemming from outbreaks at nursing homes and long-term care facilities, raising concerns about how protected residents and care workers in those facilities are.
The chart below only includes confirmed cases, not presumptive cases. To see all the presumptive cases in the country, see Health Canada’s chart here.
The Public Health Agency of Canada reports that community transmission applies to 64 per cent of Canada’s COVID-19 cases, meaning those people were infected without travelling or being close to someone who has a confirmed case.
The extent of community spread cases can be difficult to track based on testing rates and if some people are asymptomatic, they know they are carrying the illness.
Thirty-six per cent of the cases are due to travel or a person being exposed to a traveller returning to Canada. So far, this data applies to 4,183 confirmed Canadian cases, according to the Public Health Agency.
As Canada’s total case count surpasses 10,000, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam says what the new numbers don’t show is the point in time when people became sick, she said at a recent press conference.
“What you’re seeing today is what happened to someone when they were symptomatic at least two weeks ago,” she said.
Finding context in cases and the source of outbreaks can be difficult for public health agencies to discern and it will take some time to analyze whether social distancing and closures have made an impact in the last few weeks, she explained.
This week, however, is “crucial” to see whether these protocols have had any effect.
“There are still outbreaks connected to a number of high-risk settings in Canada, particularly in long-term care facilities. So there’s still an urgent need to double-down on precautions,” she said.
“While many cases occur in younger adults, it really is people over the age of 60 who account for 60 per cent of the hospitalizations and 90 per cent of deaths. The high-risk population needs to take every precaution.”
Testing efforts have also ramped up across the provinces, with more than 222,000 Canadians having been tested as of March 30. However, Ontario has faced criticism for their backlog of tests that had grown to just under 11,000 as of a week ago.
A Global News data analysis found that Ontario had the lowest testing rates at 351 per 100,000. In comparison, B.C. has a rate of 846 people tested per 100,000 as of April 1.
Ontario is still working through a backlog of cases, which is why the province is reporting increases in the hundreds recently, explained Christine Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott at a press conference on April 1.
On March 31, the province tested 6,245 people in one day, which is double the number of people tested from the day before.
“The cases that are currently being diagnosed are really historic cases, looking back at what has happened over the last week to 10 days,” said Elliott.
“What’s going to be most important is what we are going to see when the backlog is cleared over the next day or so. We will then be dealing with current information and that is what’s going to tell us where we are in terms of flattening the curve.”
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Do we know what will happen next?
On March 27, B.C.’s health officials released their own data predictions about what’s in store for the province. The modelling showed that the province’s transmission rate had dropped from 24 per cent to 12 per cent.
Researchers compared B.C.’s COVID-19 growth rate to other regions like South Korea, northern Italy and Hubei province in China to see how B.C.’s hospitals would be able to handle the spread of the virus. The results showed B.C. is similar to having a scenario like South Korea and if that analysis is accurate, the province would have enough hospital beds and ventilators.
However, Tam has warned that Canada is a “big country” and outcomes may vary starkly between provinces and territories.
While the B.C. data is “promising,” we should be “very cautious in making any definitive claims and even more so when it comes to generalizing these findings to other provinces,” said Dr. Suzanne Sicchia, an associate professor at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough, in a previous Global News report.
This week and next week are crucial for health officials as they will give them a better sense of whether measures taken to flatten the curve are actually effective, she said.
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“To these ends, the experts will be watching to see if there is a decrease in the rate of new, confirmed cases,” Sicchia said..
This week we may also see many beginning to have symptoms based on what’s known about the virus’ incubation period, according to Dr. Jeff Kwong, an infectious disease specialist and associate professor in the department of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto in a previous Global News report.
“It’s going to be this week or the next week that we’re going to see a wave of people who are really sick,“ Kwong said.
“We know there’s lots cases out there — most are mild — but how many of all these cases are going to be severe?” he said. “That’s what we’re going to start to see this week.”
According to Public Health, COVID-19 is a “serious health threat” and numbers continue to change on a daily basis.
“The risk will vary between and within communities, but given the increasing number of cases in Canada, the risk to Canadians is considered high,” the organization noted.
However, Public Health wants to ensure the public understand not all Canadians will get the disease. The focus should continue to be flattening the curve by physical distancing, self-isolation if you have any symptoms or recently travelling and staying home as much as you can.
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4:34 Answering your coronavirus medical questions
Answering your coronavirus medical questions
Questions about COVID-19? Here are some things you need to know:
Health officials caution against all international travel. Returning travellers are legally obligated to self-isolate for 14 days, beginning March 26, in case they develop symptoms and to prevent spreading the virus to others. Some provinces and territories have also implemented additional recommendations or enforcement measures to ensure those returning to the area self-isolate.
Symptoms can include fever, cough and difficulty breathing — very similar to a cold or flu. Some people can develop a more severe illness. People most at risk of this include older adults and people with severe chronic medical conditions like heart, lung or kidney disease. If you develop symptoms, contact public health authorities.
To prevent the virus from spreading, experts recommend frequent handwashing and coughing into your sleeve. They also recommend minimizing contact with others, staying home as much as possible and maintaining a distance of two metres from other people if you go out.
For full COVID-19 coverage from Global News, click here.
— With files from Global News’ Emerald Bensadoun, Patrick Cain, Hannah Jackson and Amanda Connolly.
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
