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Canada’s pandemic response is rapidly shifting toward “learning to live with the virus” — where COVID-19 is eventually treated like other seasonal illnesses, surveillance is massively scaled back and public health measures are widely lifted.
But as some provinces move closer to easing restrictions after facing the deadliest month of the pandemic since COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, there appears to be a dramatic divide on what living with the virus actually means — and how it will work.
“What we need to do going forward, as we emerge out of this Omicron wave, is recognize this virus is not going to disappear,” she said. “We do need to get back to some normalcy.”
But even with record-high hospitalizations and ICU admissions that are only now beginning to show signs of declining nationally, public health officials and politicians across the country have already embraced this new pandemic strategy as they gear up to lift restrictions.
A nurse attends to a patient in the intensive care unit of Humber River Hospital, in Toronto, on Jan. 25. Record-high hospitalizations and ICU admissions are only now beginning to show signs of declining nationally. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Saskatchewan set to lift all restrictions
Saskatchewan pivoted to living with the virus on Thursday by announcing further limits to PCR testing, ending the sharing of daily COVID-19 data and stopping the investigation of most outbreaks outside of hospitals and long-term care.
The shift came after Premier Scott Moe released a letter last Saturday lending support to protesters in Ottawa demanding an end to all vaccine mandates or a change in government, while also inaccurately claiming “vaccination is not reducing transmission.”
Moe’s comments are a huge shift in messaging from what he said just a few months ago, when the premier openly criticized the unvaccinated and imposed mandatory masking and proof of vaccination policies during a devastating fourth wave.
“As a government, we have been patient with those who have chosen to remain unvaccinated,” he said on Sept. 16. “But the time for patience is over.”
Fast forward to today, and while Saskatchewan has left current restrictions like mask mandates and vaccine certificates in place for now, Moe has hinted they won’t last long — and he’s not alone.
“For better or for worse, this is what’s going to happen across the whole country,” said Dr. Alexander Wong, an infectious diseases physician at Regina General Hospital and associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
“The question is, why are we in such a rush to do all of this? It’s clearly political.”
WATCH | Saskatchewan premier says COVID-19 restrictions ‘ending very soon’:
Sask. premier says COVID-19 restrictions ‘ending very soon’
2 days ago
Duration 2:01
Sask. Premier Scott Moe says all provincial COVID-19 restrictions, including proof-of-vaccination and mask mandates, will be “ending very soon,” but health experts say it’s too early to drop such precautions. 2:01
Alberta ready to reopen when hospitalizations drop
“On our COVID ward right now, our hospital is full to the rafters,” said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases physician and associate professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
“And I think at this point talking about, ‘Well we’re just going to go back to normal,’ it doesn’t feel normal yet and I think we do need a bit more of a cushion.”
Saxinger said there is a “necessary transition” that will occur with the pandemic where Canada will move away from COVID-19 case counting, containing outbreaks and trying to find each case — but whether that should happen right now is still unclear.
“There comes a point, especially with Omicron which is so pervasive right now, where that’s not really even feasible. It’s like trying to isolate a tree in a burning forest — it doesn’t necessarily make sense anymore,” she said.
“Does this mean we have to accept the burning forest though?”
WATCH | COVID-19 not going away: Alberta’s top doctor:
COVID-19 will not go away, says Alberta’s top doc
2 days ago
Duration 2:07
Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, says the province will at some point need to move away from a COVID-19 pandemic response into an endemic phase. 2:07
Saxinger said if Canada is planning on moving to a state where a background level of COVID-19 is expected without doing anything extreme to contain it, there has to be clear benchmarks for what level is acceptable and whether we will need to alter course.
“I really regret when people don’t acknowledge that we might have to change our plan,” she said. “To me right now, the discussion of learning to live with it seems early.”
“We’re taking a cautious approach,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Jan. 20, before adding he was “confident” the reopening plan would work and that “the worst is behind us.”
But Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore said Thursday while there is a general improvement in the COVID-19 situation, the coming weeks “will continue to be difficult” for the province’s hospital system.
WATCH | Ontario’s top doctor says ‘we’ve let our lives be controlled’ by COVID-19:
‘We’ve let our lives be controlled’ says Ontario’s top doctor amid surge of Omicron cases
9 days ago
Duration 0:19
Dr. Kieran Moore said Thursday that Canadians have lived with a significant amount of fear about COVID-19 but that thinking is going to have to change. 0:19
“We’re not out of the woods yet. We still have to be cautious,” he said. “But we’ve learned significantly from the last two years and I believe we’re in a much better position to learn to live with this virus and to be less fearful of it.”
Moore said Ontario would be “monitoring the situation internationally,” while other officials have also pointed to countries like Denmark and the U.K., which have recently lifted nearly all COVID-19 restrictions, as examples to watch closely for reopening.
“It’s important to kind of keep an eye on people who are a little bit farther ahead than us as we’re making plans,” Saxinger said. “Because you don’t want to have to relearn the lesson that’s being learned elsewhere already.”
A nurse gowns up before attending to a patient in the intensive care unit of Humber River Hospital, in Toronto, on Jan. 25, 2022. Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health said while there is a general improvement in the COVID-19 situation, the coming weeks “will continue to be difficult” for the hospital system. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
But directly comparing Canada to countries with completely different demographics does not provide firm conclusions on what lies ahead here — especially when our vaccination rates are significantly lower.
“That’s the difference between your hospitalizations not crushing you,” Wong said.
Too early to ‘declare victory’
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu warned Tuesday against the trend gaining traction worldwide to ease restrictions due to public pressure and pandemic fatigue, and cautioned that Omicron should not be underestimated.
“We are concerned that a narrative has taken hold in some countries that because of vaccines — and because of Omicron’s high transmissibility and lower severity — preventing transmission is no longer possible and no longer necessary,” he said at a press conference.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s premature for any country either to surrender or to declare victory. This virus is dangerous and it continues to evolve before our very eyes.”
Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta, said learning to live with the virus shouldn’t mean immediately lifting all public health measures going forward, adding we need to “bring the public along with us” and continue to watch the virus closely in the population.
“It doesn’t mean we’re going to go back to the state of normalcy and COVID is just going to be background noise in our lives,” he said. “It means that we’re constantly going to have to be vigilant.”
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.
