OTTAWA —
Canada will be receiving up to 200,000 more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine next week and potentially up to 168,000 Moderna vaccine doses by the end of December. This means thousands more Canadians will be vaccinated before the end of the year.
“Canada has secured our second agreement for early doses of COVID-19 vaccines,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday, announcing that a second vaccine could be available for use in this country within days.
The federal government has updated its contract with Moderna, to secure delivery of an initial tranche of doses of its vaccine candidate within 48 hours of Health Canada approval. The first 168,000 doses are expected to arrive in a series of shipments, and would be the first of what was expected to be two million Moderna doses contracted to arrive in Canada by the end of March 2021.
Overall, Canada has secured access to 20 million Pfizer doses—four million of which are set to land by the end of March— and 40 million Moderna doses, with options to buy thousands more from each manufacturer if needed.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses, with Pfizer’s shots to be given 21 days apart, and Moderna’s to be given 28 days apart.
This news comes on the second day of the largest mass vaccination effort in Canadian history, as more health-care workers and seniors begin receiving their immunizations with the Pfizer shot, which arrived in this country on Sunday and was in the first arms by midday Monday.
Canada made a deal to receive 249,000 Pfizer doses this month, and by next week 230,000 of those doses will have landed. There are currently 14 sites across the provinces that are up and running, receiving the initial doses. Trudeau said Tuesday that by next week the number of places able to handle and administer Pfizer shots will grow to 70, meaning an additional 56 will be added across the country.
“As with the early shipments of the Pfizer vaccine, this moves us even further forward on getting Canadians protected as quickly as possible,” Trudeau said.
Procurement Minister Anita Anand said the federal government is paying fair market value for these doses, but wouldn’t say whether getting early doses—something the government wasn’t anticipating early on—comes at an additional cost.
The government also continues to say that the prospect of private companies looking to get in line for vaccine doses won’t impede Canadians’ access.
“All Canadians who want one, will get a free vaccine in the coming months of 2021,” Trudeau said.
STILL REVIEWING MODERNA
Health Canada is still evaluating the Moderna vaccine submission for safety and efficacy, after beginning that process on Oct. 12. Officials have said they are on track to authorize it for use in this country soon and provinces have been preparing to be able to have access to this vaccine option later this month.
Health Canada’s chief medical adviser Dr. Supriya Sharma said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press that the agency has received the final clinical data from the pharmaceutical giant, but is awaiting data on its manufacturing plants, which are expected to be provided by the end of the week.
Anand first signalled in an interview on CTV’s Question Period this weekend that the government was in talks with Moderna about receiving initial doses early.
Health Canada has said suppliers can pre-position their orders, which Anand said she has raised with Moderna to see if it’d be an option to secure the fastest possible rollout of vaccines as soon as they are approved.
“Once it receives regulatory approval, it is evident from the pace with which we have been able to move from approval to delivery and rollout of the first vaccination program for priority populations, that ground has been well prepared for the next chapter in our response,” said Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam.
There are two other vaccine candidates in the early stages of Health Canada assessment: Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.
MODERNA DOSES GOING NORTH
The Moderna vaccine candidate still requires cold storage, but not at nearly as extreme cold temperatures as the Pfizer doses that started to be administered in Canada on Monday. This means its approval will open up new possibilities for where vaccines can be sent, stored, and shot into the arms of Canadians.
Because the Pfizer vaccine’s requirements are particularly complicated, initial doses are not being distributed to Indigenous communities or the territories.
Trudeau confirmed that doses of the Moderna vaccine will be directed to the North, as well as to remote and Indigenous communities in “the next few weeks,” adding that based on his discussions with territorial premiers, they’ll be ready to accept shipments.
“No community will be left behind. We have a plan to reach everyone who wants a vaccine, no matter where they live. Of course, shipping in the winter—especially to the far North—isn’t without its challenges,” he said.
Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the top military general who is leading the national rollout from the Public Health Agency of Canada, said that another dry run is planned, to make sure all provinces and other key players are ready to receive Moderna doses.
If approved, the Moderna vaccine would be the first to be delivered using Canada’s contracted delivery plan through FedEx Express Canada and Innomar Strategies Inc. to have doses kept cold while being shipped across the country.
“Canada will be picking up the Moderna vaccine, and that is work that is going on now to ensure that the logistics are in place… We are all ramping up, the companies are ramping up their production and at the same time here in Canada, we are ensuring that logistic systems are in place for the distribution of these vaccines right across the country,” said Anand.
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.
