OTTAWA —
Procurement Minister Anita Anand said this week she is confident Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine deliveries will only get better going forward but just hours after she made the remark, Canada’s vaccine purchases got slammed again.
“The worst week was last week,” Anand said in an interview with The Canadian Press Tuesday night.
Canada’s vaccination program was just starting to move past first gear in mid-January when production slowdowns from Pfizer, and then a delay expanding production from Moderna, suddenly saw Canada’s vaccine deliveries plummet.
Canada got no doses at all last week, and this week is getting only 20 per cent of what was previously promised from Pfizer and 80 per cent of what had been promised from Moderna.
Provinces and territories, which in mid-January got close to vaccinating 50,000 people a day, only vaccinated 5,000 people Jan. 31.
Then Europe, in a battle with AstraZeneca over delays to those shipments, imposed export controls on all European-made COVID-19 vaccines. But European Commission officials told Canada the controls wouldn’t affect Canada’s shipments. A spokeswoman for the Commission confirmed Canada’s shipments were approved, and that the controls will be used “only in very limited cases.”
This week Anand got confirmation that Pfizer and Moderna had been authorized to send the doses to Canada and the shipments had been sent.
Tuesday afternoon, she received confirmation from the global vaccine-sharing initiative known as the COVAX Facility, that Canada would be shipped at least 1.9 million and as many as 3.2 million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine by the end of June.
Canada invested $440 million in COVAX last fall, half to secure up to 15 million doses of vaccine for Canada, and half to help buy vaccines for low- and middle-income countries that can’t afford to buy vaccines on their own.
Canada was told of its first allocation in a letter Jan. 30, subject to regulatory approvals and the available supplies of vaccines. The figures were confirmed Tuesday when COVAX shared with Canada a draft document that COVAX planned to publish to its website the next day.
When the document went live Wednesday morning, the higher end of the range had disappeared, and Canada was allocated 1.9 million doses by the end of June, with no mention at all that it could go up to 3.2 million.
Canada is not alone in dealing with a change. Jamaica and the Philippines both published their expected range of deliveries, only to see the COVAX document list the lowest end of the range Wednesday.
Cecely Roy, a spokeswoman for Anand, said COVAX hasn’t explained why.
With two doses required per person, it could be the difference between vaccinating another half a million Canadians before Canada Day.
Canada is also feeling heat from critics who argue Canada is contributing to vaccine nationalism, using its wealth to buy up vaccine doses privately, and not doing enough to ensure vaccines get distributed equitably worldwide.
International Development Minister Karina Gould said that is why Canada joined COVAX. But Gould balked at the idea that Canada should forego deliveries from COVAX in favour of letting the facility send more doses to the world’s poorest places.
“At this point in time, the idea was always with COVAX that you would have developed countries and developing countries participate so that you would have global buy in and support for the process,” Gould said in a separate interview Tuesday.
Canada is currently the only country in the G7 to accept shipments from COVAX, and one of seven in the G20.
Independent MP Jody Wilson-Raybould, a former Liberal justice minister, expressed shock Wednesday that Canada would take deliveries “from poor countries.”
“How can this be true!” she wrote on Twitter.
Opposition leaders and provincial governments are expressing exasperation at the vaccine rollout.
“We knew over a year ago that the way through this pandemic, one of the key tools we needed to fight this pandemic would be the vaccine,” NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said.
Trudeau said Tuesday “we knew there would be some hurdles along the way with unpredictability and increased demand for production,” which is why Canada tried to get as many different vaccines purchased as possible.
The Liberals are banking on that effort eventually working, promising repeatedly that all Canadians who want to be will be vaccinated by the end of September.
It has secured 40 million doses each from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which together should be enough to vaccinate everyone. But three more vaccines — from AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson and Novavax — are likely to be approved within the next two or three months, adding another 82 million doses to the pile.
Gould said Canada is still working on a strategy to donate excess doses through COVAX.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 3, 2021.
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
