News
Canada’s ERs are under intense pressure — and winter is coming
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Hospital emergency departments are jammed up in much of the country even before the traditional flu season begins, raising concerns about the winter months ahead.
In Montreal, for instance, ERs hovered at about 150 per cent capacity for much of the past week — and some surpassed 200 per cent.
Dr. Judy Morris, head of the Quebec Association of Emergency Physicians, said the sustained pressure on the system from the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent staffing shortages has taken a toll.
“It’s kind of unseen to have that over such a long period,” said Morris, an emergency physician at Sacré-Coeur hospital in Montreal.
“Certainly the lack of personnel — all types of personnel, but mostly nursing personnel — is hurting us across the health-care network.”
The situation is also troubling in other parts of Canada, including Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario.
“I’ve been in emergency medicine for almost 19 years now, and I have never seen the waits that our patients have to endure at all,” said Dr. Carolyn Snider, the head of emergency medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital in downtown Toronto.
“I think what’s most concerning about it is that it doesn’t feel like there’s an end in sight for so many of us.”
Dr. Supriya Sharma, Health Canada’s chief medical adviser, noted that another COVID-19 wave is beginning in Europe.
“There’s concerns that we might see a worse flu season than we’ve seen from the last couple of years and as well as keeping an eye on COVID cases,” she said.
“It’s a matter of really being watchful and putting in place as many of our multi layers of our multi-layer public health approach as we possibly can.”
Wait times up, rural ERs scaled back
An Ontario Health report leaked by the Liberal opposition last week illustrates the extent of the problem in that province.
Patients in an emergency room waited more than 33 hours for an inpatient bed in August, a 54 per cent increase compared with the same month a year earlier. Ambulance offload times also rose, with patients waiting up to 83 minutes before entering the hospital.
At the local level, authorities are warning the public of a challenging fall and winter ahead and urging residents to get their influenza and COVID-19 booster shots.
In eastern Ontario, Hastings Prince Edward Public Health, which is based in Belleville, issued a statement on Friday pointing to the continued prevalence of COVID-19, along with an expected resurgence of influenza and a health-care system already under strain.
“This year, residents are encouraged to get the influenza vaccine when it becomes available, and to stay up-to-date with COVID-19 vaccines, to reduce their risk of severe illness and to reduce the risk of spreading illness to others,” said Dr. Ethan Toumishey, medical officer of health at the unit.
Widespread staff shortages in health care have forced Kingston Health Sciences Centre to shuffle patients between departments, occasionally close a section of the emergency department and treat people in hallways. CBC News’ chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault witnesses the toll it has taken on employees and patients at the Ontario hospital.
Emergency rooms in British Columbia are also under strain, said Aman Grewal, head of the B.C. Nurses’ Union.
She said many hospitals in rural areas have, at times, scaled back services or closed on the weekends due to a staffing shortage — putting more pressure on larger hospitals.
“Those patients that would have gone to that hospital are now having to travel an hour and a half to two hours to a more tertiary site,” Grewal said. The staffing shortage will only get worse, she said, if governments don’t put money into education programs for young nurses, as well as provide better salaries and working conditions to retain those on the job.
In Quebec, more than 4,000 health-care workers were off the job on Friday due to COVID-19, the highest number in nearly two months.
Morris, head of the province’s emergency physicians’ association, said the lack of staff, a resurgence in COVID-19 patients and backlogs elsewhere in the system are all contributing to overloaded ERs.
“When patients have nowhere to go, they come to the emergency room, and that’s why our numbers are high. But mostly we need personnel in order to open up more beds so that they can be in the right place to get the care they need,” she said.
“We’re feeling this way going into what is traditionally one of the busiest seasons with flu and another wave in front of us or upon us with COVID as well, and it’s pretty worrisome.”
The number of Quebec patients in hospital with COVID-19 climbed beyond 2,000 last week for the first time since August, prompting the province’s health minister, Christian Dubé, to once again encourage people to get their booster shots.
‘Patients have gotten more complex’
Snider of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto said the problem isn’t likely to be solved any time soon. Put simply, the number of patients coming into the hospital is greater than the number going out, she said.
“I think everybody can sort of grasp that, and there’s only so many beds in the end,” she said.
“As our patients have gotten more complex, as our patients are getting older, we need more and improved care for them when they leave.”
In an attempt to free up hospital beds, the Ontario government made the controversial decision to allow seniors to be sent up to 150 kilometres away for long-term care.
Snider said authorities will need to move quickly to free up space in the winter months and should think creatively in doing so.
“Do we need to take over hotels, do we need to take over apartment buildings and ensure that good care is being provided in different spaces than we’re used to, because we’re at such a crisis state in our health-care system,” she said.
“The other very important piece of this is: Who are the humans that are going to take care of our patients and our loved ones — and that continues to be a problem across Canada? I would say that most of our nurses, if not all, are really not paid for the hard work that they do.”
More money will land in the pockets of Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit (CCB) installment.
The federal government program helps low and middle-income families struggling with the soaring cost of raising a child.
Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or refugees who are the primary caregivers for children under 18 years old are eligible for the program, introduced in 2016.
The non-taxable monthly payments are based on a family’s net income and how many children they have. Families that have an adjusted net income under $34,863 will receive the maximum amount per child.
For a child under six years old, an applicant can annually receive up to $7,437 per child, and up to $6,275 per child for kids between the ages of six through 17.
That translates to up to $619.75 per month for the younger cohort and $522.91 per month for the older group.
The benefit is recalculated every July and most recently increased 6.3 per cent in order to adjust to the rate of inflation, and cost of living.
To apply, an applicant can submit through a child’s birth registration, complete an online form or mail in an application to a tax centre.
The next payment date will take place on May 17.
News
Capital gains tax change draws ire from some Canadian entrepreneurs worried it will worsen brain drain – CBC.ca
A chorus of Canadian entrepreneurs and investors is blasting the federal government’s budget for expanding a tax on the rich. They say it will lead to brain drain and further degrade Canada’s already poor productivity.
In the 2024 budget unveiled Tuesday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government would increase the inclusion rate of the capital gains tax from 50 per cent to 67 per cent for businesses and trusts, generating an estimated $19 billion in new revenue.
Capital gains are the profits that individuals or businesses make from selling an asset — like a stock or a second home. Individuals are subject to the new changes on any profits over $250,000.
The government estimates that the changes would impact 40,000 individuals (or 0.13 per cent of Canadians in any given year) and 307,000 companies in Canada.
However, some members of the business community say that expanding the taxable amount will devastate productivity, investment and entrepreneurship in Canada, and might even compel some of the country’s talent and startups to take their business elsewhere.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland unveiled the government’s 2024 federal budget, with spending targeted at young voters and a plan to raise capital gains taxes for some of the wealthiest Canadians.
Benjamin Bergen, president of the Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), said the capital gains tax has overshadowed parts of the federal budget that the business community would otherwise be excited about.
“There were definitely some other stars in the budget that were interesting,” he said. “However, the … capital gains piece really is the sun, and it’s daylight. So this is really the only thing that innovators can see.”
The CCI has written and is circulating an open letter signed by more than 1,000 people in the Canadian business community to Trudeau’s government asking it to scrap the tax change.
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and president Harley Finkelstein also weighed in on the proposed hike on X, formerly known as Twitter.
We need to be doing everything we can to turn Canada into the best place for entrepreneurs to build 🇨🇦<br><br>What’s proposed in the federal budget will do the complete opposite. Innovators and entrepreneurs will suffer and their success will be penalized — this is not a wealth tax,…
—@harleyf
Former finance minister Bill Morneau said his successor’s budget disincentivizes businesses from investing in the country’s innovation sector: “It’s probably very troubling for many investors.”
Canada’s productivity — a measure that compares economic output to hours worked — has been relatively poor for decades. It underperforms against the OECD average and against several other G7 countries, including the U.S., Germany, U.K. and Japan, on the measure.
Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers sounded the alarm on Canada’s lagging productivity in a speech last month, saying the country’s need to increase the rate had reached emergency levels, following one of the weakest years for the economy in recent memory.
The government said it was proposing the tax change to make life more affordable for younger generations and fund efforts to boost housing supply — and that it would support productivity growth.
A challenge for investors, founders and workers
The change could have a chilling effect for several reasons, with companies already struggling to access funding in a high interest rate environment, said Bergen.
He questioned whether investors will want to fund Canadian companies if the government’s taxation policies make it difficult for those firms to grow — and whether founders might just pack up.
The expanded inclusion rate “is just one of the other potential concerns that firms are going to have as they’re looking to grow their companies.”
He said the rejigged tax is also an affront to high-skilled workers from low-innovation sectors who might have taken the risk of joining a startup for the opportunity, even taking a lower wage on the chance that a firm’s stock options grow in value.
But Lindsay Tedds, an associate economics professor at the University of Calgary, said the tax change is one of the most misunderstood parts of the federal budget — and that its impact on the country’s talent has been overstated.
“This is not a major innovation-biting tax change treatment,” Tedds said. “In fact, when you talk to real grassroots entrepreneurs that are setting up businesses, tax rates do not come into their decision.”
As for productivity, Tedds said Canadians might see improvements in the long run “to the degree that some of our productivity problems are driven by stresses like housing affordability, access to child care, things like that.”
‘One foot on the gas, one foot on the brake’
Some say the government is sending mixed messages to entrepreneurs by touting tailored tax breaks — like the Canada Entrepreneurs’ Incentive, which reduces the capital gains inclusion rate to 33 per cent on a lifetime maximum of $2 million — while introducing measures they say would dampen investment and innovation.
“They seem to have one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake on the very same file,” said Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
Some business groups are worried that new capital gains tax changes could hurt economic growth. But according to Small Business Minister Rechie Valdez, most Canadians won’t be impacted by that change — and it’s a move to create fairness.
A founder may be able to sell their successful company with a lower capital gains treatment than otherwise possible, he said.
“At the same time, though, big chunks of it may be subject to a higher rate of capital gains inclusion.”
Selling a company can fund an individual’s retirement, he said, which is why it’s one of the first things founders consider when they think about capital gains.
Mainstreet NS7:03Ottawa is proposing a hike to capital gains tax. What does that mean?
Tuesday’s federal budget includes nearly $53 billion in new spending over the next five years with a clear focus on affordability and housing. To help pay for some of that new spending, Ottawa is proposing a hike to the capital gains tax. Moshe Lander, an economics lecturer at Concordia University, joins host Jeff Douglas to explain.
Dennis Darby, president and CEO of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, says he was disappointed by the change — and that it sends the wrong message to Canadian industries like his own.
He wants to see the government commit to more tax credit proposals like the Canada Carbon Rebate for Small Businesses, which he said would incentivize business owners to stay and help make Canada competitive with the U.S.
“We’ve had a lot of difficulties attracting investment over the years. I don’t think this will make it any better.”
Tech titan says change will only impact richest of the rich
Toronto tech entrepreneur Ali Asaria will be one of those subject to the expanded capital gains inclusion rate — but he says it’s only fair.
“It’s going to really affect the richest of the rich people,” Asaria, CEO of open source platform Transformer Lab and founder of well.ca, told CBC News.
“The capital gains exemption is probably the largest tax break that I’ve ever received in my life,” he said. “So I know a lot about what that benefit can look like, but I’ve also always felt like it was probably one of the most unfair parts of the tax code today.”
While Asaria said Canada needs to continue encouraging talent to take risks and build companies in the country, taxation policies aren’t the most major problem.
“I think that the biggest central issue to the reason why people will leave Canada is bigger issues, like housing,” he said.
“How do we make it easier to live in Canada so that we can all invest in ourselves and invest in our companies? That’s a more important question than, ‘How do we help the top 0.13 per cent of Canadians make more money?'”
More money will land in the pockets of Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit (CCB) installment.
The federal government program helps low and middle-income families struggling with the soaring cost of raising a child.
Canadian citizens, permanent residents, or refugees who are the primary caregivers for children under 18 years old are eligible for the program, introduced in 2016.
The non-taxable monthly payments are based on a family’s net income and how many children they have. Families that have an adjusted net income under $34,863 will receive the maximum amount per child.
For a child under six years old, an applicant can annually receive up to $7,437 per child, and up to $6,275 per child for kids between the ages of six through 17.
That translates to up to $619.75 per month for the younger cohort and $522.91 per month for the older group.
The benefit is recalculated every July and most recently increased 6.3 per cent in order to adjust to the rate of inflation, and cost of living.
To apply, an applicant can submit through a child’s birth registration, complete an online form or mail in an application to a tax centre.
The next payment date will take place on May 17.
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