OTTAWA —
A Canadian patient newly diagnosed with COVID-19 recently travelled to Las Vegas and used public transit in Toronto for several days before he was tested for the virus, says the Toronto public health authority.
The man, who is in his 40s, was one of the two most recently confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in Toronto.
“This information is being provided out of an abundance of caution. We’re talking about low-risk situations,” Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s top public health doctor, told a briefing Friday.
Transit riders without COVID-19 symptoms do not need to seek medical help, de Villa said, unless they get a call from her unit.
The other Toronto case, a man in his 50s, recently returned to Canada from Iran. Both men are isolating themselves in their homes.
In Peel Region just west of Toronto, a couple who had been on the Grand Princess cruise ship in San Francisco was diagnosed after returning home to Mississauga, Ont.
Peel Public Health is asking passengers in rows 18 to 22 on WestJet Flight 1199 on Feb. 28 to self-isolate, but says the risk of contracting COVID-19 remains low.
Another 237 Canadians have been forbidden from leaving the ship after a subsequent cruise while some of the thousands of passengers aboard now are tested, says a spokesperson for Princess Cruises.
The Public Health Agency of Canada was trying to find more than 260 Canadians who were on the last voyage of the Grand Princess cruise ship after fellow Canadian passengers were diagnosed with COVID-19 following their cruise.
Three of Canada’s 54 confirmed or presumptive cases of the virus are among passengers who were on the vessel from Feb. 11 to 21. The cruise began and ended in San Francisco.
The ship is off the coast of California with 237 Canadians on board and forbidden from leaving, the cruise line says, and some of the thousands of passengers on board are being tested for the virus.
Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said most of the cases in Canada so far have been mild, and the patients are self isolating at home. About seven people are in hospital, but that does not necessarily mean those patients are severely ill, she said.
“We’ve been having these plans, we’ve rehearsed them, we’ve been through a previous pandemic, we’ve been through co-ordination for Ebola response, for example. So each individual player in the federal and provincial system knows how those co-ordination mechanisms work,” Tam told a news conference Friday.
So far in Ontario, all of the 28 patients known to be sick had recently travelled outside the country or were in close contact with another patient who had.
However, Canada’s first apparent case of community transmission was reported in British Columbia on Thursday night, when officials announced eight new cases of the illness.
They say a woman in the Vancouver area was diagnosed with COVID-19, even though she had not travelled recently and had no known contact with anyone else diagnosed with the virus.
Quebec has two confirmed cases and one presumptive diagnosis that still has to be confirmed by the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. Alberta has reported two presumptive cases of the illness.
Health officials in Ontario, British Columbia and across Canada have said the risk posed by COVID-19 in this country remains low.
But they’ve been preparing for weeks for a possible outbreak similar to the ones seen in Iran, South Korea, Italy and China — where the virus originated.
Canada is increasing its funding for COVID-19 research by $20 million, Health Minister Patty Hajdu announced Friday, after concluding that the $7 million it had planned to spend isn’t enough.
The applications for the initial amount were “overwhelming,” Hajdu said.
Forty-seven research teams will now get backing from the federal government for work to “inform clinical and public health responses, develop and evaluate diagnostic tools and vaccines, as well as create strategies to tackle misinformation, stigma, and fear.”
“It also allows Canada to be at the ground level of this research so that when a vaccine is developed we are partners with other countries, that we can access that vaccine or that treatment quickly,” Hajdu said.
Meanwhile, the 129 Canadians who were quarantined after returning to Canada from a coronavirus-stricken cruise ship in Japan have finally been allowed to return home.
The Canadians were mostly confined to their rooms for two weeks aboard the Diamond Princess docked at Yokohama, Japan. The ship contained the largest outbreak outside of China at the time.
The Canadian government repatriated those without signs of the virus and put them under a further 14-day quarantine at the Nav Centre in Cornwall, Ont.
“These individuals remained asymptomatic for COVID-19 throughout the 14-day quarantine period and, as a result, they pose no risk to others and can safely return to their communities and to their usual activities,” Tam said in a written statement.
British Columbia Premier John Horgan announced the province is activating its provincial pandemic plan to deal with COVID-19, with a committee of deputy ministers overseeing the province’s response to the virus.
About about 2,000 people have already been tested and the province now has four labs to do the testing, Horgan said.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said the province is ready to use emergency powers to protect the population, health workers, and the health system’s capacity to help patients with other problems.
The B.C. government is also preparing for how it will function if large numbers of public employees get sick, Dix said, adding the plan is to be ready to operate under an outbreak that lasts up to four months.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 6, 2020.
–With files from Nicole Thompson and Michelle McQuigge in Toronto, and Laura Kane in Vancouver.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
