The Ontario government is expected to provide more details at some point Wednesday about its newly issued stay-at-home order, as public health units reported another 2,961 cases of COVID-19 and 74 more deaths of people with the illness.
At some point today, the province will publish the legal parameters for the order, which takes effect tomorrow, providing more clarification on the measures. Premier Doug Ford’s office said it likely won’t be posted until this evening.
As of Thursday, residents will have to stay home except for essential purposes such as grocery shopping, accessing health care and exercising. Here’s what you need to know about the new rules.
The province said police and bylaw officers will have the power to enforce the stay-at-home order and issue tickets to rule-breakers, but hasn’t given details on how that will play out in practice.
WATCH | Provincial officials say police have power to enforce new regulations:
However, just hours before the new COVID-19 rule is set to take effect, police officers haven’t been told what the new rules actually are 1:15
But Toronto Fire Chief and head of emergency management Matthew Pegg said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon that the city still doesn’t know how it’s supposed to enforce these new rules.
“Literally, the best information we have right now comes off a media release and a slide deck,” Pegg said. “It simply is not the technical detail we need in order to assess or understand that.
“We are sitting right now in a position where we have … not even seen a draft of the regulations.”
WATCH | Toronto fire chief says city is in the dark on new rules:
How will the province’s stay-at-home order be enforced in Toronto? “We don’t know,” said Toronto Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, who is overseeing the city’s emergency management response. “We have not even seen a draft of the regulations.” 1:15
At a news conference Wednesday, Ford said that people must only leave their homes for essential reasons.
“I know essential means different things to different people … so we need everyone to use their best judgment. If you’re not sure if a trip is absolutely essential, it probably isn’t,” he said.
In a statement Wednesday morning, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) said it is concerned about enforcement of the order, and the lack of detail so far “around the accommodation of constitutional freedoms.”
Michael Bryant, executive director of the CCLA, said that Ontario cannot ticket its way out of a pandemic.
“During the first wave of the pandemic, there were a disproportionate number of tickets for the homeless, the vulnerable and for racialized minorities,” Bryant said.
Ontario under 2nd state of emergency
The order was announced yesterday as the province declared a state of emergency — its second of the COVID-19 pandemic — and unveiled a series of new restrictions meant to slow the spread of the virus.
They included prolonging the pause on in-person learning in schools in five southern Ontario hot spots — Toronto, Hamilton, Peel, York and Windsor-Essex — to at least Feb. 10.
Child-care centres for kids not yet in school will remain open, however.
The government also restricted hours of operation for non-essential retailers currently offering delivery and curbside pickup to between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., and imposed a five-person cap on outdoor social gatherings.
Wearing a mask is also now recommended outdoors when physical distancing is difficult.
Plans to administer vaccine in long-term care by mid-February
The provincial government also said Wednesday it plans to administer the COVID-19 vaccine in all nursing homes and high-risk retirement homes by Feb. 15.
In a technical briefing this morning, members of Ontario’s vaccine distribution task force said residents, workers and essential caregivers at those facilities will get their first doses by that date.
The plan builds on an earlier pledge to give the COVID-19 vaccine to long-term care facilities in hot spots by Jan. 21.
Officials said the government is now able to move the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine safely to long-term care facilities, which has allowed it to speed up immunizations in nursing homes.
Long-term care homes have been hit hard during the pandemic, with 3,063 resident deaths from COVID-19 since March.
At Wednesday’s news conference, Ford was asked about the “iron ring” the province had said it planned to secure around Ontario’s long-term care homes. In response, Ford pleaded with front-line health-care workers to get tested for COVID-19.
“It’s not coming in through the walls and the ceiling … inadvertently though our great health-care workers, it’s coming in,” Ford said.
The premier also said at the news conference it’s possible Canadian Forces soldiers will be called in again to help at some hard-hit homes, although he provided no specifics.
However, a senior official in the Ford government later told CBC News that the province does not believe that any long-term care homes are currently in need of assistance from the military. The Red Cross is already assisting in homes, and no facilities have such a staffing crisis that military support is warranted at this time, said the official.
The province said it had administered more than 144,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccine as of Wednesday, and about 8,000 people had now received the two doses of the vaccine required for full immunization.
Ford later said the province has administered more than 150,000 vaccine doses so far.
“That is changing on an hourly basis,” he said.
“We’re emptying our freezers.”
Ford said the province now has the capacity to administer 20,000 vaccine doses a day, and is working toward 40,000 a day by February.
The province is currently focusing on vaccinating health-care workers and those in long-term care facilities but says people over the age of 80 will be the first priority group to receive the shot when Ontario enters the second phase of its vaccine rollout in April.
No paid sick days in revised plan
Notably absent from the province’s plan were paid sick days for low-wage and essential workers.
During a briefing Tuesday, two doctors helping to guide Ontario’s COVID-19 response said that more social supports, particularly paid sick days, would be essential to limiting further cases of the illness.
The lack of paid sick days for many of the province’s essential workers continues to be a major barrier to reducing transmission of the novel coronavirus in many of the hardest-hit communities, said Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health.
“People need to be supported to do the right thing,” she told reporters.
WATCH | Growing calls for paid sick days for low-wage and essential workers in Ontario:
There are renewed calls for paid sick leave for low-wage and essential workers who fear losing their jobs or income if they miss shifts because they’re sick or need to be tested for COVID-19. 1:51
Furthermore, the medical officers of health in both Toronto and Peel Region have repeatedly called for the provincial government to offer relief for workers who can’t afford to take time off if they fall ill.
Speaking yesterday, Ford said he does not want to double-up on a federal program that offers $500 per week for those who need to take time off work to isolate. Critics, though, have pointed out that the federal initiative does not offer job protection and works out to less than minimum wage.
The forecasts indicate deaths from COVID-19 will surpass those in the pandemic’s first wave unless people dramatically reduce their contact with others.
Death toll now at 5,127
The new cases reported today include 738 in Toronto, 536 in Peel Region, 245 in Windsor-Essex, 219 in York Region, 171 in Hamilton and 154 in Ottawa.
Other public health units that double- or triple-digit increases were:
Waterloo Region: 146
Niagara Region: 131
Durham Region: 119
Middlesex-London: 103
Halton Region: 88
Lambton: 72
Southwestern: 52
Simcoe Muskoka: 50
Brant County: 22
Sudbury: 18
Haldimand-Norfolk: 16
Chatham-Kent: 14
Eastern Ontario: 12
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph: 11
Huron-Perth: 11
Peterborough: 10
(Note: All of the figures used in this story are found on the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard or in its Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any region may differ from what is reported by the local public health unit, because local units report figures at different times.)
The seven-day average of new daily cases fell for a second straight day, down to 3,480 from a pandemic high of 3,555 on Monday.
Ontario’s network of labs processed 50,931 test samples for the novel coronavirus and reported a test positivity rate of 6 per cent, down slightly from recent days, which have seen rates above 7.5 per cent.
There were 1,674 patients in hospitals with COVID-19. Of those, 385 were being treated in intensive care and 276 required a ventilator to breathe.
The 74 additional deaths logged in today’s update push the official toll to 5,127.
FREDERICTON – New Brunswick’s finance minister says the province recorded a surplus of $500.8 million for the fiscal year that ended in March.
Ernie Steeves says the amount — more than 10 times higher than the province’s original $40.3-million budget projection for the 2023-24 fiscal year — was largely the result of a strong economy and population growth.
The report of a big surplus comes as the province prepares for an election campaign, which will officially start on Thursday and end with a vote on Oct. 21.
Steeves says growth of the surplus was fed by revenue from the Harmonized Sales Tax and federal money, especially for health-care funding.
Progressive Conservative Premier Blaine Higgs has promised to reduce the HST by two percentage points to 13 per cent if the party is elected to govern next month.
Meanwhile, the province’s net debt, according to the audited consolidated financial statements, has dropped from $12.3 billion in 2022-23 to $11.8 billion in the most recent fiscal year.
Liberal critic René Legacy says having a stronger balance sheet does not eliminate issues in health care, housing and education.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
HALIFAX – Some Halifax-area landlords say fixed-term leases allow property owners to recoup operating costs they otherwise can’t under Nova Scotia’s rent cap.
Their comments to a legislative committee today are in reaction to plans by the government to extend the five per cent cap on rental increases to the end of 2027.
But opposition parties and housing activists say the bill’s failure to address fixed-term leases has created a loophole that allows large corporate landlords to boost rents past five per cent for new tenants.
But smaller landlords told a committee today that they too benefit from fixed-term leases, which they said help them from losing money on their investment.
Jenna Ross, of Halifax-based Happy Place Property Management, says her company started implementing those types of leases “because of the rent cap.”
Landlord Yarviv Gadish called the use of fixed-term leases “absolutely essential” in order to keep his apartments presentable and to get a return on his investment.
Unlike a periodic lease, a fixed-term lease does not automatically renew beyond its set end date. The provincial rent cap covers periodic leases and situations in which a landlord signs a new fixed-term lease with the same tenant.
However, there is no rule preventing a landlord from raising the rent as much as they want after the term of a fixed lease expires — as long as they lease to someone new.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Former vice-admiral Haydn Edmundson has been found not guilty of sexual assault and committing an indecent act, concluding a trial that began in February.
Edmundson was head of the military’s personnel in 2021 when he was accused of assaulting another member of the navy during a 1991 deployment.
The complainant, Stephanie Viau, testified during the trial that she was 19 years old and in the navy’s lowest rank at the time of the alleged assault, while Edmundson was an older officer.
Edmundson pleaded not guilty and testified that he never had sexual contact with Viau.
In court on Monday, a small group of his supporters gasped when the verdict was read, and Edmundson shook his lawyer’s hand.
Outside court, lawyer Brian Greenspan said his client was gratified by the “clear, decisive vindication of his steadfast position that he was not guilty of these false accusations.”
Justice Matthew Webber read his entire decision to the court Monday, concluding that the Crown did not meet the standard of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
He cited concerns with the complainant’s memory of what happened more than 30 years ago, and a lack of evidence to corroborate her account.
“There are just too many problems, and I’m not in the business of … declaring what happened. That’s not my job, you know, my job is to just decide whether or not guilt has been proven to the requisite standard, and it hasn’t,” Webber said.
During the trial, Viau testified that one of her responsibilities on board the ship was to wake officers for night watch and other overnight duties, and that she woke Edmundson regularly during that 1991 deployment.
The court has heard conflicting evidence about the wake-up calls.
Viau estimated that she woke Edmundson every second or third night, and she told the court that his behaviour became progressively worse during the deployment.
She testified that he started sleeping naked and that one night she found him completely exposed on top of the sheets.
Viau said she “went berserk,” yelling at him and turning on the lights to wake the other officer sleeping in the top bunk.
That incident was the basis for the indecent act charge.
Webber said he did not believe that Viau could have caused such a disruption on board a navy ship at night without notice from others.
“I conclude that (Viau’s) overall evidence on the allegation that Mr. Edmundson did progressively expose himself to her as being far too compromised to approach proof of those allegations that she has made,” he said in his decision.
Viau alleged that the sexual assault happened a couple of days after her yelling at Edmundson.
She testified at trial that he stopped her in the corridor and called her into his sleeping quarters to talk. Viau said Edmundson kept her from leaving the room, and he sexually assaulted her.
When Edmundson took the stand in his own defence he denied having physical or sexual contact with Viau.
During his testimony, Edmundson also said Viau did not wake him regularly during that deployment because his role as the ship’s navigator kept him on mostly day shifts.
Defence lawyer Brian Greenspan took aim at the Crown’s corroborating witness during cross-examination. The woman, whose name is protected by a court-ordered publication ban, was a friend of Viau’s on the ship.
She testified that she remembered the evening of the assault because she and Viau had been getting ready for a night out during a port visit, and she misplaced her reading glasses. She said Viau offered to go fetch them from another part of the ship but never came back, and that she went looking for her friend.
On cross-examination, the woman explained that she had told all of this to a CBC reporter in early 2021.
Greenspan produced a transcript of that interview that he said suggests the reporter told her key details of Viau’s story before asking her any questions.
Greenspan argued the reporter provided information to the witness and she wouldn’t have been able to corroborate the story otherwise.
In his decision, Webber said the woman’s evidence “cannot be relied upon in any respect to corroborate that evidence of the complainant, because it’s it’s clearly a tainted recollection, doesn’t represent a real memory.”
Edmundson was one of several senior military leaders accused of sexual misconduct in early 2021.
He stepped down from his position as head of military personnel after the accusation against him was made public in 2021. The charges were laid months later, in December 2021.
Edmundson testified that in February 2022, he was directed by the chief of the defence staff to retire from the Armed Forces.
The crisis led to an external review by former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour in May 2022, whose report called for sweeping changes to reform the toxic culture of the Armed Forces.
The military’s new defence chief, Gen. Jennie Carignan, was promoted to the newly created role of chief of professional conduct and culture in an effort to enact the reforms in the Arbour report.
Outside court, Edmundson declined to comment on whether he was considering legal action against the government or the military.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
