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Coronavirus: What's happening in Canada and around the world on Monday – CBC.ca

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The latest:

Britain’s newly established quarantine hotels have received their first guests as the government tries to prevent new variants of the coronavirus from derailing its fast-moving vaccination drive.

Passengers arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport on Monday morning were escorted by security guards to buses that took them to nearby hotels.

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On Sunday the government reached its goal of giving the first of two doses of vaccine to 15 million of the most vulnerable people, including health-care workers and those over the age of 70.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the vaccination drive is now being extended to people over 65 and those with underlying health conditions.

Health officials are concerned that vaccines may not work as well on some new strains of the virus, including one first identified in South Africa.

A mobile COVID-19 testing centre, run by Randox, is set up on the grounds of the Radisson Blu hotel near London’s Heathrow airport, which is now acting as a quarantine hotel for passengers arriving from ‘red list’ countries. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

People arriving in England from 33 high-risk countries must stay in quarantine hotels for 10 days at their own expense. In Scotland the rule applies to arrivals from any country.

Critics say the move comes too late, with the South African variant already circulating in the country.

PM to set out reopening plan next week

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday spoke about his plan to lift the COVID-19 lockdown.

“We’ve got to be very prudent and what we want to see is progress that is cautious, but irreversible,” Johnson told reporters. “If we possibly can, we’ll be setting out dates.”

He went on: “If because of the rate of infection, we have to push something off a little bit to the right — delay it for a little bit — we won’t hesitate to do that.”

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets people waiting for their vaccine during a visit to a coronavirus vaccination centre at the Health and Wellbeing Centre in Orpington, southeast London, on Monday. (Jeremy Selwyn/The Associated Press)

Johnson, who will set out his plan to lift lockdown on Feb. 22, said the rates of infection were still very high and that too many people were still dying.

“The risk is that if you have a large, as it were, volume of circulation, if you’ve got loads of people, even young people getting the disease, then a couple of things happen: First of all, you have a higher risk of variants and mutations within the population, where the disease is circulating,” he said.

“Secondly, there will also be a greater risk of the disease spreading out into the older groups again.”


What’s happening in Canada

As of 9:30 a.m. ET on Monday, Canada had reported 825,790 cases of COVID-19, with 35,984 cases considered active. A CBC News tally of deaths stood at 21,293.

WATCH | Age-based vaccinating the easiest method, epidemiologist says:

Prioritizing by age is the easiest and simplest way for provinces to carry out the mass vaccination program required for COVID-19, says epidemiologist Dr. Christopher Labos. 7:01

In Newfoundland and Labrador, all students will make the switch to online learning by Thursday, as the English School District set out a staggered schedule to get children into virtual classrooms until at least Feb. 26.

Alert Level 5 was triggered late Friday with the confirmation that the B117 coronavirus variant, the variant initially detected in the United Kingdom, is now circulating in the province.

The province saw a massive spike in COVID-19 cases last week, with reported daily new cases reaching as high as 100 on Feb. 11. New cases has since declined, with 26 cases and 11 cases reported on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

WATCH | Calls to pause reopening as variants detected across Canada:

There are calls for provinces to pause some reopening plans after several COVID-19 variants have been detected in all 10 provinces. Experts predict these variants could be dominant within weeks, with potentially dire consequences. 2:06

In Ontario, widespread testing for all residents at a Mississauga condominium is set to start Monday after five cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa were identified at the location.

The province on Sunday identified the next groups in line to be vaccinated against COVID-19, with adults aged 80 and over among them.

The Ontario government has nearly finished offering a first dose to all residents of long-term care homes and high-risk retirement homes in the province, retired general Rick Hillier, chair of the province’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution task force, said in a memo to medical officers of health and hospital CEOs.

Here’s a look at what else is happening across Canada:


What’s happening around the world

As of Monday morning, more than 108.8 million cases of COVID-19 had been reported worldwide, with more than 61.1 million of those cases listed as recovered or resolved in a database maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 2.4 million.

In the Asia-Pacific region, South Korea said on Monday it would not use AstraZeneca’s vaccine on people aged 65 and older, reversing an earlier decision, and scaled back initial vaccination targets due to delayed shipments from global vaccine-sharing scheme COVAX.

South Korea had said it would complete vaccinations on 1.3 million people by the first quarter of this year with AstraZeneca shots, but it slashed the target sharply to 750,000.

Australia and New Zealand have received their first vaccine deliveries and will begin rolling out inoculations in the coming week, while Melbourne and Auckland remained locked down following the emergence of new cases.

The first Australian shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines is unloaded from a Singapore Airlines plane at Sydney International Airport on Monday. (Bianca De Marchi/Reuters)

“The eagle has landed,” Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt told reporters in Canberra on Monday as the first shipment of 142,000 doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech touched down.

In Africa, Zimbabwe has received its first COVID-19 vaccines with the arrival early Monday of an Air Zimbabwe jet carrying 200,000 Sinopharm doses from China. It is one of China’s first shipments of vaccines to Africa, after deliveries to Egypt and Equatorial Guinea.

The first Sinopharm vaccines are a donation from China to the southern African country. President Emmerson Mnanagagwa’s government has purchased an additional 600,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine that are expected to arrive early next month, according to state media.

South Africa has reopened its major land borders with neighbouring countries after closing them last month to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

The country, which has seen a cumulative total of nearly 1.5 million cases and 47,000 deaths, has seen a decline in new cases and is set to start vaccinating its front-line health workers with Johnson & Johnson vaccines later this week.

In the Middle East, Israel’s largest health-care provider reported on Sunday a 94 per cent drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date.

Health maintenance organization Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92 per cent less likely to develop severe illness from the virus.

“It shows unequivocally that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world a week after the second dose, just as it was found to be in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.

In the Americas, Brazil has confirmed cases of the variant of the novel coronavirus first discovered in the U.K. in two states and in the federal district of Brasi­lia, according to a statement from the health ministry on Sunday. The government said it has not yet confirmed cases of the variant first identified in South Africa.

A woman dressed as a superhero performs in the ‘Desliga da Justica’ street band in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. Their performance was broadcast live on social media for those who were unable to participate in the carnival due to COVID-19 restrictions. (Bruna Prado/The Associated Press)

Brazil has the world’s highest number of coronavirus deaths after the United States and more than 9.8 million confirmed cases. The variant of the virus first discovered in Brazil is circulating in 10 states, the health ministry said.

In Europe, the first shipment of a COVID-19 vaccine developed in China will arrive Tuesday in Hungary, the first country in the European Union to approve it.

In a video on Facebook on Monday, State Secretary Tamas Menczer said 550,000 doses of the vaccine developed by Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm will be transported by jet from Beijing, enough to treat 275,000 people with two doses each. The first shipment will undergo testing by the National Public Health Center before inoculations begin, Menczer said.

A French medical team was due to start work Monday at a hospital in Portugal, which for more than three weeks has been the country in the world with most COVID-19 deaths by size of population.

The French doctor and three nurses arrived amid signs that a month-long lockdown, which is being extended to at least March 1, is paying off. On Sunday, just over 4,800 COVID-19 patients were in hospital, down from a Feb. 1 peak of close to 7,000.

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Child care in Canada: Trudeau unveils new help for providers – CTV News

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The federal government is launching a new loan program to help child-care providers in Canada expand their spaces, and will be extending further student loan forgiveness and training options for early childhood educators, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Thursday.

The prime minister unveiled a trio of child-care-centric commitments that will be included in the upcoming federal budget, with the aim of opening up more $10-a-day child-care spaces across the country, as the Liberals continue to work towards creating 250,000 new spaces by March 2026.

Specifically, the Liberals are vowing to offer $1 billion in low-cost loans and $60 million in non-repayable grants to public and not-for-profit child-care providers, so they can build or renovate their care centres. 

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This funding will be administered through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMCH), which Trudeau called “a common sense approach that will help child care be developed alongside housing.”

An additional $48 million is being earmarked for the next four years to extend student loan forgiveness — similar to the program offered to rural doctors and nurses — to early childhood educators, in an effort to incentivize more teachers to work in smaller communities. 

The federal government is also promising $10 million over the next two years to train more early childhood educators.

The prime minister, speaking in Surrey, B.C., alongside the minister currently leading the file, Jenna Sudds, touted the bilateral child-care agreements in effect across the country for seeing thousands of children placed in affordable spaces.

However, in recent months Canadian parents and care providers have sounded alarms about increasingly long daycare waitlists. And, operators in some provinces have threatened to withdraw from the lower-cost program because they’re struggling to make ends meet. 

Trudeau said while the government has funded 100,000 spaces so far and is aware of the challenges in rolling out this new national program, not enough families have access and not all provinces are moving as fast as they should. 

“I want to take a moment to talk to young moms, many of you millennials. You’ve grown up with so many pressures in this economy, the 2008 recession, COVID, climate change … and we want to make sure that everyone — especially moms raising kids — has the best chance to succeed and thrive,” Trudeau said.

“As Canada grows, as families grow, we want to make sure more kids can access high-quality child care… That’s what fairness for every generation is all about.”

The prime minister also got political, accusing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of opposing the program, despite the Official Opposition voting in support of a recently passed Liberal piece of legislation meant to enshrine in law a commitment to the Canada-wide early learning and child-care system, and the long-term funding needed to maintain it. 

Reacting to the news, NDP MP and critic for children, families, and social development Leah Gazan said the announcement was a “direct result of advocacy” by her party, care workers, unions, and women’s organizations.

She also pointed the finger at the Conservatives, accusing them of trying to stall the program and push for a “for-profit private system that parents can’t afford.” 

Liberal pre-budget strategy

Similar to how Wednesday’s rollout of renter-fairness-focused pre-budget news went, cabinet ministers are making echo announcements of the new child-care affordability measures across the country Thursday afternoon. 

This is all part of a new communications strategy the Liberals are employing in the lead up to the release of the April 16 federal budget.

Practically every day between now and when Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland releases the massive economic document, the Liberals are expected to tease out bits and pieces of the budget.

In an effort to stretch out their ability to market the measures within it, Trudeau as well as members of his cabinet will unveil new initiatives over the next two weeks, to the point that the vast majority of the budget will be public prior to budget day.

Traditionally, governments have held budget news — save for some pre-tabling leaks — for the day the document is tabled in the House of Commons post-daylong reporter and stakeholder lockup.

Kicking off this strategy on Wednesday, Trudeau issued a video across social media platforms indicating the overall theme for the 2024 budget will be “generational fairness,” a message meant to speak to millennials and Generation Z.

“When I first decided to run for office, one of my biggest motivations was working to create a Canada that young people saw themselves… As prime minister, I’ve never lost sight of that,” Trudeau said in the clip.

“You as a young Canadian are the heartbeat of our economy. You power our growth and you deserve an economy that gives you a fair shot at success. But, this moment we’re all living in is throwing big challenges your way… So we’re going to roll up our sleeves and work like hell. And we’re going to tell you about what we’re doing to fix it, over the next two weeks.”

While Trudeau’s 2015 election victory was credited in part to a historic surge in young people turning up at the polls, Poilievre has been chipping away at that Liberal voting bloc of those aged 43 and under, seeking to appeal to their current struggles to get ahead with his “powerful paycheques” and housing affordability arguments.

In November 2023, Trudeau tapped Max Valiquette, a marketing guru with self-described expertise in understanding younger generations, as his new executive director of communications.

“We’re witnessing a different communication strategy from the government. They’re implementing something they’ve not tried before. We’re not going to have a budget day on April 16. We’re going to have budget days between now and April 16,” said political commentator Scott Reid in an interview on CTV News Channel.

“Frankly, this government knows that it needs to break through, it knows that it needs to connect with Canadians… Is it going to turn around the polls overnight? No. Might they get a little bit more of a hearing than they otherwise would have been? Probably.” 

With files from CTV News’ Vassy Kapelos and Annie Bergeron-Oliver

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Ontario releases 2023 Sunshine List, top earner made $1.9M – CBC.ca

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Five employees at Ontario Power Generation are in the top 10 earners on the province’s so-called sunshine list for 2023, with the province’s highest salary nearing $2 million.

The annual sunshine list documents public sector employees with salaries over $100,000. In this year’s edition, there are 300,570 names, more than 30,000 higher than last year.

Kenneth Hartwick, CEO of the electricity Crown corporation, is in the top spot again with a salary of $1.93 million.

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Two other executives at the organization — chief strategy officer Dominique Miniere and chief projects officer Michael Martelli — made nearly $1.2 million and nearly $1 million, respectively.

You can find a list of the top 100 earners below.

The presidents and CEOs of the Hospital for Sick Children and the University Health Network are also in the top 10, earning around $850,000 each. So is Phil Verster, who is president and CEO of the provincial transit agency, Metrolinx, with a $838,097 salary.

Caroline Mulroney, president of the Treasury Board, highlighted other high growth areas in a release.

“The largest year-over-year increases were in the hospitals, municipalities and services, and post-secondary sectors, which together represented approximately 80 per cent of the growth of the list,” she said.

The list shows 17 professors or associate professors at the University of Toronto had earnings of $500,000 or more.

A statement from a University of Toronto spokesperson said the school competes with top universities and private-sector employers around the world for faculty members.

“This occasionally results in salaries above the usual range for a small number of faculty members.”

An Ontario Power Generation building.
Five employees at Ontario Power Generation are among the top 10 spots of the annual sunshine list for 2023. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press)

Premier Doug Ford earned $208,974 last year. His chief of staff, Patrick Sackville, earned $324,675.

Matthew Anderson, CEO of Ontario Health, a provincial agency the Ford government created in 2019, earned $821,000. Meanwhile the public servant leading the Ministry of Health, deputy minister Catherine Zahn, earned $477,360, and Health Minister Sylvia Jones, $165,851.

There are more than 25,000 registered nurses on the list, including seven who earned more than $300,000 last year.

Chief Justice Sharon Nicklas, who was appointed to the top post in the province’s judiciary last May, earned $388,960.

The police chiefs of Thunder Bay, Daniel Taddeo, ($376,428) and Hamilton, Francis Bergen, ($374,492) were paid more last year than OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique ($373,472). Taddeo retired in April 2023. 

Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw, who took over the post in late 2022, earned $353,411. 

Organizations that receive provincial government funding are also required to disclose salaries for the sunshine list, so it includes top earners at some registered charities.

The chief executive of the True Patriot Love Foundation, Nicholas Booth, earned $421,149. The foundation funds support programs for veterans and military families. 

The president and CEO of the Canadian Red Cross Society, Conrad Sauve, earned $412,970, while the YMCA of Greater Toronto’s chief executive, Medhat Mahdy, earned $394,057.

Salaries of other key Ontario public figures include:

  • $826,539 for Ontario Pension Board CEO Mark Fuller.
  • $709,581 for Ontario Lottery and Gaming Association president & CEO Alfred Hannay.
  • $601,376 for Registered Nurses Association of Ontario CEO Doris Grinspun.
  • $596,392 for Dean of Ivey Business School, Western University, Sharon Hodgson.
  • $563,291 for LCBO president & CEO George Soleas.
  • $546,053 for Dean of the Faculty of Health Science, Queen’s University, Jane Philpott.
  • $533,112 for Royal Ontario Museum president & CEO Joshua Basseches.
  • $486,192 for University of Toronto president Meric Gertler.
  • $464,148 for Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore.
  • $455,091 for Chief Coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer.
  • $404,003 Art Gallery of Ontario director and CEO Stephan Jost.
  • $395,974 for former auditor general Bonnie Lysyk.

Adjusting sunshine list threshold

The sunshine list has been around for almost 30 years, always set at six figures and up. 

At Queen’s Park on Thursday, some members of provincial Parliament faced questions on whether the $100,000 starting point should be adjusted.

Green Party of Ontario Leader Mike Schreiner said it should be pegged to the rate of inflation, but others disagreed.

“I think that people think that $100,000 is still a lot of money, especially in an affordability crisis,” said NDP MPP Catherine Fife, who’s also the finance critic.

Government House Leader Paul Calandra said the government has no plans at this time to change the threshold on the sunshine list.

“I think it’s an important document that serves the people well in highlighting the salaries of our public employees.”

The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, enacted by former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris in 1996, compels organizations that receive public funding from the province to report the names, positions and pay of people who make more than $100,000.

The interactive chart below shows the top 100 earners on the list, based on both salary and benefits.

Search the complete Sunshine List for yourself here.

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1 dead, 2 critically injured after car crash in Montreal

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Montreal

Three people are in hospital with critical injuries after their vehicle crashed into a tree. Police believe they might be connected to two drive-by shootings that took place early Thursday morning.

2 drive-by shootings also took place overnight

an SPVM car near a taped-off crime scene
Montreal police are investigating a car crash possibly linked to two drive-by shootings. (Mathieu Wagner/Radio-Canada)

Urgences-santé say one person died and two others were critically injured after their vehicle hit a tree in the Rosemont neighbourhood.

Montreal police believe the crash may be linked to two drive-by shootings early Thursday morning.

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The first happened around 5 a.m. on Pie-IX Boulevard. Police say a car was shot at repeatedly and the driver, a 41-year-old man, was injured in the upper body. He was transported to hospital, but his life is not in danger, say police.

Shortly afterward, shots were reported in the Plateau Mont-Royal borough, near the intersection of Saint-Joseph Boulevard and Henri-Julien Avenue. No one was injured.

Police say they are investigating to determine if there is a connection between the collision and the shootings. Montreal police spokesperson Jean-Pierre Brabant says it’s possible those in the vehicle were involved in the shootings.

The province’s independent police watchdog is now involved.

with files from Chloë Ranaldi

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