Canadians are set to receive renewed federal help amid the coronavirus pandemic as Parliament passed legislation authorizing new financial aid, while Ontario announced more than $500 million in new funding to protect long-term care.
On early Wednesday morning, the federal government unanimously passed Bill C-4 — legislation authorizing new benefits for workers left jobless or underemployed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The vote, which was considered a confidence measure, earned the support of the more adversarial parties, the Bloc Quebecois and the Conservatives. It passed 306-0.
The bill is intended to replace the now-defunct $500-per-week Canada emergency response benefit (CERB), which came to an end last weekend after helping almost nine million Canadians weather the pandemic’s impact.
The bill introduces a series of new COVID-19 benefits for Canadians to ease their transition away from CERB.
Millions of CERB recipients will transition automatically to employment insurance (EI). Expanded eligibility rules will also mean more people can qualify and the changes also include three new replacement benefits.
WATCH | Ottawa to buy millions of rapid COVID-19 tests after approval:
Ottawa has signed an agreement to buy millions of rapid-test devices for COVID-19, but it hasn’t been approved by Health Canada. The technology promises to detect the virus in less than 15 minutes and many are pushing to speed up its approval. 1:56
September has been a record breaking month forOttawaas the city ends the month with 64 more confirmed cases of COVID, adding to the more than 1,300 reported over the course of the month.
On Wednesday, 43 out of 64 new cases were from people under the age of 40, most of them in their 20s and 30s.
With more than 20 deaths linked to COVID-19 so far this month, Ottawa’s medical officer of health said the city is experiencing a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
WATCH | Ontario scrambles to contain 2nd round of COVID-19 outbreaks in nursing homes:
There are at least 46 confirmed outbreaks at Ontario long-term care homes as the province scrambles to prevent a second wave of COVID-19 from getting out of control. But after almost 1,900 deaths in long-term care homes since the pandemic began, some say the province should have been able to prevent these new outbreaks. 2:11
Meanwhile in Ontario, health authorities say they are expecting new daily cases of COVID-19 to reach 1,000 in the first half of October, as the province confirmed another 625 new infections on Wednesday.
According to Adalsteinn Brown, the dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, the number of new cases reported daily are doubling every 10 to 12 days. That means the province could see a “remarkably high surge” in the next coming weeks.
He said the growth in infections was initially limited to the 20-39 age group, however now, cases are climbing in every age group.
“Although we see a large amount of infections among younger people right now, this is likely starting to spill over into older age groups, which is where we see the most tragic and most challenging consequences for health and for the health-care system,” said Brown.
At Alberta’s Foothills Medical Centre, some patients are being transferred to another hospital because of the COVID-19 outbreaks at the Calgary facility earlier this month.
So far, four patients have died and 60 positive cases have been identified in patients, staff and visitors. The outbreak has also caused dozens of surgeries to be postponed.
“It’s somewhat horrifying, to be honest, to see those kinds of numbers,” said Dr. Stephanie Smith, the director of infection prevention and control at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton.
“It severely impacts the hospital’s ability to provide care, and certainly we’re seeing that across the province in that there’s services that are being diverted to other hospitals. So it’s very concerning.”
Signs point to the Manitoba Public Insurance building, now a COVID-19 testing site, in Winnipeg on Tuesday. (Lyzaville Sale/CBC)
Residents in Manitoba are being warned about another outbreak at a personal care home.
The Calvary Place Personal Care Home in Winnipeg is moving to red, or critical, level on the province’s pandemic response system.
In a seven-week period in August and September, 61 health-care workers tested positive, making up the bulk of the roughly 100 such cases over the past six months, according to COVID-19 surveillance data from the province.
The recent uptick is adding strain to the health-care sector as employees are being required to work more overtime due to staffing shortages, said the Manitoba Nurses’ Union and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
On Wednesday, 40 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Manitoba, bringing the total number of active cases to 599.
According to a provincial news release, more than three-quarters of the new cases — 31 — are in the Winnipeg health region.
New cases were also announced in each of the other four health regions in the province.
There are four in the Southern Health region, two in the Prairie Mountain Health region, two in the Interlake-Eastern health region and one in the Northern Health region.
What’s happening in the rest of Canada
As of 8:19 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Canada had 158,758 confirmed or presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 134,971 of those as recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 9,333.
The Abbott Laboratories-backed molecular devices can be administered by trained professionals at places like pharmacies, without the need for a laboratory to determine if someone is infected with the virus.
The point of care devices could give results in 15 minutes and could help improve tests for communities across Canada dealing with a surge in coronavirus cases.
To date, the vast majority of tests have been done at public health clinics, with samples then sent to laboratories for analysis — a process that can take days.
A health-care worker walks along the long lineup for a COVID-19 test at an Ottawa testing site on Sept. 15. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
Dr. Jennifer Russell said her colleagues from across the country have talked about “streamlining” testing requirements to avoid a logjam of tests for people who end up simply having a cold.
Several of the symptoms for COVID-19 overlap with those of the common cold, including a runny nose, sore throat and headache. Those are three of the 10 symptoms British Columbia removed last week.
She said the system can handle the current situation, but if there’s a spike in COVID-19 cases in New Brunswick, then the checklist may have to be scaled back.
Quebec is making sure people follow its newly strengthened public health rules, especially in the province’s red zones where COVID-19 cases are surging.
Starting Wednesday, police will be issuing $1,000 fines to those who gather in private residences or protests without wearing a mask.
“Police officers will start by trying to disperse the gatherings, but if people don’t co-operate, fines can be given,” Premier François Legault said.
Police will be authorized to demand proof of residency and if residents refuse entry, officers will be able to obtain warrants faster through a new, virtual system that was established in collaboration with the Crown, he said.
“We had to give the police the means to intervene,” said Public Security Minister Geneviève Guilbault.
Normally the process for obtaining a warrant can take a day or two, but that won’t work when police want to break up parties that very same evening, Legault said.
In addition to banning all gatherings, even outside in public parks, Quebec also has made masks mandatory for those who wish to march or protest.
Quebec reported 838 new cases of COVID-19 but no deaths Wednesday. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 74,288 confirmed cases and 5,834 people have died in the province.
WATCH | Critical contact tracing backlog as COVID-19 cases rise in Ontario:
Ontario has put a lot of effort into ramping up its COVID-19 testing, but experts say contact tracing is lagging woefully behind and it may be too late to fix the problem. 2:01
Officials say they have had difficulty tracing those who have been in contact with a positive case, hampering efforts to isolate potentially contagious individuals.
On Tuesday, Health Minister Christian Dubé said he was in the process of finalizing details about adopting the federal app, COVID Alert, which informs users when they have had prolonged contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole and BlocQuébécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet are back on Parliament Hill Wednesday after self-isolating for two weeks due to positive COVID-19 tests.
Blanchet said his personal experience should serve as a warning to everyone to take public health guidance seriously.
“Some people go through it much more painfully than I did. I was very, very, very lucky. Some people die of that thing,” he told a news conference.
“There is no absolute protection. There [are] only ways to reduce the probability of catching the thing and giving it to someone who might be more vulnerable to it.”
What’s happening around the world
According to Johns Hopkins University, the global total of confirmed coronavirus cases stands at more than 33.7 million. More than one million people have died, while over 23.4 million have recovered.
The United Nations chief says the COVID-19 pandemic has taken “an unprecedented toll,” especially on the economies of many developing countries, and the world has not responded with “the massive and urgent support those countries and communities need.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is seen on a screen during a video conference in Berlin on April 28. (Michael Kappeler/Pool/AFP/Getty Images)
Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that in the United States, Canada, Europe and most of the developed world, governments have adopted packages valued in double-digits of GDP to help tackle the coronavirus crisis and its impact.
“The problem is to mobilize the resources to allow the developing countries to be able to do the same,” he told a joint press conference with Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who have been jointly spearheading high-level meetings to try to raise the resources.
Meanwhile the number of deaths and people being hospitalized for COVID-19 in Britain are rising again. On Wednesday, there were 7,108 new infections reported and 71 virus-related deaths, the same number of deaths confirmed the day before.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged people on Wednesday to continue to social distance, wear masks, wash their hands and download the coronavirus app.
“I know that some people will think we should give up and let the virus take its course, despite the huge loss of life that would potentially entail,” Johnson said on Wednesday. “I profoundly disagree and I don’t think it’s what the British people want.”
WATCH | U.K.’s Boris Johnson vows to fight and defeat coronavirus:
Saying it’s vital to protect the U.K.’s health service, Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked Britons to follow the rules around COVID-19 and help defeat the coronavirus. 1:21
As the fight against the coronavirus continues, residents in Madridare being barred from leaving except on essential travel, Spain’s government said on Wednesday.
The capital city, with more than three million people, and nine surrounding municipalities with at least 100,000 inhabitants each, are to see borders closed to outsiders for non-essential visits.
People would be allowed to cross boundaries for work, school, doctors’ visits or shopping, but not for leisure.
Other measures include the closure of bars and restaurants at 11 p.m., from a previous curfew of 1 a.m., as well as shutting parks and playgrounds. Social gatherings will be limited to six people.
Madrid has 735 cases per 100,000 people, one of the highest of any region in Europe and double Spain’s national rate.
South Korea reported 113 new cases of COVID-19, its first daily increase over 100 in five days, as the country entered a holiday break that officials fear would possibly worsen transmissions.
The numbers released by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on Wednesday brought the caseload to 23,812, including 413 deaths.
Eighty-one of the new cases came from the Seoul metropolitan area, where health workers have struggled to stem transmissions linked to various sources, including churches, medical facilities, restaurants, schools and workers.
Indonesia on Wednesday reported 4,284 new coronavirus cases, taking the total number of infections to 287,008, data from the country’s COVID-19 task force showed.
Cleaners walk down a street as the city operates under lockdown in response to an outbreak of the coronavirus disease in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 3. (Erik Anderson/AAP Image/Reuters)
There were also 139 additional coronavirus-related deaths reported, taking the total number of fatalities to 10,740.
Russia has completed clinical trials of a second potential vaccine against COVID-19, developed by Siberia’s Vector Institute, the RIA news agency cited Russian consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor as saying on Wednesday.
The institute completed early-stage human trials, known as Phase II, earlier this month.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday pledged $100 million US to help developing countries access a COVID-19 vaccine as World Bank President David Malpass said “broad, rapid and affordable” access to vaccines “will be at the core of a resilient global economic recovery that lifts everyone.”
Merkel also called on “those who are still dithering” to commit to the global vaccine effort.
The Czech government will limit indoor gatherings to 10 people and outdoor ones to 20 as part of new measures taking effect for two weeks from Monday to combat a surge in coronavirus cases, Health Minister Roman Prymula said on Wednesday.
Sports matches will continue but without spectators, and theatres and cinemas can still operate, but concerts, musicals and operas will be banned, Prymula said.
VANCOUVER – A disciplinary investigation has found a former Vancouver police sergeant shared “disrespectful” commentary on a fellow officer’s court testimony about being sexually assaulted by a colleague.
The decision against Narinder Dosanjh, obtained by The Canadian Press, includes the running commentary on the woman’s testimony — apparently written by someone inside the courtroom — that calls her a “bad drunk” and says there was “no way” her case would be proved.
Former New Westminster police chief Dave Jansen, the external officer who rendered the decision against Dosanjh, says his assessment accounts for a culture of treating officers who testify against each other as “rats.”
Former Vancouver constable Jagraj Roger Berar was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to a year in jail for assaulting the woman, who can’t be identified because of a publication ban on her name.
Jansen says in his ruling, dated Oct. 11, that the comments in a Vancouver police group chat appear “supportive” of Berar and reflect “all-too-common myths” about women who make sexual assault allegations.
While Jansen found Dosanjh committed discreditable conduct by sharing the chats, a complaint against a more-senior Vancouver officer who was inside the courtroom, and who the victim and other officers believed wrote the commentary, were not substantiated.
The ruling says Jansen, who retired as New Westminster’s chief constable, would accept submissions before deciding how Dosanjh should be punished.
The woman who was assaulted was the complainant in the disciplinary investigation, and said in an interview she felt “vindicated” by Jansen’s decision because it “truly paints what I’ve been through,” after reporting a fellow officer for sexual assault.
She said many other women in municipal policing fear speaking out about ill-treatment at work, and some have told her about being assaulted and harassed but feared ruining their careers if they complained.
“This decision is important for those women to see,” she said. “It shows the tides are changing. Like, this is the first win I’ve had.”
A spokesman for the Surrey Police Service, where Dosanjh now works, did not immediately answer a question about how he was penalized, and said Dosanjh declined an interview request with The Canadian Press.
In his decision, Jansen said there was an “unfortunate but often pervasive” culture of treating officers who complain as “‘rats’, who betrayed their colleagues.”
“In terms of the messages themselves, Sergeant Dosanjh alleges that they are not degrading, humiliating or derogatory and do not attack the personal character of the complainant. I disagree,” Jansen wrote.
The decision includes a screenshot of the commentary about the complainant, who said the order of the messages appeared to refer to her evidence while she was being cross-examined and suggested the comments were written by someone listening to her testimony.
The commentary on a Vancouver police chat group on the Signal messaging app said the victim “wore a wire twice,” and “admitted in cross to possibly drinking way more alcohol than she originally claimed.”
“Her memory is super hazy and there’s no way you can prove beyond reasonable doubt,” the person wrote.
“And she admitted that she is really bad drunk,” they added.
Another message said it was a “nail in the coffin” of the case that video showed the complainant “cuddling, holding hands” with Berar.
The victim, who became aware of the commentary when a friend in the department showed them to her, was distressed by the messages and disputed their accuracy, said Jansen.
“The comments also appear to reflect some of the all-too-common myths around women making allegations of sexual assault. Some of these myths include the belief that because a victim socialized with the perpetrator, or engaged in some consensual activity with him, therefore she must have consented to the assault,” he wrote.
Jansen’s decision said Dosanjh shared the messages with a fellow officer after getting them from a “VPD chat group that he claims he knew little about, from a co-worker he claims not to be able to identify.”
The decision said other officers believed the commentary was written bya more-senior officer in the department who had been present at the trial, but Jansen said the discreditable conduct complaint against that person was unsubstantiated.
The decision said Dosanjh claimed he was the “fall guy” and “a pawn in a broader game.”
Jansen’s decision said Dosanjh was a senior officer and supervisor who was aware of the “vulnerability of victims of sexual crimes and of the myths that surround sexual assault victims.”
It said Dosanjh’s “distribution of these messages that were disrespectful of an alleged victim of sexual violence who was also a co-worker, should they become public, would likely discredit the reputation of the police force.”
The Vancouver Police Department did not immediately provide comment on Jansen’s decision.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
FREDERICTON – The offspring of beetles imported from British Columbia are ready to take up the fight against an invasive insect that is killing hemlock trees in Nova Scotia.
Last fall and spring, about 5,000 Laricobius nigrinus beetles — affectionately called Lari by scientists — made an overnight journey from the West Coast.
Lucas Roscoe, research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, says in the fight against the woolly adelgid that is destroying swaths of hemlock trees in Nova Scotia, the first step was to make sure the Lari beetle can survive a Nova Scotia winter.
The one-to-two-millimetre black flying beetles were released across six sites in Nova Scotia that had the woolly adelgids.
In one of the sites, scientists placed cages of imported beetles and about 60 per cent of them were able to survive the winter in Nova Scotia, which Roscoe says is an encouraging rate.
He says the woolly adelgid was first seen in southwestern Nova Scotia in 2017 and the peppercorn-sized insect, aided by climate change, has since spread north.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
Dozens of researchers across Canada, including renowned environmentalist David Suzuki, have joined a growing chorus of voices urging the federal government to halt the importation of an endangered monkey species for medical research in Quebec.
A letter signed by 80 scientists, academics, doctors and students says testing on long-tailed macaques from Cambodia should be banned due to ethical concerns and potential public-health risks.
“A decade ago, chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, ceased to be used for experimentation because using such animal ‘models’ could no longer be justified from scientific, ethical, and/or financial perspectives,” says the letter addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his environment minister and the premier of Quebec.
The researchers say they are also concerned about “the serious risks of transmission of zoonotic pathogens” that could be associated with transporting macaques.
Their letter urges the federal government to end charter flights that have been bringing the macaques into Canada, and to adopt regulations banning the importation of all primates for biomedical testing.
It’s the latest group to add more pressure on Ottawa to suspend the monkey imports by Charles River Laboratories, a U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant that has a sprawling facility in Montreal.
The company announced in 2023 that it was halting macaque imports into the U.S., after it was subpoenaed in a case that involved the indictment of two senior Cambodian officials over what authorities described as “multiple felonies for their role in bringing wild long-tailed macaques into the United States.”
No charges have been brought against Charles River Laboratories, or any of its officials, and the company has said it will fully co-operate with the U.S. investigation.
At around the same time, imports of monkeys from Cambodia into Canada dramatically surged, with Statistics Canada data showing a 500 per cent increase in 2023 from the year before.
Environment and Climate Change Canada, the federal department responsible for monitoring commercial trade in wildlife, confirmed to the Canadian Press that Charles River Laboratories has imported 6,769 long-tailed macaques into the country between January 2023 and August of this year. The monetary value of these imported macaques is around $120 million dollars, according to Statistics Canada.
The department previously said that officials rigorously and closely inspect imports of foreign animals, including those brought in by Charles River Laboratories, and that all macaque imports so far this year have complied with federal and international wildlife regulations.
The government and the company have both said that no Canadian laws have been broken.
Last month, the Canadian Transportation Authority issued a permit for another shipment on a cargo plane chartered by Charles River Laboratories. A flight tracker shows that a plane with the same flight number as what is shown on the permit departed Phnom Penh, Cambodia last Thursday, and arrived in Montreal on Friday.
Jesse Greener, a professor of chemistry at Laval University who signed the researchers’ letter to the government, said medical technology has developed to a point that makes it unjustifiable for the pharmaceutical industry to continue using live primates for testing.
“The government should take a leadership role and help researchers and surely the private sector to pivot from using these unethical, and I would say old and outdated and unreliable animal models, and embrace these much more efficient and ethical approaches that are … exploding right now,” said Greener, who has done research on methods to replace animals in such experiments.
“It is grotesque,” he said of the animal use. “It is time that we change the page on this chapter of terrible research and commercial activities.”
Canada banned the use of animals for cosmetic testing last year, but it is still legal to use live primates for drug testing purposes.
The federal government said a draft strategy aimed at reducing and replacing the use of animals in drug testing was published in September and open to public consultations for 60 days.
The strategy, which will be revised based on input from researchers, experts and others, is expected to be published in June 2025, it said.
“The government of Canada is committed to advancing efforts to replace, reduce, or refine the use of vertebrate animals in toxicity testing where possible,” Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a statement Tuesday.
Charles River Laboratories previously told The Canadian Press that while it is also committed to reducing its use of live primates, global regulatory bodies require drugs to be tested on animals before they are evaluated in humans.
The company said the use of non-human primates has been vital in developing treatments for various diseases and that the standards it applies in its facilities are exceeding global norms.
Matthew Green, a New Democrat MP who had previously called on the federal government to halt the latest shipment of macaques, said he has “great concern” about importing this exotic animal.
“Generally in Canada, Canadians like to believe that our government has higher regulations and more stringent enforcement protocols when it comes to protecting endangered species, yet this is not the case in comparison to what the United States has done,” he said.
Green and two of his NDP colleagues wrote a letter to three federal ministers last month, demanding an “immediate attention” to the issue.
The Animal Alliance of Canada also sent a letter to the environment minister in August, urging the immediate suspension of monkey importation from Cambodia.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
