Alberta’s premier is urging people to avoid large private gatherings as the number of novel coronavirus cases in the province climbs, saying “COVID-19 loves parties.”
Jason Kenney, who said Monday that health officials could be forced to cancel elective surgeries if case numbers keep rising, called on people to follow public health guidance and respect restrictions.
“We’re all fed up with this, but now more than ever we need to take this seriously — and the single biggest thing people could do is just stop with the private parties and the social gatherings.”
The issue of large gatherings was also flagged by the premier in Manitoba, who said Monday the province is seriously considering a temporary curfew as part of its plan to try to tackle growing case numbers.
The province reported 103 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday along with five more deaths. While the new case count is lower than figures seen Monday and compared to a high of 480 on Friday, the number of hospitalizations have continued to climb.
There are 130 people in hospital — six more than on Monday, and a record high — and 20 in intensive care, up from 18.
Brian Pallister said Monday there have been reports of large parties being promoted online in Winnipeg, which is now considered a red zone on the province’s pandemic response scale.
WATCH | Manitoba considers curfew as new restrictions begin:
Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister is considering implementing a curfew to reverse the trend of increased COVID-19 cases in the province as harsh new restrictions came into effect in Winnipeg. 1:46
“These late-night situations in Winnipeg have expanded our number of COVID cases significantly,” Pallister said at his briefing Monday.
In British Columbia, which is also seeing rising COVID-19 case numbers, Health Minister Adrian Dix spoke out after social media postings showed a large number of Halloween partiers gather in a Vancouver neighbourhood.
“It’s a very irritating event because I think it was a visible symbol of people not following the rules of gathering, which are limited to 50 people,” Dix said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday again urged people to limit their contacts, follow public health guidelines and download the COVID Alert app. He pointed to increasing case numbers in several European countries, saying surges there show how quickly things can escalate.
Trudeau said he knows the situation is tough now, but cautioned that it’s “going to be even tougher if we give up now.”
Canadians flattened the curve this spring, he said, adding it’s time to do it again this fall.
On Tuesday, new recommendations from the federal government on masks were outlined by Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam.
The Public Health Agency of Canada is now recommending that Canadians wear three-layer non-medical masks with a filter layer to prevent the transmission of COVID-19, Tam said at a news conference.
WATCH | Canada’s top doctor gives new guidance on the type of mask to wear:
Canada’s chief public health officer spoke to reporters during the bi-weekly pandemic briefing on Tuesday. 2:05
The recently updated guidelines recommend that two layers of the mask should be made of tightly woven fabric like cotton or linen and the middle layer should be a filter-type fabric, like non-woven polypropylene fabric.
Tam says she’s not suggesting that Canadians throw out masks they currently own, stating that adding a filter could help.
The World Health Organization has recommended three layers for non-medical masks since June.
What’s happening in Canada
As of 12:15 p.m ET on Tuesday, provinces and territories in Canada had reported a cumulative total of 242,185 confirmed or presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 201,813 as recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 10,256.
Ontario announced Tuesday that it is launching a new system of criteria for imposing health restrictions on different areas in the province, as a record 1,050 new cases of COVID-19 were reported. Most of those infections are in Toronto and the surrounding regions. Another 14 deaths were also announced.
The seven-day average of new cases of COVID-19 increased to 950.
Ontario is reporting 1,050 cases of <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a>. Locally, there are 408 new cases in Toronto, 212 in Peel, 86 in Halton, 76 in York Region and 57 in Durham. There are 837 more resolved cases and nearly 25,300 tests completed.
The new colour-coded model provides clarity on how decisions about restrictions for different industries and businesses are being made at the provincial level, said Premier Doug Ford.
The announcement also means that changes are being made to the modified Stage 2 restrictions for Ottawa, Peel and York regions.
As a result, Ford said that at 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 7, those regions will be moved out of the Stage 2 designation and gyms and indoor dining will be allowed again. Those businesses will also reopen in Toronto but a week later, on Nov. 14.
“Mayor Tory has asked us for a little more time in Toronto,” Ford said.
You can read more about the new framework and how businesses have reacted to increased shutdowns this month here.
The number of people in hospital stood at 357, with 73 in intensive care and 47 on a ventilator, the province reported.
Quebec reported 871 new cases on Tuesday and added 34 deaths to its count of COVID-19 fatalities, with five of those reported as occurring in the previous 24 hours.
The province, which has recorded more than 108,000 cases since the pandemic began, reported 526 COVID-19 hospitalizations with 85 in ICU.
The Quebec government said Tuesday that regions including Quebec City and Montreal are improving but others, such as Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Mauricie and Lanaudière, are seeing increased levels of COVID-19 transmission.
Dr. Horacio Arruda said at a news conference that Quebec is looking at its own recommendations for masks, as the federal Public Health Agency recommended Canadians choose three-layer non-medical masks on Tuesday.
In Atlantic Canada, there was one new COVID-19 case reported in Nova Scotia on Tuesday. There were no new cases in New Brunswick or Newfoundland and Labrador.
In Prince Edward Island, which has no active cases, a state of emergency was renewed on Tuesday for another 30 days.
Premier Dennis King urged people to maintain their efforts at keeping the province safe, saying the “simple things” Islanders are enjoying right now “could be very quickly and easily ripped from us if we aren’t vigilant.”
Saskatchewan reported 74 new COVID-19 cases on Monday. According to the province 34 people were in hospital, with seven in intensive care.
Across the North, there were no new cases reported in Yukon, the Northwest Territories or Nunavut on Monday.
What’s happening around the world
WATCH | U.S. COVID-19 management a ‘mess’ at several levels, infectious disease expert says:
There was poor cohesion between leaders at the state and federal levels in the U.S. over managing COVID-19, says infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch, who also hopes that voting on Tuesday won’t cause a major superspreading event. 1:32
As of Tuesday morning, more than 47 million cases of the novel coronavirus had been reported worldwide since the pandemic began, according to a tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The tool maintained by the U.S.-based university listed more than 31 million of those as recovered and put the global death toll at more than 1.2 million.
In the Americas, huge voter turnout was expected in the U.S. despite mounting cases of the novel coronavirus and political rancour.
In and around polling places across the country, reminders of an election year shaped by a pandemic, civil unrest and bruising political partisanship greeted voters, although more than 90 million ballots already have been submitted in an unprecedented wave of early voting.
Many wore masks to the polls — either by choice or by official mandate — with the coronavirus outbreak raging in many parts of the country.
In Nebraska alone, the surge in COVID-19 cases has led to record-high hospitalizations that are straining the state’s health-care system, officials said Monday.
Dr. Cary Ward, chief medical officer for CHI Health’s network of 14 hospitals across eastern Nebraska and western Iowa, said during a video call with reporters that there had been a doubling of COVID-positive patients in the last several weeks in the network. He said if the trend continues “every hospital in the state could be at capacity in a very short period of time.”
Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo has began self-isolating after a close coworker tested positive for the coronavirus.
In Europe, the French government will reimpose an evening curfew on Paris, and possibly the Ile-de-France region around the capital, to tackle worsening COVID-19 figures, government spokesperson Gabriel Attal said on Tuesday.
A sign with instructions for delivery and click-and-collect is stuck to the window of a shop in Paris on Tuesday as non-essential businesses are closed due to the new lockdown to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. (Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images)
Greece announced it will impose a two-week lockdown in northern regions and suspend flights, while Italy will tighten restrictions but is holding back from reintroducing a nationwide lockdown as infections, hospital admissions and deaths surge.
Russia’s coronavirus cases could peak in the middle of November, the country’s consumer health watchdog estimated on Tuesday, as authorities reported more than 18,000 new infections nationwide.
The peak would be roughly mid-November, Alexander Gorelov, deputy director of a research institute at Rospotrebnadzor, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
A municipal worker wearing protective equipment sprays disinfectant on a bus stop near the Novodevichy convent in Moscow on Tuesday. (Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)
“It is difficult to give a more accurate forecast as many factors affect the development of the epidemiological process,” he said.
Officials have repeatedly said that Russia does not intend to reimpose the strict lockdown restrictions that were in place in the spring, despite a surge in cases and deaths across the country.
The situation with the coronavirus in Ukraine is close to catastrophic and the nation must prepare for the worst, Health Minister Maksym Stepanov said on Tuesday, as the country registered a record 8,899 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours.
Nursing students disinfect each other at the COVID-19 testing facility on the Spoor Oost site in Antwerp on Tuesday. Belgium is in a second lockdown as hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients reach record highs. (Dirk Waem/Belga/AFP/Getty Images)
In Africa, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has tested positive for COVID-19, but his condition is gradually improving as he receives treatment in a German hospital, the presidency said on Tuesday.
Mozambique will receive €100 million in coronavirus-related aid from the European Union, EU Ambassador Antonio Sanchez-Benedito Gaspar said. South Africa remained the hardest-hit country in Africa, with more than 727,000 cases recorded and more than 19,400 deaths.
In the Asia-Pacific region, authorities in Sri Lanka have extended the school holidays for two more weeks, postponing the opening of classes amid a surge of COVID-19 patients from two clusters in Colombo and the capital’s suburbs.
Schools were suddenly closed last month as a precautionary measure after a new cluster of coronavirus infections centred on a garment factory erupted in the densely populated Western province, where the capital is. Another cluster centred on the country’s main fish market arose later.
Security personnel stand at a checkpoint in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Monday following a one-week curfew extension for the Western province to contain the spread of COVID-19. (Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP/Getty Images)
India has registered 38,310 confirmed coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, maintaining an overall downturn even as fresh infections continue to appear in its capital, New Delhi. The Health Ministry on Tuesday also reported 490 more fatalities from COVID-19, raising the overall death toll to 123,097.
With a total of 8.2 million coronavirus cases during the pandemic, India is the second-worst-hit country behind the United States. But it has been witnessing a steady fall in daily cases.
Still, health officials say New Delhi remains in the grip of its third and worst wave of infections yet. In the past week, there were more than 5,200 cases on average every day. The Health Ministry attributes the city’s surge to the festival season, with people crowding markets for shopping.
In the Middle East, Iran reported on Tuesday a record daily total of 8,932 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the overall figure to 637,712 for detected infections in the Middle East’s worst-hit country, the Health Ministry said.
Health Ministry spokesperson Sima Sadat Lari told state television that 422 patients had died in the past 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 36,160.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
OTTAWA – Members of Parliament studying the federal government’s decision to buy a $9-million luxury condo in Manhattan are preparing to recall Canada’s consul general in New York to answer more questions about his involvement in the purchase.
The Conservatives put forward a motion on Tuesday to have Tom Clark return to the House operations committee. The move was supported by other opposition parties after new information emerged that contradicted his previous testimony.
Clark told the committee in September he had no role whatsoever in the purchase of the new condo, or the sale of the previous residence.
But reporting from Politico on Tuesday indicated Clark raised concerns about the old unit two months after he was appointed to his role as Canada’s representative in New York.
Politico cited documents obtained through access-to-information, which were then shared with other media by the Conservative party.
A May 2023 report from Global Affairs Canada indicates Clark informed government officials the residence needed to be replaced.
“The current (consul general in New York, head of mission) expressed concerns regarding the completion of the … kitchen and refurbishment project and indicated the unit was not suitable to be the (consul general’s) accommodations,” the report reads.
“It does not have an ideal floor plan for (consul general in New York) representational activities.”
The final call on whether Clark will face further questions has not been made, however, because the committee adjourned before the motion went to a vote. The committee’s next meeting is next week.
Tuesday’s meeting featured Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly as a witness, and she faced questions about Clark’s involvement in the purchase.
“This was not a political decision because this was an operational decision,” Joly told the committee in a testy exchange with Conservative MP Michael Barrett.
“(The committee) had numerous people, officials of mine, that came to see you and said that. So, these are the facts.”
Joly later told the committee she only learned of the decision to purchase a new residence through media reports, even though her chief of staff was notified weeks earlier.
“The department informed my chief of staff once the decision was taken. Because, of course, it was not a political decision,” Joly said.
Shortly before Joly was excused, Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie put forward the motion to recall Clark for two more hours to answer more questions.
Bloc MP Julie Vignola proposed instead to have him testify for only one hour — indicating she would support the motion with that change.
“One hour is more than enough to know whether he lied to us,” Vignola told her colleagues in French.
NDP MP Taylor Bachrach also said he would support the move, given the contrast between the new report and Clark’s testimony about whether he spoke to anyone about a desire to move into a new residence.
“What really irks me is the consul general was so clear in response to repeated questioning at committee,” Bachrach said.
“Mr. Clark said, ‘Never.’ One-word answer, ‘Never.’ You can’t get more unequivocal than that.”
The Liberal government has argued that buying the new residence will save Canadians taxpayers millions of dollars and reduce ongoing maintenance costs and property taxes while supporting future program needs for the consul general.
The former official residence is listed for sale at $13 million, but has yet to be sold.
In her remarks Tuesday, Joly told the committee other like-minded countries have paid more for their Manhattan residences than Canada has — including $11 million for the U.K., and France’s $19 million purchase in 2015.
Joly said among the countries that have residences in New York, only Afghanistan and Bangladesh were not located in Manhattan.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
