British Columbia reported a record high COVID-19 case number on Tuesday as neighbouring Alberta declared a public health emergency and put forward targeted measures aimed at slowing transmission of the novel coronavirus.
Alberta — which reported 1,115 new cases and 16 additional deaths on Tuesday — is temporarily banning indoor private social gatherings and moving all students in Grade 7 and above to at-home learning.
Premier Jason Kenney opted to keep businesses, including retail and clothing stores, open with 25 per cent capacity. Casinos will be allowed to run their slot machines at 25 per cent capacity and churches will still be allowed to hold services with one-third their normal audience. Restaurants can still offer in-person dining.
Kenney, who has not ruled out the possibility of further restrictions in the weeks ahead, said Tuesday’s measures were needed to keep the province’s health-care system from being “overwhelmed” and to protect the vulnerable.
“They are also needed to protect Albertans from the health, social and economic damage that a crushing lockdown would inflict.”
But some in the province were quick to criticize Tuesday’s orders, saying they didn’t go far enough. Mike Parker, president of a major union of health-care workers, called the measures “inadequate” and took issue with Kenney’s leadership, saying the premier “continues to put business interests ahead of the well-being of all Albertans.”
As of Tuesday, Alberta had 13,349 active cases of COVID-19 and 348 people in hospital, with 66 in intensive care.
WATCH | Alberta response not aggressive enough to curb COVID-19, says respirologist:
Recent news on COVID-19 vaccines is very encouraging, particularly with regards to protecting the elderly, says respirologist Dr. Samir Gupta. 7:46
British Columbia, meanwhile, reported 941 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday — a new daily high in the province, which also announced a new public health measure.
“We need to slow the spread of COVID-19 in our province and that needs to happen now,” Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a statement. “That is why we have paused all gatherings, events and indoor group fitness activities.”
941 new cases of <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a> announced in British Columbia, a record high. <br><br>10 new deaths, and hospitalizations rise to a record 284. <br><br>Today’s chart. <a href=”https://t.co/OSjE76rIXh”>pic.twitter.com/OSjE76rIXh</a>
The vast majority of the new cases in B.C. were in the Fraser Health region, which includes major cities like Surrey and Burnaby. As of Tuesday there were 7,732 active cases of COVID-19 in the province and 284 people in hospital, with 61 in intensive care.
What’s happening across Canada
As of 11:20 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Canada’s COVID-19 case count stood at 344,928, with 57,298 of those considered active cases. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 11,653.
Ontario is expected to provide guidance Wednesday on how people should handle the upcoming holiday season amid the coronavirus pandemic. Toronto and Peel Region are currently under the grey, or lockdown, level in the province’s tiered COVID-19 alert system, with those restrictions to stay in place at least until the week of Christmas.
WATCH | Toronto pub offering free meals to those in need:
The Dizzy Gastro Sports Pub in Toronto’s west end is offering free meals to people who are struggling financially because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Owner Chris Murie expects more people to be looking for help as government benefits wind down. 6:03
The tough new rules have sparked outcry from some small business owners, who argue they unfairly clamp down on small retailers while big-box stores that sell essentials like groceries are still allowed to sell “non-essential” products.
Ontario reported 1,373 cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, with 445 in Toronto and 415 in Peel Region. Health officials reported 35 additional deaths, bringing the cumulative death toll in the province to 3,554.
The number of people with COVID-19 in the province’s hospitals stood at 523, with 159 in intensive care, according to a provincial dashboard.
Quebec, which has seen the most cases of any province to date, recently provided its own guidance around Christmas.
Premier François Legault has said that people in that province can attend up to two social gatherings (with a maximum of 10 people in attendance at each event) from Dec. 24 to 27. People who plan on attending these gatherings are also asked to quarantine a week before and a week after.
Quebec reported 1,100 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday. Hospitalizations stood at 655, with 93 in intensive care, according to a provincial dashboard.
Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, meanwhile, urged people to be “very, very observant” of the province’s public health guidelines over the holidays. He waded into the broader debate about how to handle the holiday season this week, calling Quebec’s plan “dangerous.”
Manitoba reported 476 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday and 12 additional deaths, bringing the province’s death toll to 248.
In Atlantic Canada, where a travel bubble that tied the provinces together has been temporarily popped, Nova Scotia‘s premier is once again urging people to “stay the blazes home.”
After announcing 37 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday — the most the province has seen since late April — health officials put forward new regulations that will see a range of closures in the Halifax area beginning later this week. Restaurant dining rooms will close, as will public spaces like libraries, casinos and recreation centres.
“If you haven’t woken up to the second wave, this is your wake-up call,” Premier Stephen McNeil said.
WATCH | N.S. cracks down on Halifax to stop COVID-19 surge:
Nova Scotia is responding to a recent surge in COVID-19 cases with new restrictions focused on the Halifax area and a massive push for rapid testing regardless of symptoms. The goal is to find every case and preserve the relative safety the province has enjoyed for months. 1:57
In the North, Nunavut reported 11 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the number of active cases in the territory to 153. There were no new confirmed cases reported in Yukon or the Northwest Territories on Tuesday.
What’s happening around the world
From The Associated Press and Reuters, last updated at 11 a.m. ET
As of early Wednesday morning, there were more than 59.9 million reported cases of COVID-19 worldwide, with more than 38.3 million of those listed as resolved or recovered, according to a coronavirus tracking tool maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The global death toll stood at more than 1.4 million.
In the Americas, U.S. president-elect Joe Biden will give a speech on Wednesday highlighting the challenges facing Americans as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches and the country faces a surge in coronavirus infections.
Although White House officials are pushing Georgia to do more to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Gov. Brian Kemp said Tuesday that the responsibility rests with individual Georgians, as he implored them to take precautions over Thanksgiving.
In Minnesota, a surge of COVID-19 cases throughout the state is affecting staffing levels at many nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. That’s forcing the state to send the National Guard to help out in some homes, while the administration is also asking state employees to consider volunteering in facilities with critical staff shortages.
The Star Tribune reported Wednesday that Minnesota Department of Health data shows 90 per cent of the state’s nursing homes and 58 per cent of assisted-living facilities have active outbreaks.
Robert Lugo, left, helps manage Zoom calls as Santa Larry, right, speaks with a virtual visitor at the Santa Experience in the Mall of America on Tuesday in Bloomington, Minn. The owners had initially set up a socially distanced set, featuring a cabin with a plexiglass window, but moved completely online after new COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said Tuesday that 47 long-term care facilities are in “a crisis staffing situation” and are receiving active support from the state, including help from federal health nurses.
Gov. Tim Walz’s administration is also taking the unusual step of emailing all state employees and asking them to consider volunteering for two-week stints in long-term care facilities, particularly in greater Minnesota.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore, which once had the highest COVID-19 rate in Southeast Asia, said it was nearly virus-free and Australia’s most-populous state eased restrictions, while Tokyo will urge bars and restaurants to operate with shortened hours.
WATCH | Some Canadians in Australia favour an aggressive approach to COVID-19:
Australia became one of the few countries in the world, and one with many similarities to Canada, to beat back a second wave of COVID-19 and bring its case count near zero. 5:13
South Korea said 60 new army recruits at a boot camp have tested positive for the coronavirus, the military’s largest cluster infection. The Defence Ministry said in a statement the recruits had been taking basic training at an army unit in Yeoncheon, a town near the tense border with North Korea, at the start of their 18 months of mandatory military service.
It said more tests are underway to determine whether 860 other recruits and troops at the Yeoncheon unit have been infected with the virus too.
In Europe, Germany reported a record 410 COVID-19 deaths over 24 hours just before federal state leaders and Chancellor Angela Merkel were due to discuss an extension of pandemic-related restrictions into December and for the Christmas and New Year holidays.
France will start easing curbs this weekend so people will be able to spend the holiday with their families, and said a vaccine could start being administered by the year-end if approved by regulators.
An employee works to prepare orders for Christmas at JoueClub toys shop in Paris as non-essential stores prepare to reopen after weeks of lockdown to combat a resurgence of the coronavirus in France. (Christian Hartmann/Reuters)
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday that his government was considering limiting Christmas celebrations to six people in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Health experts and scientists have advised that six is a sufficiently low number to help stop the virus, Sanchez said, adding that the final details of the restrictions will be negotiated with regional authorities.
In the Middle East, Iran registered on Wednesday a daily record high of 13,843 new cases, the health ministry said, pushing the national tally to 894,385 in the Middle East’s worst-hit country.
The World Health Organization said the coronavirus pandemic has “slowed down” in the past week although death rates continued to rise, with more than 67,000 new deaths reported.
The UN health agency said in its latest epidemiological update Wednesday that even though there was a “downward trend” in the number of cases in Europe, the region still has the biggest proportion of new cases and deaths globally. WHO noted that Africa reported the highest increase in new cases and deaths, driven by South Africa, Algeria and Kenya.
In the past week, WHO said, the number of new cases reported in Europe dropped by about six per cent after a 10 per cent decline the previous week, suggesting that lockdowns across the continent are effectively slowing transmission. Still, the region accounts for about half of new global deaths.
In Asia, WHO noted that Japan reported the largest number of daily cases since the beginning of the outbreak, with more than 2,000 reported every day for five consecutive days, a 41 per cent increase from the previous week. Myanmar reported a 74 per cent jump in cases last week, with more than 11,000 new cases and a 36 per cent increase in deaths, at 188.
TORONTO – A group of hotel service workers in Toronto is set to hold a rally today outside the Fairmont Royal York to demand salary increases as hotel costs in the city skyrocket during Taylor Swift’s concerts.
Unite Here Local 75, the union representing 8,000 hospitality workers in the Greater Toronto Area, says Royal York employees have not seen a salary increase since 2021, and have been negotiating a new contract with the hotel since 2022.
The rally comes as the megastar begins her series of six sold-out concerts in Toronto, with the last show scheduled for Nov. 23.
During show weekends, some hotel rooms and short-term rentals in Toronto are priced up to 10 times more than other weekends, with some advertised for as much as $2,000 per night.
The union says hotel workers who will be serving Swifties during her Toronto stops are bargaining for raises to keep up with the rising cost of living.
The union represents hospitality workers including food service employees, room attendants and bell persons.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to slap an across-the-board tariff of at least 10 per cent on all imports including from Canada is unlikely to apply to Canadian oil, energy experts are predicting.
The threat of the tariff is causing a lot of concern north of the border, where the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said such a tariff could take a $30-billion bite out of the Canadian economy.
Rory Johnston, a Toronto-based oil market researcher and founder of Commodity Context, said he believes there’s a very small probability that Trump’s fees would apply to Canadian oil, but it is “quite a potentially damaging one.”
“Canada is uniquely vulnerable to market pressure posed by U.S. refineries given our lack of alternative egress,” Johnston said during a panel for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute Wednesday.
Michael Catanzaro, a former Trump energy adviser, told a forum in Washington, D.C. last week that he doesn’t expect Trump’s campaign vision of energy dominance and lower energy costs will exclude Canada.
“We should double down on the fact that the U.S. and Canada together can be this powerful force,” he said at the North American Energy Preeminence Forum hosted by the right-leaning Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 8.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S. and trade comprises 60 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. A significant proportion of that comes from oil and gas.
Canada is also the largest source of U.S. energy imports, and almost all Canadian crude oil exports went to its neighbour in 2023. Most of that makes its way through pipelines to the Midwest, where the key battleground states flipped for Trump on promises of making life more affordable.
Without exemptions for Canadian crude, many experts agree that the cost at American pumps is certain to increase. It’s unlikely the Republican leader would take action that’ll make gas cost more, Johnston said.
Johnston added there could be a situation where Canada sees a boon from Trump’s tariffs. If the Republican leader puts those fees on all oil imports except Canada “that is actually a net good thing for Canadian exports.”
But all of this comes with the caveat that there’s been a rocky relationship between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump, and the Liberal government in Canada has been at odds with the Republican politically on a number of fronts including climate action and renewable energy.
Catanzaro recalled a meeting with Canadian officials after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate agreement, an international treaty to cut greenhouse gases, during his first administration — a move the president-elect has promised to repeat.
“They were very hostile to us and to the administration,” Catanzaro said.
The Canadian reaction set the bilateral relationship back for some time, Catanzaro said.
Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-U.S. Relations, said he’s not certain the Republican leader would be willing to give a tariff concession under Trudeau.
Hampson said Trump would know that giving Canada an immediate exemption would provide Trudeau a powerful argument about his ability to negotiate with the president-elect ahead of Canada’s looming election. The Republican leader would not be happy with that outcome, given their notably rocky relationship during Trump’s first administration, Hampson added.
Trump called Trudeau “weak” and “dishonest” after the prime minister criticized the president’s 2018 tariff actions at the G7 summit in Quebec. There was another blow-up when Trudeau and other NATO leaders appeared to be on video talking about a Trump press conference the following year. Trump called the prime minister “two-faced.”
Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s then-trade representative, recounted in his book that U.S.-Canada relations were “at their lowest ebb since the failed American invasion of Upper Canada during the War of 1812.”
The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, negotiated under the first Trump administration, will come under review in 2026. Hampson said Trump could use the tariffs, or a threat of them, to force Canada into concessions.
Wilbur Ross, the former U.S. commerce secretary who was involved in the negotiation of that trilateral agreement, recently told CBC that Trump is likely to carve out exemptions for sectors such as Canadian oil and gas.
Eric Miller, president of Rideau Potomac Strategy Group, said politicians run for office in poetry and govern in prose, agreeing that wide-reaching tariffs on Canadian energy were unlikely.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
HALIFAX – The director of a democracy watchdog says that if Nova Scotia’s electoral officer had more power to levy fines, it would discourage situations such as campaign managers giving Tim Hortons gift cards to voters.
The Liberal party has complained to Elections Nova Scotia after a Progressive Conservative campaign manager in Lunenburg, N.S., handed out gift cards each good for a single cup of coffee at a drive-thru while candidate Susan Corkum-Greek greeted voters as they exited.
The campaign manager resigned earlier this week and issued a statement saying he’d handed out 25 of the $2.07 cards.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, says Nova Scotia needs law reform to permit its chief electoral officer to directly order a fine in such cases, rather than lengthy, costly and often ineffective court cases.
“We need to discourage violations of election laws, even small ones, as much as we discourage illegal parking,” he said.
He said there may be significant violations of the Elections Act where the public prosecution service should be called in, but often minor cases in provincial jurisdictions can drift on for months and end up being abandoned.
The Liberals have argued providing the gift cards violated Section 327 of the provincial Elections Act, which prohibits offering “a bribe” to influence a person’s vote.
The party has also filed a petition seeking a declaration by the Nova Scotia Supreme Court that the incident constitutes corrupt practices under the Elections Act. However, a spokesperson for the judiciary said the case won’t be heard until after the Nov. 26 election.
Conacher said law reforms in Nova Scotia could result in similar cases being dealt with summarily, as occurs with parking tickets, particularly if they are isolated and less severe.
Asked about such a potential reform, Tim Houston, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, said it’s important to keep in mind the person involved in Lunenburg was a party volunteer.
“Let’s not lose sight of the fact these are people volunteering their time to help the process …. I think it’s a very slippery slope to kind of weaponize the legal system against a party volunteer who maybe made a mistake,” he said.
Conacher said he does not think his proposal would discourage people from volunteering for political parties.
“It’s more important to discourage violations of the law. I don’t think you discourage volunteers. It just makes them pay more attention to following the rules, and as a result you get fairer elections,” he said.
The NDP and Liberal leaders didn’t immediately provide comment on the proposed law reform.
Unlike the federal system, in Nova Scotia there is no commissioner appointed to levy administrative penalties under the Nova Scotia Elections Act. Conacher said it’s preferable to have separate roles, with chief electoral officers focusing on running elections while the election commissioner focuses on monitoring any violations of the legislation.
However, he said he recognizes this system is more costly, and that it’s possible for chief electoral officers to take on the function of levying administrative fines as well.
“The lack of penalties for many violations can just encourage more violations. You don’t want to tie up the courts with all these minor things,” said Conacher.
Naomi Shelton, a spokeswoman for Elections Nova Scotia, says the Tim Hortons case remains under investigation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2024.
