Ontario completed 59,416 COVID-19 tests in the previous 24 hours with a 2.1 per cent positivity rate, which has been trending down in recent weeks.
Author of the article:
Aedan Helmer
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Ottawa Public Health reported 62 new cases Saturday. There were no new deaths and the city’s death toll remains 439.
There have been 14,650 cases in Ottawa and of those, 13,723 are now considered resolved.
There are now 488 active cases in the city, an indicator showing a rising trend in recent weeks after steady declines through early February.
There are 24 patients in hospital and seven in ICU.
Ottawa’s statistics remain remains at the Orange (Restrict) level in the province’s framework, though in an update to council last week, Dr. Vera Etches cautioned that the city could soon be headed into the Red (Control).
OPH is to meet with the province this week to discuss whether the city should return to the Red level of restrictions, which Etches called “a real possibility.”
Those indicators had been trending the wrong direction, but there have been some encouraging signs in data released in recent days.
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Ottawa’s daily test positivity was 1.7 per cent in the last 24 hours, and the weekly average has again declined slightly to 2.0 per cent. That weekly rate must remain below 2.4 per cent to remain in Orange.
Ottawa’s weekly average rate of infection is trending up, however, with a slight increase from 34.7 to 35.0 cases per 100,000 population over the last 24 hours. That rate must remain under 40 cases per 100,000 population to remain in Orange.
The R(t) number — another key indicator measuring the secondary cases generated by a single confirmed COVID-19 infection — must be between 1.0 and 1.1 to remain in Orange.
Ottawa’s R(t) number has remained relatively flat, hovering around 1.0 for much of February, and has now dipped below that threshold with an average 0.98 score over the past week.
Any number above 1.0 indicates the virus is spreading in the community, any score under 1.0 indicates the spread is coming under control.
On the vaccination front, Ottawa received another 4,000 Moderna doses on Thursday, and has now administered 49,125 of the 61,820 total doses the city has received.
A “minor booking issue” caused some lineups at The Ottawa Hospital Civic Campus where health care workers awaited their vaccinations.
The appointments include the highest priority hospital and community-based health care workers, staff and essential caregivers from long-term care homes, and staff from high risk retirement homes, The Ottawa Hospital said in a statement.
Province
Ontario is reporting 1,185 new laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases Saturday and 16 related deaths.
The Greater Toronto Area remains a provincial hotspot, with 331 new cases identified in Toronto Saturday and 220 new cases in Peel. Both regions remain under lockdown orders.
York region reported 119 new cases.
There were 67 new cases in Ottawa, according to provincial data.
There are often discrepancies between Ontario’s daily case counts and those logged by local public health units while the province is completing its data migration to a central system. Ottawa Public Health is using its own system in the meantime, which pulls local data each afternoon and reports the numbers around 12:30 p.m. the following day. OPH says its data is typically the most up-to-date.
In surrounding regions, the Eastern Ontario public health unit reported seven new cases Saturday, a day after 11 new infections were confirmed in the area on Friday.
There were five new cases in Hastings, one in Kingston and three in Renfrew County.
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No new cases were found in Leeds, Grenville and Lanark.
Ontario completed 59,416 COVID-19 tests in the previous 24 hours with a 2.1 per cent positivity rate, which has been trending down in recent weeks.
There are 680 patients in Ontario hospitals, 276 in intensive care and, of those, 182 require a ventilator.
Those rates of severe cases have remained relatively constant recently after steady declines through early February.
On the vaccination front, another 24,339 vaccine doses were administered Friday, and as of 8 p.m., a total of 668,104 doses had been administered, with 260,972 Ontarians fully immunized with both doses.
Meanwhile, the province confirmed that it unknowingly distributed counterfeit N95 masks to health-care providers.
The province could not immediately say how many of the counterfeit 3M masks it had acquired for its stockpile, or how many were given to health-care workers.
The Ministry of Health sent a memo to health-care providers notifying them of the problem and asked them to seek out and “isolate” the faulty gear by product number.
The government said it is reviewing its entire stockpile to check for the counterfeit product and has also alerted Health Canada of the situation.
Quebec
Quebec reported 858 new COVID-19 cases and 13 deaths on Saturday.
There were 21 fewer patients in hospital, for a total of 599, with 112 in ICU, a drop of seven.
There were 31 new cases reported in the Outaouais region for a total of 6,280. There was one new death reported in the region for a total of 160.
A total of 287,003 infections have now been confirmed in the province since the pandemic began.
There have been 10,385 deaths and 268,645 cases are considered recovered.
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Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
After a long day at a work event in July, Kathryn Kozody was relieved when she spotted a car with a lit-up taxi sign.
She thought it was odd when the driver told her she’d have to pay her fare with a debit card. Still, a tired Kozody hopped in the car.
“I was like, ‘Fine, it’s kind of weird, but let’s go home,'” said Kozody, who lives in Calgary.
Nothing else seemed off — until the next day when she discovered that almost $2,000 was missing from her bank account. On top of that, her debit card had someone else’s name on it.
Kozody concluded that the taxi driver was a fraudster who, during the debit card transaction, recorded her PIN, stole her card and handed her back a fake.
“I started freaking out,” she said. “It’s terrifying when they have your debit card.”
It took Kozody about two weeks to get her money back from her bank, and she’s still rattled by the experience.
“It really felt like an invasion of privacy and a violation to be a victim of this scam,” she said. “I really don’t want it to happen to anybody else.”
The taxi scam isn’t new; Toronto and Montreal have been seeing it for years. But the crime is becoming more widespread.
This summer, police in Calgary,Edmonton and at least five cities in southern Ontario, including Kingston and Ottawa, posted warnings online that they had received multiple reports of the scam.
Police and the Canadian Taxi Association say the fraudsters have a helping hand: with the click of a button, they can purchase a generic — but official looking — taxi roof sign on e-commerce sites like Amazon.
“They do have a moral responsibility to at least sell the signs to individuals that are properly licensed,” said association president Marc André Way.
However, the U.S.-based company continues to sell the product to all customers.
“These lights are legal to sell in Canada,” Amazon told CBC News in an email.
‘Eye-popping’ numbers
The taxi scam has several variations but typically ends the same way: the victim pays with a debit card, then the scammer secretly steals it and hands the victim a similar but fake card. Shortly thereafter, money disappears from the victim’s account.
Ron Hansen, deputy chief of police in Sarnia, Ont., said his department received 12 reports of the scam in July, with one victim losing $9,900.
Toronto police report that since June 2023 the department has received 919 reports of the taxi scam, totalling $1.7 million in losses.
The numbers are “eye-popping,” said Toronto police detective David Coffey.
“When they do get a victim, they are quick to go right into the bank accounts. They’re quick to empty them out.”
Jessica Chin King of Toronto said just 15 minutes after a recent cab ride, she got a suspicious activity alert from her bank. Turns out, $600 had been withdrawn from her account.
“I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that just happened.’ I was in shock,” said Chin King, whose bank later reimbursed the cash.
She said she too was fooled by the taxi sign atop the car.
“I was in the car with somebody who wasn’t a taxi driver. Anything could have happened,” she said. “I was thankful that it was only my bank [account] that was compromised.”
Taxi light for $35 on Amazon
CBC News bought a taxi sign from Amazon for $35. It has a magnetic strip on the bottom, so it easily sticks to the top of a car.
To power the light, an attached wire can be run through the driver’s window and plugged into the car’s auxiliary power outlet, also known as the cigarette lighter outlet.
The taxi association says licensed taxi drivers typically get their roof signs from speciality suppliers, and they are hardwired to the car — not powered via the cigarette lighter.
“When you see that … it’s obvious that it’s not a legitimate taxi,” said Way, the association president.
“This is not a safe, practical way to distribute the trusted ‘Taxi’ signs,” he wrote.
But Amazon told Way — and CBC News — the signs will remain on its site, because the company isn’t breaking any rules.
“It’s going to be quite difficult, I think, for anyone to stop Amazon from selling a product that is perfectly legal to sell,” said Toronto criminal lawyer, Daniel Goldbloom. “It’s true that these taxi signs can be used to commit scams, but kitchen knives can be used to commit murder — and we don’t stop retailers from selling those.”
But Way isn’t giving up hope.
He says the taxi association also plans to ask other online retailers, such as Temu and eBay, to stop selling the taxi signs and will lobby provincial governments for legislation that regulates the sale of the product.
However, Coffey said he believes the best way to fight the taxi scam is to educate people about it.
“Never, never give another person control of your debit card,” the detective said.
Victims Chin King and Kozody also want to spread the word.
“The more people know, the less likely it is to happen again to somebody else,” Kozody said.