TORONTO —
An upcoming nightly curfew in Quebec is hogging the headlines, but some public health experts say it’s another plank of Premier Francois Legault’s new plan that other provinces should pay the most attention to.
The measures include a curfew that will affect the vast majority of Quebecers. As of Saturday, anyone caught outside their home between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. for any reason other than work, walking a pet within one kilometre of their home or visiting a pharmacy will be subject to a fine of up to $6,000.
CTV News’ Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Abdu Sharkway told CTV’s Your Morning on Thursday that while the curfew may seem heavy-handed, it is necessary to find a way to reverse COVID-19’s upward trend in Quebec.
“If incentive to do the right thing isn’t working, at some point, when do you have to invoke disincentive to make sure that more people don’t die and that our health-care system doesn’t collapse?” he said.
“We’re really playing with fire at this point in time.”
Places of worship will also be closed around the clock in Quebec, except for funerals with up to 10 people in attendance. Legault additionally said that “non-essential” manufacturing operations will be halted, although discussions are still ongoing to determine what exactly that entails.
WORKPLACE WOES
Even that first hint of a willingness to close non-retail and non-service workplaces is a positive sign that may do more to slow the pandemic than the curfew, Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease specialist affiliated with McMaster University in Hamilton, told CTVNews.ca.
“I think everyone is focusing on the curfew part. The one thing that I think may actually have a big potent effect … is the fact that they’re looking at really ramping down manufacturing,” he said Thursday via telephone.
“It’s showing up more and more that workplaces are becoming a major, major issue.”
As of Dec. 23, 2020 – the last report available – there were 699 active workplace outbreaks in Quebec. In total, they had been directly linked to 3,367 cases of COVID-19. Manufacturing facilities accounted for 27 per cent of those outbreaks and 40 per cent of those cases.
Data released this week by the City of Toronto shows that manufacturing facilities, construction sites, offices and warehouses account for more than 40 per cent of workplace outbreaks in Canada’s largest city during the pandemic – more than three times as many as bars and restaurants.
Despite that, lockdown-like measures to date have largely focused on bars, restaurants and other public-facing businesses, while requiring non-public-facing workplaces only to ensure mask-wearing and physical distancing.
“Many of our lockdowns really haven’t been able to [tackle workplace transmission],” Chagla said.
“If hospitals and long-term care facilities struggle to prevent transmission to their staff for COVID coming in, then a workplace is going to be even harder to try to prevent that type of transmission.”
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases physician affiliated with the University of Toronto, said Thursday that “upstream drivers” of COVID-19 cases, such as workplace transmission, need to be addressed by any new public health restrictions.
“Otherwise, this is a Band-Aid solution,” he told CTV News Channel.
As for the curfew, Chagla said he is “not 100 per cent certain” about its effectiveness.
Curfews have been used in Australia, France and other jurisdictions as part of successful efforts to flatten COVID-19 curves, but Chagla said there is little proof that the curfews themselves made as much of a difference as other measures introduced around the same time.
“There’s not great evidence to suggest it actually works, other than that when these things get rolled out, they get rolled out as a bundle – so when it works, you don’t know which part of the bundle was actually the component that worked,” he said.
THE ‘CANADIAN SHIELD’ APPROACH
Meanwhile, a group of 17 public health experts and business leaders is calling for other provinces to enact measures far stronger than Quebec’s.
They released a strategy last week that they call “the Canadian Shield,” arguing that Canada should be placed into a “short, sharp” and more severe lockdown until the national COVID-19 active case tally is approximately one-quarter its current size.
Once that has been achieved, they argue, the caseload will be low enough for the World Health Organization-endorsed strategy of testing, contact tracing and isolation to be effective. Restrictions could then start to be relaxed, as long as the number of active cases continues to fall by between 17 and 25 per cent per week.
While the restrictions are in place, the group argues, governments would need to do more than they have done thus far to support the people and businesses most affected by the lockdown.
One of the 17 people behind this strategy is André Beaulieu, the senior vice-president of corporate services for Bell Canada, which owns CTV News.
In a report released last week, the group argued that if their recommendations were followed immediately, the active case total in Canada could fall by 75 per cent by the end of January, the country could see fewer than 40 new cases a day by May 1, and 5,000 lives could be saved. Following the current path could lead to 9,000 new infections per day in the spring, even as vaccines are rolled out, they said.
“Building the Canadian Shield is a challenging strategy requiring quick, decisive actions by government and a whole of society engagement. However, it is achievable, and massively better than the status quo,” they wrote.
Asked for his opinion, Chagla said he can see the Canadian Shield strategy being realistic as far as reducing COVID-19 cases and deaths, but worries it does not account for “collateral damage” such as increases in depression, financial instability, household violence and worsened non-COVID-19 medical outcomes as a result of a more severe lockdown.
“More restrictive measures and that are needed. Supports for essential populations and essential staff are needed. Ramping down manufacturing as much as possible is needed. But to do this bundled approach, to significantly lock down as part of the approach … I have some hesitation saying that’s an ideal plan to roll out,” he said.
“People are so frustrated, so upset, they see a lot of inconsistencies with public health messaging – I’m able to do X but not Y – I don’t think, without huge militaristic support, you’re able to even invoke a plan like this.”
‘THIS SITUATION IS UNTENABLE’
There are also questions around how Quebec plans to enforce its curfew. Existing COVID-19 restrictions have been haphazardly enforced in many Canadian jurisdictions. More than 40,000 people entering or returning to Canada during have been contacted by police about concerns they are not following quarantine restrictions, but only 138 of those interactions had resulted in tickets or charges as of last week.
“A lot of questions arise in my mind around ‘How is this going to be enforced? How do you determine if somebody’s out for an essential reason or not?'” Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, an infectious diseases specialist at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ont., said Wednesday on CTV News Channel.
Whatever the strategy, the experts say it’s important that something be done to stop Canada’s ever-escalating COVID-19 case counts from continuing on their current path.
“This situation is untenable. We simply cannot accept the loss of life that is going on in much of Canada at this time,” Sharkaway said.
Bogoch cautioned that there was ample warning of the current COVID-19 spike “for probably over a month,” and that numbers will likely continue to increase in the near future.
“You’ve got your health-care system in many parts of the country stretched beyond capacity, you’ve got ICUs that are full, you’ve got rising case numbers, rising hospitalizations, rising deaths,” he said.
“This is clearly, clearly an emergency. It is not going to get better. It is probably going to get worse over the next couple of weeks.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
