Premier Doug Ford is scheduled to hold a news conference beginning at 1 p.m. at Queen’s Park. Ford’s office says he will be joined by the minister of health, solicitor general and the head of the province’s vaccine distribution task force.
You can watch it live in this story.
Ontario reported another 2,275 cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, a single-day record that comes with an important caveat, according to the province.
Changes to how Public Health Ontario collects and analyzes cases mean that today’s figure includes 2.5 extra hours of data from several health units, artificially inflating the total number — but by how much is not yet clear.
The new cases include 711 in Toronto (the local count in the city was unaffected by the data changes), as well as 586 in Peel Region, 185 in Windsor-Essex and 154 in York Region.
They come as hospitalizations in Ontario near highs not seen since the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in the spring.
The number of people in Ontario hospitals with confirmed cases of COVID-19 jumped considerably today, up to 921 from 857 yesterday, an increase of 64. Of those, 249 are being treated in intensive care and 156 require the use of a ventilator, up five and seven, respectively, from yesterday.
At the height of the first wave, hospitalizations topped out at 1,043, while ICU admissions peaked at 264.
Other public health units that saw double-digit increases were:
Hamilton: 99
Durham Region: 92
Waterloo Region: 71
Halton Region: 65
Niagara Region: 65
Simcoe Muskoka: 55
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph: 37
Middlesex-London: 31
Brant County: 28
Southwestern: 21
Huron Perth: 12
Haldimand-Norfolk: 11
Eastern Ontario: 11
Due to a one-time data clean-up, Ottawa reported -9 cases.
(Note: All of the figures used for new cases in this story are found on the Ontario Health Ministry’s COVID-19 dashboard or in its daily epidemiologic summary. The number of cases for any region may differ from what is reported by the local public health unit because local units report figures at different times.)
The Ministry of Education also reported 319 new cases that are school-related: 270 students, 48 staff members and one person who was not identified. Some 913 of Ontario’s 4,828 publicly funded schools, or about 18.9 per cent, have at least one case of COVID-19, while 20 schools are currently closed because of the illness.
The new cases push the seven-day average to 1,927, a new high.
The record comes as Ontario’s network of labs processed just 39,556 test samples and reported a positivity rate of 5.3 per cent.
There are currently 17,031 confirmed, active infections of the novel coronavirus provincewide, the most at any time during the pandemic.
Public health officials also reported another 20 deaths linked to the illness, bringing the official toll to 3,992.
Meanwhile, the early stages of the province’s expansive immunization campaign, which began yesterday with the first shots administered in Toronto, continues today.
Hundreds more front-line health-care workers are expected to get shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at locations in Toronto and Ottawa throughout the day. The doses arrived in Canada late Sunday night.
And the chief medical adviser at Health Canada says things are on track for her department to approve a second vaccine for the virus very soon.
Dr. Supriya Sharma says things “look positive” for the vaccine from U.S. biotech firm Moderna but there are still some outstanding manufacturing documents needed before the decision can be made.
Ongoing reviews of two more vaccines are less certain, with AstraZeneca’s potentially needing more study before Health Canada is ready to make a decision, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine candidate’s review still in the very early stages.
Health Canada approved the vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech Dec. 9.
Health-care workers in Toronto and long-term care residents in Montreal and Quebec City were the first to receive the vaccine Monday morning.
Health workers in Manitoba and Alberta are set to follow Wednesday and most other provinces intend to start vaccinating priority groups by the weekend.
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.
