News
Fully vaccinated but left out: Canada’s new border rules put some in a conundrum – Global News
Canada’s new border rules for fully vaccinated travellers are not going down well with some people who have received COVID-19 vaccines in other countries.
Since July 5, all eligible air travellers who are fully vaccinated are exempt from the mandatory 14-day quarantine — but only if Health Canada authorized the vaccine that the traveller used.
Li, who went home to see family in Nanjing back in April, got one dose of the Sinovac vaccine and another of the Sinopharm shot one month apart.
“When I left Canada, the vaccine wasn’t readily available for people of my age yet in Toronto, so I decided it’s my best chance to get a vaccine in China,” the 30-year-old told Global News.
But now, Li, who is a food industry analyst and often travels to the United States for work, finds herself in a bit of a conundrum as she will still need to quarantine every time she returns to Canada.
“Obviously it’s going to cause a lot of inconvenience.”
So far, the federal government has approved four COVID-19 vaccines for use: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
Two other vaccines from Medicago and Novavax are currently under review by Health Canada.
No applications for China’s vaccines have been submitted to the regulator yet. But the shots have been given the green light by the World Health Organization (WHO) and are being doled out in several Asian and Latin American countries.
“I think as long as the vaccine is approved by WHO, then the Canadian government should recognize it as well,” said Li.
Freya Ma is in a similar boat. The 23-year-old Chinese national was fully vaccinated in Shanghai in April before flying back to Toronto, where she resides.
Ma says even though she feels safe after getting her two doses, Canada’s border restrictions are an “inconvenience.”
“But for now, I am just really being optimistic … and hoping … the government will … welcome … more types of vaccine.”
Vaccinate again?
Last month, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) released updated guidance for Canadians who are fully immunized with COVID-19 vaccines approved in Canada.
Canadians who have received both doses of the vaccine will no longer have to wear masks or physically distance when outside with small groups of people from multiple households — even if those people are unvaccinated. However, they’ll need to wait 14 days after their second shot to be considered fully protected.
Under the PHAC guidelines, fully vaccinated people in Canada can hug, go camping with friends, have small family barbecues, play close contact sports and attend outdoor weddings as well as outdoor birthday parties.
Because the same rules do not apply to them, both Li and Ma are left wondering if they would need to get vaccinated again with one of the shots authorized by Canada.
“I’m thinking if it will never be recognized, I might have to get some vaccine that’s approved here, just because I have to go back to normal life,” said Li.
In the Middle East, both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) have offered the Pfizer vaccine as a booster shot to those who have been fully vaccinated with Sinopharm.
Alberto Martin, a professor of immunology at the University of Toronto, says from a health standpoint, there should be no concern in doing so.
“I don’t see any reason why there will be any issues with those people that have been immunized with the Chinese vaccine and just getting re-immunized here in Canada with Pfizer or AstraZeneca,” he told Global News.
“From a medical perspective, I don’t see it hurting. It can only help.”
The differential treatment at Canada’s border is also affecting vaccinated people who want to see family in Canada.
Graciela D’Andrea, 65, got her first dose of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine back in April and is awaiting the second dose. Her husband has been fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca.
The Argentine couple was hoping to visit their son and daughter-in-law in Toronto, who they haven’t seen in over a year and a half. But D’Andrea says the two-week quarantine is an impediment.
“I find it unfair that people can enter but because I am vaccinated with Sputnik, I can’t [without quarantine],” she told Global News in Spanish.
“My husband can enter without it because he got AstraZeneca.”
D’Andrea is hoping all countries start easing restrictions for vaccinated travellers.
“The most important thing is that we’re vaccinated against the coronavirus. It shouldn’t matter what the brand of the vaccine is.”
Freedom of movement
The WHO said last week that any COVID-19 vaccines it has authorized for emergency use should be recognized by countries as they open up their borders to inoculated travellers.
“Any measure that only allows people protected by a subset of WHO-approved vaccines to benefit from the re-opening of travel … would effectively create a two-tier system, further widening the global vaccine divide and exacerbating the inequities we have already seen in the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines,” the global health body said in a July 1 statement.
In the United States, people who have received two doses of the mRNA vaccines — Pfizer and Moderna — and the single-shot Johnson and Johnson vaccine are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after the inoculations. However, air passengers entering the U.S. are not required to quarantine, regardless of their vaccination status.
In Europe, France is accepting tourists who were inoculated with the four EU-approved vaccines — Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna or Johnson and Johnson.
But Spain is also allowing recipients of the two Chinese vaccines authorized by the WHO — as long as visitors are fully vaccinated at least two weeks before the trip.
Kerry Bowman, a professor of bioethics and global health at the University of Toronto, said Canada’s new policy excludes millions of people who have received the Sputnik V vaccine or one of China’s two vaccines.
“This [policy] is essentially vaccine passports,” he told Global News in a previous interview. “If every country does this, we’re going to have a huge problem on our hands in terms of access.”
Bowman pointed out that the AstraZeneca vaccine has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yet, so if that country followed Canada’s lead, then it would limit the freedom of movement for millions of Canadians.
According to Bowman, there should be an international standard set by the WHO for all the vaccines it has approved.
“We need international standards, not national. Otherwise, we’ve got problems with fairness and freedom of movement.”
— with files from Global News’ Eric Stober, Elizabeth Palmieri and The Association Press.
© 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
News
For its next trick, Ottawa must unload the $34B Trans Mountain pipeline. It won't be easy – CBC.ca
In her budget speech to the House of Commons on Tuesday, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland took a moment to celebrate the finishing touch on expansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline.
The controversial project has been plagued by delays and massive cost overruns, but Freeland instead focused on its completion, highlighting the: “talented tradespeople and the brilliant engineers who, last Thursday, made the final weld, known as the golden weld, on a great national project.”
For all the difficulties with developing and building TMX, Freeland still faces another major hurdle that is sure to prove contentious — choosing when to sell it, who gets to buy it, and for how much.
An upcoming election and more than $34 billion in construction costs are raising the stakes.
Ottawa bought the project when it was on the verge of falling apart — before there was ever a shovel in the ground — in the face of legal, political and regulatory challenges.
The federal government has long vowed to sell the project (including at least a partial ownership stake to Indigenous groups) once construction was complete. That milestone has now been reached.
But the move will no doubt open a Pandora’s box, says Daniel Béland, the director of the McGill University Institute for the Study of Canada and a professor in the department of political science.
He says any potential deal will face intense scrutiny considering the election is due before the fall of 2025 and, most notably, because the actual sale price is expected to be far lower than the cost to actually build the pipeline.
“They were in a hot spot when they bought it back in 2018. They are still in a hot spot,” said Béland.
How the governing Liberals handle Trans Mountain could impact how voters view the Liberal party’s handling of financial, economic, Indigenous, and environmental issues.
“There’s risk either way. If you sell it really fast, but you sell it at the price that is considered to be quite low, then you might be accused of just getting rid of it for political reasons but not having the interest of taxpayers in mind,” he said.
“But, if you wait and you don’t sell it, then you might be accused of being basically permanently involved or trying to be permanently involved in that sector of the economy in a way that many people, even people who are more conservative, may find inappropriate.”
Deep discount
There has always been interest in buying it, including from Stephen Mason, the managing director of Project Reconciliation, a Calgary-based organization which aims to use a potential ownership stake to benefit Indigenous communities.
Nearly five years ago, Mason walked into then-federal finance minister Bill Morneau’s office in Ottawa and made an offer to purchase Trans Mountain before construction had even begun on its expansion, which will transport more oil from Alberta to the British Columbia coast.
Morneau was interested, he says, but the project wasn’t for sale until the new pipeline was built.
Much has changed since that meeting in July 2019, including the ballooning cost of Trans Mountain to more than $34 billion (compared to an original estimate of about $7.3 billion) and numerous delays in construction.
Mason is still pursuing ownership. He won’t discuss numbers, but suspects Trans Mountain is worth far less than $34 billion.
“My intuition is telling me that it’s going to be a fairly significant writedown,” he said. “I’m not sure the Liberal government wants to get into a public recognition of what the writedown is ahead of the election, but that is just … my speculation.”
New tolls
A critical factor in the timing and price of a potential sale is a dispute over how much oil companies will have to pay to actually use the new pipeline.
Several large oil producers signed long-term contracts to use 80 per cent of the pipeline. However, as construction costs have soared, so too have the tolls that companies will have to pay.
Those companies have balked at the higher rates arguing they shouldn’t have to bear the “extreme magnitude” of construction overruns. The Canada Energy Regulator has scheduled a hearing for September, at the earliest, to resolve the issue.
For now, the regulator has set an interim toll of $11.46 for every barrel of oil moved down the line. That price includes a fixed amount of $10.88 and a variable portion of $0.58. The fixed amount is nearly double what Trans Mountain estimated it would be in 2017.
“There’s no way that you can have tolls high enough on TMX to cover a $34 billion budget,” said Rory Johnston, an energy researcher and founder of the Commodity Context newsletter, who describes the cost overruns on the project compared to the original estimates as “gigantic.”
He doesn’t expect the final tolls to be much higher than the interim amount because, otherwise, the pipeline could become too expensive for oil companies to want to use. Based on the interim tolls, Johnston expects the federal government to likely only recover about half of the money it spent to buy and build Trans Mountain.
“There’s no way anyone would pay the full cost of the pipeline because the tolls don’t support it. You’re going to need to discount it. You’re going to need to take a haircut of at least 50 per cent of this pipeline,” he said.
The federal government currently owns the original Trans Mountain pipeline, built in 1953, the now-completed expansion and related facilities including storage tanks and an export terminal.
Potential buyers
The federal government has looked at offering an equity stake to the more than 120 Western Canadian Indigenous communities whose lands are located along the pipeline route, while finding a different buyer to be the majority owner.
Besides Project Reconciliation, other potential buyers include a partnership between the Western Indigenous Pipeline Group (WIPG) and Pembina Pipelines.
The group has the support from about 40 Indigenous communities and hopes to purchase the project within the next year, said Michael Lebourdais, an WIPG director and chief of Whispering Pines/Clinton Indian Band, located near Kamloops, B.C.
Those communities have to live with the environmental risk of a spill, so they should benefit financially from the pipeline, he says.
Pension funds and other institutions could pursue ownership too.
“There will be buyers. I’m not sure that they’ll be willing to pay the full cost of construction but I think there’ll be buyers for sure,” said Jackie Forrest, executive director of the ARC Energy Research Institute.
The federal government will likely highlight the overall economic benefits of the new pipeline and the expected role of Indigenous communities in ownership, experts say, as a way to defend against criticism if the eventual sale price is low.
In her Tuesday speech, Freeland was already promoting the pipeline’s expected financial boost by highlighting the Bank of Canada’s recent estimate that the new Trans Mountain expansion will add one-quarter of a percentage point to Canada’s GDP in the second quarter.
News
14 suspects arrested in grandparents scam targeting seniors across Canada: OPP – CP24
An interprovincial investigation into an “emergency grandparents scam” that targeted seniors across Canada has led to the arrest of 14 suspects, Ontario Provincial Police say.
Details of the investigation, dubbed Project Sharp, were announced at a news conference in Scarborough on Thursday morning.
Police said 56 charges have been laid against the suspects, who were all arrested in the Montreal area.
According to police, since January, investigators identified 126 victims who were defrauded out of a total of $739,000. Fifteen of those victims were defrauded on multiple occasions, police said, resulting in the loss of an additional $200,000.
The victims, who range in age from 46 to 95, were targeted based on the fact that they had landline telephones, police said. While people across the country were defrauded, police said, the majority resided in Ontario.
Police said four of the 14 arrested in the fraud remain in custody while the other 10 have been released on bail. The charges they face include involvement in organized crime groups, extortion, impersonating a police officer, and fraud, police said.
OPP Det.-Insp. Sean Chatland told reporters Thursday that the police service began looking into an “organized crime group” believed to be involved in fraud during an intelligence probe in September 2022.
By February 2023, Chatland said the probe was formalized into an OPP-led joint forces investigation involving police services in both Ontario and Quebec.
“This organized crime group demonstrated a deliberate and methodical approach in exploiting victims. They operated out of Ontario and Quebec, utilizing emergency grandparents scams on victims across Canada,” Chatland said.
“They would impersonate police officers, judges, lawyers, and loved ones, preying on grandparents who believed they were trying to help family members in trouble.”
He said in many cases, the suspects utilized “money mules” or couriers to collect large sums of money from the victims.
This is a breaking news story. More details to come.
News
PQ leader unapologetic about comments made regarding Canada – CTV News Montreal
Parti Québécois (PQ) Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon isn’t shying away from criticism that comments he made referencing Canada’s colonial past were an inappropriate way to push his party’s sovereignty agenda.
“We need to be considering the whole history of Canada in interpreting what’s happening,” he told CJAD 800’s Aaron Rand.
This comes just days after St-Pierre Plamondon assured that Quebecers “will definitely be living through a third referendum” on sovereignty before the end of the decade if his party is elected.
His reasoning: the federal government poses an “existential threat” to Quebecers.
“What will become of us as Quebecers if we don’t even have a fifth of the votes in a government that decides for us? We’re finished. Canada has a bleak future in store for us,” he told party members at a two-day national council on housing. “It’s a regime that only wants to crush those who refuse to assimilate.”
In speaking with Rand on Wednesday about backlash to his comments, St-Pierre Plamondon pointed out, “I’m not always soft-spoken but I always try to be as thoughtful as possible.”
Nevertheless, he doubled down on his argument, saying the federal government was “disrespecting” the provinces when it comes to issues like immigration.
“That doesn’t give us any hopes of integration, and housing, and of providing services for these people under the federal power of immigration,” he said.
Plamondon stated that there are currently 560,000 temporary immigrants in Quebec, and if the federal government continues on this path, “there is no viable future for Quebec.”
LISTEN ON CJAD 800 RADIO: PQ leader accuses Canada of ‘disrespecting the competencies of provinces’
He also refused to apologize for referencing Canada’s history, saying the country shouldn’t shy away from its past.
“Talking about history is not being radical even though the [Quebec Liberal Party] PLQ or Éric Duhaime tries to distort what I said to make me a radical politician,” he said. “I don’t think people will buy that because I’ve been constant for the past years, and talking about history shouldn’t be radical in my view.”
He points out that his criticisms aren’t specifically aimed at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his Liberal Party but at the federal government in general.
“He’s continuing the mission of his father. He has the exact same approach toward Quebec, and that’s fair to do,” St-Pierre Plamondon said. “If we live in a world where the past never happened, it’s difficult to have an appropriate reading of what’s actually happening right now if we have no notion of what happened before.”
He says his beliefs will not change no matter who is in power.
The next federal election is slated to take place on or before Oct. 20, 2025.
-
Investment24 hours ago
Saudi Arabia Highlights Investment Initiatives in Tourism at International Hospitality Investment Forum
-
Business24 hours ago
Rupture on TC Energy's NGTL gas pipeline sparks wildfire in Alberta – The Globe and Mail
-
Tech17 hours ago
Cytiva Showcases Single-Use Mixing System at INTERPHEX 2024 – BioPharm International
-
Art24 hours ago
Squatters at Gordon Ramsay's Pub Have 'Left the Building' After Turning It Into an Art Café – PEOPLE
-
Science23 hours ago
Nasa confirms metal chunk that crashed into Florida home was space junk
-
Politics23 hours ago
The Earthquake Shaking BC Politics
-
News19 hours ago
Tim Hortons says 'technical errors' falsely told people they won $55K boat in Roll Up To Win promo – CBC.ca
-
Investment23 hours ago
Bill Morneau slams Freeland’s budget as a threat to investment, economic growth