OTTAWA — The fraught year of 2020 may be over, but experts warn the dawn of a new year doesn’t mean an end to the troubles caused by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Patients in multiple Canadian hotspots are flooding hospitals at an alarming rate and expected to arrive in even greater numbers in the weeks to come, doctors and health centres said Friday.
“If these rates of increase continue the way they are, the months of January and February are absolutely going to be brutal. It’s just a question of how brutal will it be,” said Anthony Dale, head of the Ontario Hospital Association.
One-fifth of the province’s intensive care capacity is now devoted to COVID-19 patients, with Toronto and the regions of Peel, York, and Windsor-Essex hardest hit.
Dale said 45 of the 149 COVID-19 patients admitted into intensive care in Ontario last week have died.
“We will see accelerating numbers of unnecessary deaths — more people dying. We will see more people suffering in intensive care and in hospitals,” he said, calling the situation “totally unsustainable.”
The spike could jeopardize elective surgeries and other care. Some hospitals have already started to cancel procedures, adding to the backlog created after 160,000 were nixed in the first wave, he added.
1:40 Kenney says unaware of MLA travel until after Christmas
Kenney says unaware of MLA travel until after Christmas
“Even though COVID’s going on, people still get cancer, they still get heart disease, they still need organ transplants.”
He said the pandemic has prompted staff shortages at numerous hospitals, with some front-line workers redeployed to testing centres, labs and long-term care homes.
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Hospitals in the greater Montreal area are on track to exceed capacity within the next three weeks, with almost two-thirds of beds designated for coronavirus patients already occupied, according to a report from INESSS, a government-funded health institute.
“Unfortunately, if the trend continues, this will have to be compensated in particular by the additional shedding of non-COVID treatments in our hospitals,” Quebec Health Minister Christian Dube said Thursday in a Twitter post in French.
2:07 Alberta premier says vaccine rollout has significantly increased
Alberta premier says vaccine rollout has significantly increased
However, the projection did not take into account Premier Francois Legault’s shutdown of all non-essential businesses in the province from Dec. 25 to Jan. 11., which could help curb the spread, said Dr. Luc Boileau, who heads the institute.
“The good news behind all of this is the vaccinations coming on,” Boileau said. “The impact of this will be manifest on the outbreaks inside health services and of course lowering mortality.”
Nearly 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which requires ultracold storage, have been distributed across the Canada since Health Canada approved it on Dec. 9.
The Moderna vaccine — green-lighted on Dec. 23 — has also started to roll off tarmacs, beginning to reach remote and First Nations communities over the past week. Its -20 C storage temperatures make for easier delivery compared to the -70 C needed for the Pfizer vaccine.
Individuals need to make sensible choices around social distancing and staying home, said Tim Sly, an epidemiologist and professor emeritus at Ryerson University’s School of Public Health.
“We’re still seeing knucklehead parties from seven to 14 to 25 people, raving out there with no masks, lots of booze and drinking and hugging and kissing and so on,” Sly said. “That’s avoidable.”
Public officials are not above making dubious travel choices, with several prominent politicians taking heat for holiday travel despite public-health guidelines to stay home.
On Friday evening, the federal NDP released a statement saying that MP Niki Ashton travelled to Greece to see an ill family member, and would consequently be relieved of her shadow cabinet roles, which include transportation.
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1:22 New Year baby in Toronto brings hope for 2021
New Year baby in Toronto brings hope for 2021
“While we are sympathetic to Ms. Ashton’s situation and understand her need to be with her family, millions of Canadians are following public health guidelines, even when it made it impossible for them to visit sick or aging relatives,” the party said.
Earlier, Rod Phillips resigned as Ontario’s finance minister after cutting short a Caribbean vacation, while Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard came under fire for a Hawaiian getaway from Dec. 19 to Dec. 31.
Surgeries typically ramp-up following a winter holiday lull, but more could now be sidelined due to the ripple effects of rule-flouting, said Dr. Zain Chagla, an infectious disease physician at St. Joseph’s hospital in Hamilton and an associate professor at McMaster University.
“If there’s no beds to put those patients in afterwards, unfortunately those surgeries just get cancelled,” he said.
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St. Joseph’s has opened a satellite site in a revamped hotel, transferring dozens of patients to the renovated facility in order to keep the main health centre’s occupancy rate below 90 per cent to handle the expected surge.
“I have patients that didn’t have COVID but had horrible outcomes because … they weren’t able to access care the way they should,” he added, recalling the first wave.
“I’m very worried about those individuals again going into the next three to four months, that we’re going to see a fallout of people that have missed cancer diagnoses or infections that needed to be treated earlier.
“It’s a lot of strain on a system that is already strained,” he said.
Most provinces and territories are not reporting new data on Friday due to the holidays.
New Brunswick added two new COVID-19 cases Friday, pushing its provincial total to 601.
2:14 Look back at the impact of COVID-19 in B.C. by the numbers
Look back at the impact of COVID-19 in B.C. by the numbers
The Yukon added another four cases as well, with the territory’s total caseload standing at 64.
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Canada’s two largest provinces reported new record highs of COVID-19 cases on Thursday.
Ontario reported 3,328 new cases and 56 more deaths linked to the virus, matching the highest death toll from the first wave. In Quebec, there were 2,819 new cases and 62 deaths.
The Public Health Agency of Canada said Thursday more than 720 patients hospitalized with the virus are now receiving treatment in ICUs, including 337 in Ontario and 165 in Quebec.
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.
