As far as confirmed cases of the coronavirus go, Canada has kept the amount of people infected with COVID-19 in the country contained at 12.
But in a shifting tone from previous messages, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam told reporters Tuesday “it’s likely that this virus will cause a pandemic.”
“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when,” Tam said.
“For now, the risk in Canada is low, but the risk is evolving. Concerning developments in recent days tell us the window of opportunity may be closing, but there is still much that Canada can do to delay spread and become more prepared.”
With the exception of Antarctica, the illness has confirmed cases in every continent across the globe, but with the world bracing itself for widespread outbreak, is Canada prepared?
Story continues below advertisement
Well, yes and no.
Experts say that Canada has all of the necessities for widespread disease outbreak — negative-pressure isolation chambers, supplies, medical procedures and assessment protocol — but hospital overcrowding remains a concern.
2:54 COVID-19: Ontario health official outlines phases of pandemic plan
COVID-19: Ontario health official outlines phases of pandemic plan
Hospitals already operating over capacity
According to Barb Collins, CEO and president of the Humber River Hospital, Canada is “certainly much more prepared than we were pre-SARS.”
“[There is] much more analysis going on and much more standardized language and practices around protecting staff and physicians, protecting patients and protecting the public than there would have been in the pre-SARS date,” she said, adding that the protocols and procedures for containing the virus would vary on a provincial level.
By the height of the SARS epidemic in Sept. 2003, the Canadian government said it had 438 confirmed cases of the disease. Of that, 44 people died.
Dr. Alan Drummond, co-chair of public affairs for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians and emergency physician at the Perth hospital, urged against fear-mongering and said Canada learned a lot of “hard-earned lessons” from the SARS outbreak in 2003.
His concerns, he said, were with whether Canada would have the space available to take care of its infected.
Drummond said the safe occupancy rate for any hospital is deemed to be at around 85 per cent, which provides “wiggle room” or a surge capacity in case of a sudden outbreak or increased demand for health care services.
Story continues below advertisement
But over the last two decades, he said, Canadian hospitals have been trying to function at 100 per cent capacity or higher on a day-to-day basis — made worse in Ontario, where he said many hospitals operate at 120 per cent capacity.
0:30 COVID-19: Brazil confirms first case in country, says will watch for how virus acts in ‘tropical country’
COVID-19: Brazil confirms first case in country, says will watch for how virus acts in ‘tropical country’
When a hospital is over capacity, he said patients going through the emergency department who are deemed sick enough to require admission find themselves without beds.
“They end up spending time in the hallway in the emergency department, waiting two, three days for transfer to a ward or to an ICU,” said Drummond. “That leads to a backlog of patients in the waiting room.
“It also leads to a backlog of ambulances waiting on the offload ramp, unable to get back to the community to respond to emergencies.”
“We can’t function on a good day. We can’t function in a mild flu season. What are we going to do if there is a major pandemic?”
He said the impact of a disease like COVID-19 could lead to cancelled surgeries, premature discharges or transferring older patients to smaller hospitals with less intensive care to make room. If Canada were unable to prevent a pandemic, Drummond said, “some decisions are going to have to be made.”
Story continues below advertisement
“If that terrible case scenario ever comes, will there need to be rationing of care and doctors making the decision of who lives and dies? I suspect the answer is yes,” he said.
As for whether or not Canada has enough beds, supplies, or is fully prepared for a pandemic, Colin Furness, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, stressed there was no way to know if any amount of preparation is really enough.
“There are no experts in what this looks like. We just haven’t done it. We haven’t been tested that way,” Furness said of Canada’s health care system. “There’s too many variables.”
1:50 Countries must shift mindset to coronavirus preparedness: WHO expert
Countries must shift mindset to coronavirus preparedness: WHO expert
Health officials tout negative-pressure rooms, training
The Ontario ministry of health said in a statement to Global News they spent almost $206.8 million since 2019 to support 1,428 acute care spaces and increase the amount of spaces needed for beds in the hospital sector.
They said the province has at least 806 permanent negative-pressure rooms and 463 additional spaces that can be made into negative-pressure rooms in the hospital’s emergency department, should a widespread outbreak occur.
Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, said in a press conference on Wednesday the province was doing between 30-40 tests a day, and had a lab that could do 1,000. As part of their pandemic plan, the official said Ontario would be widening its surveillance scope.
An Alberta Health spokesperson said in a statement to Global News that provincial residents can “rest assured that we are well-prepared for any future situation that may arise,” touting a recently tested a pandemic plan in a government-wide exercise last year. Since January, the Albertan government has been gathering extra personal protective equipment and planning for separate assessment centres that can test for respiratory illness.
In their statement, they said there are 374 isolation rooms distributed throughout Alberta.
The Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife has 24 negative-pressure rooms in a brand-new facility that allows the hospital to section off entire wings as negative-pressure space, as well as one airborne isolation room in its Inuvik Hospital.
Newfoundland and Labrador said all four of their regional health authorities were equipped with isolation beds and negative-pressure rooms, although they were unable to specify how many.
1:17 Chinese SWAT team practices takedown of ‘Coronavirus victim’
Chinese SWAT team practices takedown of ‘Coronavirus victim’
Manitoba Health, Seniors and Active Living said they have implemented a Canada-wide Incident Management Structure to coordinate the health system’s activities to share information and responsive techniques to possible cases of COVID-19 with all provinces.
The Manitoba government said the risk for contracting the novel coronavirus remains low, but that they are “in the process” of assessing its infrastructure to determine how many isolation beds the province has.
Story continues below advertisement
A spokesperson from the Nunavut Department of Health told Global News it had five negative-pressure rooms in its province, including four at its Qikiqtani General Hospital, although they said it was “unlikely” that someone would become infected with the disease.
The health department added they were performing routine infection prevention and control precautions, readied with personal protective equipment as needed.
Negative air pressure rooms, which allow air in, but not air out, are considered ideal spaces for airborne diseases.
However, Furness said the beds aren’t necessary for COVID-19 cases, as this disease is spread through human-to-human transmission, droplet and contact means. More important, he said, is whether doctors entering rooms with infected patients are trained with the proper procedures, whether hospitals have proper signage, personal protective equipment and cleaning tools.
“In 2003, because we weren’t ready, a relatively small number of cases almost overwhelmed our health system. People don’t like to say that, but it did. It came close to it came closer than most people really want to talk about, and that was only a few hundred cases,” he said.
“We’re way better prepared now.”
0:40 Coronavirus outbreak: Authorities say risk of infection in Toronto remains low
Coronavirus outbreak: Authorities say risk of infection in Toronto remains low
Furness also noted that a majority of confirmed cases are either mild or asymptomatic, which could help prevent Canada’s health care system from being overwhelmed by an influx of patients seeking in-hospital admission.
Story continues below advertisement
A shift in preparation measures
That the disease is less severe is good news for hospitals, said Dr. Vera Etches, the City of Ottawa’s top health officer. However it also means the disease is more likely to spread.
Etches said that up until now, the country has been focused on individual cases, but if there were a pandemic, the Canadian government would shift to other measures to try to slow down the transmission of the infection in the entire country.
In preparation for an outbreak, Etches suggested Canadians make arrangements to be able to stay home for at least a week, as well as childcare arrangements in order to further prevent the disease from spreading.
“What we’re trying to avoid is that a whole bunch of people get sick all at once because there’s a lack of immunity,” she said.
“Trying to distance people from one another, sometimes useful in terms of breaking that or slowing down transmission so people can work from home or people can decrease the number of large gatherings that they’re participating in. These kinds of things can slow down transmission.”
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
