No, we aren’t talking about Valentine’s Day, we’re talking about the beginning of a nationwide vaccination campaign to protect Canadians against the coronavirus.
“V-Day” is what the person in charge of leading Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine task force, retired general Rick Hillier, called Dec. 14, after watching the first Canadians roll up their sleeves to get vaccinated.
“This is an incredible day,” he said, as Quebec nursing home resident Gisèle Lévesque became the first Canadian to get a shot as part of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination program.
It’s not quite the light at the end of the tunnel, Hillier said, but it’s as though somebody has lit a match to “help us see our way out of the abyss and the darkness.”
The first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by Health Canada, which was made by Pfizer-BioNTech, will be delivered to 14 sites across the country in the coming days and given to high-risk people first.
They include health-care workers and people who live in long-term care homes.
The first Canadian
Gisèle Lévesque smiled after getting her shot at a long-term care home in Quebec City on Dec. 14. (Image credit: National Capital Integrated University Centre of Health and Social Services/The Canadian Press)
While a number of Canadians volunteered to get the shot during the testing stages, Lévesque was the first to get vaccinated with the approved vaccine.
The 89-year-old, who lives in a long-term care home in Quebec City called CHSLD Saint-Antoine, was given a round of applause after she got her shot.
Quebec, then Ontario
In Ontario, a personal support worker in Toronto named Anita Quidangen was the first in that province to be vaccinated on Monday.
Tamara Dus, left, gave Ontario’s first COVID-19 vaccine to Anita Quidangen, right, shortly after 12 p.m. ET on Dec. 14. (Image credit: Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Quidangen, who has been a personal support worker for more than 30 years, often did double shifts during the pandemic to care for residents.
“Anita has spent years rolling up her sleeves to protect our province, and today, she didn’t hesitate to find a new way to do so,” Ford said.
First on the planet
The first person in the world to get a COVID-19 vaccine was 90-year-old Margaret Keenan.
Staff at University Hospital in Coventry, England, cheered after Margaret Keenan, 90, became the first person on the planet to get a shot against COVID-19. (Image credit: Jacob King/The Associated Press)
Keenan got the shot on Dec. 8, just a few days before her 91st birthday.
“It’s the best early birthday present I could wish for,” she said at the time, “because it means I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the new year after being on my own for most of the year.”
What’s next?
Canada is expected to receive 249,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine before the end of December.
Because every person requires two shots of this particular vaccine before they become immune to the coronavirus, that’s enough to cover only 125,000 Canadians.
More shipments are expected to arrive in Canada in 2021.
Because of transportation challenges, the first round of vaccines won’t be available in Canada’s northern territories.
The shots also won’t be available for kids under the age of 16 until more testing is done.
More answers to your questions
Keep checking CBCKidsNews.ca for more vaccine updates!
Later this week, CBC Kids News contributor Isabelle MacNeil will be sharing an interview she did with a COVID-19 researcher that answers these questions:
When can kids get a COVID-19 vaccine?
How do we know that the vaccine works?
How do we know that it’s safe?
_______________________________________________________________________ With files from CBC News, The Associated Press
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
