Canada’s vaccine campaign has been crushing it lately, with an impressive 80 per cent of eligible Canadians having had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
That statistic distracts from a troubling fact, however: more than six million Canadians still haven’t had a shot, just as experts are warning we need more coverage to beat back a possible surge of cases in the fall.
The first-dose vaccination campaign now seems to be grinding to a halt, with fewer than 50,000 people getting a vaccine each day — down from a peak of over 185,000 last month — even though those doses are now readily available nationwide.
CBC News has spoken to some unvaccinated Canadians to learn more about the hesitancy that has taken hold in some pockets of the country.
Many of the holdouts say they’re concerned about safety and side effects. Others say they’re not happy with the current products on offer.
There are also practical considerations. A number of the unvaccinated have a needle-related phobia that can make getting a shot a frightening experience. Some have severe allergies to the vaccine components. Some rural Canadians have had trouble with access.
Ted Kuntz (centre) Director and Vice President of Vaccine Choice Canada, joins fellow protesters in observing a minute’s silence during a rally against Ontario’s vaccination law outside the legislature in Toronto on Oct. 29, 2019. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)
And experts also suggest somewhere between two and 10 per cent of the population is vehemently opposed to vaccines — no matter what public health officials say about the many benefits of getting a shot.
Nadina Smith graduated from teachers’ college this spring and she’s feeling the pressure from family and friends to get a shot before school starts up in the fall.
Smith, who is from Alberta, told CBC News she’s researched the science behind various COVID-19 vaccines and she’s most comfortable with the one-dose Johnson & Johnson shot, which uses the more conventional viral vector vaccine technology.
Such vaccines use a modified version of a different virus (the vector) to deliver instructions to cells, and are widely used to prevent infectious diseases like influenza.
New tech vs. old tech
Canada ordered the J&J shot — 300,000 doses were delivered months ago — but there are no plans to use it as part of the vaccination campaign. Government officials have said the provinces and territories have shown no interest in obtaining this product.
“I know the traditional vaccines aren’t rated quite as effective in the research — but I’m comfortable with that style. I would happily go at this very moment to get that,” Smith said.
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As Ontario accelerates the rollout for people’s second doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, many are reportedly having a stronger reaction to the second shot than their first. Dwight Drummond spoke with Dr. Jeff Kwong, a scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluation Sciences (ICES), about the science behind side effects. 3:35
While the mRNA products produced by Pfizer and Moderna have been deemed safe and effective by Health Canada and other regulators after a careful review of clinical trial data, Smith said she’s still reluctant to accept a vaccine that was developed so quickly.
She said she’s not opposed to vaccines (she describes herself not as “vaccine hesitant” but as “mRNA vaccine hesitant”) but she’s concerned about the possible long-term effects of mRNA shots in particular, which use relatively new technology.
‘I don’t want to be the guinea pig’
“How do we know what kind of impact this is going to have on our bodies? Am I gonna have a third eye in 20 years?” she said.
“I mean, I know I’m not gonna have a third eye, but I’m just trying to explain what I mean. We don’t know what the potential outcomes are in the long term.
“The only thing that would have swayed me is if there was some sort of research or study of the long-term effects of COVID mRNA. For me, that is a huge concern and I don’t want to be the guinea pig.”
A staff member sets up an antibody production line at the Ibex building of Lonza, where the Moderna mRNA coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine was produced, in Visp, Switzerland on Sept. 29, 2020. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)
Messenger RNA, or mRNA, directs protein production in cells throughout the body to trigger an immune response and protect against infectious diseases.
While an mRNA vaccine has never been on the market until now, mRNA vaccines have been tested in humans for at least four infectious diseases: rabies, influenza, cytomegalovirus and Zika. No long-term side effects from those products have been reported.
Researchers have been studying mRNA technology and its potential for three decades. With an injection of hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency funding from the U.S. government and other sources, companies like Moderna and BioNTech (and BioNTech’s partner Pfizer) turned a promising piece of molecular biology into a usable product that has been deployed in several hundred million people to great effect.
Mixed messages
Lorie Carty, a retiree from Prince Edward County, Ont., said the actions of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) and Health Canada — two bodies that have sometimes offered competing advice about vaccines, most notably about the AstraZeneca product — have made her question the safety of the vaccines.
“It seems like they’re flying by the seat of their pants, trying to figure things out as they go along and there’s just so much mixed information,” Carty said of federal health officials.
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Prime Minister Justsin Trudeau and medical experts tried to reassure Canadians that all approved COVID-19 vaccines are safe after the National Advisory Committee on Immunization said some vaccines were preferred over others. 2:05
She said she has an appointment booked but she keeps rescheduling because she’s just not ready to commit.
“I want to be sure before I put that in my body because once it’s in there, there’s no going back,” Carty said.
“I’m not saying I’m an anti-vaccine person. I just don’t have enough confidence. We really don’t know the long-term effects. There’s just so many questions and every day you read something different.”
Lorie Carty, a retiree from Prince Edward County, Ont., said the actions of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) and Health Canada have made her question the safety of the vaccines. (Submitted by Lorie Carty)
Andriy Petriv is a long-haul truck driver from the Toronto area. He said he and his wife got sick with what they think was COVID-19 shortly after Christmas. While they didn’t get tested, Petriv said they had all the usual symptoms.
‘I just don’t see the point’
To satisfy his curiosity, he said, he recently had an antibody test to see if he had developed any immunity to COVID-19. The test, which is used to determine past infection, showed that he had developed some antibodies to the virus.
“Since I already had it, I don’t see the point of taking a vaccine. It could be dangerous in some cases and given the fact that I already have antibodies, why should I even take a risk?” he said in an interview.
“If I have to take it, I’ll take it. I’m not scared of vaccines. I just don’t see the point. Why put something in my body just to have a certificate or something? If you’re not thirsty, why should you drink just to make somebody happy?”
He said he’s also disturbed by the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has so far only granted the COVID-19 vaccines an emergency use authorization, not “full approval” — a process that can sometimes take years. The FDA has said full approval is coming.
Health experts maintain that even people with past infections should get a vaccine. Some jurisdictions, however — including Quebec, France, Germany and Italy — have been administering just a single dose to anyone with a confirmed previous diagnosis.
Dr. Kumanan Wilson is a researcher at the University of Ottawa and Ottawa Hospital whose expertise includes infectious disease. (CBC)
“While you will receive some immunity from having a previous infection, it remains unclear the duration and breadth of that immunity,” said Dr. Kumanan Wilson, a professor of medicine at the University of Ottawa.
“It’s uncertain whether being exposed to a previous version or variant of the virus will protect you against new variants as strongly as a vaccine will.”
Vaccine acceptance is growing
Shannon MacDonald is an associate professor in the faculty of nursing at the University of Alberta. Before the immunization campaign got underway, she conducted a study on the acceptability of COVID-19 vaccines among the Canadian population.
She found that, in general, the vast majority of Canadians are not diametrically opposed to vaccines. In fact, fewer than 2 per cent of Canadian parents refuse childhood shots for their kids.
Knowing little about the shots that would soon be deployed, 65 per cent of Canadians polled for MacDonald’s study said they would get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as Health Canada approved one for use — a figure she described as “hugely encouraging.”
The number of willing vaccine recipients has grown steadily since that study was published.
“Unfortunately, the small proportion are quite vocal and there’s a perception that they’re bigger than they are. I think focusing on people who have really legitimate questions — and when I say legitimate questions, I don’t mean their concerns are necessarily based on facts — is really key,” MacDonald said in an interview.
‘Breakthrough cases’ extremely rare
MacDonald said the best way to convince the hesitant is to show them the data on just how effective the vaccines have been at preventing infection.
For example, of the 403,149 COVID-19 cases reported in Ontario between December 14, 2020 and July 10 of this year, just 0.4 per cent were so-called “breakthrough cases” — COVID-19 infections in people who had received their second doses 14 days prior.
A father holds his son in the shade as his family waits for over six hours for their COVID-19 vaccine at a pop-up mass vaccination clinic in Toronto on June 17, 2021. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)
About 4 per cent of all cases reported in that seven-month period were people who were partially vaccinated with just one dose. The rest, of course, were unvaccinated.
As of July 10, fewer than 18,200 of the 10,000,000 people who have received at least one dose so far in Ontario have contracted the virus — 16,358 were infected when they were only partially vaccinated and 1,765 became infected after having two doses.
In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control estimates that 97 per cent of the people who have been admitted to hospital recently with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.
The trust factor
MacDonald said the very low number of adverse effects should also assure the hesitant that these products are safe.
“The safety profile has been impressively good,” she said. “You could put the message on a billboard and that might reach some people, but for people who are distrustful of the government, pharmaceutical companies, whatever, they need to hear the message from people that they trust. We have to get the message out there.
“All it takes is one case in your unvaccinated community and you’re all at risk.”
According to Public Health Agency of Canada data, there have been only 2,222 serious adverse events reported post-vaccination in Canada as of July 9. That’s just 0.005 per cent of all doses administered.
Vaccine recipients cheer as the number of doses administered — 25,000 — is shown on the big screen at the mass vaccination clinic at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on June 27, 2021. (Cole Burston/The Canadian Press)
Despite these positive indicators, MacDonald said the vaccination campaign will almost certainly hit a wall of entrenched hesitancy.
A fourth wave of cases might convince the unconvinced that they’re better off with a shot, she said. “You’d hate to wait to see an outbreak to say, ‘See this is what could happen.’ But that might be the case.”
She said public health authorities should still try to persuade some of the unvaccinated but, at a certain point, those energies might be better spent on getting the partially vaccinated back for that crucial second dose.
“Let’s focus on them instead of jumping through one hundred hoops to try and get a first dose into people who aren’t interested,” she said.
MONTREAL – The employers association at the Port of Montreal has issued the dockworkers’ union a “final, comprehensive offer,” threatening to lock out workers at 9 p.m. Sunday if a deal isn’t reached.
The Maritime Employers Association says its new offer includes a three per cent salary increase per year for four years and a 3.5 per cent increase for the two subsequent years. It says the offer would bring the total average compensation package of a longshore worker at the Port of Montreal to more than $200,000 per year at the end of the contract.
“The MEA agrees to this significant compensation increase in view of the availability required from its employees,” it wrote Thursday evening in a news release.
The association added that it is asking longshore workers to provide at least one hour’s notice when they will be absent from a shift — instead of one minute — to help reduce management issues “which have a major effect on daily operations.”
Syndicat des débardeurs du port de Montréal, which represents nearly 1,200 longshore workers, launched a partial unlimited strike on Oct. 31, which has paralyzed two terminals that represent 40 per cent of the port’s total container handling capacity.
A complete strike on overtime, affecting the whole port, began on Oct. 10.
The union has said it will accept the same increases that were granted to its counterparts in Halifax or Vancouver — 20 per cent over four years. It is also concerned with scheduling and work-life balance. Workers have been without a collective agreement since Dec. 31, 2023.
Only essential services and activities unrelated to longshoring will continue at the port after 9 p.m. Sunday in the event of a lockout, the employer said.
The ongoing dispute has had major impacts at Canada’s second-biggest port, which moves some $400 million in goods every day.
On Thursday, Montreal port authority CEO Julie Gascon reiterated her call for federal intervention to end the dispute, which has left all container handling capacity at international terminals at “a standstill.”
“I believe that the best agreements are negotiated at the table,” she said in a news release. “But let’s face it, there are no negotiations, and the government must act by offering both sides a path to true industrial peace.”
Federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon issued a statement Thursday, prior to the lockout notice, in which he criticized the slow pace of talks at the ports in Montreal and British Columbia, where more than 700 unionized port workers have been locked out since Nov. 4.
“Both sets of talks are progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved,” he wrote on the X social media platform.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Employers and the union representing supervisors embroiled in a labour dispute that triggered a lockout at British Columbia’s ports will attempt to reach a deal when talks restart this weekend.
A spokesman from the office of federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon has confirmed the minister spoke with leaders at both the BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514, but did not invoke any section of the Canadian Labour Code that would force them back to talks.
A statement from the ministry says MacKinnon instead “asked them to return to the negotiation table,” and talks are now scheduled to start on Saturday with the help of federal mediators.
A meeting notice obtained by The Canadian Press shows talks beginning in Vancouver at 5 p.m. and extendable into Sunday and Monday, if necessary.
The lockout at B.C. ports by employers began on Monday after what their association describes as “strike activity” from the union. The result was a paralysis of container cargo traffic at terminals across Canada’s west coast.
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint against the employers for allegedly bargaining in bad faith, a charge that employers call a “meritless claim.”
The two sides have been without a deal since March 2023, and the employers say its final offer presented last week in the last round of talks remains on the table.
The proposed agreement includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term along with an average lump sum payment of $21,000 per qualified worker.
The union has said one of its key concerns is the advent of port automation in cargo operations, and workers want assurances on staffing levels regardless of what technology is being used at the port.
The disruption is happening while two container terminals are shut down in Montreal in a separate labour dispute.
It leaves container cargo traffic disrupted at Canada’s two biggest ports, Vancouver and Montreal, both operating as major Canadian trade gateways on the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
This is one of several work disruptions at the Port of Vancouver, where a 13-day strike stopped cargo last year, while labour strife in the rail and grain-handling sectors led to further disruptions earlier this year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
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