For one family of 11 in Arviat, a COVID-19 lockdown and a broken boiler means there hasn’t been hot water in their three-bedroom public housing unit for more than two weeks. While everyone is well, Cecilia Akammak says she has to boil water to hand wash and disinfect surfaces.
The lockdown ended on Wednesday in the rest of Nunavut, where the number of active cases has fallen consistently throughout the week, leaving only a handful in Whale Cove and none in Rankin Inlet.
But Arviat still has 44 active cases as of Friday. The community of about 2,550 people remains in full isolation with no travel in or out of the community while health staff work to curb community transmission.
With schools closed and families confined to their homes in winter, the outbreak is highlighting the territory’s ongoing struggles with overcrowding and inadequate housing.
WATCH | Nunavut’s chief public health officer on restrictions in Arviat:
Nunavut’s chief public health officer, Dr. Michael Patterson, warns Arviat needs to keep its tight restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19. 1:04
Emergency repairs only
Because maintenance staff with the local housing authority are isolating, too, the Nunavut Housing Corporation says only emergency repairs are possible.
“I was even thinking to call the Health minister,” said Akammak, who lives with her husband, children and grandchildren. “It’s a kind of urgent emergency because we have to have hot water in hand, too. We have to boil it to be clean.”
We have nothing, absolutely nothing in our community.– Jenny Gibbons, Arviat resident
Federal relief funds helped the municipality send food hampers to families who can’t go out to the store. Essential workers are delivering water more often and cleaning supplies are being given out.
Resident Jennifer Aulatut says these kinds of supports are helping a lot. But she says because her unit is old and run down, she still doesn’t feel safe using her water without boiling it.
The water in her home is yellow and makes her children sick, she said.
“It’s not good water to drink or wash your hands,” she said. “If I want to have coffee, I buy some water at the store.”
However, due to financial constraints, Aulatut said buying water is often not an option for her.
Jennifer Aulatut, seen here with her children, said their Arviat home doesn’t have safe drinking water, but they can’t stay with family because it isn’t safe to visit during lockdown. (Submitted by Jennifer Aulatut)
Usually, she stays with family when her 60-year-old dilapidated home needs urgent repairs.
But right now, she said, it isn’t safe to visit.
A recent territorial survey on hidden homelessness found that more than 140 people in Arviat are homeless, and over 60 children live in unstable housing situations.
There is no homeless shelter in the community and the territory’s Department of Family Services said to get one, a non-profit community group would have to organize it.
Jenny Gibbons, another Arviat resident, has been working to build support for a shelter in her community for the last two years, but faces her own struggles, like lack of Internet to access the forms and information from the government.
Gibbons says she knows what it’s like to rely on other people for housing.
Nunavut’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Michael Patterson says there aren’t enough separate spaces in Arviat for people sick with COVID-19 to isolate away from their households. (Submitted by Dylan Clark)
“There are too many people in one house,” she said. “We have nothing, absolutely nothing in our community, and we need it.”
Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Michael Patterson said there are some separate isolation spaces identified in Arviat to help deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, but that these spaces are nowhere near the amount that would be needed to keep all sick people separate.
Because many households have a large number of people living together, Patterson said isolating one person isn’t helpful when others may already be infected. He also said it may be harmful to remove people from their support network while they’re ill.
However, by following safety measures like cleaning and mask wearing, he said contact tracing teams are seeing that not everyone in a household will become ill.
Housing corp. can’t meet demand
Since 2018 there have been 45 public housing units built in Arviat, bringing the community to ninth place out of 25 on the territory’s list of communities most in need of housing.
Territory-wide, the Nunavut Housing Corporation says more than 3,000 units are needed. But President Terry Audla says the 120 to 130 units the territory is able to build annually are not enough to keep up with demand.
Each year, it costs the territory around $20,000 in upkeep for each of its 5,000 plus public housing units, and Audla said these overall maintenance costs increase as more units are built. Water and electricity are the highest bills, he said.
Terry Audla, president of the Nunavut Housing Corporation, said the recent COVID-19 outbreak in the area has highlighted the strains that a territory-wide housing crisis puts on residents. (Kieran Oudshoorn/CBC)
Audla hopes to access COVID-19 funding from a $1 billion pandemic-related rapid housing initiative announced through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. So far, he said COVID-19 support funds have only gone to personal protective equipment for his staff.
“We are continuing to try and lobby for more dollars because of the housing crisis here in Nunavut, and the COVID-19 pandemic just magnifies it all,” Audla said.
He views Arviat as a prime example of the crisis with “how it spread so quick, so fast.”
Housing units built in the territory are allocated based on the number of housing applications filed with a local housing office, as well as population growth and rates of overcrowding.
The Nunavut government is currently having an independent review of that allocation method conducted, after MLAs said the housing wait lists reported for their communities did not accurately reflect what is needed on the ground. Audla said the report is expected to be done by summer of next year.
No pandemic money
In an interview with CBC News last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called housing one solution to poor health, low education and high rates of family violence experienced in Nunavut.
“We know how important it is to invest in housing and this pandemic has only exacerbated that and highlighted the need for more investments, and we will be there to do more for housing in the North,” Trudeau said.
But in a news conference following last month’s announcement of $19.36 million in federal relief money for Nunavut, Premier Joe Savikataaq said pandemic funds so far aren’t meant for housing.
In the meantime, residents like Cecilia Akammak, Jennifer Aulatut and their families are doing their best to follow the public health restrictions despite the shortfalls of their living conditions now amplified by the pandemic.
“We have to be clean but it’s kind of hard without hot water,” Akammak said. “It’s tiring, too.”
HALIFAX – Ottawa is negotiating a $500-million bailout for Nova Scotia’s privately owned electric utility, saying the money will be used to prevent a big spike in electricity rates.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson made the announcement today in Halifax, saying Nova Scotia Power Inc. needs the money to cover higher costs resulting from the delayed delivery of electricity from the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric plant in Labrador.
Wilkinson says that without the money, the subsidiary of Emera Inc. would have had to increase rates by 19 per cent over “the short term.”
Nova Scotia Power CEO Peter Gregg says the deal, once approved by the province’s energy regulator, will keep rate increases limited “to be around the rate of inflation,” as costs are spread over a number of years.
The utility helped pay for construction of an underwater transmission link between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, but the Muskrat Falls project has not been consistent in delivering electricity over the past five years.
Those delays forced Nova Scotia Power to spend more on generating its own electricity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
TORONTO – Roots Corp. may have built its brand on all things comfy and cosy, but its CEO says activewear is now “really becoming a core part” of the brand.
The category, which at Roots spans leggings, tracksuits, sports bras and bike shorts, has seen such sustained double-digit growth that Meghan Roach plans to make it a key part of the business’ future.
“It’s an area … you will see us continue to expand upon,” she told analysts on a Friday call.
The Toronto-based retailer’s push into activewear has taken shape over many years and included several turns as the official designer and supplier of Team Canada’s Olympic uniform.
But consumers have had plenty of choice when it comes to workout gear and other apparel suited to their sporting needs. On top of the slew of athletic brands like Nike and Adidas, shoppers have also gravitated toward Lululemon Athletica Inc., Alo and Vuori, ramping up competition in the activewear category.
Roach feels Roots’ toehold in the category stems from the fit, feel and following its merchandise has cultivated.
“Our product really resonates with (shoppers) because you can wear it through multiple different use cases and occasions,” she said.
“We’ve been seeing customers come back again and again for some of these core products in our activewear collection.”
Her remarks came the same day as Roots revealed it lost $5.2 million in its latest quarter compared with a loss of $5.3 million in the same quarter last year.
The company said the second-quarter loss amounted to 13 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Aug. 3, the same as a year earlier.
In presenting the results, Roach reminded analysts that the first half of the year is usually “seasonally small,” representing just 30 per cent of the company’s annual sales.
Sales for the second quarter totalled $47.7 million, down from $49.4 million in the same quarter last year.
The move lower came as direct-to-consumer sales amounted to $36.4 million, down from $37.1 million a year earlier, as comparable sales edged down 0.2 per cent.
The numbers reflect the fact that Roots continued to grapple with inventory challenges in the company’s Cooper fleece line that first cropped up in its previous quarter.
Roots recently began to use artificial intelligence to assist with daily inventory replenishments and said more tools helping with allocation will go live in the next quarter.
Beyond that time period, the company intends to keep exploring AI and renovate more of its stores.
It will also re-evaluate its design ranks.
Roots announced Friday that chief product officer Karuna Scheinfeld has stepped down.
Rather than fill the role, the company plans to hire senior level design talent with international experience in the outdoor and activewear sectors who will take on tasks previously done by the chief product officer.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Mediated talks between the union representing HandyDART workers in Metro Vancouver and its employer, Transdev, are set to resume today as a strike that has stopped most services drags into a second week.
No timeline has been set for the length of the negotiations, but Joe McCann, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1724, says they are willing to stay there as long as it takes, even if talks drag on all night.
About 600 employees of the door-to-door transit service for people unable to navigate the conventional transit system have been on strike since last Tuesday, pausing service for all but essential medical trips.
Hundreds of drivers rallied outside TransLink’s head office earlier this week, calling for the transportation provider to intervene in the dispute with Transdev, which was contracted to oversee HandyDART service.
Transdev said earlier this week that it will provide a reply to the union’s latest proposal on Thursday.
A statement from the company said it “strongly believes” that their employees deserve fair wages, and that a fair contract “must balance the needs of their employees, clients and taxpayers.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
