If information is power, Ontario seems to be experiencing a brownout.
Three months into the COVID-19 crisis, one of Canada’s hardest-hit provinces is still unable to share some basic details about the spread of the disease, including the number of tests being performed per region, statistics on the success of contact tracing, the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) or the location of outbreak “hot spots.”
The sort of data that is often readily available in other Canadian provinces and jurisdictions around the world.
On Wednesday, Toronto Public Health bowed to public pressure and released COVID case numbers for all of the city’s postal codes — information that may well spur more residents to get tested. This came just one day after Ontario Premier Doug Ford had rejected calls for a similar province-wide disclosure, saying he worried that the information could be “very stigmatizing” for people living in those areas.
Now, critics are calling for even more COVID transparency as Ontario struggles to flatten its curve and find a safe way to relax its lockdown.
“The province’s unwillingness and inability to collect the appropriate data, and in turn share it with the public, and public health units, is hindering our response to COVID-19,” said Joe Cressy, a Toronto city councillor and chair of the Board of Health.
Absence of information
Cressy cites not just the imprecise testing numbers but the absence of information on the race, occupation and living conditions of those who have fallen ill — details that might help authorities understand who is most at risk and how the disease is spreading.
WATCH | Toronto Coun. Joe Cressy says more COVID-19 data is crucial:
Toronto city councillor Joe Cressy disappointed in lack of provincial COVD-19 data. 0:19
He said this was especially crucial in the Greater Toronto Area, which currently accounts for 76 per cent of all new COVID infections in the province.
“In order to tackle a virus, you need to understand it,” said Cressy. “So for us to be able to tackle COVID-19, to test for it proactively, to respond with the appropriate protections in place, we need to know who it’s hurting and who it’s hurting most.”
It’s a call echoed by Dr. Andrew Morris, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto’s Sinai Health and University Health Network.
“Having data is really important for all aspects of tackling COVID-19. It lets us know where we’ve been. It lets us know where we’re going,” he said. “If we don’t have that information, we don’t really have a good idea of the best ways for us to approach it. And we also don’t have an understanding of where our blind spots are.”
Morris said that hospitals in the province are still operating in the dark when it comes to things like the availability of hand sanitizer and PPE or localized surges in positive tests — something that might allow them to plan for busy emergency rooms days in advance.
Last week, Ford vowed yet again to “ramp up” testing, to levels that “this province has never seen.”
“I’m going to be all over this testing,” said the premier.
Meanwhile, his health minister, Christine Elliott, has defended his government’s record to date.
“Do we hit the targets every single day? No. There is an ebb and flow to this but we are increasing our capacity on a daily basis,” she said.
Complicated reporting systems
Part of the problem, Morris said, are “archaic” systems that don’t allow hospitals, regional health authorities and the province to readily and easily share and analyze the data they have on hand.
“I think a lot of this relates to the chronic under-funding of public health in Ontario,” said Morris. “Many of the problems that we’re experiencing today were experienced during [the 2002-03] SARS crisis as well… Our public health infrastructure has really not ramped up to the level that we’ve needed to.”
Even the flow of basic information between the province and its 32 public health units is complicated. For example, Ontario’s daily COVID update pulls together information from four different databases — the provincial integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS), which dates back to the early 2000s, as well as newer, municipally run reporting systems in Toronto, Ottawa and Middlesex-London.
Meanwhile, in the hastily constructed testing system — which is administered by the province — samples travel all over Ontario to both public and private labs for analysis. As a result, many local health regions say they don’t know how many tests they have performed, and can only disclose how many positive results have come back.
Dr. Andrew Morris, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto’s Sinai Health and University Health Network, said that having data is important for tracking all aspects of COVID-19. (Turgut Yeter/CBC)
The way that news of positive tests is shared with public health officials depends on which lab or hospital has processed the swab. A Toronto Public Health spokesperson told CBC that it has been receiving lab reports through a variety of ways: electronically, by phone, fax, even through the mail.
As of Wednesday, Peel, York, Ottawa, Durham, Waterloo and Windsor-Essex County followed Toronto as regions with the greatest number of COVID cases.
Scattered data
CBC News canvassed these additional six public health units to determine recent counts of COVID-19 swab testing. The response was scattered.
While each unit publishes detailed COVID-19 updates online, York Region Public Health Services, Windsor-Essex County Health Unit and Ottawa Public Health are the only regions in the group that publish daily testing numbers. York’s website provides the most comprehensive daily counts, broken all the way down to specific testing centres. According to the data, the entire region tested 705 people on May 25.
All of this is a sharp contrast to British Columbia and Alberta, which have both managed to share regional testing numbers throughout the crisis. Or Quebec, which provides case numbers by district for its major urban centres.
New York City, perhaps the hardest-hit spot in the worldwide pandemic, has a municipal website that tracks everything from hot spots to local testing levels to the distribution of PPE and free meals.
New York City’s public health authority shares extensive and comprehensive COVID-19 data, including daily testing counts, cases by zip code and the numbers of free meals that have been distributed so far during the pandemic. (NYC Health)
Then there’s South Korea, where the government has been providing the public with detailed information on where novel coronavirus patients reside, so they can steer clear of specific streets or neighbourhoods.
False impression of spread
The man quarterbacking Ontario’s COVID-19 response, Dr. David Williams, the chief medical officer of health, defended the provincial approach on Wednesday, suggesting that things like Toronto’s list of postal code hot spots might actually give a false impression of the spread of the disease.
“You may find that you have a number of people in an area because you have the same postal code,” Williams said. “Does that mean that neighbourhood is the problem? Or that the people went and worked in different companies that happen to have outbreaks in those companies?”
Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams has defended the province’s decision to not disclose neighbourhood locations of COVID-19 outbreak ‘hot spots.’ (CBC)
Government transparency advocates say they don’t buy such claims.
“We feel that governments in general should be more open with the information that’s coming out,” said Ian Bron, a project co-ordinator with the newly formed Canadian COVID-19 Accountability Group.
“Many Canadians don’t know where the hot spots are. And that’s the kind of information that citizens should have in order to make informed decisions about where to go and where to go afterwards. For example, if you’re going to visit a loved one in a long-term care facility.”
Bron acknowledged that governments have been forced to improvise during the crisis but said that shouldn’t be an excuse for obscuring information that could be ultimately useful for public health.
“It’s a little too easy to say we’re in the middle of an emergency so we can’t do anything right now. That doesn’t mean you can’t start taking steps in the right direction,” he said. In a new report, his group is calling for measures like federal and provincial COVID ombudspersons to help improve transparency.
U.S. produces ‘much better data than we do’
Bron points to American jurisdictions as a positive example for Canadian governments.
Ian Bron is a project co-ordinator with the newly formed Canadian COVID-19 Accountability Group. (Courtesy of Carleton University )
“Although it seems like a terrible mess in the States, they produce much better data than we do. They go to much greater levels of granularity,” he said.
There are worries about the consequences of too little information as the COVID outbreak grinds on. Morris pointed to a recent mass gathering in a Toronto park as evidence that the public might be at risk of losing the COVID plot.
“Today, I’m not sure that the average citizen really understands why there’s a need to physically distance, self-isolate and [wear a] mask, and part of that relates to not having a clear [government] strategy,” he said. “I think if there were one overarching challenge that we haven’t overcome yet, it’s a clearer message.”
It’s an absence of illumination that threatens to leave an entire province groping around for a way forward.
TORONTO – Will Taylor Swift bring chaos or do we all need to calm down?
It’s a question many Torontonians are asking this week as the city braces for the arrival of Swifties, the massive fan base of one of the world’s biggest pop stars.
Hundreds of thousands are expected to descend on the downtown core for the singer’s six concerts which kick off Thursday at the Rogers Centre and run until Nov. 23.
And while their arrival will be a boon to tourism dollars — the city estimates more than $282 million in economic impact — some worry it could worsen Toronto’s gridlock by clogging streets that already come to a standstill during rush hour.
Swift’s shows are set to collide with sports events at the nearby Scotiabank Arena, including a Raptors game on Friday and a Leafs game on Saturday.
Some residents and local businesses have already adjusted their plans to avoid the area and its planned road closures.
Aahil Dayani says he and some friends intended to throw a birthday bash for one of their pals until they realized it would overlap with the concerts.
“Something as simple as getting together and having dinner is now thrown out the window,” he said.
Dayani says the group rescheduled the gathering for after Swift leaves town. In the meantime, he plans to hunker down at his Toronto residence.
“Her coming into town has kind of changed up my social life,” he added.
“We’re pretty much just not doing anything.”
Max Sinclair, chief executive and founder of A.I. technology firm Ecomtent, suggested his employees avoid the company’s downtown offices on concert days, saying he doesn’t see the point in forcing people to endure potential traffic jams.
“It’s going to be less productive for us, and it’s going to be just a pain for everyone, so it’s easier to avoid it,” Sinclair said.
“We’re a hybrid company, so we can be flexible. It just makes sense.”
Swift’s concerts are the latest pop culture moment to draw attention to Toronto’s notoriously disastrous daily commute.
In June, One Direction singer Niall Horan uploaded a social media video of himself walking through traffic to reach the venue for his concert.
“Traffic’s too bad in Toronto, so we’re walking to the venue,” he wrote in the post.
Toronto Transit Commission spokesperson Stuart Green says the public agency has been working for more than a year on plans to ease the pressure of so many Swifties in one confined area.
“We are preparing for something that would be akin to maybe the Beatles coming in the ‘60s,” he said.
Dozens of buses and streetcars have been added to transit routes around the stadium, and the TTC has consulted the city on potential emergency scenarios.
Green will be part of a command centre operated by the City of Toronto and staffed by Toronto police leaders, emergency services and others who have handled massive gatherings including the Raptors’ NBA championship parade in 2019.
“There may be some who will say we’re over-preparing, and that’s fair,” Green said.
“But we know based on what’s happened in other places, better to be over-prepared than under-prepared.”
Metrolinx, the agency for Ontario’s GO Transit system, has also added extra trips and extended hours in some regions to accommodate fans looking to travel home.
A day before Swift’s first performance, the city began clearing out tents belonging to homeless people near the venue. The city said two people were offered space in a shelter.
“As the area around Rogers Centre is expected to receive a high volume of foot traffic in the coming days, this area has been prioritized for outreach work to ensure the safety of individuals in encampments, other residents, businesses and visitors — as is standard for large-scale events,” city spokesperson Russell Baker said in a statement.
Homeless advocate Diana Chan McNally questioned whether money and optics were behind the measure.
“People (in the area) are already in close proximity to concerts, sports games, and other events that generate massive amounts of traffic — that’s nothing new,” she said in a statement.
“If people were offered and willingly accepted a shelter space, free of coercion, I support that fully — that’s how it should happen.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Hundreds of Taylor Swift fans lined up outside the gates of Toronto’s Rogers Centre Wednesday, with hopes of snagging some of the pop star’s merchandise on the eve of the first of her six sold-out shows in the city.
Swift is slated to perform at the venue from Thursday to Saturday, and the following week from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23, with concert merchandise available for sale on some non-show days.
Swifties were all smiles as they left the merch shop, their arms full of sweaters and posters bearing pictures of the star and her Eras Tour logo.
Among them was Zoe Haronitis, 22, who said she waited in line for about two hours to get $300 worth of merchandise, including some apparel for her friends.
Haronitis endured the autumn cold and the hefty price tag even though she hasn’t secured a concert ticket. She said she’s hunting down a resale ticket and plans to spend up to $600.
“I haven’t really budgeted anything,” Haronitis said. “I don’t care how much money I spent. That was kind of my mindset.”
The megastar’s merchandise costs up to $115 for a sweater, and $30 for tote bags and other accessories.
Rachel Renwick, 28, also waited a couple of hours in line for merchandise, but only spent about $70 after learning that a coveted blue sweater and a crewneck had been snatched up by other eager fans before she got to the shop. She had been prepared to spend much more, she said.
“The two prized items sold out. I think a lot more damage would have been done,” Renwick said, adding she’s still determined to buy a sweater at a later date.
Renwick estimated she’s spent about $500 in total on “all-things Eras Tour,” including her concert outfit and merchandise.
The long queue for Swift merch is just a snapshot of what the city will see in the coming days. It’s estimated that up to 500,000 visitors from outside Toronto will be in town during the concert period.
Tens of thousands more are also expected to attend Taylgate’24, an unofficial Swiftie fan event scheduled to be held at the nearby Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
Meanwhile, Destination Toronto has said it anticipates the economic impact of the Eras Tour could grow to $282 million as the money continues to circulate.
But for fans like Haronitis, the experience in Toronto comes down to the Swiftie community. Knowing that Swift is going to be in the city for six shows and seeing hundreds gather just for merchandise is “awesome,” she said.
Even though Haronitis hasn’t officially bought her ticket yet, she said she’s excited to see the megastar.
“It’s literally incredible.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
OTTAWA – Via Rail is asking for a judicial review on the reasons why Canadian National Railway Co. has imposed speed restrictions on its new passenger trains.
The Crown corporation says it is seeking the review from the Federal Court after many attempts at dialogue with the company did not yield valid reasoning for the change.
It says the restrictions imposed last month are causing daily delays on Via Rail’s Québec City-Windsor corridor, affecting thousands of passengers and damaging Via Rail’s reputation with travellers.
CN says in a statement that it imposed the restrictions at rail crossings given the industry’s experience and known risks associated with similar trains.
The company says Via has asked the courts to weigh in even though Via has agreed to buy the equipment needed to permanently fix the issues.
Via said in October that no incidents at level crossings have been reported in the two years since it put 16 Siemens Venture trains into operation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2024.
