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Ontario to begin COVID-19 vaccinations at hospitals in Toronto and Ottawa on Dec. 15 – CP24 Toronto's Breaking News

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The province will begin inoculating health-care and long-term care workers at two hospitals in Toronto and Ottawa next week, Premier Doug Ford says.

With Health Canada approving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use on Wednesday, Ford says the province will begin receiving doses of vaccine in the next few days.

“Beginning Tuesday, December 15, these first doses will be administered at University Health Network and The Ottawa Hospital to health care workers who are providing care in long-term care homes and other high-risk settings.”

The Toronto vaccines will be stored somewhere in the UHN’s downtown Toronto campus.

Ret. Gen. Rick Hillier, who leads the province’s COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Task Force, said the province will receive 6,000 doses on Monday, with Toronto and Ottawa receiving 3,000 each.

“The vaccinations are going to be rolled out in a coordinated fashion, so the teams now are working with the long-term care homes whose health care workers will be getting vaccinated first,” he said during a news conference on Thursday.

Those selected will be given an appointment to visit the vaccination site. Pfizer’s vaccine is delicate while in storage and cannot be moved easily. The chief medical adviser at Health Canada said the doses must be kept at temperatures between -60 C and -80 C until just before injection.

“We cannot move the Pfizer vaccine from where we receive it at those two sites. So, we have to have people who can come to the special vaccination site,” Hillier said.

“If Pfizer changes the characteristics and parameters about the vaccine and allows us to move it, then we would obviously go into the long-term care homes.”

The Moderna vaccine, which has not been approved for use in Canada, has different characteristics and is easier to handle, Hiller said, adding that it will allow for vaccination sites to be set up at long-term care homes.

When asked why Ottawa and not Peel, which is in the lockdown level, was selected as one of the two sites, Hillier said the city was chosen weeks ago “to test the logistics chain outside of just Toronto.”

“Ottawa has gone through some tough times and recently came out of more stringent conditions,” he said.

“They have had some long-term care homes and retirement residents that have had COVID-19 visited upon them and tragic circumstances. So all those things were used to make a decision to use Ottawa as one of the first test cases.”

There is also a limited number of doses at the moment, Hillier said. That’s why he is urging residents to keep following public health measures as the vaccination program is being rolled out.

“It is going to take a while. We will get the vaccines on a schedule that is not perfect. They will arrive over a long period of time,” he said.

“We cannot vaccinate every single person on day one, so people do have to be patient.”

Hillier noted that Ontario may get 90,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine by the end of December, which he said will be rolled out to 13 hospitals that will become vaccination sites across the province.

The federal government has said Canada as a whole will receive 249,000 doses of the vaccine by the end of December.

Meanwhile, Hillier said the province is expected to get 35,000 to 85,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine by the end of this month, pending its approval by Health Canada.

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Japan’s SoftBank returns to profit after gains at Vision Fund and other investments

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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.

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Trump campaign promises unlikely to harm entrepreneurship: Shopify CFO

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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.

Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)

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RioCan cuts nearly 10 per cent staff in efficiency push as condo market slows

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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.

Companies in this story: (TSX:REI.UN)

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