Ontario’s cabinet is being urged to declare another state of emergency as it seeks to address surging numbers of COVID-19 cases in the province, sources say.
Health officials have recommended the following restrictions to cabinet, sources told CBC Toronto on Monday:
Gathering limits reduced to as few as five people.
Shorter hours for essential businesses, which would involve earlier closures and later openings.
Limits on construction activity, but those limits would still allow essential construction to continue. Essential construction would be defined as work on health care and critical infrastructure, as well as residential buildings.
A requirement that no employees would be allowed in offices unless they are deemed essential.
Those proposals, which have not yet been decided upon, come as Ontario reported another 3,338 cases of COVID-19 and the province’s death toll topped 5,000 on Monday.
Also on Monday, a government source told CBC News that a curfew will not be among restrictions expected to be announced.
The idea of a curfew, similar to the one recently implemented in Quebec, was floated as a possibility for Ontario as infections continue to surge. Premier Doug Ford said last week that revised COVID-19 forecasts show current measures are not doing enough to slow transmission of the novel coronavirus.
At a news conference Monday afternoon, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, associate chief medical officer of health, said it is “her understanding” that a curfew was not recommended by the province’s health table.
Sources told CBC News the updated modelling, set to be detailed at an 11:30 a.m. briefing tomorrow, projects the province’s intensive care units will be filled beyond capacity by early February. It also forecasts that Ontario is on track to see up to 6,000 new cases per day by the end of this month.
Yaffe said Monday that “urgent action” is necessary in Ontario — something the premier first started talking about late last week.
“Unfortunately, I’m not able to give you any good news today,” Yaffe said.
“The number of people who have lost their lives remains unbearably high.”
Ford has repeatedly said that “nothing is off the table” but has offered no specifics about what new restrictions could be coming. In a brief statement this morning, Ford said his cabinet will meet later today, with an announcement expected after the modelling has been released publicly.
“We do believe, that based on the data that you will see tomorrow … that we are in a serious situation and serious measures need to be [undertaken],” Yaffe said.
Meanwhile, Dr. David Naylor, co-chair of the federal government’s Immunity Task Force, told CBC News Network’s Power & Politics that Ontario’s only choice now is to further batten down the hatches.
“We have to go back to where we were in the spring,” he told host Vassy Kapelos Monday evening. “Whether we can get compliance at that level … is questionable but right now, much as I hate to endorse it because it’s so hard on people and its hard on people differentially, we’re going to have to really try to shut things down to the greatest extent possible in the provinces like Ontario that are hard hit.”
Naylor says the problem was that in the fall Ontario let the case counts get too high, and tracking and tracing failed. The only way to get a grip on the situation now is to keep kids out of school, non-essential businesses closed and contact between people to a minimum.
“I don’t see any way around some really tough measures right now,” he said.
WATCH |Dr. David Naylor, co-chair of the federal government’s Immunity Task Force, speaks to Power & Politics host Vassy Kapelos:
Dr. David Naylor, co-chair of the federal government’s Immunity Task Force on what Ontario needs to do now. 1:20
The newest confirmed cases include 931 in Toronto, 531 in Peel Region, 241 in York Region, 168 in Niagara Region and 165 in Waterloo Region.
Other public health units that saw double- or triple-digit increases were:
Ottawa: 159
Hamilton: 146
Durham Region: 143
Middlesex-London: 141
Windsor-Essex: 118
Lambton: 90
Simcoe-Muskoka: 84
Halton Region: 81
Southwestern: 81
Eastern Ontario: 69
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph: 56
Huron-Perth: 27
Chatham-Kent: 21
Brant County: 14
Sudbury: 11
(Note: All of the figures used in this story are found on the Ministry of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard or in its Daily Epidemiologic Summary. The number of cases for any region may differ from what is reported by the local public health unit, because local units report figures at different times.)
Combined, the additional cases bring the seven-day average of new daily cases to a record high 3,555.
There are now 30,632 confirmed, actives cases of COVID-19 provincewide.
The number of patients with COVID-19 in hospitals climbed to 1,563, 80 more admissions than yesterday. Of those, 387 are being treated in intensive care and 268 require a ventilator to breathe, a new pandemic high in the province.
Notably, Critical Care Services Ontario, which produces an internal report on ICU admissions and capacity each morning, puts Ontario’s current ICU figure at 409, according to Anthony Dale, president of the Ontario Hospital Association.
Ontario’s network of labs processed 46,403 test samples for the novel coronavirus and reported a test positivity rate of 7.7 per cent. Another 28,774 tests are in the queue to be completed.
The 29 additional deaths in today’s update bring Ontario’s official toll to 5,012. The first COVID-19-linked death was reported on March 19, 2020.
The province says it administered 8,859 more doses of COVID-19 vaccines yesterday. As of 8 p.m. Sunday, a total of 122,105 doses have been given in Ontario.
Meanwhile, elementary and secondary school students across northern Ontario returned to in-class learning this morning.
The northern portion of the province is allowed to return to school buildings as positivity rates for COVID-19 in that region are relatively low.
All students began their winter term with online learning this month and the government announced last week that students in southern Ontario will continue attending classes remotely until at least Jan. 25.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced Saturday that the list of essential workers eligible for emergency child care would be expanded.
It now includes RCMP officers, custodial and clerical education workers and postal staff.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
