Bureaucratic turf concerns prevented a highly trained team of infection prevention and control experts from helping Ontario long-term care homes in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, an independent commission has heard.
Dr. Gary Garber, the former medical director of infection prevention and control at Public Health Ontario, testified last week that his department was asked to maintain a “low profile” in order to avoid being “subsumed” by the newly created Ontario Health.
The reorganization, which the province said would modernize the health-care system and save millions of dollars, occurred on Jan. 22, 2020. The next day, a Toronto hospital admitted the first patient in Canada with the novel coronavirus.
In March, when a growing number of long-term care homes in the province were reporting COVID-19 outbreaks, Garber said 25 to 30 highly trained experts from Public Health Ontario watched from the sidelines.
“At the time, I was explaining it to people that COVID really was the IPAC (infection prevention and control) Olympics, that we had people who had been training for years,” Garber told the Long-Term Care COVID-19 Commission.
Instead, he said, the team was told not to get involved.
“We were basically told, ‘No, we don’t have the bandwidth for that. No, we can’t do that. No, it’s…the health unit’s responsibility to do that.”
Public Health Ontario said in a statement to The Canadian Press that it did not prohibit its infection prevention specialists from going into nursing homes, but it noted that “with a small team at PHO, it was not possible to meet every request.”
The commission has heard about numerous failures in infection prevention and control in nursing homes in the pandemic’s first wave, from not isolating sick residents from healthy ones to the lack, or misuse, of personal protective equipment.
In its first set of interim recommendations to the Minister of Long-Term Care on Oct. 23, 2020, the commission said major improvements in infection prevention and control were needed. It also said inspections teams should be sent in to nursing homes immediately to evaluate and improve IPAC protocols.
Garber said the infection prevention and control experts were finally allowed to help out the homes in late April.
He said one of his most frustrating moments came in March when he was on the line with a nursing home that had reported only a couple of COVID-19 cases.
“Can you cohort? Can you move the sick people? Can you take the ones you know have COVID in one place, the sick people in another and separate them from the rest?” Garber recalled asking the home, which he did not name.
“And the answer I was told was no. And it was the one time – maybe one of the few times in my career that I just felt helpless because I just knew what was going to happen.”
He said about 90 per cent of the residents in that home became infected with COVID-19.
The commission is investigating how the novel coronavirus spread in the long-term care system and will submit its final report on April 30, 2021.
Hearings are not open to the public, but transcripts of testimony are posted online days or weeks later.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2021.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
