While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged today that Christmas won’t be the same this year, with wide swaths of the country under COVID-related lockdowns, he said there’s reason for optimism in 2021 now that hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses are expected to arrive early in the new year.
Speaking to reporters outside Rideau Cottage in Ottawa, Trudeau said the government got word today that Pfizer will be shipping 125,000 vaccine doses per week in January 2021 for a total of 500,000 shots — primarily destined for the arms of front line health care workers and long-term care home residents. Pfizer has committed already to delivering 249,000 doses to Canada in December.
All told, roughly 375,000 Canadians are expected to be vaccinated with the two-dose Pfizer shot by the end of January.
Canada is also anticipating the delivery this month of 168,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine, enough for about 84,000 people. The Moderna product is still waiting on Health Canada’s regulatory approval.
“This is the largest immunization campaign our country has ever seen, and I know we have the right plan and the expertise we need,” Trudeau said. “But remember, a vaccine in a week or in a month won’t help you if you get COVID-19 today.”
WATCH: Prime Minister Trudeau offers update on vaccine delivery
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with reporters outside Rideau Cottage on Friday. 1:57
Trudeau urged Canadians to continue to follow public health guidelines over the holidays. While the vaccine news is promising, he said, Canadians should resist complacency.
“Our fight against this virus is not over, even as we’re preparing to say goodbye — and good riddance — to 2020. It may be the holiday season, but we have to be more careful than ever,” Trudeau said.
Asked about the prospect of getting even more Pfizer doses, Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand said today she’s in constant communication with the company to discuss the possibility of “accelerated timelines” and to “ensure Canada has the earliest possible access to Pfizer doses.”
Canada is still on track to take delivery of 4 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the first three months of 2021, she said.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a current Pfizer board member, said this week that because the U.S. passed on ordering 100 million more doses of the vaccine, the company’s Kalamazoo, Mich., plant could send that product to other countries in the second quarter of 2021.
Watch: Trudeau questioned about vaccine deliveries, impact on Christmas.:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with the CBC’s Tom Parry on Friday. 2:19
Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said today’s announcement that Canada will receive a specific number of Pfizer doses in January may give the provinces leeway to accelerate their vaccination campaigns.
While all provinces have started delivering shots, most have stockpiled the second dose of the two-dose regime to ensure they have enough supply on hand.
If a steady supply of vaccines is expected, Tam said, some provinces may opt to just vaccinate as many people as possible without keeping a reserve.
“It’s great to hear this schedule,” Tam said. “If you know there’s 125,000 coming per week in January, that makes planning for that second dose much easier in terms of not necessarily having to hold back the initial ones … so I think those details are to be worked out on the ground.”
Pfizer has stipulated that the second shot should be administered 21 days after the first to ensure the 94 per cent effectiveness rate documented in the clinical trials
U.S. vaccination campaign pulling ahead of Canada
The U.S. is expected to vaccinate many more people than Canada in the coming weeks.
Gen. Gustave Perna is the military general leading Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. mission to develop and distribute a vaccine. He said Pfizer already has shipped 2.9 million doses to the United States, with millions more to follow by month’s end.
Some U.S. governors, however, are reporting that their allocations of the vaccine are less than what they expected.
The U.S. also has secured 100 million doses of the promising Moderna product for the first three months of 2021 alone. Canada expects to receive about 2 million Moderna doses between January and March.
Operation Warp Speed largely bankrolled the vaccine’s development, the clinical trial process and the large-scale manufacturing operations, spending $4.1 billion so far to support Moderna.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the chief science adviser to the U.S. vaccine operation, has said every American who wants a vaccine will get one by June.
The Public Health Agency of Canada told CBC News Tuesday that it expects to have enough vaccine doses on hand to vaccinate every Canadian by the end of September, 2021.
Asked what he would do to close the Canada-U.S. vaccine gap, Trudeau said the federal government has secured one of the broadest portfolios of promising vaccine candidates in the world.
“The Americans have a health care system that will have challenges and will have successes. We have our own process. We’re focused on our own process to make sure that as many Canadians as possible get vaccinated, as quickly as possible, with vaccines that are safe and effective and approved by Health Canada,” he said.
Watch: Trudeau is asked why many Canadians aren’t listening to pandemic messaging.:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with reporters at Rideau Cottage on Friday. 1:58
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.
