OTTAWA —
The first COVID-19 vaccines were injected into the arms of Canadians today, a historic moment some have dubbed “V-Day,” as the country enters a new phase of the ongoing fight against the novel coronavirus.
In Ontario and Quebec, the first shots were administered to a small group of prioritized people on Monday, after Pfizer-BioNTech’s initial shipments of doses landed on Sunday night.
This week, 14 sites across the 10 provinces will be receiving Canada’s initial 30,000 doses, as the country’s largest and most logistically complex mass-immunization campaign kicks off.
“I’m very pleased with how this is unfolding,” said the top military general who is leading the rollout from the Public Health Agency of Canada, Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin on Monday afternoon.
The landmark vaccination effort is focusing first on the people who the virus has hit hardest in this country: staff and residents of long-term care homes as well as frontline health care staff treating COVID-19 patients.
Canada’s first recipient of a COVID-19 vaccine was 89-year-old Gisele Levesque, a resident at the Saint-Antoine long-term care home in Quebec City. She got her shot at 11:25 a.m. In that province, vaccinations also began at the Maimonides Geriatric Centre in Montreal. That province was set to receive 1,950 initial doses.
The first vaccine given in Ontario went to personal support worker Anita Quidangen. She received her shot at the Michener Institute, part of the University Health Network in Toronto, donning scrubs and a face mask. Camera crews were on-hand to capture the moment, carried live on TV, at 12:03 p.m. EST.
“Thank you very much… “I’m excited,” Quidangen said to applause from colleagues.
She was one of five front-line workers from the Rekai Centre—the first multilingual, non-profit nursing home in Canada—to be given the first chance to receive some of that province’s initial 6,000 doses.
“She has worked tirelessly to care for some of our most vulnerable, both throughout this pandemic and since her first days as a PSW in 1988. Anita has spent years rolling up her sleeves to protect our province, and today, she didn’t hesitate to find a new way to do so,” said Ontario Premier Doug Ford in a statement.
Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu was in Montreal for the occasion, and said the last nine months have been traumatic for many Canadians, particularly those who work in or have loved ones inside long-term care homes or other health-care facilities.
“I know how worried and anxious families and health-care workers are, all across the country,” she said. “So I see this as the first step forward into the light.”
Sitting in specialized freezer boxes, the doses left Europe for Canada over the weekend, and Fortin said Monday he was not aware of any issues with keeping the doses that arrived so far at the extreme cold temperature required.
“Everything’s going according to plans,” he said.
THOUSANDS VACCINATED BEFORE 2021
Over the course of the day more shipments from UPS, who the pharmaceutical giant has contracted to deliver the vaccines, have been arriving at the other delivery sites across Canada, where plans are in place to start vaccinating even more health-care staff and long-term care home residents and their caregivers, on Tuesday and continuing all week long.
“We finally have a tool to protect the residents, so it’s a great day for us,” said Lucie Tremblay, the director of nursing for CIUSSS West-Central Montreal, in an interview on CTV News Channel. “It’s the beginning of the end of this awful illness. I think that for the last 10 months, everybody was under a lot of stress. We were always afraid that the residents would get the illness, we were afraid of losing residents and we did, unfortunately.”
According to federal Procurement Minister Anita Anand, approximately 30,000 more doses are expected to arrive next week, as the country’s supply will continue arriving in stages.
“Canada is charting its path forward towards recovery,” Anand said Monday.
Retired Canadian Armed Forces Gen. Rick Hillier, who is leading Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine task force, said that Monday marks the start of what will be likely close to a year-long process to see everyone who wants to be vaccinated able to do so.
“We’re all feeling, maybe just a little tiny sigh of relief now… maybe there is hope that we’ll get out of this incredible period that we’ve been through that’s been so brutal on everybody,” said Hillier in an interview on CTV News Channel Monday.
While it’s the moment many have been waiting for, infectious disease specialist and Ontario vaccine task force member Isaac Bogoch told CTV’s Your Morning that this first batch is more like a “trial run” until more shipments arrive in the coming days and weeks.
“It’s a small initial batch,” said Bogoch. “These [14] programs are going to start. It’s going to take some time for them to take off, but they are going to take off, and soon every Canadian will be able to get access to this and this terrible pandemic will come to an end.”
Between now and the end of December, Canada is set to receive 249,000 doses from Pfizer, after the federal government secured an early first delivery just days ahead of Health Canada’s authorization. The initial plan was to see Canada’s vaccine effort kick off in earnest in January.
By the end of March Canada is set to receive four million total doses, which is enough to fully vaccinate two million people, given it’s a two-shot immunization process with the second needle administered 21 days following the first. In total, Canada is set to receive 20 million Pfizer doses.
The provinces have been tasked with keeping track of who has been vaccinated and ensuring they come back on time for their second shot, but the federal government will also be keeping track of the rates of immunization.
PANDEMIC FAR FROM OVER
The big week finally comes more than nine months after the World Health Organization officially labelled global SARS-COV-2 outbreaks a pandemic and Canadians first entered lockdown amid a first wave of infections. Since then, infections dipped and surged again. Health officials in Canada have confirmed more than 460,000 cases of COVID-19 and close to 13,500 deaths as of Monday. Worldwide, the novel coronavirus has killed more than 1.6 million people.
The Pfizer-BioNTech shots are the first of several vaccines expected to be on the market soon, according to experts, after record-breaking development and production by scientists around the world. Americans began receiving Pfizer vaccines on Monday as well.
Canada has signed deals with seven vaccine manufactures, securing more than 400 million doses of potential COVID-19 vaccines, should all trials pan out.
“This is incredible stuff. We all know how horrible it’s been with the pandemic globally and of course here in Canada,” said Bogoch.
But officials are still warning that “V-Day” excitement doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. On Sunday night, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that Canadians should continue wearing masks, washing hands, avoiding gatherings and using the COVID Alert exposure notification app.
“This is good news. But our fight against COVID-19 is not over,” he wrote. “Now more than ever, let’s keep up our vigilance.”
Canadians should “double down” in the coming weeks, as the vaccination programs are likely to face a number of hurdles, Bogoch said.
MODERNA APPROVAL NEXT?
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is not the COVID-19 panacea. Because the vaccine’s requirements are particularly complicated, including the need to be stored at -70 C, initial doses are not being distributed to Indigenous communities or the territories.
The hope is that the Moderna vaccine candidate, which has yet to be approved by Health Canada but has less complicated storage requirements, will be able to roll out to those communities soon.
Moderna’s vaccine candidate is now the most advanced in Canada’s regulatory process, but there isn’t a date or estimate yet for when it may be given the green light.
Anand said that the government is currently in talks with Moderna about receiving initial doses early.
“We are in touch with our suppliers every day, including Moderna, and we are pressing for early deliveries of the doses pending Health Canada regulatory approval,” said Anand in an interview with Evan Solomon on CTV’s Question Period that aired Sunday.
Bogoch suggested that a “mobile truck” operation could even administer a less complex vaccine like Moderna’s to people experiencing homelessness in urban areas, but in the meantime “we just have to work within the confines of the vaccine properties that we have access to.”
While this week is a promising milestone during a long pandemic, Canadians are a long way out from “normal,” said Bogoch.
“We’ll probably start to see a lifting of these health restrictions when enough Canadians have had access to the vaccine,” he said.
The federal government is aiming to have all Canadians who want to be vaccinated receive their shots by the end of 2021.
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.
