Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller says the nationwide push to prioritize First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities for the COVID-19 vaccine is starting to bear fruit, and that vaccination rates in those communities are now significantly higher than those reported elsewhere.
According to the latest data, more than 83,000 doses have been administered so far in more than 400 Indigenous communities.
Twenty-five per cent of adults in these communities have received at least one shot — a rate six times higher than the one for the general population.
Miller said he expects most Indigenous adults to be vaccinated before the rest of the population — a goal, he added, that is rooted in science.
“It’s what we want,” Miller said, adding the territories and B.C. are on track to vaccinate 75 per cent of Indigenous adults by the end of March. The rest of the country isn’t expected to reach that milestone until sometime this summer.
Other provinces, notably Ontario, have also released vaccination schedules that prioritize Indigenous peoples in the next phase of the inoculation campaign, which is expected to being next month as vaccine supplies start to stabilize.
“We continue to see progress that brings us hope,” Miller said, adding that the Indigenous vaccination campaign is being complicated by “huge logistical challenges” in isolated parts of the country. “The end of the tunnel is there but there’s still a whole chunk of tunnel left.”
WATCH: Miller says vaccination rates are higher in Indigenous communities
Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller says the vaccination rate in Indigenous communities is 6 times higher than in the general population. 2:00
There’s an urgent need to vaccinate Indigenous communities quickly because fast-spreading new variants of COVID-19 could be particularly deadly in communities where the housing stock is poor and multi-generational living is common, the minister said.
Miller said the federal government is working with local leaders to create more isolation space to keep positive cases apart.
Dozens of troops arrive on the Shamattawa First Nation in Manitoba on Sunday, Dec. 13, 2020 to help local authorities fight a COVID-19 outbreak. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)
Provincial and territorial governments have been directing doses to northern and remote communities and urban Indigenous populations in an effort to protect a group that the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has identified as particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.
NACI has said that shots in the early phases of the vaccine rollout should be directed at long-term care home residents and the staff caring for them — but also at Indigenous adults because they face an elevated risk of death and “societal disruption” from COVID-19.
Urban Indigenous population especially vulnerable: NACI
While the initial batch of shots has been largely administered in First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities, NACI said there should now be a greater push to cover urban Indigenous individuals who may be even more vulnerable. NACI said early data suggest off-reserve First Nations members are more likely to be hospitalized and die than those living on reserves.
Miller has pointed to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that show Native Americans are 3.5 to 5 times more likely to develop severe health complications from COVID-19.
“The science is saying priority needs to be given to Indigenous communities,” he said, noting that many people face substandard living conditions that make them more susceptible to infection.
While Indigenous communities performed well during the first phase of the pandemic, with lower incidents of COVID-19 cases, the second phase has been more challenging.
“Attack rates and mortality rates in First Nations communities are now higher when compared to the overall Canadian population,” NACI wrote in its latest update, published Sunday.
Indigenous individuals are also more likely to have other health troubles that could make a bout of COVID-19 more deadly.
“The proportion of Canadians who identify as Indigenous and have at least one underlying medical condition associated with an increased risk of severe COVID-19 is higher compared to other Canadians for every age category above 20 years of age,” NACI wrote.
Minister of Indigenous Services Marc Miller. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
Miller urged provincial leaders to stay the course with Indigenous vaccination plans, even if political pressure mounts from other constituents to redirect the doses elsewhere.
“The apprehension with who gets what first is fuelled by concerns about volume and timing. You can see scenarios where people say, ‘How come not me?’ and that gets further fuelled by the worst platforms out there — social media tending to be one of them,” Miller said.
Canadians should have an “immense amount of pride” in the fact that vulnerable groups are at the front of the line because it affirms the country’s commitment to equity in health care, Miller said.
Dr. Tom Wong, chief medical officer at Indigenous Services Canada, said it’s too early to tell if the ambitious vaccine campaign has reduced rates of infection.
He said the number of people who have been fully vaccinated with a two-dose regime is still quite low — less than 5 per cent — but he said he expects immunity to build in the coming weeks as the rollout ramps up.
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.
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.
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.
