TORONTO —
After steadily declining in June and flattening out in early July, Canada’s COVID-19 curve has been on the upswing over the past two weeks.
“There’s this gradual but progressive creep of increasing new cases,” Dr. Matthew Oughton, an infectious diseases specialist at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, said Thursday on CTV News Channel.
A significant number of these new cases can be linked to known outbreaks in several provinces. While some of them have been blamed on “lockdown fatigue” and younger Canadians loosening up their social circles, others show continuing issues in migrant worker camps and other close-quarters settings.
More than 70 COVID-19 cases had been linked in some way to that outbreak as of Wednesday, and more than 1,000 people have entered self-isolation as a result.
The mayor of Kelowna has warned out-of-towners against visiting the city this summer, and B.C.’s provincial health officer said Wednesday that the province may impose regional restrictions on the area, breaking from the province-wide approach used up to this point.
CALGARY’S MYSTERIOUS UPSWING
Alberta has led the charge for increasing COVID-19 numbers in Canada, now holding the dubious distinction of being the province with the highest infection rate per capita.
“They had controlled the pandemic really well until about a month ago,” Dr. Abdu Sharkawy, a Toronto-based infectious disease expert, told CTV News Channel on Wednesday.
What concerns the experts, though, is that it’s not clear what’s driving the increasing caseload. In other Canadian hotspots, there is a place or activity or gathering generally considered to be the source of the outbreak. That’s not the case here.
There were 517 active cases of COVID-19 in Calgary as of Wednesday – approximately 10 per cent of the Canadian total.
HUTTERITE COLONIES
Approximately three-quarters of the world’s Hutterites – an offshoot group of Anabaptist Christians – live in Western Canada, where there are more than 350 Hutterite communities known as colonies.
They speak their own language and mostly live technology-free lives – and as of last week, they’re at the centre of COVID-19 activity in the Prairies.
Two Hutterite colonies in Manitoba went into voluntary lockdown after reporting a combined five cases of the virus on July 17, accounting for every new case in the province that day. A few days later, the tally was up to 20 cases among three colonies. Church services and communal meals have been put on hold as the colonies attempt to repel the virus.
The effects of the pandemic have been much more severe among Hutterite groups in Saskatchewan. Seventeen colonies in that province were known to have had active cases of COVID-19 as of Wednesday, and 48 of the 60 new cases announced in Saskatchewan on that day were traced to Hutterite communities.
MIGRANT FARM WORKERS AROUND WINDSOR, ONT.
Ontario has adopted a staged approach to reopening, with parts of the province where new case numbers are low allowed to have fewer restrictions than those where the numbers are high.
The last areas to reopen have largely been in and around Toronto – but nearly 400 kilometres away, Windsor, Ont., has also lagged behind. Windsor and neighbouring Essex County were responsible for more than one-quarter of all new COVID-19 cases announced in Ontario on Thursday.
In late June, one farm alone was linked to 175 known cases of COVID-19.
MONTREAL’S BELOVED BARS
Quebec has had far more cases of COVID-19 than any other province, with Montreal especially hard-hit.
Despite that, the province has been moving ahead faster than some others when it comes to reopening. Bars were allowed to start serving customers again in late June, with distancing and other safety measures in place, and it wasn’t long until reports of coronavirus infections linked to bars began to pour in.
“There’s been much concern raised … that facilities like bars, where there’s alcohol involved, seem to pose a higher risk than most other businesses,” Oughton said.
There were also concerns that bar employees were not wearing the required personal protective equipment, with Premier Francois Legault saying inspectors found that to be the case at 35 of the 36 bars they checked out in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region.
“Project Pandemic: Canada Reports on COVID-19” is a national collaboration bringing together journalists and journalism students from news organizations and universities across Canada to gather information as a public service.
The consortium draws on data gathered by governmental health authorities, journalists and the nonprofit platform Flatten.ca. This project is co-ordinated by Concordia University’s Institute for Investigative Journalism, with the support of the Canadian Association of Journalists. For the full list of credits, please visit concordia.ca/projectpandemic.
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.
