In response to the pandemic, politicians in Ottawa set up an emergency wage subsidy scheme that was meant to help workers. But some of Canada’s biggest firms have milked the subsidy scheme for billions while paying out dividends and laying off staff.
The vaccine itself can set us free. But ‘vaccine passports’ will remove people’s rights.
The vaccine rollout has been a rare success for the UK government. Not only have the most vulnerable people received shots in their arms ahead of schedule, but vaccine take-up has also been far higher than expected. For those aged 70 and above, the take-up was 90 per cent, rising to an astonishing 97 per cent among those aged 75 to 79. Hospitalisations and deaths are on the verge of plummeting. And yet, the calls for ‘vaccine passports’ – which would entail de facto mandatory vaccination – are growing louder and louder.
MPP Roman Baber, ejected from the Progressive Conservative caucus by Premier Doug Ford for opposing COVID-19 lockdowns, wants his colleagues to put their money where their mouths are.
Baber (York Centre) introduced a private member’s bill on Wednesday to temporarily slash MPPs’ salaries to the equivalent of federal CERB payments to underscore the impact of shutting down the economy to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
That would reduce MPPs’ wages from about $2,240 a week before taxes to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit’s $500.
(2/2) @PaulCalandra decided to make a joke out of the situation. As 400k Ontarians have not resumed work, 153k jobs lost in January alone, people are desperate as they lose homes, life savings & businesses, the @OntarioPCParty Government said to them "Let them eat cake". #onpoli pic.twitter.com/1363R0SJYn
— Roman Baber (@Roman_Baber) February 17, 2021
“Am I missing something here,” a journalist asked Adalsteinn Brown, the head of Ontario’s Science Advisory Table, after he had walked viewers and reporters through the latest pandemic data and modelling, “or is this presentation actually predicting a disaster?”
“No,” Dr. Brown replied, “I don’t think you’re missing anything.”
Go incognito, it’s a Globe editorial. Things do not bode well for Ontario if the variants take hold.
Also… COVID: UK variant spreading rapidly in Germany
Oh great! – Toronto, Peel Region want to extend current lockdown until at least March 9
The Canadian advisory committee on immunisation has said the government should prioritise adults from “racialised communities” for the “second stage” of the country’s Wuhan coronavirus vaccination plan.
My mother is in Covid lockdown at a Toronto Hospital, this is the 2nd time since Christmas, 5 people on her floor are infected, thankfully she is not. I was informed today she has pneumonia. She’s 96 years old no one has come near her with a Covid vaccine. But then she’s white.
Ontario reported 847 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and 10 new deaths, the lowest daily increase since late October, as the province’s active caseload and hospital burden continued its long decline.
There were 257 new cases reported in Toronto, 131 in York Region and Peel Region reported 171.
Ontario government still working on specific ‘triggers’ for emergency brake as businesses reopen in many regions
The Ontario government is still working on drafting specific “triggers” for when the so-called emergency brake can be invoked, despite the recent lifting of the stay-at-home order and the reopening of businesses in many parts of the province.
Premier Doug Ford told reporters on Tuesday that he wouldn’t hesitate to use the “emergency break” to move regions back into lockdown if COVID-19 cases spike due to spread of new, more contagious variants.
Sainted Irish Mudda’s floor at the hospital is still under lockdown, 6 cases in total one of which is suspected to be the UK variant.
The pharmaceutical industry, government health authorities, and the media insist the new vaccines are safe and effective. While the initial results are promising, this is not the whole truth. Both honesty and acknowledging ignorance require answering a few questions.
h/t Marvin
Crevatin said her mother was escorted out of the hospital by security after a nurse “caught” her reaching out to hold her husband’s hand shortly after the move to the fifth floor.
“Most of the nurses in that unit were fantastic and very understanding, but there was a couple that were very into just …following the rules,” she said.
“They’ve been married for 60 years. It’s very hard for my mother not to hold his hand, not to go up close to him, to touch him — especially since that’s our only form of communication with him.”
When the nurse asked her mother to return to her chair, two metres away, she did but Crevatin said two security guards were still called and they escorted her mother out of the hospital.
A return to Canada from travels abroad could land you in one of the federal government’s isolation hotels, dystopian-looking places sheathed in plastic, with meals delivered to your door and only minutes of fresh air per day.
World Health Organization (WHO) adviser Jamie Metzl has said that the international body’s investigation into the origins of the CCP virus was in fact conducted by Chinese authorities.
The probe, which also considered whether the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus could have accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology that had been studying coronavirus spread from bats to humans, was carried out by local authorities and not WHO investigators, Metzl told Fox News’ “Ingraham Angle” on Feb. 10.
Ontario is reporting 904 cases of #COVID19 today and 964 cases reported yesterday. Today, there are 320 new cases in Toronto, 154 in Peel and 118 in York Region.
Over 27,000 tests were completed on February 15th and nearly 30,400 tests on February 14th.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 16, 2021
51% say Trudeau won’t meet his vaccine goal
As schools reopen in Ontario’s hardest-hit regions, experts urge province not to lift COVID restrictions
Weeks of online learning are coming to an end for thousands of students and parents as schools in Toronto and neighbouring Peel and York regions reopen — the last in Ontario to do so after the Christmas break.
Many medical experts — including a committee led by Toronto’s SickKids Hospital — have called for schools to be the priority as the Ontario government decides when and how to bring the hardest-hit regions out of COVID-19 lockdown.
As they watch the alarming rise of more contagious variants of the novel coronavirus, some public health officials and epidemiologists are warning that in areas with high community transmission, schools should be the only places to reopen in the immediate future.
People in the U.K. with learning disabilities have been told they will not receive resuscitation if they contract COVID-19, according to learning disability charity Mencap.
Between April 1 and Sept. 30 there are 26 weeks, meaning the provinces will have to put at least two million doses per week into the arms of Canadians.
Over its lifespan between late March and October of last year, the CERB paid out nearly $82 billion to 8.9 million people whose incomes crashed because they saw their hours slashed or lost their jobs entirely.
Some three million people lost their jobs in March and April as non-essential businesses were ordered closed, and 2.5 million more worked less than half their usual hours.
The data from Employment and Social Development Canada show that 6.5 million people received the $500-a-week CERB during the first four weeks it was available, or more than one in five Canadians over age 15.
What emerges from that initial wave is a largely rural-urban split, with higher proportions of populations relying on the CERB in cities compared to rural parts of the country.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s cover-up of nursing home deaths from COVID-19 hid nearly 1,900 fatalities in New York City alone — with new figures sending the tally at one Queens facility skyrocketing more than 1,000 percent.
A Post analysis of the latest state Health Department data shows that 5,443 nursing home residents have been killed by the coronavirus in the Big Apple.
