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Month: August 2021

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‘Our lives are ruined’: Canada invited them as permanent residents — then COVID-19 slammed the door shut

Aug 23, 2021 , , , , by shlf

With permanent residence visas in hand, they sold their houses, quit their jobs and even shipped some of their belongings to their new homes in Canada.

Then hit, closing international borders and leaving them high and dry — without a home, job or path to restoring their stalled immigration dreams.

While the federal government is striving to restart an immigration system halted by the coronavirus pandemic and to make up for its 2020 shortfall, tens of thousands of would-be newcomers who have the visas to settle here permanently are being kept outside Canada. Some of their visas have now expired.

It’s a situation that has left many hurt, frustrated and worried for their future.

The teacher and the massage therapist

Belarussian Fatima Camara and her husband quit their jobs, sold their home and pulled their five kids out of school after they got their confirmation of permanent residence and visas stamped on their passports in late March.

They found a realtor and rented a place where they could quarantine for a month in Dieppe, N.B. They sent their bikes, shoes and clothes in aniticipation of the life-changing move from Minsk.

Today, they have no idea where those shipments went, because they weren’t there to pick them up.

“We stay in Belarus without a home, jobs and are absolutely hopeless,” said the French and English teacher and part-time massage therapist, whose family’s permanent residence visa is expiring in December.

“Our immigration plan and our lives are ruined.”

Since mid-March, Ottawa has imposed strict travel restrictions against foreign nationals, including holders of permanent resident visas who have yet to be admitted into the country. It had planned to welcome 340,000 newcomers this year, a target that’s expected to fall short by 40 per cent.

Currently, Canada only allows entry to those who have a permanent resident visa issued before March 18 to settle here permanently. A border officer will still ask questions about their reasons for coming now and ensure self-isolation rules are being respected.

Those with their visas stamped after that date, such as Camara, need to apply for an authorization to travel before they can board a flight, unless they are living in and coming from the United States.

Would-be immigrants with expired visas are asked not to contact the immigration department until they are ready to travel. Only in July, did officials introduce a webform for expired visa-holders to apply for an authorization letter and be assessed by a list of criteria, including whether they have compelling reason to travel to Canada now.

According to an immigration department spokesperson, 15,786 applicants who received their visas before March 19 have had their documents expire as of the end of October. About 2,700 principal applicants filled out the webform and more than 120 received authorization.

The accountant

Prashant Gupta of India received his visa in January and had booked a flight for March 18 before postponing the trip. Since then, he twice tried unsuccessfully to board a flight in May to get here before his visa expired in June, despite Ottawa’s policy to exempt those who got their visa before that date. (Both Canada-bound flights were repatriation flights, restricted to Canadian citizens and already landed permanent residents.)

After months of waiting, the chartered accountant from Kolkata was thrilled to get an authorization letter from the Canadian government on Nov. 6. But he was again refused boarding, this time because Air India would not recognize the expired visa, despite the authorization document.

“I was offloaded at the last moment and not allowed to enter the aircraft. I have asked the Canadian embassy for help, but have yet to receive a response. There was another girl who suffered the same fate,” noted Gupta, who had a job offer in Toronto for a position in financial acquisition that’s no longer valid since he couldn’t make it to Canada.

“This has really broken me. The economy is bad. I can’t go back to my previous job. I have no income. My life has just stopped and stalled.”

The nurse

Registered nurse Katie Hilton, who had previously worked in British Columbia for two years, said she and her husband, Rich, a broadcast journalist, invested three years of their life and more than $10,000 in the immigration process.

They went through and paid for the required English language test, medicals, police clearance, education credential assessement and her licensing registration before she, as the principal applicant, was selected by the Alberta government in 2019 through a provincial immigration stream based on her skills.

Hilton already has a job lined up as part of a new COVID-19 service for the Indigenous community just north of Cochrane, but she needs to arrive and complete her quarantine before the end of November.

“While I completely understand the borders being closed to the vast majority of people at the moment, I can’t understand why those in essential roles aren’t being fast-tracked, especially over the autumn and winter period, when we know there will be a surge in COVID cases,” said Hilton, who received her visa in late October.

She became even more frustrated this week when she was issued the authorization letter, but told her 10-year-old son, Benjamin, does not meet the exemption requirement.

“I’m honestly speechless at how ridiculous these rules are. What kind of government separates a mother and child?” asked Hilton.

“I’m now having to choose between either using the exemption letter but leaving my child in the U.K, having to rely on my elderly parents to help with child care and potentially exposing them to the virus for which I’d never forgive myself … or stay in the U.K. to be with my child and lose my job.”

The cyber security worker

Fadi Ghaoui, who quit his job in cyber security in Saudi Arabia and moved back to Lebanon in April for the move to Canada, said many would-be newcomers have had their lives put on hold and it has taken a heavy financial toll on them. After they quit their jobs, they must now dip into the settlement fund they’d set aside.

“I have used 30 per cent of my savings intended for our new life in Canada just to survive in Lebanon,” said Ghaoui, who received his family’s permanent resident visas on Jan. 7 and had booked their flight for May, two weeks before the visas expired on June 6. They couldn’t leave because his country was in lockdown.

At the end of June, he got an email from the Canadian visa post in London that his permanent residence application was under review to see if anything would need to be updated, such as a new medical clearance before another visa would be issued.

His family was among the survivors of the Aug. 4 explosion that levelled the Beirut port, killing more than 200 people and injuring 6,500. They were three kilometres away, witnessing the flattening of the site when it happened.

Despite the Canadian government’s special program to speed up immigration applications for blast victims in the area, the family has yet to hear an update to their application.

“I do not have a house anymore. I do not have a job anymore. There is no security in my country. The economic situation is bad. We feel so insecure. I fear for our future,” said Ghaoui, who, along with his wife and daughter, is staying with his parents.

“We are barely surviving here. We are stuck. Should we rent a house? Should we unpack all our bags again? Leave for the Gulf? Or just wait for Canada immigration’s response? Being in limbo is the worst.”

Nicholas Keung is a Toronto-based reporter covering immigration for the Star. Follow him on Twitter:

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Emergency road closure in Barrie today

Aug 23, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Warning to motorists, there is an emergency road closure on Doris Drive in Barrie.

The city’s operations branch requires a full closure of the road to undertake emergency water main repair on Doris Drive between Ridgeway Avenue and Highcroft Road today (Friday, Nov. 27) from 9 a.m. to approximately 5 p.m. 

Detour route: access the west end of Doris Drive via Ridgeway Avenue. Access the east end of Doris Drive via Highcroft Road.

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Ontario reports 625 new cases of COVID-19 amid worries we are headed for 1,000 a day

Aug 20, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Ontario reported 625 new cases of amid warnings the province is on track for 1,000 daily in a couple of weeks — surpassing the recent high of 700 — depending on the impact of recent restrictions including shorter hours for bars and restaurants.

The next targets could be trouble spots for transmission such as banquet halls, indoor group fitness classes and workplaces with lax attitudes on allowing employees to come to work sick or to skip quarantines, chief medical officer Dr. David Williams said Wednesday.

“We need to tighten the belts…or we’re going to see a lot more cases,” he told a briefing at Queen’s Park.

Cases are doubling every 10 to 12 days, top provincial health officials said in presenting new computer modelling on the likely trajectory of the pandemic which shows Ontario on the same path as neighbouring Michigan and the Australian state of Victoria, where an overnight curfew starting at 8 p.m. was enacted for Melbourne.

“We are starting to see that sharp upward curve,” said Dr. Adalsteinn Brown, dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Premier Doug Ford said his cabinet is discussing the province’s next moves to slow the spread of the highly contagious virus because of the “deeply concerning” projection, but added “we aren’t rolling back today” as opposition parties called for quicker action.

“If these numbers keep rising we’ll see 200 to 300 patients in ICU (intensive care) beds per day. Folks, we have to work together to turn the tide in this fight,” the premier acknowledged after four deaths were reported for the second day in a row.

While the province is waiting a few more days to gauge the effect of shuttering strip joints and ordering earlier closures for bars and restaurants along with a Sept. 19 reduction in the maximum size of public gatherings to 10 indoors and 25 outdoors, “we’re going to start looking at other venues that are a problem,” said Williams.

Some banquet halls and workplaces are being “less than stringent” on enforcing guidelines such as crowd limits, mask wearing, physical distancing and staying home when sick, he added, with group fitness classes a problem because people are “breathing hard, working hard” in close quarters.

The briefing followed Monday’s spike to 700 new cases and another 554 Tuesday in a September surge that has seen daily infections rise from around 100 daily through August, raising concerns about how long schools will be able to remain open with cases rising in classrooms as well.

The Ontario Hospital Association, along with a number of doctors and epidemiologists have called on the government to take stricter measures before the spread of COVID-19 gets further out of hand, warning hospitals could eventually be swamped. The OHA, for example, is pushing for a return to Stage 2 in urban hot spots like Toronto.

While the trend has been for the majority of cases in people under 40, that growth is helping to spread the highly contagious in older age groups more likely to require medical care and hospitalization, provincial officials said. They cautioned that could limit the capacity to perform surgeries and other procedures backlogged from the first wave.

“We have seen this same pattern play out in Florida, France, Spain,” University of Toronto epidemiologist Dr. David Fisman said on social media. “You need leadership that understands these patterns and has the political courage to act when things don’t yet look horrible.”

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath echoed that, saying “we need to do it now.”

Ford and Williams said they are aiming for targeted actions based on provincial and local data to avoid widespread shutdowns unless absolutely necessary.

“You have to measure the impacts on peoples’ livelihoods,” Ford told reporters.

Ontario Health chief executive Matthew Anderson said several regions in the province outside larger cities have no or very few new cases, whereas hot spots like Peel and Ottawa are in situations where three per cent of people being tested are positive for COVID-19. Fisman said four per cent of people in their 20s being tested are positive.

The government’s fall preparedness plan released Wednesday states positivity rates should be kept below three per cent.

Officials at the briefing said hospitals can remain close to normal with fewer that 150 COVID-19 patients in intensive care but capacity is increasingly limited beyond that with 350 coronavirus ICU patients making normal operations “impossible,” meaning surgeries have to be postponed.

Hospitalizations have doubled to 150 in the last two weeks and there were 35 patients in ICU in Wednesday’s daily report, including 17 on ventilators. Intensive care patients peaked just below 300 in early April before the province hit a then-high of 640 new daily cases later in the month.

Another 52 cases of COVID-19 were reported in schools with the number of schools with cases rising by 32 to 282, with three schools closed temporarily.

Rob Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter:

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From Ryan Reynolds to pandemic punditry: How Ottawa Public Health mixes wit and wisdom to deliver serious messaging on COVID-19

Aug 20, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Ottawa Public Health’s irreverent and sometimes hilarious Twitter account educates, claps back at trolls, and has even gotten the attention of actor Ryan Reynolds.

With almost 100,000 followers, it’s become a public health influencer.

And in a pandemic where scientists are fighting, not just the virus but also misinformation, the public servants behind it have risen to the occasion.

Kevin Parent leads the small team that manages the agency’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts. The Star caught up with him about what it’s like on the front lines of the battle against misinformation.

Q: Judging by your follower count, it looks like the Twitter account has been quite successful. Is that all due to COVID-19?

A: If I’m permitted to humble brag: We’re the most followed local public health unit in North America.

Back in January, we were sitting about 55,000 and the next behind us was New York with in the 30s, Toronto was also in the 30s.

So we’ve been the most followed in North America for quite a while.

But the growth we saw during COVID was incredible. We got all this growth organically. We don’t put any money into our Twitter account. There’s no paid ads, or sponsored anything.

We’re quite proud of that.

Do you think that translates to impact?

Twitter is such a busy place. There’s so much going on and we’re just trying to get health messaging to stand out amongst the noise.

We’ve always tried to be human, we’ve always tried to be approachable.

It’s not typical government comms. We’re trying to be transparent, empathetic.

We’re recognizing that this is a very difficult time for people. We’re acknowledging that openly.

You look at the growth we’ve had and the attention we’ve had on the accounts throughout COVID and that in and of itself is kind of evidence of the success of the style and the tone.

How do you engage with followers and help public health messages find new eyes?

On Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as well, we read every single comment.

We read every single reply.

It’s one of the ways that we’ll actually build content. If there’s something that a lot of people are asking about, or talking about, or identify, we’ll try to talk about it.

We like having one-on-one conversations, because it just makes people feel that much more comfortable with us. And it makes them more likely to engage with our posts, and share them with their friends.

So you read all your mean tweets?

We could do Jimmy Kimmel’s entire season of that after COVID.

How do you combat misinformation online?

A lot of people call it the infodemic, which is going on in parallel to the pandemic. We just address it by putting out as much information as we can.

Some people comment on our Facebook posts with a conspiracy theory, and what’s interesting is that very often the community will kind of take care of itself.

People will start replying to it with the actual factual information.

We know it’s out there.

There’s been an entire series of misinformation posts that we’ve done. And each time we tend to be fairly cheeky with it.

We like to point out the obvious absurdity with a lot of things.

One of the most recent things that we did which I really enjoyed, I believe the tweet said: the notion that COVID-19 is a conspiracy that involves every nurse, doctor, paramedic, hospital, health unit and health agency on the planet represents a very optimistic view of project management.

Anybody who’s ever worked in government knows that just couldn’t happen.

What about trolls?

They’re there. We see them. Sometimes we just mute the accounts.

One of the hardest parts of this job is learning not to take it personally. Some pretty awful things have been said on social media, but on the other hand, it’s nothing new.

There’s an article that comes to mind, from the CBC archives, in 1987. It was about mandatory seatbelts. I kid you not, in the video there’s a gentleman saying “this is government dictatorship.”

“I’m going to ask my doctor for a medical exemption from wearing a seatbelt.”

The public having issue with being told to change their behaviour by health officials is really nothing new.

What about legitimate constructive criticism, or questions?

Sometimes you can just sort of tell that somebody’s asking a question and they genuinely would like an answer.

There are people who will ask a question and we see an opportunity to educate and inform and we will absolutely reply. But then there’s others where, you’re well aware that no amount of answering and information is going to change this person’s mind.

So we carry on with our day.

You also have shared a couple of examples of recent clusters of COVID transmission, like one that stemmed from a cottage weekend, another from a wedding. Why do that?

I understand that messaging fatigue is a thing.

We needed tangible examples. People see case numbers every day. But what does it actually mean? There’s clear-cut lessons to be learned. The most recent example was at a wedding.

As much as we’re not trying to shame anybody, there was one individual who woke up and had mild symptoms, and chose to go to a wedding. And that one decision had that exponential effect.

Think of all those parents. All those kids that couldn’t be in school. The testing centres with an extra 200 people in line. Those are all real human impacts that are beyond the case numbers.

That particular one has a couple of thousand likes and retweets and between Facebook and Twitter, last time I looked at it I think it reached about 600,000 people.

The feedback has been great, people are like, this is real, this is something that I can see and relate to.

It’s also to look at the other side of it. Had that one person woken up with mild symptoms and decided to not go to the wedding, that one individual action would have saved 200-plus people from having to go through all that. It’s the power of individual actions.

How do you craft your posts?

We’ve had some really successful posts, when something happens and we react to it as quickly as possible.

Remember when Dr. Fauci in the States threw the first pitch at the ball game? We retweeted and said: in his defence he’s spent his entire career trying to prevent people from catching things.

Whether it’s something like that where something happens and we want to react to it, or if it’s just when we’re building our week’s social media plan, there’s always three sets of eyes on every single post.

We keep a bank of all the posts that have gone out so that we have quick access to things. We also leave ourselves room within our day to pivot to things and react as they happen.

Some public health agencies are using TikTok to get messages across to younger people. Will you do that?

TikTok is something we’re considering.

There is solid value in us being there, on the other hand we’re a taxpayer-funded municipal institution and there’s been a lot of privacy concerns about TikTok.

So we have our privacy officers looking into that. We’ve got a legal team looking into it, and we’ll see how it goes.

What are some of your recent favourite posts?

I don’t know if you’ve seen any of our Twitter threads. I think those are my favourite.

It’s that moment of candour between us and the followers. That moment of like, all right, we need to talk.

When mandatory masks were introduced in Ottawa, our thread included almost an apology. We said, we understand that for some of you this is coming out of nowhere. We recognize that frustration and we acknowledge it. But here’s why, and then we walked through the reasoning.

And the couple of times Ryan Reynolds replied to us, was just fantastic.

We had a fun little interaction with him back in February. He started following us. We said, we take physical distancing so seriously that we would kick Ryan Reynolds out of bed.

You have your little fan moment. He has 16 million followers.

So 16 million followers scrolled through their feeds and saw an Ottawa Public Health tweet because he interacted with it.

This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

May Warren is a Toronto-based breaking news reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

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LIVE VIDEO: Ontario Premier Doug Ford provides daily update on COVID-19 October 15

Aug 20, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Watch Premier Doug Ford’s daily COVID-19 update now.

In a news conference at Queen’s Park, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and provincial cabinet ministers Christine Elliott (health) and Peter Bethlenfalvy (Treasury Board president) provide an update on their government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 government’s response. They are joined by Jamaal Magloire, Assistant Coach and Community Ambassador for the Toronto Raptors.

A controversial hiring rule that is unpopular with school boards and principals — and even some teachers — is being revoked, Education Minister Stephen Lecce announced Thursday.

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‘Didn’t feel comfortable’: Collingwood restaurant returns to takeout only with COVID-19 cases on the rise

Aug 20, 2021 , , , , by shlf

While restaurants in COVID-19 hot spots such as Toronto and York Region are returning to takeout only, Simcoe County businesses have not been forced to return to Phase 2 restrictions.

However, one Collingwood restaurant has decided to shut down its dining room for the time being.

Cassie MacKell, owner of located on made the decision to offer takeout only earlier this month.

“We just didn’t feel comfortable serving members of the public with the COVID numbers being so high,” she told Simcoe.com. “You can do your best to sanitize and not touch anything, but when you’re physically serving people, there is so many points of contact.”

The bar is known for its Asian-inspired menu and creative cocktails, and has developed a following among locals. MacKell said people just want to see the business get through the pandemic.

“We are fortunate enough to have a great following. I think people want to support their local businesses,” she said.

They’re offering takeout from 4 to 8:30 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday, and customers can order online.

MacKell said a silver lining from COVID was the development of their takeout business.

“As soon as that happened, our takeout business grew, so now going forward, whenever everything is back to normal at some point, we will now have a successful takeout business going,” she said. “We can see how that will be beneficial.”

While it’s the best decision to keep people safe, it’s not the same as a full restaurant full of happy customers.

“It’s not that much fun only doing takeout,” she said. “We miss having people inside, we miss so much bartending and having people sit at the bar making cocktails for them.”

MacKell is hopeful things will turn around and they can open up the restaurant again.

“We really want to open inside; we’re trying to wait until the time is right for us,” she said. “We don’t judge anyone who is open.”

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Sweet! No need to cancel Halloween, Dr. Theresa Tam says

Aug 20, 2021 , , , , by shlf

OTTAWA—Canada’s top doctor Dr. Theresa Tam says is scary but it’s not a reason to cancel Halloween.

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa Tuesday after COVID-19 dampened many an indoor Thanksgiving weekend feast, Canada’s chief public health officer said public health leaders recognize Halloween is important to communities and children. They also believe it’s possible to strike the “right balance” between risk and fun — outdoors.

“I think trick-or-treating outside with the right distancing, prepackaging your treats so that people are not rummaging in a bowl of their bonbons, candies, is actually important,” said Tam. So is “having hand sanitizers for your kids, wearing a mask,” she said.

Tam said it’s important to listen to local public health directions, because virus activity differs from region to region.

Toronto, Ottawa and Peel region are Ontario’s hot zones, but Ontario’s medical health officer Dr. David Williams said recommendations for Halloween in those spots haven’t yet been finalized.

Tam hailed creative suggestions like using a hockey stick to hand out treats, or a pool noodle to show kids how far apart to stand.

In the Whitby area, woodworker Scott Bennett designed and to YouTube an illuminated candy slide to allow social distancing while handing out Halloween candy. He describes it as “similar to a Hot-wheels track and lined with LED lights.”

“It is possible to give candy and to receive candy safely,” said Tam’s deputy, Dr. Howard Njoo.

Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

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Heather Scoffield: Chrystia Freeland wants to spend more — lots more

Aug 20, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Generous, because doing less will only hurt everyone in the long run.

And yes, we can afford it.

staff billed her first big finance-minister vision speech on Wednesday as “an announcement of national significance” and that was an overreach. She quite deliberately avoided talk of numbers or of setting firm parameters on government spending or deficits.

But in her speech and in a subsequent interview with the Star, she did set out some principles that will frame her decision-making as she navigates through the pandemic, and that will eventually have a great deal of influence on our lives as well.

If there was an announcement in her virtual speech to the Toronto Global Forum, it was that logic and compassion alike dictate big, fat government spending for a long time to come.

There is a moral case to be made for governments to spend and do “whatever it takes” to stamp out the virus and mitigate the damage for businesses and individuals alike, she said. But we knew that.

The point of her speech was to make a strong economic case for spending more, lots more, rather than less — not just because she’s (unashamedly) a bleeding-heart liberal but because the economic recovery depends on it.

In the interview, she laid out three distinct stages for fiscal policy. Right now, the effort is focused on controlling the virus and bridging individuals and companies to the other side with generous but time-limited support. Step two comes when we move beyond coping to repairing, when the government will dedicate “significant” money and programs to pushing the economy back to where it was and positioning it for the future.

And only in step three, when the recession is completely over, will the federal government begin to contemplate ratcheting back the spending.

She pointed to a consensus, not just in Canada but among economic thinkers at the International Monetary Fund and around the world, that austerity is all wrong. Curtailing government support while the recession is still with us would serve to undermine companies that are struggling through no fault of their own, and penalize people who have lost their livelihood because they happen to work in public-facing jobs.

And besides, with interest rates so low and the Bank of Canada indicating on Wednesday that they will stay that way for at least a couple of years, government borrowing is a bargain right now.

“The upshot is that we are living today in a world where the risks of fiscal inaction outweigh the risks of fiscal action. Doing too little is more dangerous and potentially more costly than doing too much,” Freeland said in her speech.

At some point, when the pandemic has been vanquished and the economy has fully recovered, there will be limits to government spending and a reinstatement of fiscal rules to rein in government largesse, she said. But for now, the focus of fiscal policy has to be on controlling contagion, supporting Canadian individuals and business, and making sure permanent damage is kept to a minimum.

But does it have to be all or nothing? Freeland presents it as a binary choice. It’s either government spending freely to prevent any permanent “scarring” from the recession — keeping all businesses open, finding jobs for everyone, keeping all the rent paid. Or it’s a “monstrous” and “heartless” fiscal policy that abandons people and companies for the sake of notional fiscal rules that date back to the bygone era of the 1990s when interest rates were high and inflation was more lively.

Not even Freeland’s most bitter political opponents argue in favour of chopping government support any time soon. The political and economic debate in Canada is around the “how” — how should supports be designed to be efficient and impactful, who should take priority, and how strict the rules for eligibility should be. Those are debates worth having.

Even on the “how,” there’s a consensus among politicians and government institutions alike that low-income people and certain key industries such as airlines, accommodation and food services are repeatedly hammered by the pandemic and deserve special attention.

Far more controversial is the spending of the future — when and how the Liberals should impose some fiscal discipline, what kind of growth and recovery they should foster.

Conservatives tend to argue that borrowing on the assumption that low interest rates will stick around indefinitely is folly. Markets and economists want to see some kind of framework that will ensure good decisions and a sustainable fiscal path for the long term. Business groups urge government to impose a tight target for deficits and spending.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, however, says there’s way too much uncertainty in the economy to contemplate guidelines and restraints right now.

Freeland has talked extensively with all of them, but especially Trudeau. Her conclusion? Spending “needs to be limited and it needs to be temporary” over the long run, she says. But spending rules? Not quite yet.

That’s a choice that has little to do with logic or compassion, and everything to do with politics.

Heather Scoffield is the Star’s Ottawa bureau chief and an economics columnist. Follow her on Twitter:

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Health units can respond faster than the province to protect long-term-care residents, minister says

Aug 20, 2021 , , , , by shlf

With outbreaks of COVID-19 taking deeper and more deadly hold in nursing homes, the cabinet minister in charge is urging local medical officers of health to step in quickly with any “necessary” protections.

“Our measures take somewhat longer,” Long-Term Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton said Monday as the government reported 1,487 new cases in the wake of Premier Doug Ford’s warning Ontario is

Another 123 nursing home residents and 23 staff have been infected in the last two days in addition to deaths of 24 residents, including at a handful of . There are outbreaks in 107 of Ontario’s 626 nursing homes, an increase of six.

Fullerton’s comments, which came without specific advice for local health units, prompted criticism from NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and others, given there have been 250 nursing home deaths in the second wave of the pandemic this fall.

“She can’t pass the buck,” Horwath said, citing an “empty promise” from Ford earlier this year to put an “iron ring” of protection around nursing homes.

“It looks like she’s preparing to scapegoat the public health units.”

While the province has limited the number of visitors to nursing homes in general, and in hot spots is allowing only two designated “caregivers” in to see loved ones, Fullerton said local medical officers of health have more “tools to use” under the Health Protection and Promotion Act, such as banning visitors to keep potential infections out.

“In some cases, that is happening,” she told reporters after the legislature resumed sitting following a one-week break. She noted that 92 per cent of nursing homes have no COVID-19 cases among residents.

Liberal MPP Mitzie Hunter (Scarborough-Guildwood) said that was an attempt to minimize the dangers of the virus in the close confines of long-term care, where it spread rapidly last spring and has now killed more than 2,000 residents and eight staff since March.

“What you’re doing in hot spots is not working because people are dying,” Hunter said in the legislature’s question period.

Kennedy Lodge nursing home in Scarborough has had 30 residents die since an outbreak began Oct. 2, while has had seven dead, along with 136 residents and 65 staff infected. Both are getting assistance from hospitals in the Scarborough Health Network.

Fullerton acknowledged “testing isn’t perfect” for nursing-home employees because some are staff are unwittingly going to work infected, which can “wreak havoc” among vulnerable residents, and said new rapid testing kits coming soon will help that situation.

“It’s coming in through the staffers, it’s coming in through the visitors,” Ford told reporters, saying front-line health care staff need COVID-19 test results back within 24 hours, not “three or four days.”

It’s not clear why it is taking that long for staff to get test results because, most days, labs are processing tests at a level below their daily capacity of about 50,000.

Ford also announced the creation of an agency called Supply Ontario to provide centralized procurement and bulk purchasing of personal protective equipment and other supplies for the government and related agencies.

Monday’s tally of 1,487 new cases province-wide was almost 100 short of a record set Saturday, but nevertheless lifted the seven-day moving average of new cases to an all-time high of 1,443, almost double the level of a month ago.

“The trends are concerning,” said chief medical officer Dr. David Williams. Recommendations requested by Ford on the need for any new pandemic restrictions will come by week’s end, he added.

Just two of Ontario’s 34 public health units had no new cases, a sharp contrast with the 18 or 20 that would typically report no infections back in August, when Ontario went almost a week with fewer than 100 cases daily.

On average, every person who catches COVID-19 now is infecting another 1.2 people according to the effective reproduction rate.

Although more than one-third of Ontario’s hospitals did not report their latest statistics, Monday’s report from the Ministry of Health still showed the number of people requiring hospital care for the virus jumped by 21 to 500 patients.

There were 125 patients in intensive care, an increase of seven and a level not seen since June 3, and 70 of them on ventilators, up three. Just a week ago, there were 367 people in hospital with 84 in intensive care.

Provincial health officials warned last week that ICU numbers are due to surpass 150 within the next 10 days, pinching the ability of hospitals to perform non-emergency surgeries and other procedures.

Most of Ontario’s new cases were in the GTA, with 508 in Toronto, 392 in Peel, 170 in York, 45 in Durham and 46 in Halton.

Rob Ferguson is a Toronto-based reporter covering Ontario politics for the Star. Follow him on Twitter:

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This GTA neighbourhood has a staggering rate of COVID-19 infections. Families are struggling, and essential workers are scared. Inside the ‘perfect storm in Peel’

Aug 20, 2021 , , , , by shlf

At the northeast corner of Queen Street East and Airport Road in Brampton begins a large stretch of multi-sized warehouses, factories and shops. On any given day, the movement of small and large trucks loading or unloading is about the only observable activity in the area, save for occasional construction work. It’s kilometres in either direction before you reach residential parts of the neighbourhood, a mixture of multi-unit housing buildings and stand-alone or semi-detached homes.

This is the part of the Greater Toronto Area that has emerged as the place most affected by .

Last week, the Star reported that the : that is to say, nearly one in five residents being tested for the virus receive a positive result, based on analysis conducted by non-profit research institute ICES. Peel Region as a whole has a positivity rate of 9.8 per cent, the highest in the GTA.

For residents of this neighbourhood, it is regrettable that some people’s behaviour may have contributed to the increase in positivity rates, but they say a big part of why the coronavirus is running rampant here stems from external factors beyond their control.

Take Robbie Singh, for example. The 28-year-old tow truck driver, who has lived in this part of Brampton his entire life, says that unlike many others whose jobs allow them the luxury to work from home or take paid time off, he hasn’t stopped working, even during the lockdown months at the beginning of the pandemic.

In addition to observing health measures at work — always wearing a mask, washing hands and sanitizing — he has to regularly book testing appointments to ensure his own safety and that of his family.

“I mean, someone has to do the job,” said Singh as he left the testing site at Gore Meadows Community Centre last week.

“It’s scary, because in Brampton, almost everyone is an essential worker and we get out all the time, which exposes us to the virus more than other people in other places.”

Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, says the rate of spread in the region has been foreseeable since March.

“You’ve got a perfect storm in Peel,” he said.

There’s a large population of immigrants, crowded households, and poorly paid employees engaged in precarious yet essential work, all of which makes the region more vulnerable, he said.

In Brampton, industries including manufacturing, retail, transportation and warehousing, and hospitality accounted for 43 per cent of residents’ jobs, according to data from the 2016 census. These are industries that have been deemed essential and often do not allow people the chance to work from home.

“Ontario has been managing COVID like a political problem, rather than a public health problem,” Furness said, noting that outbreaks in places such as long-term-care homes are politically “embarrassing” and were addressed quickly and vocally by the province.

“Migrant farm workers, homeless people … racialized communities — people don’t seem to care about (them) so much, so they just haven’t gotten resources,” Furness said. “COVID is a racist problem … It’s layers of tragedy here.”

Before going on maternity leave earlier this year, Racine Grenaway worked in retail at Canadian Tire. Her husband works in a food processing factory in Toronto, and the family decided that he would stay with a cousin in town rather than travel home every day and risk infecting her or their three children. She also has multiple sclerosis, and it’s been difficult for her to go get her medications.

Now she has another major worry: her two school-aged kids, 11 and seven years old, have to get tested after an outbreak at their school forced it to shut down. There were recently at Holy Spirit Catholic Elementary School.

“If you ask me, the kids shouldn’t have been in school to begin with,” she said. “I mean, they pulled them out of school back in March. The situation is much worse now, right?”

Grenaway decried a lack of resources in the neighbourhood to help people in need. She said there aren’t enough walk-in clinics despite a growing population. Even getting a COVID-19 test appointment can take days, she said.

“People need to watch their behaviour more, but I think our community also gets left out and ignored by government a lot,” Grenaway said.

As a pharmacist in the area, Khalid Bhatti has seen the impact of COVID-19 on essential workers in this neighbourhood first-hand. The number of his own patients who test positive has been increasing steadily for the past few weeks. That rise has more to do with the nature of their jobs than with ignorance of safety measures, he said.

“They are out there every day, keeping the economic engine going,” said Bhatti, who noted the vast majority of his clients are truck drivers and people working in logistics, retail and restaurants.

There are many complicating factors that account for why this part of Brampton is particularly hard hit by COVID-19, Bhatti said.

Many people live in poverty and earn a low wage, even while they risk their lives to go to work. There are a lot of rental properties and rooming houses in the area for students as well as multi-generational families, and this creates more density than other areas, he said.

Language barriers compound things. Many residents in the area are recent immigrants whose first language may not be English. In addition, the messages coming from different levels of government keep changing and it can be confusing for people to know what to do.

Bhatti gave the example of Education Minister Stephen Lecce, who last week said the government might extend winter break for students, only to reverse this the very next day.

“The back-and-forth, every day, does not help,” said Bhatti. Governments need to be co-ordinated and consistent in what they tell the public, he said.

“I, as a pharmacist, am getting confused by the messaging. I can only imagine what it’s like for people who have English as their second or third language, which predominantly this area has.”

To curb the spread of the virus, the government should be providing incentives for testing, Furness said. If tests come back positive, people should be given access to — plans are underway in Peel for these — and money to cover lost wages and groceries for their families for the time they need to quarantine.

Furness adds that public health units should employ people who share an identity and language with the community they will be working in.

The few people who don’t respect safety measures cause a lot of pain to those just trying to survive the pandemic.

In the parking lot across from a community service centre near Williams Parkway and Airport Road, Georgina Kuaninoo, a longtime resident, says it breaks her heart to hear stories of police breaking up large parties.

“Why 100 people are getting together to party in this pandemic, I don’t understand,” she said. Kuaninoo has, on several occasions, yelled at people not wearing masks in public, or at those not observing a proper distance from one another.

“I haven’t seen my grandkids in a long time, and it’s tough. We only speak on the phone,” she said.

“This thing is spreading like fire and everybody is going to die if we don’t pay attention.”

Angelyn Francis is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering equity and inequality. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email:

Gilbert Ngabo is a Star breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: