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David Olive: Stock surges and setbacks for the week ending Nov. 20

Sep 14, 2022 , , , , by shlf

Winners

Enthusiast Gaming Holdings Inc. (EGLX.TO) $2.87+53.5%

Investors have been slow to warm to stock in Enthusiast Gaming, which operates the largest online network of gaming sites in North America. The stock was flat this year until news that Joe Biden was making use of the Toronto company’s nearly 1,000 YouTube channels and other gaming platforms to reach Gen X and Millennial voters in his U.S. presidential campaign. The stock made further gains this week as Enthusiast expanded its advertising clientele to include consumer-products giants Gillette and the Popeyes fast-food chain.

Canada Goose Holdings Inc. (GOOS.TO) $45.54+1.4%

In the midst of a global pandemic, Canada Goose has held up remarkably well. Earlier this month, the firm reported sales and profits that widely outperformed gloomy analysts’ forecasts. Credit the firm’s increased online prowess, which has helped offset sales declines in traditional stores. Canada Goose also benefits from its sizable presence in Mainland China, the first major economy to fully reopen after gaining control of the pandemic. But the firm warns that European and North American sales will remain weak due to rising pandemic cases in those regions.

Cineplex Inc. (CGX.TO) $8.94+22.8%

The thriller now playing at Cineplex theatres is a survival saga that investors have lately taken an interest in. True, in its latest quarter, Cineplex reported a 91 per cent drop in attendance and an 85 per cent plunge in revenues from the same quarter in 2019, and recorded a $121.2 million loss. But the Toronto firm, Canada’s biggest cinema operator, also recently won temporary relief from financial covenants on $460 million in credit facilities. And it was able to raise $303 million in new financing — an act of faith by lenders that the post-pandemic era will see a robust recovery in theatregoing.

Losers

Jamieson Wellness Inc. (JWEL.TO) $34.90-8.5%

Jamieson has been one of the pandemic winners. The stock has more than tripled in value over the past three years, with much of that gain this year. The leading maker of vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements, based in Toronto, has benefited from the long-term wellness movement. The pandemic further increased demand for supplements that boost immune systems. But as all stock-market darlings do, Jamieson finally reached the point of overvaluation, trading at a pricey 48 times earnings by September. A correction was due. But the underlying fundamentals, including Jamieson’s successful international expansion, remain intact.

Barrick Gold Corporation (ABX.TO) $31.75-5.8%

Barrick investors have been riding a roller coaster this year. Gold went on a tear, hitting a record price of $2,050 (U.S.) in August. But the gold price has since slumped as perceived geopolitical risk — the main reason people buy gold — has receded. Barrick has reported an impressive profit of $3.0 billion (U.S.) year-to-date. But the pandemic and local political disputes have intermittently closed two of Barrick’s biggest mines. And at least some investors were put off the stock when, earlier this month, Warren Buffett revealed that he had dumped about 40 per cent of his Barrick stake, so keen to do so that he took a loss on the shares.

Metro Inc. (MRU.TO) $60.68-1.9%

Metro, one of Canada’s top three grocery chains, is among the pandemic economy’s winners. Some investors who anticipated the strong 11.4 per cent increase in fourth-quarter profit that Metro reported this week took their winnings off the table. But Metro’s growth prospects remain intact. Building on a 160 per cent surge in online sales in the latest quarter, Metro is accelerating growth its online-pickup capacity, and upgrading its online pharmacy operations to counter Amazon’s recent move into prescription drugs. Metro is also expanding the variety of its prepared-meal offerings, catering to the growing “grocerant” trend of selling restaurant-like meals.

David Olive is a Toronto-based business columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter:

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BEHIND THE CRIMES: Why was family murder the only option for these two children?

Dec 16, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Few Markham residents thought they’d ever see an act as twisted and terrifying as Jennifer Pan’s again.

Instead, they witnessed one far more evil.

It was in 2010 when Pan’s Hollywood-style murder-for-hire plot — to kill her immigrant parents all the while acting like a victim during a home invasion/robbery — came to fruition.

Her mother, Bich-Ha, was murdered by a group of thugs.

Her father, Hann, miraculously survived.

Jennifer, her ex-boyfriend and their cohorts were jailed for life in 2017.

Almost a decade later, tragedy struck again, this time even more gruesome — a quadruple homicide with arresting similarities.

In 2019, a Markham video-gaming recluse named Menhaz Zaman, 23, just a year younger than Jennifer at the time of the Pan incident, murdered his mother, grandmother, sister and father with a crowbar, followed by a knife across their throats.

It left many wondering how lightning could strike twice in the same community of fewer than 400,000 people.

“It’s amazing that it happened twice in one city … it’s really quite remarkable,” said Dr. Jaswant Guzder, a psychiatry professor at McGill University. “It’s a horrific crime, that’s highly unusual.”

In the Pan case, Jennifer was the eldest child and under plenty of pressure to achieve immense success at her scholarly pursuits, as well as her pastimes, such as figure skating and piano.

Her parents all but insisted she attended Ryerson for pharmacology.

Problem was it was all a masquerade — showing parents fake report cards, buying textbooks and sitting around the library all day, but not actually attending school.

When they finally figured out she’d been lying, Jennifer was locked in the house and spent almost a year in her room plotting their murder.

Menhaz’s parents both thought he was attending York University and taking mechanical engineering.

In reality, he was catching the bus each day, wandering the campus or heading to Markville Mall to keep up the ruse.

In the lead up to the day he was supposed to graduate, July 28, 2019, he followed through on his murder plan, which was three years in the making.

While Pan continues to maintain her innocence, Menhaz pleaded guilty on Sept. 24.

Dr. Hiram Mok, a psychiatrist focusing on mood disorders and cross-cultural psychiatry, believes the problems in both cases are relatively common inside immigrant homes from these regions – Vietnam and Bangladesh – but admitted this outcome is very rare.

Often problems like these can manifest inside the homes of immigrant families when parents move to more prosperous countries and work menial jobs, he said, putting their own careers on hold.

We know that Jennifer’s father, a tool and die maker, worked extremely hard at Magna and refused to take vacations in order to save cash until his children graduated.

Menhaz’s father was a taxi driver, an occupation where the drivers are often overworked and overqualified immigrants.

“Parents project their own immigrant expectations onto their kids,” Dr. Mok said. “They can put pressure on the kids to achieve their unfulfilled dreams … the immigrant dream.”

This sort of pressure can result in children leading double lives so as not to disappoint the parents, while maintaining their own freedoms, he said.

“This can lead to deception and fantasy, because (the children) don’t have a life, no friends, no dating, no sex; it’s very strict, almost like a religion,” he said.

He told a story of a female he knows of, who would receiving 97 per cent on exams only to be directed by her mother to demand of the teacher why she was missing the final 3 per cent.

Dr. Soma Ganesan, a psychiatrist and founder of Vancouver General Hospital’s cross culture clinic, said cultures around the globe rank professions in terms of prestige, with doctors, engineers and lawyers at the very top.

Dr. Ganesan noted that in certain parts of the world, there is a sort of social contract between parents and children.

“(The deal is) I will work hard, 12 hours a day, I will take no vacation and I will do this to provide a warm and comfortable house for you,” he said. “(But then the) children are under tremendous pressure to enter university and a prestigious program.”

Born in Vietnam to an Indian father, Dr. Ganesan further explained how feelings of resentment and desperation can fester inside children, who often have little opportunity to voice their own opinions.

“Parents express their love by providing safety to grow and opportunity to educate, but they have expectations of the children to do well in school,” he said.

He told the story of a young man he knows of who lied about attending university only to end up disappearing from his family’s life altogether, rather than lose face and admit the deceptive behaviour.

Dr. Mok added that while this sort of pressure can result in educational and career successes, it can also leave the individuals in misery during adulthood.

“Some become high achieving in life, but they are never happy; they have an empty feeling inside,” he said. “The feeling may sound like, ‘I don’t know who I am.’ They can lead normal lives, but only with psychological attention.”

For many, the most shocking part of the murders may be both Jennifer’s and Menhaz’s desperate plotting and planning, without either finding another way out of the predicament.

Prior to his arrest, Menhaz wrote the following on a chat app: “I wanted them to die so that they didn’t suffer knowing how much of a pathetic subhuman I was.”

Dr. Ganesan believes issues can involve saving face for the individual or the family.

“They were born in Canada, in a mixed culture, where they see freedom of speech at school and hierarchical rigidity when they get home,” he said, speaking in general terms and not about individual cases. “There’s post-traumatic stress, pressure in the family, social isolation, verbal abuse; they feel continuously sad and depressed for a long time. There are serious symptoms of depression … they can lack the ability to control the mind. Without intervention, the final stages of depression is homicidal or suicidal.”

Dr. Guzder, head of child psychiatry at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, believes what can help immigrants so much when they come to Canada, their collectivist ideals, can also result in tragic situations like these ones.

She said Western cultures stress autonomy, preparing children to leave the nest and move on to live alone and possibly start their own families.
That mentality stands in contrast to Asian cultures that are based on familial support, where small communities help one another to an extraordinary degree.

“There’s a strain between these two polarities,” she said. “Adolescents in the dominant culture have to navigate what’s positive and negative of both those cultures.”

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‘The stars seem to be more aligned’: Collingwood group champions creation of ‘world class’ cultural centre

Dec 7, 2021 , , , , by shlf

John Kirby was the chair of a committee in 1991 whose mandate was to determine the feasibility of an arts and culture centre for Collingwood.

About five years removed from the closing of the Collingwood Shipyards and about nine years away from the construction of the Blue Mountain Village, the area was still finding itself.

“We didn’t have the financial resources to do anything back then,” Kirby said. 

However, Kirby, who is now a member of the Collingwood Arts Culture Education (CACE) group, said the time is right.

Rob Hart is chair of the group that has a mission to see a “world class” arts, culture and entertainment centre built in Collingwood that will serve all of South Georgian Bay.

Hart said arts and culture is woven into the fabric of the area.

“It’s an unbelievable arts community,” Hardy said. “The energy, the vibrancy and the variety in the South Georgian Bay area it just blew me away.

The Town of Collingwood is currently sending out a request for proposal for a new feasibility study for a potential centre. Hart expects the feasibility study results to come back sometime next spring.

According to a recent press release from CACE, they’ve received support from MPP Jim Wilson, Clearview Mayor Doug Measures, Mayor Brian Sanderson and MP Terry Dowdall.

They’ve also received support from hundreds of individuals and groups involved in the local arts and culture scene.

Thom Vincent, a CACE member and local developer, said the facility could also help drive economic growth, as a strong arts and culture community can help attract businesses looking to relocate and young families.

“By having this type of facility, if we end up with it, will encourage younger people coming up here and give them a platform to express themselves in the arts and culture community,” he said. “The stars seem to be more aligned this time than ever before.”

Kirby said CACE already has a plan to help raise money to build it.

“I have no doubt in my mind that a facility can be built, and the capital money can be raised for that,” he said. 

For more information, visit .

Editor’s note: A correction was made to this story on Nov.16. The name of the group is Collingwood Arts Culture Education group and its char is Rob Hart. Simcoe.com regrets the error.

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Surge at emergency departments in Brampton, Etobicoke leads to transfers of in-patients to other hospitals, for the first time in the pandemic

Nov 2, 2021 , , , , by shlf

A crush of patients arriving at emergency departments in Brampton and Etobicoke have forced William Osler Health System to postpone some elective surgeries and — for the first time during the pandemic — transfer in-patients to other Toronto-area hospitals to ease dangerous overcrowding.

The surge of emergency patients — a mix of those with symptoms and those with other urgent health concerns — pushed Osler beyond capacity late Thursday, prompting its president and CEO to warn this could be the “leading edge of more difficult times for our communities.”

Even as Osler struggles to maintain its health-care services in Ontario’s biggest COVID-19 hot spots, the province on Friday eased public health measures for Peel Region, which had been under modified Stage 2 restrictions since mid-October.

The new provincial public health framework puts Peel in the red or “control” zone, which permits bars, restaurants and gyms to open for some indoor service starting Saturday. Soaring COVID-case counts with York Region and Ottawa into the more lenient orange or “restrict” zone.

Peel’s medical officer of health, Dr. Lawrence Loh, asked the province Friday to keep Peel in modified Stage 2 for another week, as was granted to Toronto.

“I certainly advocated for that given our ongoing challenges with contact tracing — — and also the recent developing challenges with capacity at William Osler,” Loh told the Star on Friday, noting the red control zone was not enough in his opinion to subdue the local epidemic.

“I’m working with our local leaders, our mayors, to take a look at what additional local restrictions we can bring into place so we can encourage people as much as possible to limit their close-contact interactions.”

Dr. Naveed Mohammad, Osler’s president and CEO, said he “supports completely” Loh’s efforts for more public health measures across Peel. Osler’s hospital system includes Brampton Civic Hospital, Etobicoke General Hospital and Peel Memorial Centre for Integrated Health and Wellness.

“We can provide our colleagues in the government with our recommendations from a science and epidemiology (perspective) and what we’re seeing in the hospitals’ point of view,” he said. “Once the decisions are made we have to work with them to ensure we keep our communities and patients as safe as we possibly can.

“The province has made its decision and we will provide our feedback … and we will see where things go from there.”

In a statement issued Friday afternoon, the Ontario Hospital Association called the province’s decision to allow Peel to reopen in the new red control zone “reckless,” stating it “must be reversed immediately given the risks it poses to area hospitals, particularly William Osler Health System.”

Anthony Dale, the association’s president, told the Star that Osler faces “punishing pressures” to keep up with the health-care demands of its community at the best of times, but especially so in a pandemic and with Peel a major hot spot.

“The situation is precarious and fragile and a major surge in COVID patients would greatly destabilize William Osler’s operations,” he said, pointing to hospital systems in other regions and countries being overwhelmed during the pandemic’s fall wave.

“We’re in a situation where the circumstances could change very quickly,” Dale said. “And we may have the illusion of control, but all of the jurisdictions in the world that have made that assumption have paid a price.”

Starting Friday and going through to Saturday, Osler plans to transfer 15 to 20 patients from Brampton Civic and Etobicoke General to other GTA hospitals, after which the situation will be reassessed, according to an Osler spokesperson. More than 10 hospitals have offered Osler help, including Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Markham Stouffville Hospital, Mackenzie Health and the University Health Network.

Mohammad said transferring Osler in-patients to other hospitals because of overcrowding typically only happens about once a year. Until this week, Osler had not yet asked for such help during the pandemic, he said, adding that hospitals have offered to take both COVID and non-COVID patients.

As of Friday, Osler was caring for 55 patients with suspected COVID-19 and 57 confirmed COVID-positive patients, 15 of whom are in intensive care, Mohammad said. Each of these patients must isolate in a single room for infection control, he said.

“That really impacts our capacity and our real estate,” he said, adding that Osler has already opened up all possible spaces in its hospitals that can currently be staffed. “Finding staff to care for those patients is where the challenge starts.

“Last night (Thursday) we got to a point that if any more patients came in through the emergency who needed to be admitted, we could not possibly provide them a safe place to be held and be admitted.”

A COVID-19 outbreak on a surgical floor at Etobicoke General has also “compounded the situation,” Mohammad said.

Capacity pressures have also forced Osler to postpone 50 elective surgeries within the last two weeks, according to an Osler spokesperson. The hospitals will “continue to prioritize urgent and time-sensitive surgeries” in the coming weeks, the spokesperson said.

As of Friday, Peel still had the province’s highest COVID-19 infection rate of 120 cases per 100,000 population per week with a seven-day average of 264 new cases a day, according to the Star’s ongoing tally. Peel’s most recent epidemiological summary shows 6.8 per cent of COVID-19 tests in the region came back positive between Oct. 18 and Oct. 24; the same week Brampton reported a 9.6 per cent test positivity rate.

Currently, Osler has a COVID-19 test positivity rate of 11 per cent that includes tests from its assessment centres and hospital patients. A hospital spokesperson said data could not be broken down to individual hospital sites because “analyzing data into smaller subgroups may be misleading because the number tested is small.”

Mohammad said he is worried about the situation at Osler because it’s fuelled by the escalating number of cases in the community

“I’m worried about where things are going. I’m also worried that this may be the leading edge of a wave of patients that may need more hospital care.”

Dale said the Ontario Hospital Association is reviewing the province’s new colour-coded public health measures framework with its partner hospitals and outside experts and plans to submit recommendations to the province next week.

“We do see some significant room for improvement,” he said, noting the definition of hospital capacity in the document is not clear and the threshold levels for the COVID-19 reproduction rate are too high. “As it is right now, it leaves essentially no room for error.”

Megan Ogilvie is a Toronto-based health reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

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We can’t eliminate COVID risk in schools. But can we solve the runny-nose riddle for screening symptomatic students?

Oct 29, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Eleven people were infected with during a family gathering at a vacation home in the U.S. this summer.

The source of the outbreak, according to released Oct. 5 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: a 13-year-old girl with the sniffles. “Nasal congestion” was her only symptom.

Earlier this month, as sniffly kids flooded Ontario’s COVID assessment centres, and the province’s testing backlog surpassed 80,000, the government for schools and daycares. The new rules allow kids with runny noses and several other short-lived symptoms to return to class without a test, following a similar move in British Columbia.

The revisions are controversial, especially in hot spots like Toronto.

Dr. Andrew Morris with Sinai Health and the University Health Network is among several infectious diseases experts who have raised concerns. He said the CDC case report reflects a hard truth about runny noses and COVID in kids: “It’s almost impossible to distinguish between colds due to rhinovirus and colds due to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19).”

But what would it take to build a system that keeps sniffly kids carrying coronavirus out of schools? How worried should parents be about their stuffed-up children? Can Ontario solve the runny-nose problem?

“Everything about this is hard,” said Amy Greer, Canada Research Chair in population disease modelling, and a specialist in infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Guelph. “The challenge with all this is that we don’t have better data.”

“I have never discussed runny nose so much in my life,” Dr. Barbara Yaffe, Ontario’s associate chief medical officer of health, said when announcing the change to the province’s school and daycare screening guidelines, a decision she said was rooted in evidence and based on medical advice.

“What we are trying to do is balance,” she said. “Obviously we want to minimize the transmission of COVID-19, but we also want to ensure that kids can go to school or child care if it’s safe.”

Dr. Janine McCready, an infectious diseases physician at Michael Garron Hospital, has spoken out against the new guidance around runny noses, warning that she is seeing positive cases among schoolkids with no known exposure, whose only symptom is a short-lived runny nose.

At the request of the Star, McCready reviewed a report by Public Health Ontario on COVID in kids, which the Health Ministry said helped inform the changes to school screening. She said the data “does not allay my concerns in our current situation.”

The report looked at the symptoms of 1,332 kids who tested positive in Ontario before July 13, and found that runny noses were reported in eight to 18 per cent of cases, depending on the age group. That’s less than some of the more serious symptoms — including fever and cough — which, according to the new screening guidelines, require students to stay home and consult a health-care provider about whether they need a test.

The report, which included a systemic review of the scientific literature, notes that the authors “did not identify published evidence that discussed which isolated or single symptoms are commonly, or uncommonly, seen in pediatric populations.”

However, as McCready points out, among some age groups captured in the Ontario data, such as four- to nine-year-olds, more than 10 per cent of sniffly kids with COVID reported only having a runny nose, roughly on par with the proportion of kids that age with coughs who reported a cough as their sole symptom, according to the report.

Dr. Ari Bitnun, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor at the Hospital for Sick Children, said, “he has no problem” with the province’s new guidance, because “if you get aggressive with every runny nose … you are going to have a lot of children that end up quarantined,” triggering other “bad outcomes,” including families pulling their kids out of in-person learning.

However, Bitnun said the guidance should be continually re-evaluated, based on the way the disease is spreading locally — “not provincewide, but very local, which is hard to do sometimes.”

In Toronto, local data on runny noses and COVID in kids is elusive. Toronto Public Health to reflect the new Ontario policy after reviewing its own data on 855 kids with COVID from January to September, but there was no separate category tracking nasal congestion.

“It was difficult to determine how many children only had a runny nose, and how many had a runny nose that improved in 24 hours,” associate medical officer of health Dr. Vinita Dubey said in an email. She said she will “continue reviewing our local data and recommendations as new scientific evidence emerges.”

Toronto Public Health’s revised guidelines are more stringent than the provincial guidance, recommending testing for any symptom that doesn’t improve, including a runny nose — a tweak Dubey said was made “because infections have recently dramatically risen” in Toronto.

There is still a lot we don’t know about runny noses and COVID in kids, because schools in many countries closed for much of the epidemic, and children were relatively sheltered from exposure. Many children with the virus are also asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms, making cases hard to catch.

A preprint of a Swiss study released in September underscores how difficult it is to use symptoms as an indicator of COVID in kids. For the study, which has not been peer-reviewed, researchers analyzed blood samples and symptoms of 2,500 children to gauge their exposure to SARS-CoV-2. They found that of all kids who reported having a runny nose, roughly half had been exposed to the virus, while the other half had not — suggesting the odds that the sniffles in these kids was due to COVID at 50-50.

This presented a vexing back-to-school test for policy-makers, particularly heading into fall, when kids typically experience other respiratory illnesses, which Greer said called for “a strong plan for how we would manage the number of children and families that would require testing.”

But the bottleneck that left many families waiting for hours for testing and multiple days for results suggests the province “did not anticipate” the problem, Greer said.

Dr. Andrea Chittle is a family physician who works at a COVID assessment centre in Guelph. She said the province needs to take “a broader, system-wide view.”

“I think the questions we need to be asking are around how can workers be supported so that they can be home with their children when their children are symptomatic? What more robust systems and plans can be put in place in schools so that we have less spread of (viruses) through schools?”

Making testing easier and more accessible for families is key to keeping schools open, Chittle said, suggesting pop-up sites near schools warrant consideration.

Before the school screening guidelines changed, Toronto mom Bekki Kam was stuck in COVID testing purgatory for six days with her two young kids, who were tested because they had runny noses. Both children tested negative.

At the time, Kam said the screening tool at her kids’ school — which directed all symptomatic kids to stay home for 14 days or test negative before returning — “seemed a bit like overkill.”

She isn’t sure what to make of the evidence around runny noses and COVID, but said she would support a more conservative approach if the government could “expedite” the testing process.

“If every kid on earth is going to have a runny nose in the next four, five months … isn’t there a way to make the process a bit better if that’s a big indicator?” she said. “I’m happy to have them tested but I don’t want them missing weeks and weeks at a time just because they have the sniffles.”

Even with the loosened school screening guidelines, Kam said she is dreading her kids’ next illness, and the possibility they may need a COVID test, citing reports that the recent switch to appointment-only testing has left some people waiting days for a slot.

In response to questions for this story, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry said the government is continuing to “review the evidence and will update the guidance, as required,” but “is not considering revising the COVID schools guidelines at this time.”

The statement did not specifically mention strategies for improving testing for children and schools and daycares, but the spokesperson said the province is taking steps to build an integrated lab and testing network and boost testing capacity, noting its plan to roll out rapid testing “in the coming weeks.”

On Friday, as the number of infections in the province surged, there were 56 new COVID cases reported in publicly funded schools in Ontario, bringing the two-week total to 628, according to the province’s online tracker.

With rising rates of community transmission of the coronavirus, the challenge of distinguishing between COVID-related sniffles and run-of-the-mill colds is becoming more pressing, Morris said.

While it might be “a reasonable strategy not to bother” testing sniffly kids when COVID rates are low, that has become more difficult to justify in some pockets of Toronto, where, according to recent data obtained by the Star, more than COVID tests are coming back positive.

“When the prevalence of disease is so high, we would expect many more colds to be due to COVID-19,” Morris said.

As hard as it is for families, McCready said based on the current situation in Toronto, “my advice would be that if anyone in the household has symptoms, then everyone should stay home, and those with symptoms should go get tested.”

With files from Jennifer Yang

Rachel Mendleson is a Toronto-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

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Today’s coronavirus news: B.C. reports 738 new cases; Alberta hits ‘tragic milestone’ of 500 COVID-19 deaths; Auditor general releases report on Ontario’s pandemic response

Oct 28, 2021 , , , , , by shlf

The latest news from Canada and around the world Wednesday. This file is no longer updating. Web links to longer stories if available.

10:03 p.m.: South Korea has recorded more than 500 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours for the first time in about eight months as health authorities struggle to contain a third surge of infections.

The Asian nation has been experiencing a spike in cases since it relaxed stringent social distancing rules last month. To deal with the latest surge, the country on Tuesday re-imposed tough distancing guidelines in Seoul and some other areas.

South Korea’s cases initially peaked last February and March, with officials reporting hundreds of fresh cases daily, mostly tied to a religious sect. Its second major outbreak came during the summer, and was mostly tied to the greater Seoul area.

Officials say the latest outbreak is worrisome because there are many cluster infections tied to a variety of sources.

10:00 p.m.: Four national interest exemptions to COVID-19 border restrictions, covering 1,300 professional athletes, have been issued by the federal immigration minister, his office confirmed Wednesday.

The details came after MPs at the House of Commons immigration committee were told by departmental officials that 1,300 national interest exemptions had been issued.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino’s office was forced to clarify late Wednesday the details of the national interest exemptions he’s authorized after the number surfaced at a House of Commons immigration committee hearing earlier in the day.

Mendicino was grilled on how many people had been allowed into Canada using the exemption, which admits those who don’t qualify under current COVID-19 related restrictions, or to skip the mandatory 14 day quarantine when they arrive.

Who has access to that program has been a source of public debate, especially throughout the summer and fall as thousands of families placed sustained public pressure on Mendicino to loosen the border restrictions to allow more families to reunite.

8:24 p.m.: Toronto officials are taking steps to fight vaccine hesitancy to ensure that as many people as possible take part in immunization programs when they become available in early 2021.

City council voted on Wednesday to ask Toronto’s COVID-19 Immunization Task Force, in coordination with the provincial and federal governments, to promote the safety and efficacy of vaccinations.

The motion was one of several amendments to a COVID-19 motion passed by council on Wednesday as it grapples with flattening the second wave of the disease while ensuring that the massive vaccination program, when it is launched, runs as smoothly as possible.

8:11 p.m.: Provincial health officials say they are working on British Columbia’s plan to handle COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer, says Dr. Ross Brown of Vancouver Coastal Health will join the group working to organize the logistics around the distribution of vaccines.

and 738 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, bringing the total to 29,086.

Henry says front-line workers as well as those in long-term care homes will likely have priority for vaccinations.

“It’s very much focused on who is most at risk and how do we protect them best,” Henry said. “There’s a lot of discussion that needs to happen.”

Henry said they hope to have vaccines by January 2021.

8:03 p.m.: The Saskatchewan government is suspending team sports for the next three weeks and slashing capacity limits for public venues to 30 people in its latest attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Premier Scott Moe announced the new health measures Wednesday by video from his home in Shellbrook, Sask., where he was isolating after eating at a restaurant where someone infectious had been.

Health officials reported 164 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and said hospitalizations had risen to 111, with 19 people in intensive care.

The premier said the province’s seven-day average of 214 daily cases is too high.

7:35 p.m.: As , Alberta Health services is bracing for more cases by making 400 ICU beds and 2,000 acute care beds available to COVID-19 patients.

On Wednesday afternoon, Alberta Chief Medical officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said the province has reached a grim milestone of 500 deaths, with another 1,265 COVID-19 cases diagnosed overnight.

“This is a tragic milestone. My sympathies go out to the loved ones and friends of these individuals who are mourning the lives lost during what is a very difficult time to grieve,” Hinshaw said.

Overall, the province has 13,719 active cases with 355 people in the hospital and 71 in intensive care. Alberta has passed 50,000 COVID-19 infections since the beginning of the pandemic, which accounts for 1.2 per cent of Albertans.

7:30 p.m.: Wednesday, Doug Ford appeared to be under siege, writes Star columnist Bruce Arthur. He attacked Ontario’s auditor general, who had that morning on the province’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and traced how it has been cumbersome, reactive and political.

The premier was not happy. The premier blew his top. Ford has always loved savaging watchdogs, all the way back to Toronto city hall.

“I’m really glad the auditor general just got a health degree and became a doctor over the last year or so,” Ford later said, sarcastically, in response to a question about organizational structures and decision-making processes. He said, “this does nothing but undermine our entire health team.”

There wasn’t much, however, in terms of factual disagreements.

6:22 p.m.: Seven Ontario Provincial Police detectives are now investigating the alleged $11 million theft of provincial COVID-19 relief funds.

“We’re conducting a criminal investigation into allegations of a major fraud,” Detective Staff Sgt. Sean Chatland, head of the probe, said Wednesday.

“We’re still fairly early on. We’ve been investigating for a couple of months,” he said, emphasizing it “is going to take some time.”

As revealed by , a Toronto couple and their two adult sons, who all worked as Ontario government computer specialists, are alleged to have been involved in the theft of more than $11 million in pandemic aid.

5:30 p.m.: Ontario’s response to COVID-19 has been slowed by a “cumbersome” command structure that sidelines public health experts, including a chief medical officer who has not “fully exercised” his powers.

Those conclusions and more were in a from auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, who found Ontario lagged other provinces on key fronts such as protecting nursing home residents and migrant farm workers.

While not mentioning chief medical officer Dr. David Williams by name, the report faults him for not making his recommendations to Premier Doug Ford public and for not acting more quickly or comprehensively on public health measures such as mask requirements.

“Ontario’s response to COVID-19 in the winter and spring of 2020 was slower and more reactive relative to most other provinces and many other international jurisdictions,” Lysyk said, echoing concerns raised by opposition parties and some observers in the health community.

4:30 p.m. (Updated): Ho-ho-hold off on inviting guests for Christmas.

That’s the advice from the provincial government as COVID-19 cases continue to rise at near-record levels and deaths mount, with 35 more fatalities reported Wednesday.

“We can’t take chances,” Premier Doug Ford told his daily briefing. “We have to bend the curve and stop the spread.”

He said public health experts are urging people to celebrate only with members of their own households, especially in the lockdown zones of Toronto and Peel.

People who live alone can pair exclusively with one other household and students returning from college and university should quarantine in their dorms or apartments and limit close contacts for 10 to 14 days before travelling home.

Ontario reported 1,373 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, just below the seven-day average of 1,389 that peaked at 1,443 on Nov. 16.

4:08 p.m.: The Saskatchewan government is suspending group sports and making masks mandatory for indoor fitness activities in its latest attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The Ministry of Health says the added measures start tomorrow and will last until at least Dec. 17.

The province says all team sports across amateur and recreational leagues will be suspended, including hockey, curling and dance.

4 p.m.: Alberta Premier declared a second state of public health emergency in Alberta Tuesday after weeks of mounting COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and fatalities.

The . Cases are rising and outnumbering provinces including Ontario despite having only a third of the population of Canada’s largest province. But until yesterday, despite the rising COVID-19 case numbers, Albertans were free to dine out, shop and gather in groups even as Ontario went into lockdown and other provinces tightened restrictions.

Many health experts are concerned the current provincial measures are a case of too little too late and nothing short of a lockdown will help bring the infection surge under control, something Kenney has consistently pushed back against.

, a Toronto Star reporter based in Calgary, joins This Matters today to explain what is going on in Alberta, what the new measures mean and what the consequences might be for Albertans as the provincial government tries to balance public opinion, politics and a pandemic.

3:54 p.m.: Nova Scotia’s Liberal government is bringing in temporary rent controls amid a series of evictions of low-income tenants and rising homelessness in Halifax.

Housing Minister Chuck Porter said Wednesday that rents across the province can’t increase by more than two per cent a year. The restriction is retroactive to Sept. 1.

The measure will remain until the province lifts its state of emergency order or Feb. 1, 2022, whichever comes first.

Porter linked the move directly to the global pandemic and the need to avoid putting people out of their homes when there aren’t affordable rental options.

He also said landlords will not be able to obtain an eviction order for renovations — informally known as a “renoviction” — for the same time period, because he says people shouldn’t be forced out of their homes during the pandemic.

3:46 p.m.: Marc-Andre Bedard, a well-known politician with the Parti Quebecois and loyalist to Rene Levesque, has died of complications from COVID-19 at the age of 85.

Bedard was Quebec’s longest-serving justice minister, from 1976 to 1985, and also served as deputy premier in 1984 in Levesque’s government.

He helped advance a series of reforms to the province’s justice system, including the amendments to protect homosexuals and disabled people in the human rights charter.

On Wednesday, Stephane Bedard said his father was hospitalized with complications from COVID-19, and hours later, he said his father was dead.

Quebec Premier François Legault on Wednesday called Bedard a “great man.”

2:30 p.m.: and the highways for Thanksgiving, disregarding increasingly dire warnings that they stay home and limit their holiday gatherings to members of their own household.

While the number of Americans travelling by air over the past several days was down dramatically from the same time last year, plenty of others pressed ahead with their holiday plans amid skyrocketing deaths, hospitalizations and confirmed infections across the U.S.

About 1 million people per day passed through U.S. airport checkpoints from Friday through Tuesday, a drop-off of around 60% from the same time a year ago. Still, those have been the biggest crowds since the COVID-19 crisis took hold in the U.S. in March.

More than 88,000 people in the U.S. — an all-time high — were in the hospital with COVID-19 as of Tuesday, pushing the health care system in many places to the breaking point, and new cases have soared to an average of over 174,000 per day, the highest level on record.

2:14 p.m. (Updated): The owner of has been charged after attempting to open, one day after the city’s top doctor ordered the Etobicoke restaurant closed for violating the restrictions.

Adam Skelly faces two charges for operating without a business licence.

The fine is up to $50,000 for a corporation and up to $25,000 for an individual or officer/director, says city spokesperson Brad Ross.

1:42 p.m. (will be updated) Ontario says people should only celebrate holidays with those they live with. “The safest way for any of us to enjoy the holidays, no matter where we live in the province, is to celebrate with our own households,” says Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

“I know there are many people looking forward to their traditional family celebrations at this time of year, but to keep your loved ones safe, traditions will have to be adjusted,” said Ford. “We’re asking everyone to please stick to your own household when celebrating. Avoid big holiday parties or large family dinners to help us stop the spread of this deadly virus. By following this public health advice, we can all have a safe and fun holiday season.”

1:10 p.m.: London, Ont., hospital network that closed one of its facilities to admissions amid a COVID-19 outbreak says new patients will be sent to one of its other sites.

The London Health Sciences Centre has stopped new admissions to medical units at its University Hospital in an effort to fight an outbreak that has infected 41 patients and staff so far.

A spokeswoman for London Health Sciences Centre — which manages several hospitals — says new patients that would have been admitted to the University Hospital will now be sent to the network’s Victoria Hospital.

The local public health unit had recommended the halt to admissions at the University Hospital on Tuesday and said the move would be reassessed in 48 hours.

Dr. Chris Mackie, the medical officer of health for the Middlesex-London Health Unit, has called the situation at the University Hospital “alarming.”

Visitors and designated care partners are also not currently permitted at the University Hospital’s medical units.

12:52 p.m.: The country’s chief public health officer is advising Canadians that to limit the spread of COVID-19, they should go out only for essentials.

Dr. Theresa Tam says the number of people experiencing severe cases of COVID-19 is continuing to rise, putting a strain on health-care services and forcing hospitals to cancel surgeries.

She said it’s safest to limit errands and outings to just essentials and not to socialize with people beyond one’s household.

But with a month to go before Christmas, provincial premiers are grappling with how to balance health measures and safe enjoyment of the holidays.

12:50 a.m.: Owners of Rockcliffe Care Community say the mid-Scarborough nursing home has “made substantial progress” against a COVID-19 outbreak that has taken 17 lives.

“We feel the gravity of these losses, and our hearts go out to the families who have lost loved ones,” a spokesperson for Sienna Senior Living, Nadia Daniell-Colarossi, said in an email Tuesday .

The disease caused by the novel coronavirus spread throughout the home after it was found on Nov. 2, and around 90 per cent of the 165 residents were infected.

In a statement, Daniell-Colarossi said 31 active cases remain among residents and 40 among staff and contracted employees.

12:45 p.m.: Newfoundland and Labrador is reporting one new case of COVID-19 today.

The new case involves a woman in her 40s who is connected to a growing cluster of cases in the western region of the province.

Health officials are warning rotational workers in the province of a COVID-19 outbreak at the Imperial Oil Cold Lake work site in Alberta.

Newfoundland and Labrador has reported 324 COVID-19 infections, 25 of which are considered active.

12:45 p.m.: The percentage of total COVID-19 cases in Quebec among people over the age of 70 is increasing, but the number is significantly below what was reported during the peak of the pandemic’s first wave.

Data from Quebec’s national public health institute indicates 18.4 per cent of Quebecers with active COVID-19 cases since Nov. 22 were over the age of 70, up from 14.9 per cent the previous week.

But that number is far below what was reported during the peak of cases last spring, when seniors over 70 years old accounted for 35.2 per cent of total COVID infections in Quebec.

Dr. Quoc Dinh Nguyen, a gerontologist and epidemiologist at the Universite de Montreal hospital centre, said today he’s worried about the mental health of older adults.

He says seniors are not only the most likely age group to die from the novel coronavirus, but they are also most at risk to having their lives disrupted by efforts to contain it.

Health authorities say there are 18 private seniors residences where more than 25 per cent of residents have active cases of COVID-19.

Quebec is reporting 1,100 new COVID-19 cases and 28 more deaths attributed to the virus, including 12 that occurred in the past 24 hours.

The province has reported a total of 135,430 cases of COVID-19 and 6,915 deaths linked to the virus.

12:15 p.m.: Nunavut is reporting 11 new cases of COVID-19, which brings the territory’s active case count to 153.

Health officials said today there were eight new cases in Arviat and three new cases in Whale Cove.

Chief public health officer Dr. Michael Patterson says there are over 300 people in isolation in Arviat.

No one in Nunavut is hospitalized because of COVID-19 and Patterson says those infected have mild to moderate symptoms.

11:51 a.m. A Honolulu city councillor has called on the city’s police chief to reinstate its coronavirus enforcement unit. The unit was suspended after allegations that officers abused overtime hour submissions.

Councilman and Legal Affairs Committee chair Ron Menor proposed this week that Police Chief Susan Ballard should only ban officers currently under investigation for wrongdoing. He says that the rest of the officers should continue to enforce coronavirus restrictions around the city, especially with the upcoming holiday season fast approaching.

The job of ensuring that Honolulu’s residents and tourists are following coronavirus guidelines is now conducted by on-duty patrol officers. They take assignments based on their availability.

11:40 a.m.: The Manitoba Human Rights Commission says it’s getting between 50-100 calls a month from people who say being forced to wear a mask during the pandemic is a violation of their rights.

Acting executive director Karen Sharma says the calls represent a sharp increase in her agency’s workload.

She says the province’s mandatory mask-wearing order is not a human rights issue, except potentially for people with disabilities.

11 a.m.: Quebec is reporting 1,100 new COVID-19 cases and 28 more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus, including 12 that occurred in the past 24 hours.

Health authorities said today the number of hospitalizations remained stable at 655 and 93 people were in intensive care, a drop of three.

The province says it conducted 24,067 COVID-19 tests on Nov. 23, the last day for which testing data is available.

Quebec has reported 135,430 COVID-19 infections and 6,915 deaths linked to the virus since the start of the pandemic.

10:49 a.m. Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet is blasting the prime minister’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, calling Justin Trudeau’s pledge that vaccines will start to arrive in the coming months “unacceptable.”

Trudeau sought to reassure Canadians yesterday even as he acknowledged that some other countries are likely to start inoculating their citizens first, citing Canada’s low capacity to churn out vaccines.

Blanchet says the federal government should have moved sooner to help obtain manufacturing rights and beef up production capacity on Canadian soil.

The Bloc leader also says the short-term COVID-19 emergency centres on limiting viral spread, which he accuses Ottawa of managing with an “uncertain” hand.

The United States, Britain and Germany have said their residents could start to receive vaccinations as early as December.

Trudeau said yesterday the federal government has signed orders for millions of doses from a variety of foreign pharmaceutical companies in recent months, and that Canada has been pushing the international community to ensure equal access for all.

10:48 a.m. The Jacksonville Jaguars will be without three defensive coaches against Cleveland this weekend because of COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.

Coach Doug Marrone says defensive co-ordinator Todd Wash, defensive line coach Jason Rebrovich and defensive assistant Dwayne Stukes will not be available against the Browns. Rebrovich missed last week’s game against Pittsburgh because of COVID protocols.

Marron and assistant special teams co-ordinator Mike Mallory will run the defence during practice this week.

On Sunday, secondary/safeties coach Joe Dana will call the defence and assistant linebackers coach Tony Gilbert will coach the defensive line. Assistant Tyler Wolf will take care of Gilbert’s responsibilities from the coaching booth.

Marrone says he has confidence in Dana’s ability to handle the extra workload.

“He’s called the defence here last year during pre-season,” Marrone said. “He’s called them in the pre-season games, I’m sure some in Atlanta and he’s done it at Georgia Southern. Obviously, we worked together and been on the phones with him.

10:45 a.m.: Ontario is reporting an additional 162 new cases in public schools across the province, bringing the total in the last two weeks to 1,193 and 4,269 overall since school began.

, the province reported 138 more students were infected for a total of 857 in the last two weeks; since school began there have been an overall total of 2,609.

The data shows there are 24 more staff members infected for a total of 186 the last two weeks — and an overall total of 573.

The latest report also shows that no more infected individuals who weren’t identified for a total of 150 in that category in the last two weeks — and an overall total of 1,087.

There are 688 schools with a reported case, which the province notes is 14.25 per cent of the 4,828 public schools in Ontario.

Four schools were closed because of an outbreak. The data doesn’t indicate where they are.

Frank W. Begley Elementary school in Windsor is one of them, among students, believed to be the highest number in the province yet. Eight staff are also positive.

There is a lag between the daily provincial data at 10:30 a.m. and news reports about infections in schools. The provincial data on Wednesday is current as of 2 p.m. Tuesday. It doesn’t indicate where the place of transmission occurred.

The Toronto District School Board updates its information on current COVID-19 cases throughout . As of Wednesday at 9 a.m., there were 286 students infected, 56 staff and 331 resolved cases.

The Toronto Catholic District School Board also updates its information . As of Wednesday at 10:15 a.m., there were 84 schools with at least one active case. There are 132 active student cases and 37 staff.

10:45 a.m.: A North York elementary school at the school on Wednesday for a second straight day due to a recent COVID-19 outbreak.

One more student positive case was reported Tuesday for a total of nine positive cases at St. Fidelis Catholic School, near Keele Street and Highway 401. There are now nine students and five staff members with a positive case.

While Toronto Public Health has declared an outbreak at the school, the school is still listed as open while the agency continues its investigation.

10:40 a.m.: Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet is blasting the prime minister’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, calling Justin Trudeau’s pledge that vaccines will start to arrive in the coming months “unacceptable.”

Trudeau sought to reassure Canadians yesterday even as he acknowledged that some other countries are likely to start inoculating their citizens first, citing Canada’s low capacity to churn out vaccines.

Blanchet says the federal government should have moved sooner to help obtain manufacturing rights and beef up production capacity on Canadian soil.

The Bloc leader also says the short-term COVID-19 emergency centres on limiting viral spread, which he accuses Ottawa of managing with an “uncertain” hand.

The United States, Britain and Germany have said their residents could start to receive vaccinations as early as December.

Trudeau said Tuesday the federal government has signed orders for millions of doses from a variety of foreign pharmaceutical companies in recent months, and that Canada has been pushing the international community to ensure equal access for all.

10:15 a.m. (updated): Ontario is reporting 1,373 new cases of COVID-19 today, and 35 new deaths linked to the virus.

Health Minister Christine Elliott says 445 of today’s new cases are in Toronto, while 415 are in Peel Region.

Eleven fewer people are hospitalized with COVID-19, according to today’s numbers, for a total of 523.

The number in ICU remains 159, and 15 more people are on a ventilator, totalling at 106.

9:33 a.m. Ontario’s response to has been slowed by a “cumbersome” command structure that sidelines public health experts, including a chief medical officer who has not “fully exercised” his powers.

Those conclusions and more were in a special report Wednesday from auditor general Bonnie Lysyk, who found Ontario lagged other provinces on key fronts such as protecting nursing home residents and migrant farm workers.

While not mentioning chief medical officer Dr. David Williams by name, the document faults him for not making his recommendations to public and for not acting more quickly or comprehensively on public health measures such as mask requirements.

8:10 a.m. Croatia has registered a record number of daily coronavirus cases as authorities consider additional measures to try to stem the outbreak.

The national COVID-19 response team said Wednesday that 3,603 infections have been registered in the past 24 hours and 56 patients have died.

Since Feb. 25, when the first case was registered in the country of 4 million, 111,617 persons have tested positive for the coronavirus and 1,501 have died.

Croatian media say that because of the latest outbreak, some hospitals are running out of beds and infected patients have had to be placed in tents.

Authorities are reportedly considering introducing new nationwide restrictive measures that could include closing cafes and restaurants.

7:57 a.m. With domestic violence on the rise amid the coronavirus pandemic, activists are holding protests Wednesday from France to Turkey and world dignitaries are trying to find ways to protect millions of women killed or abused every year by their partners.

The pope called for global action to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. France’s government sealed a deal with TikTok to encourage young people to report abuse through the social network. World soccer governing body FIFA announced an awareness campaign.

“Men’s violence against women is also a pandemic — one that predates the virus and will outlive it,” said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of the U.N. Women agency.

“Last year alone, 243 million women and girls experienced sexual or physical violence from their partner. This year, reports of increased domestic violence, cyberbullying, child marriages, sexual harassment and sexual violence have flooded in,” she said.

In Ukraine, the Femen feminist activist group staged a topless protest outside the president’s office Wednesday. Protests were also planned in Turkey and France.

7:42 a.m. Canada will not receive any of the millions of prepurchased vaccine doses the federal government has ordered unless and until Health Canada approves the vaccine’s safety, says the minister in charge of vaccine purchase contracts.

Contracts signed with the most promising vaccine manufacturers to date do not provide for delivery to Canada or long-term storage here while regulatory approval is still pending, Public Services and Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Tuesday.

And even if the federal independent regulators swiftly approve any of the three vaccine candidates they are currently reviewing, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged that Canada will likely be behind countries like the U.S., Germany and Britain “and others” where those vaccine manufacturers are based.

7:15 a.m. Toronto’s softer condo sales and prices have so far remained at odds with the region’s blazing single-family home market.

Many realtors and economists say the condo sector will regain its momentum once workers return to their downtown jobs and classes, and the stream of immigrants starts flowing again to the Toronto area.

But not everyone buys that.

Investment adviser Hilliard MacBeth, author of, “When the Bubble Bursts: Surviving the Canadian Real Estate Crash,” said the single-family home market will inevitably be affected by the condo sector.

“For almost everybody, if you want to buy a single-family home you’ve got to sell something,” he said. “The problem is, if you can’t sell your condo you can’t move up.”

6:43 a.m. A by Women’s Shelters Canada offers a glimpse into the experiences of front-line workers and women fleeing violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, with reports of clients facing more violence that is also increasing in severity.

The Shelter Voices survey says 52 per cent of 266 participating shelters reported seeing clients who were experiencing either somewhat or much more severe violence, as public health measures aimed at fighting COVID-19 increase social isolation, while job losses fuel tension over financial insecurity in many households.

Violence “was also happening more frequently, or abusers who hadn’t used violence in the past were suddenly using violence,” said Krys Maki, the research and policy manager for Women’s Shelters Canada.

The survey also found 37 per cent of shelters reported changes in the type of violence clients faced, including increased physical attacks resulting in broken bones, strangulation and stabbings.

Shelters and transition houses that did not report changes in the rates or type of violence were often located in communities that had seen fewer cases of COVID-19, the report notes.

6:21 a.m. Consumer rights advocates are criticizing the latest statement on airline refunds from the country’s transport regulator, saying it contradicts federal and provincial rules to the detriment of customers.

The Canadian Transportation Agency updated its statement on vouchers last week, writing that “the law does not require airlines to include refund provisions” in their passenger contracts — known as tariffs — for flights cancelled due to reasons beyond carriers’ control, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CTA website post tops up its initial statement on travel credit from March, which suggested refunds are mandatory only if the tariff provides for it in certain cases.

However, passenger rights advocates say both statements go against federal and provincial law and legal precedent.

An airline’s terms of carriage must clearly lay out its policy on matters including “refunds for services purchased but not used … either as a result of the client’s unwillingness or inability to continue or the air carrier’s inability to provide the service for any reason,” according to regulations under the Canada Transportation Act.

6 a.m. Toronto’s softer condo sales and prices have so far remained at odds with the region’s blazing single-family home market.

Many realtors and economists say the condo sector will regain its momentum once workers return to their downtown jobs and classes, and the stream of immigrants starts flowing again to the Toronto area.

But not everyone buys that.

Investment adviser Hilliard MacBeth, author of, “When the Bubble Bursts: Surviving the Canadian Real Estate Crash,” said the single-family home market will inevitably be affected by the condo sector.

“For almost everybody, if you want to buy a single-family home you’ve got to sell something,” he said. “The problem is, if you can’t sell your condo you can’t move up.”

on whether the drop in Toronto’s downtown condominium prices will spread to detached house prices.

5:15 a.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country’s 16 state governors are expected Wednesday well into December, and discuss tightening some restrictions while allowing somewhat more generous rules for the Christmas period.

Germany embarked on a so-called “wave-breaker” shutdown on Nov. 2, shutting restaurants, bars, sports and leisure facilities but leaving schools, shops and hair salons open. It was initially slated to last four weeks.

Proposals drawn up ahead of Wednesday’s video conference by state governors, who are responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions, call for extending the shutdown until Dec. 20.

5:10 a.m. Russian authorities have registered a record number of coronavirus deaths for a second straight day.

The government coronavirus task force reported 507 new deaths on Wednesday, the country’s highest daily toll. The previous record of 491 deaths was reported on Tuesday. A total of 37,538 people have died from the coronavirus in Russia, according to the task force.

Russia has been swept by a rapid resurgence of the outbreak this fall, with numbers of confirmed infections and deaths hitting new highs almost daily and significantly exceeding those reported in the spring.

The country’s authorities have rejected the idea of another nationwide lockdown or widespread closure of businesses, even as media reports from Russian regions showed that the health care system was under severe strain.

On Wednesday, officials reported 23,765 new confirmed cases. Russia currently has the world’s fifth largest coronavirus caseload of over 2.1 million.

5:07 a.m. A top Wednesday that the first citizens in the 27 nation bloc could be vaccinated against the coronavirus by Christmas, but she warned that member countries must urgently prepare their logistical chains for the rollout of hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccines.

Claiming that “there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told EU lawmakers that “the first European citizens might already be vaccinated before the end of December.”

The commission, the EU’s executive arm, has agreements with six potential vaccine suppliers and is working on a seventh contract. The deals allow it to purchase over 800 million doses, more than the population of the bloc, which stands at around 460 million people.

On Tuesday, Brussels said it would sign a contract for up to 160 million doses of the experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Moderna, which the company says appears to be 94.5% effective, according to its preliminary data.

But von der Leyen said that while vaccines are important, “what counts are vaccinations. ”

“Member states must get ready now. We’re talking about millions of syringes, we’re talking about cold chains, we’re talking about organizing vaccination centres, we’re talking about trained personnel that is there. You name it. All this has to be prepared,” she warned.

5:04 a.m. Ontario’s auditor general is on how the province has handled the COVID-19 pandemic so far, including how it has made decisions during the global health crisis.

The special report issued by Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk will look at emergency management in the context of the pandemic, as well as outbreak planning and decision-making.

It will also include an audit of government processes related to COVID-19 testing, case management and contact tracing.

The report is set to be made public this morning.

Wednesday 4 a.m. The Ontario government is expected to spell out its guidelines today for celebrating the upcoming winter holidays as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Toronto and Peel Region are currently under the grey or lockdown level in the province’s tiered COVID-19 alert system, with those restrictions to stay in place at least until the week of Christmas.

Public health measures under the lockdown level include a ban on indoor gatherings except with those in the same household, as well as closing down restaurants for all but takeout and delivery.

The province’s top doctor said earlier this week it seemed unlikely the situation would improve in those regions enough over 28 days to warrant moving them to the red alert level, which is one level lower.

Five other regions — Hamilton, Durham, Halton, York and Waterloo — are currently classified as red zones, which caps social gatherings at five people indoors and 25 outdoors.

Ontario’s most recent modelling showed the province is on track to see up to 6,500 new daily cases of COVID-19 by mid-December, though those projections are expected to be updated Thursday.

Tuesday 10:47 p.m.: A forgiving grading system is the solution students at the University of Manitoba want to address the challenges of learning on a virtual campus this year.

Student senators, backed by the undergraduate and graduate students unions at the U of M, have penned a proposal to school administration to temporarily introduce an alternative grading process, similar to the one put in place in the spring amidst initial COVID-19 disruptions.

The group wants pupils to have the option to either choose a pass-or-fail or accept a letter grade that is excluded from their grade point average calculation for a maximum of one course per term in 2020-21.

Students would still be able to accept all their grades, as usual.

The intent is to “add a little bit of flexibility in this inflexible time,” said Rubel Talukder of the Student Senate Caucus.

ythytbu

New Barrie restaurant holding job fair from Oct. 14-17

Oct 25, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Despite the ongoing pandemic and uncertainty in the marketplace, the Charcoal Group is forging ahead with expansion plans in Barrie with the goal of opening a new restaurant next month.

The restaurant will be holding a job fair from Oct. 14-16 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Oct. 17 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Hiring will take place for all culinary and service roles for the restaurant’s newest location on Fairview Road.

The job fair is being held in the Churchill ballroom at the Holiday Inn ().

ythytbu

Canadian Down Syndrome Week Celebrated in Simcoe County November 1-7

Oct 22, 2021 , , , , by shlf

In Canada, we celebrate our loved ones who are living with Down syndrome a little extra throughout the week of November 1-7.

“Canadian Down Syndrome Week as a great opportunity to both raise awareness about Down syndrome and thank our communities for being inclusive and seeing the abilities of those living with Down syndrome,” notes Jennifer van Gennip, Executive Director of the Down Syndrome Association of Simcoe County (DSASC).

Like everything 2020, Canadian Down Syndrome Week looks a little different this year. Instead of gathering for the annual Step UP for Down Syndrome Fun Walk at the Tiffin Centre, DSASC member families will walk separately to raise money and awareness. The association has also provided lawn signs to members, to help them mark the week from home.

The DSASC is a volunteer-driven charity supporting individuals living with Down syndrome and their families all across Simcoe County. They offer a broad range of social events, programs, and bursaries for their 75 member families. While many programs are on hold due to COVID-19 precautions, members enjoy participating in the Club 21 all-ages social club, the bowling and dance programs, the Young Adults Day Program, and events like the Christmas Party and the World Down Syndrome Day Dinner and Dance. The association also provides children’s therapy and recreation bursaries, as well as young adult independence bursaries.

About the Down Syndrome Association of Simcoe County

The Down Syndrome Association of Simcoe County (DSASC) is a charitable organization serving the county’s vibrant Down syndrome community. We work together to raise awareness and encourage the inclusion of people with Down syndrome, while also supporting our members and their families. Learn more at .

About Down Syndrome

Down syndrome is a naturally occurring chromosomal arrangement that has always existed and that is universal across racial, gender, and socioeconomic lines. The effects from the extra genetic material (3 copies of chromosome 21 instead of 2) vary from person to person, and the degree of resulting developmental delay also varies. Down syndrome occurs in approximately 1 of 781 live births, and there are an estimated 45,000 Canadians with Down syndrome.

People with Down syndrome are people first. When children and adults with Down syndrome or other disabilities are given opportunities to participate, all children and adults benefit, and environments of friendship, acceptance, and respect are created.

ythytbu

New Tecumseth may ban residents from COVID-19 hot spots from using rec facilities

Oct 7, 2021 , , , , by shlf

New Tecumseth may ban residents from COVID hot spots from using rec facilities

If you live in a COVID-19 hotspot like Toronto, York or Peel Region and were thinking of making the drive north to take part in a drop-in recreation program, or to get a workout in at one of the town’s gyms, that might not be an option for much longer.

At the Oct. 19 committee of the whole meeting, New Tecumseth CAO Blaine Parkin asked council to provide input on putting a ban in place.

He said the first step would be to restrict these residents from rec programs and the gyms, but further study would be required to see how a temporary ban would affect the user groups and leagues that have members from other municipalities, or play other teams from those areas.

While council supported this proposal, a report will have to be brought back for further consideration before any restrictions are put into place.

Parkin said the town already has a detailed contact-tracing program in place to track everyone who uses the town’s facilities.

Due to the surge in COVID-19 cases, the City of Toronto, Peel Region and Ottawa were rolled back into a modified Stage 2 last week, and York Region was reverted back on Oct. 19.


ythytbu

Beausoleil First Nation mourning sudden death of councillor

Oct 7, 2021 , , , , by shlf

Beausoleil First Nation councillor died suddenly on Oct. 14 at his Christian Island home. He was 35-years-old.

Monague leaves behind a wife and two children. He is also survived by his parents, three siblings, aunts, uncles, nephews, godchildren and many cousins.

His sudden death has left the entire community in shock.

“I can’t believe you are gone. I will miss your humour, laughing together, family chats on messenger, discussions on how to better our communities, debates and just hanging out,” wrote Marie Norton in an Oct. 14 social-media post. “So young. Too soon.”

Monague had become extremely involved in the Beausoliel First Nation community over the years. In 2016, he was elected to council and served as the youngest member of the community’s seven-member council. He also served as a volunteer firefighter on Christian Island.

“It’s hard to put into words how deep this loss is,” said Lace Copegog in an Oct. 14 social-media post. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without (Hank’s) advice and mentorship … I will truly miss the jokes, the conversations and the good debate.”

As a youth, Monague served on the Ontario First Nations Young Peoples Council. He was a big supporter of youth on Christian Island and impacted the lives of many young Beausoleil First Nation members.

“Another warrior has gone to the spirit world,” stated Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Glen Hare on Oct. 16. “The Anishinabek Nation recognizes the advocacy and voice of the youth representation Hank provided during his time in the Eshekeniijig Advisory Council.”

Ontario Regional Chief RoseAnn Archibald also offered her condolences.

“With a heavy heart, I would like to send my sincerest condolences to the friends and family of Councillor Hank Monague of Beausoleil First Nation,” said Archibald. “(Hank) was a dedicated First Nations leader in Ontario throughout his lifetime.”

Visitation will be held on Oct. 17 at 1 p.m. at the Christian Island United Church. A funeral service will follow on Oct. 19 at 1 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate donations to Niijii and Christian Island United Church.