Ontario optometrists are set to withdraw provincially insured eye services starting today after a breakdown in talks with the provincial government over reimbursement of costs.
The province’s health plan covers annual eye exams for residents aged 19 and under, 65 and older and people with specific health conditions.
The head of the Ontario Association of Optometrists said starting today, optometrists will call affected patients to cancel appointments and place them on waiting lists.
Dr. Sheldon Salaba says his group’s members are currently paying for around 45 per cent of those services and says the job action comes after disappointing talks on the issue with the government.
He says there will be a delay in service for people covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan until talks resume.
However, he says people should still contact optometrists with emergencies for help reaching a family doctor or another health-care setting.
“We are going to help them navigate, depending on what is happening to them, the best option for them to receive care,” Salaba said in an interview.
The province has offered to pay optometrists $39 million to retroactively account for increased costs of services.
It has also offered to increase reimbursement by 8.48 per cent.
Salaba says optometrists want an increase of 70 per cent to close the gap.
A spokeswoman for Health Minister Christine Elliott said the government will continue funding the affected services, and “any decision to withdraw services is the decision of individual optometrists.”
“The offer on the table is an extremely fair and reasonable one, and we urge the Ontario Association of Optometrists to commit to working with us to reach an agreement to ensure Ontarians continue to access the care they need and deserve,” Alexandra Hilkene said in a statement.
The province said approximately 2.9 million Ontario residents received provincially insured optometry services in the 2019-20 fiscal year.
A new poll suggests the Conservatives and NDP have momentum heading into the second half of the federal election campaign, while the Liberals are bleeding support.
Thirty-four per cent of decided voters who took part in the Leger survey said they support Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives — ahead of the Liberals and up four percentage points since Aug. 16, when the campaign got underway.
Support for Jagmeet Singh’s New Democrats is also up four points, to 24 per cent.
Support for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, meanwhile, is down five points to 30 per cent, while Green party support is down three points to two per cent.
In Quebec, support for the Bloc Quebecois stands at 29 per cent, behind the Liberals at 33 per cent.
The online poll of 2,005 Canadians, conducted Aug. 27 to 30 in collaboration with The Canadian Press, cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.
A planned announcement on a provincial vaccine certificate program which was scheduled for Tuesday is on hold.
Sources had told CityNews earlier in the day that Premier Doug Ford was set to unveil its plans on Tuesday, finally bowing to pressure from opposition leaders and numerous health organizations who have been calling for a provincially administered proof of vaccine system.
The provincial cabinet is said to be debating the various elements of the program which would limit access to certain non-essential services based on vaccination status.
Ford has long pushed back against the idea, saying as recently as July 15th he was “not going to do it” and that he was not in favour of having a “split society.”
RELATED: Vaccine certificate program to be introduced by Ford government: sources
Local medical officers of health have talked about implementing their own regional programs, but have urged the provincial government to take the lead role for simplicity sake.
Similar systems have already been announced in British Columbia and Quebec.
On Monday, the GTHA Mayors and Chairs issued a statement saying they look forward to the details of a provincial proof of vaccination program.
“We believe such a province-wide system accompanied by appropriate guidelines for implementation will be crucial to protecting the progress we have made fighting COVID-19 and will help us all combat a fourth wave and the Delta Variant – both of which represent continuing challenges to the significant progress made to date,” read a statement from the group, which includes the mayors of Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Hamilton and Aurora.
Ontario opposition parties held a joint meeting with major stakeholders in the province on Monday, including health care and education groups, to discuss a certificate or passport program.
NDP health critic, France Gelinas, and the leaders of the Green and Liberal parties, outlined specifically that the certificate system must be clear and simple, easy to access, useable in areas where a mobile phone might not get a great signal, and most importantly consistent for the entire province.
Gelinas says the phrase, “don’t reinvent the wheel” came up in the stakeholders’ meeting, with the suggestion that a “copy and paste” of the Quebec system would work just fine for Ontario.
A motorcyclist is dead following a crash in the High Park area of the city.
Police say the motorcyclist, believed to be in his 30s, was headed westbound when he collided with the driver of a van on Bloor Street West near Indian Road just after 10 p.m. Monday.
When emergency personnel arrived they found the motorcyclist trapped underneath the vehicle, suffering from life-threatening injuries. Life saving measures were attempted but he pronounced dead at the scene.
Police are investigating the exact cause of the crash.
The U.S. State Department is now urging Americans to “reconsider travel” to Canada due to what the Centers for Disease Control call “high” levels of COVID-19 infection.
The new Level 3 travel advisory, issued today, marks a quick end to a three-week period when the warning to would-be travellers to Canada had been eased to “exercise increased caution.”
That Level 2 advisory coincided with Canada’s decision to allow fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents back into the country.
There was no specific reason given for the revised advisory beyond the CDC’s notice, also issued today, which pegs Canada’s current COVID-19 levels at “high.”
Only about 61 per cent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, compared with nearly 75 per cent of Canadians over the age of 12.
The U.S. is maintaining its existing restrictions on non-essential Canadian travellers until at least Sept. 21, citing the ongoing spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19.
OTTAWA — At least one of the three main federal party leaders is on the move today, with events across the country.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has a multi-provincial day ahead.
He’s starting off in Ottawa, where he’s set to make an announcement, and then flying to Ladysmith, B.C., for a meet-and-greet with supporters.
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, meanwhile, is sticking to the Greater Toronto Area.
He starts the day at a dog sanctuary in King City, Ont., before heading to an event with supporters in nearby Markham.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s plans were not immediately available. Trudeau was dogged over the weekend by obscenity spewing protesters angry about his pandemic vaccination policies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 30, 2021.
The Canadian Press
Calls have been growing for the Ford government to put in place some sort of vaccine passport and it looks like there could be some movement this week.
Sources at Queen’s Park tells 680 NEWS the province is expected to reveal some kind of plan early this week.
Peel Region’s Medical Officer of Health, as well as the mayor of Mississaga are among those who have been calling for some sort of proof of vaccination.
Dr. Lawrence Loh said officials are exploring the idea of creating their own regional COVID vaccine certificates if the Ford government doesn’t step up with a vaccine passport.
Loh says they are in the early exploratory phase of “trying to understand what our jurisdiction might be and also what the nature of what a program might look like.”
Even Justin Trudeau called out the premier during a press conference last week, saying he should “step up” and enforce a proof-of-vaccination policy.
In response, Ford’s office says his government will continue to observe the emerging Delta variant and its severity.
“Ontario has put forward the most cautious reopening plan, which includes some of the highest vaccination thresholds, maintaining masking in public indoor spaces, as well as capacity limits and distancing requirements, and releasing the most comprehensive, far-ranging mandatory vaccination policies for high-risk settings in the country,” the premier said in a statement released through his spokesperson.
“As Dr. [Kieran] Moore has already said, we will continue to monitor the trajectory and status of the Delta variant and respond accordingly.”
Premier Ford has continuously rejected the idea of his government implementing mandatory vaccine passports, even for health care workers.
Ford has not spoken publicly since July 30.
British Columbia and Quebec have already introduced their own vaccine passports.
With files from Lucas Casaletto
One person is in custody and police are searching for a second person after shots were fired inside Yorkdale Mall on Sunday afternoon.
Police say they were called to the popular north Toronto mall around 3:38 p.m. after receiving several calls about multiple shots being fired.
Police say with the help of mall security, officers identified a suspect and following a brief foot pursuit he was arrested on the Highway 401 on-ramp. Police say they also recovered a loaded firearm.
In a late afternoon update, investigators said they were looking for a second suspect in connection with the shooting, however, they did not provide a description at this time as they were still collecting information from eye-witnesses.
Police could not say if the two were shooting at each other but confirmed they are aware two people had firearms.
No injuries have been reported as a result of the shooting but paramedics did report some people suffered minor injuries in the commotion to get out of the mall as shots rang out.
“All of a sudden I heard ‘bang, bang, bang, bang, bang’ like at least five times,” Maria, who was inside the mall at the time of the shooting, tells CityNews. “And I said to myself, ‘Oh my god that’s a gun!’”
“Imagine everyone is walking, non-nonchalant shopping and all of sudden you hear three gunshots go off,” this eyewitness told CityNews. “Everyone ballistically running, falling, tripping. There was people getting trampled.”
Chase Malka, who was locked in the mall for several hours Sunday, recalled hearing the faint sound of gunshots in the mid-afternoon.
Staff then escorted Malka into the Footlocker.
“It was scary but the staff at the Footlocker were very nice and kept everything in control,” Malka said. “Overall everything was handled very well by the staff and the police.”
Chris Pryce, another shopper locked down, said he was at Hudson’s Bay when the shooter ran through and smashed through some glass trying to escape.
“It was unnerving when they told us to move away from the doors and to barricade ourselves … in the storeroom,” he said.
But given the circumstances, panic was relatively minimal, Pryce said.
“I was with an elderly cancer patient who had a panic attack and was crying but her family was there,” he said. “So it was OK that they had them for support.”
By the early evening, Pryce said he was fed up waiting to be let out, given that the suspect had already been arrested.
“This is getting a bit long in the tooth,” he said.
Police say the mall remains in lockdown but shoppers and staff who were trapped inside are being allowed to leave. However, anyone who may have left behind any property in the initial rush to get out of the mall will have to return on Monday to retrieve it.
A spokesperson for the mall says it will be closed for the rest of the day as police continue to investigate.
“Toronto Police Services (TPS) responded quickly and any questions must be directed to them as this an active investigation,” William Correia, Director, Yorkdale Shopping Centre said in a statement. “Yorkdale has excellent surveillance technology, and we are working closely with Toronto Police Services to support the investigation.”
The shooting comes almost two years to the day a similar incident took place at the mall. On that occasion, an altercation between two groups of men resulted in several shots being fired. No one was injured in that shooting. A 20-year-old man was charged with several offences.
Files from The Canadian Press were used in this report
NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Ida knocked out power to all of New Orleans and inundated coastal Louisiana communities on a deadly path through the Gulf Coast that was still unfolding Monday, promising more destruction.
The heavy rain and storm surge has already had a catastrophic impact along the southeast coast of Louisiana, and life-threatening floods along rivers was continuing well inland as torrential rain kept falling, forecast to dump as much as two feet in places as Ida’s center moved over Mississippi.
Ida made landfall on the same day 16 years earlier that Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi, and its 150 mph (230 kph) winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the mainland. It was already blamed for on death, someone hit by a falling tree in Prairieville, outside Baton Rouge, deputies with the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed on Sunday.
The power outage in New Orleans, meanwhile, heightened the city’s vulnerability to flooding and left hundreds of thousands of people without air conditioning and refrigeration in sweltering summer heat.
The 911 system in Orleans Parish also experienced technical difficulties early Monday. Anyone needing emergency assistance was urged to go to their nearest fire station or approach their nearest officer, the New Orleans Emergency Communications Center tweeted.
Ida finally became a tropical storm again 16 hours after making landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane. Its top sustained wind were 60 mph (97 kph) early Monday, and forecasters said it would rapidly weaken throughout the morning while still dumping torrential rain over a large area. The storm was centered about 95 miles (155 kilometers) south-southwest of Jackson, Mississippi, moving north at 8 mph (13 kmh).
As Ida made landfall Sunday, the rising ocean swamped the barrier island of Grand Isle and roofs on buildings around Port Fourchon blew off. The hurricane then churned through the far southern Louisiana wetlands, threatening the more than 2 million people living in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
In Baton Rouge, 27-year-old Robert Owens watched the sky in his neighborhood light up as transformers blew up all around him.
“Never in my life have I encountered something this major,” he said as giant gusts rattled his home’s windows.
Significant flooding was reported late Sunday night in LaPlace, a community adjacent to Lake Pontchartrain, meteorologists in New Orleans said. Many people took to social media, pleading for boat rescues as the water rose.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said rescue crews would not be able to immediately help those who were stranded as the storm raged. And he warned his state to brace for potentially weeks of recovery.
“Many, many people are going to be tested in ways that we can only imagine today,” the governor told a news conference Sunday.
But he added, “There is always light after darkness, and I can assure you we are going to get through this.”
The entire city of New Orleans late Sunday was without power, according to city officials. The city’s power supplier _ Entergy _ confirmed that the only power in the city was coming from generators, the city’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness said on Twitter. The message included a screenshot that cited “catastrophic transmission damage” for the power failure.
The city relies on Entergy for backup power for the pumps that remove storm water from city streets. Rain from Ida is expected to test that pump system.
Overall, more than 1 million customers in Louisiana were without power, and another 80,000 or so in Mississippi were in the dark, according to PowerOutage.US, which tracks outages nationwide.
In New Orleans, wind tore at awnings and caused buildings to sway and water to spill out of Lake Pontchartrain. The Coast Guard office there received more than a dozen reports of breakaway barges, said Petty Officer Gabriel Wisdom. Officials said Ida’s swift intensification to a massive hurricane in just three days left no time to organize a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans’ 390,000 residents.
In Lafitte, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south of New Orleans, a loose barge struck a bridge, according to Jefferson Parish officials. And U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Ricky Boyette said engineers detected a “negative flow” on the Mississippi River as a result of storm surge.
Ida was churning in one of the nation’s most important industrial corridors _ home to a large number of petrochemical sites.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality was in contact with more than 1,500 oil refineries, chemical plants and other sensitive facilities and will respond to any reported pollution leaks or petroleum spills, agency spokesman Greg Langley said.
Louisiana is also home to two nuclear power plants, one near New Orleans and another about 27 miles (about 43 kilometers) northwest of Baton Rouge.
The region getting Ida’s worst is also already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections due to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant.
New Orleans hospitals planned to ride out the storm with their beds nearly full, as similarly stressed hospitals elsewhere had little room for evacuated patients. And shelters for those fleeing their homes carried an added risk of becoming flashpoints for new infections.
Comparisons to the Aug. 29, 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents. Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths as it caused levee breaches and catastrophic flooding in New Orleans. Now facing Ida more than a decade and a half later, officials emphasized that the city’s levee system has been massively improved.
President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for Louisiana. He said Sunday the country was praying for the best for the state and would put its “full might behind the rescue and recovery” effort once the storm passes.
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Associated Press writers Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi; Seth Borenstein in Kensington, Maryland; Michael Biesecker in Washington; and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Health Canada is advising anyone who has purchased health products manufactured by Eco-Med Pharmaceuticals Inc. to immediately stop using them due to potential bacterial contamination.
The products, which include ultrasound gels, transmission and massage lotions as well as hand sanitizers and first aid antiseptics, could pose a health risk to Canadians after they potentially came in contact with a bacteria called Burkholderia stabilis (B. stabilis).
Health Canada has suspended the pharmaceutical company’s licence to manufacture and sell health products based on potential safety issues in the meantime.
If you have used any of the following products and are concerned about health issues, you are asked to contact your doctor:
Medical Devices: massage lotions and ultrasound lotions
- EcoGel 100
EcoGel 200
- EcoGel 300
- EcoLotion Transmission and Massage Lotion
- Medelco Multi Purpose Ultrasound Gel
- Red Medical Ultrasound Gel
Natural Health Products: hand sanitizers and first aid antiseptic
- Prevent+ (NPN 80097875)
- Prevent+ Foam Sanitizer (NPN 80102490)
- Prevent+ Rubbing Alcohol; Rubbing Alcohol 70%; (NPN 80103917)
- First Aid Antiseptic: Prevent+ Hydrogen Peroxide 3% USP; Hydrogen Peroxide 3% USP; (NPN 80107321)
People who have used the product, especially those with compromised immune systems who are experiencing “an unusual or persistent infection on the skin or in the general area where the product was applied”, or who are feeling unwell, should seek immediate medical attention.
Health Canada did not say whether there had been any people with symptoms at this time.
They had originally posted an advisory for certain ultrasound gels, but expanded the notice once the manufacturer couldn’t determine the source of the contamination.
