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.
The federal election campaign will converge in Winnipeg Friday, where leaders of the two largest parties will be holding events.
Both Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and his Conservative counterpart Erin O’Toole will appear in the Manitoba capital for public events and to take questions from reporters.
New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh will make the campaign’s first stop at an Indigenous community when he visits the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan _ a community which made a preliminary finding of 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school. Singh plans to visit the gravesites.
On Thursday, the leaders battled over the right prescription to help the country’s health-care systems and how much more funding provinces require to meet their needs during and after the pandemic.
O’Toole said he would boost federal funding for provincially run health-care systems by six per cent annually. Speaking in French at a stop in Ottawa, O’Toole left the door open to offering more money if the national economy grows faster than expected, which would give federal coffers extra cash to potentially splash around.
Speaking in Victoria, B.C., where he outlined plans to improve wages and conditions in long-term care facilities, Trudeau said the country needs to invest more in health care and that his government would be there to increase provincial transfers, although he did not detail when or by how much.
Singh took aim at Trudeau over the Liberal government’s track record on health-care spending during a campaign stop in Edmonton where he highlighted his party’s pledge for a $250 million fund to help train and hire 2,000 nurses.
The NDP leader said the Liberals criticized the previous Conservative government for cutting funding to provinces in 2014, only to turn around and maintain funding increases at that level once in office.
Two-thirds of Canadians say they are in favor of keeping non-vaccinated college and university students out of class while almost six in 10 also favour barring school-aged children from in-person learning.
A Maru Public Opinion poll finds 66 per cent of Canadians want unvaccinated college and university students barred from in-person classes while 58 per cent feel school-aged kids 12 years and up should only be allowed to attend class online unless and until they get vaccinated.
Meanwhile, almost three-quarters of Canadians surveyed say they want a provincially issued vaccine status card or app rather than a passport to use as proof of vaccination.
The poll finds 70 per cent of Canadians prefer a card, like a driver’s license with a QR code, or similarly an app with a QR code that will verify their vaccine status for personal use or need. This, despite the fact most provinces already make available a paper printout version of their status.
The strongest support comes from Quebec, where 74 per cent say they favour either a card or an app. The Quebec government announced earlier this month it plans to introduce a vaccine passport system. More than 70 per cent of residents in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Ontario also supported such a plan.
The idea of Canadian provinces implementing a vaccine passport system has been a point of contention with the country in the midst of a fourth wave fueled by the Delta variant. As well, more and more businesses and workplaces are now demanding proof of vaccination.
The poll of 1,504 randomly selected Canadian adults who are Maru Voice Canada online panelists was taken between August 9th and 10th and has a margin of error +/- 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
A trio of children’s hospitals in Ontario are going to require healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 as of next month.
The Hospital for SickKids, Holland Bloorview and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario are implementing a mandatory vaccine policy for staff, volunteers, learners and contractors which will take effect September 7, 2021.
A statement from SickKids says all staff who are eligible will need to be vaccinated unless they have a documented medical or human rights exemption. For those not in compliance after finishing an education session, “all options will be considered to effectively enforce the policy.”
What those options are was not specified in the statement and it was not immediately clear what proof the hospitals would require.
“Implementing vaccine mandate policies for our staff was not our first choice, nor was it an easy choice to make, but as health-care institutions dedicated to the health of children, we feel it is the right thing to do,” said Dr. Ronald Cohn, President and CEO of SickKids.
The policy is in line with recommendations from the Ontario Medical Association, Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario and the American Academy of Pediatrics and go beyond the recent Ford government directive which requires all healthcare workers in the province to get vaccinated or routinely tested prior to coming to work.
The hospital adds it needs to go beyond the provincial guidelines because at least 70 percent of patients and clients at all three organizations are under the age of 12 and currently not eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Dr. Kieran Moore, the province’s chief medical officer of health, said the province supported the move.
“We recognize that some organizations, where a vast majority of patients are not currently eligible to be vaccinated, will need to go beyond the minimum standard set by our directive,” Moore said.
Western Canada is likely to be the main locale of Thursday’s election campaign, where two of the three national leaders will be holding events.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau will speak in Victoria, making an announcement on support for seniors.
New Democrat head Jagmeet Singh will be Edmonton. Singh will speak on health care and campaign on behalf of local candidates — one of whom, Heather McPherson, was the only non-Conservative to win an Alberta seat in the last federal election.
Erin O’Toole’s Conservative campaign will move to Central Canada. He’ll be making an announcement in Nepean, Ont., and has scheduled two virtual telephone town halls for voters in New Brunswick and Ontario.
On Wednesday, Trudeau found himself targeted by his rivals over the cost of living, facing broadsides from Conservatives for the decade-high pace of price growth and the NDP for high housing prices.
The country’s headline inflation barometer clocked in at 3.7 per cent in July, which Statistics Canada said was the highest year-over-year increase since May 2011 as price growth accelerated from June.
In Quebec City, O’Toole said the Liberal government’s approach to the economy fuelled the increase, but also pinned blame on NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh as well. O’Toole said the inflation numbers should worry Canadians.
Asked how a Conservative government would respond, O’Toole spoke about his party’s promise to waive the GST on purchases made this December.
Speaking in Vancouver, Trudeau said he respected the independence of the central bank to set its own policies to manage inflation.
An 18-year-old man has died after being struck by a dump truck in Yorkville while on a bicycle Wednesday evening.
Officers were called to the intersection of Bloor Street and Avenue Road around 6:30 p.m.
Investigators say the cyclist and the dump truck were both travelling northbound in the curb lane on Bloor Street when the truck struck the cyclist.
The man suffered life-threatening injuries and was pronounced dead shortly after police arrived.
Toronto police Insp. Michael Williams says victim was a resident of the immediate area of University and Bloor.
The driver involved remained on the scene. Road closures were in effect for several hours, but it has since reopened.
