The City of Toronto has launched a campaign to help encourage a safe return to offices in the downtown core.
In partnership with the Toronto Region Board of Trade, the city released “playbooks” this week that offer reopening strategies for businesses that have had employees largely working from home during the pandemic.
“It’s not just a plan, not just a challenge, but a necessity that we get Toronto reopened in full,” Toronto Mayor John Tory said in detailing the campaign.
“We asked businesses to answer the call of sacrifices and they did … and now it’s a call to make sure we can reopen but at the same time keep people safe.”
The city issued its playbooks for the downtown financial district, as well as a hub around the Pearson International Airport and the Scarborough Centre in the city’s east end.
The documents include best practices for sanitizing and co-ordinating physical distancing in elevators and lobbies, among other things.
Recommendations for the financial district include smaller elevator capacities and the staggering of work hours to reduce crowding.
Small and medium-sized businesses in certain areas will also be given access to free COVID-19 screening kits as part of the campaign.
The campaign comes as public health officials and the province continue to ask employers to have employees work from home where possible.
But Tory said the time is fast approaching when tens of thousands of workers will return to the city’s office towers, which saw a mass exodus of employees when the pandemic hit.
According to the campaign – dubbed We’re Ready Toronto – about 118,000 people worked in the financial district before the pandemic hit, and 85 per cent of those were able to work remotely. Bringing that workforce back to office towers will help nearly 2,400 small businesses in the district recover, it said.
Shraddha Khirwadkar, a research assistant at the Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning at Sick Kids Hospital, has been working in-person downtown for several months.
“It’s not how it used to be. Restrictions mean you have to wear a mask in the office at all times, and there are designated spaces to eat and work,” Khirwadkar said Thursday.
“I guess you have fewer opportunities to bond with your colleagues at the water cooler.”
The head of the Toronto Region Board of Trade said the campaign to urge a return to offices isn’t just about preventing another lockdown but “creating excitement and momentum” about workers coming back to downtown.
Board of trade CEO Janet De Silva said that while some workers could be assigned a “hybrid model” that involves working from home on a part-time basis, that shift likely won’t be permanent.
She added that provincial and federal governments will need to co-ordinate to develop guidance for international events and business-related tourism.
“I think tremendous work has been done by all three levels of government but what’s important right now is setting the stage for what reopening will look like,” she said.
Prosecutors are expected to lay out their case Friday against a Toronto teacher accused in the drowning of a student on a high school canoe trip.
Closing submissions in the case of Nicholas Mills began Thursday, with the defence arguing his conduct did not meet the threshold for a criminal conviction.
Mills has pleaded not guilty to criminal negligence causing death in the July 4, 2017, drowning of 15-year-old Jeremiah Perry.
The Crown alleges Mills ignored safety rules in planning and carrying out the trip, including in allowing Perry — who it alleges could not swim — to go in the water without a life jacket.
In its submissions Thursday, the defence disputed the allegation that Perry could not swim, saying he would not otherwise have been able to reach the area where he drowned.
Defence lawyer Phil Campbell also argued Mills’s conduct should not be measured against the best practices of experts, but rather what would be reasonable for the “average parent.”
RoseAnne Archibald of the Taykwa Tagamou Nation in Ontario has become the first woman to serve as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
“The AFN has made her-story today,” she said Thursday, using a play on words to outline the historic win.
“Today is a victory, and you can tell all the women in your life that the glass ceiling has been broken. And I thank all of the women who touched that ceiling before me and made it crack. You are an inspiration to me.”
Archibald secured victory after her rival, Reginald Bellerose, who has been serving as Chief of Muskowekwan First Nation in Saskatchewan for the last 17 years, conceded.
The election had stretched to a second day and went to a fifth round of voting after neither Archibald nor Bellerose received the necessary 60 per cent of votes to win.
That remained the case when the AFN announced the fifth-ballot results Thursday evening, but Bellerose then withdrew from the race before a sixth round of voting could begin.
In an effort to unify the organization, Archibald made a point in her speech to reach out to the seven candidates who ran against her for the job. The AFN represents 634 First Nations with 900,000 members.
Describing them as akin to “competitive siblings,” she called the other candidates brave and applauded them for wanting to serve their communities and First Nations across the country.
She also thanked all the chiefs who voted in the AFN election, even those who did not vote for her, saying she has learned from their guidance and ideas.
“While there are things and differences that divide us, there is much that we share,” she said.
“We all want our children to grow up proud and surrounded by love, culture, ceremony and language and safe and vibrant communities. We want a mother earth for them that is not threatened by wildfires and climate change and wildfires and a warming planet. We want to be good ancestors and leave a strong legacy for the seven generations ahead.”
Archibald, who previously served as regional chief for Ontario, has been involved in First Nations politics for 31 years. She was the first woman and youngest chief elected to represent her home nation at 23 and went on to become the first woman and youngest deputy Grand Chief for Nishnawbe-Aski Nation in Ontario.
She campaigned on a platform to build a solid post-pandemic recovery plan for First Nations, to increase the involvement of women, youth and LGBTQ and two-sprit peoples in the AFN’s political processes, and to support and co-ordinate community-driven solutions to move First Nations beyond reliance on federal dollars toward economic self-sufficiency.
Archibald has also pledged to work with governments to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action, with specific goals of creating community-driven solutions for healing, similar to the former ‘Aboriginal Healing Foundation’ and to work with nations and survivors to establish memorials to those lost to residential schools.
“With the recent discovery and recovery of our little ones across this country, we are all awake ? and what people need to understand and what people need to come to terms with is how settler Canadians have benefited from these colonial practices and how we, as Indigenous people, have been the target of genocide,” she said.
“We are going to stare this straight in the face and kick colonial policies to the curb. Change is happening.”
In his concession speech, Bellerose said he felt the tide was against him because the AFN chiefs had decided against two back-to-back leaders from Saskatchewan.
Outgoing national chief Perry Bellegarde is from Little Black Bear First Nation in the southern part of the province.
While he admitted he is disappointed, Bellerose also made a point to say he ran a clean campaign, making veiled references to social media posts and comments by other chiefs that may have suggested otherwise.
“I would encourage the chiefs on a go-forward basis that whatever we’re going to do on renewal, whatever we’re going to do in restructuring, let’s add some stability to the election,” Bellerose said.
“Let’s put some criteria on social media, let’s put some criteria on how candidates conduct themselves. That way when people say the AFN chief is irrelevant, no it’s not. It’s ethical, it’s strong, it’s fair.”
Pfizer is about to seek U.S. authorization for a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine, saying Thursday that another shot within 12 months could dramatically boost immunity and maybe help ward off the latest worrisome coronavirus mutant.
Research from multiple countries shows the Pfizer shot and other widely used COVID-19 vaccines offer strong protection against the highly contagious delta variant, which is spreading rapidly around the world and now accounts for most new U.S. infections.
Two doses of most vaccines are critical to develop high levels of virus-fighting antibodies against all versions of the coronavirus, not just the delta variant — and most of the world still is desperate to get those initial protective doses as the pandemic continues to rage.
But antibodies naturally wane over time, so studies also are underway to tell if and when boosters might be needed.
Hours after Pfizer issued its statement, the FDA and Centers for Disease and Control issued a joint statement saying Americans do not need booster shots yet.
“Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time,” the CDC and FDA said in the statement.
“We continue to review any new data as it becomes available and will keep the public informed. We are prepared for booster doses if and when the science demonstrates that they are needed.”
On Thursday, Pfizer’s Dr. Mikael Dolsten told The Associated Press that early data from the company’s booster study suggests people’s antibody levels jump five- to 10-fold after a third dose, compared to their second dose months earlier.
In August, Pfizer plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration for emergency authorization of a third dose, he said.
Why might that matter for fighting the delta variant? Dolsten pointed to data from Britain and Israel showing the Pfizer vaccine “neutralizes the delta variant very well.” The assumption, he said, is that when antibodies drop low enough, the delta virus eventually could cause a mild infection before the immune system kicks back in.
But FDA authorization would be just a first step — it wouldn’t automatically mean Americans get offered boosters, cautioned Dr. William Schaffner, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Public health authorities would have to decide if they’re really needed, especially since millions of people have no protection.
“The vaccines were designed to keep us out of the hospital” and continue to do so despite the more contagious delta variant, he said. Giving another dose would be “a huge effort while we are at the moment striving to get people the first dose.”
Currently only about 48% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated — and some parts of the country have far lower immunization rates, places where the delta variant is surging. On Thursday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that’s leading to “two truths” — highly immunized swaths of America are getting back to normal while hospitalizations are rising in other places.
“This rapid rise is troubling,” she said: A few weeks ago the delta variant accounted for just over a quarter of new U.S. cases, but it now accounts for just over 50% — and in some places, such as parts of the Midwest, as much as 80%.
Also Thursday, researchers from France’s Pasteur Institute reported new evidence that full vaccination is critical.
In laboratory tests, blood from several dozen people given their first dose of the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines “barely inhibited” the delta variant, the team reported in the journal Nature. But weeks after getting their second dose, nearly all had what researchers deemed an immune boost strong enough to neutralize the delta variant — even if it was a little less potent than against earlier versions of the virus.
The French researchers also tested unvaccinated people who had survived a bout of the coronavirus, and found their antibodies were four-fold less potent against the new mutant. But a single vaccine dose dramatically boosted their antibody levels — sparking cross-protection against the delta variant and two other mutants, the study found. That supports public health recommendations that COVID-19 survivors get vaccinated rather than relying on natural immunity.
The lab experiments add to real-world data that the delta variant’s mutations aren’t evading the vaccines most widely used in Western countries, but underscore that it’s crucial to get more of the world immunized before the virus evolves even more.
Researchers in Britain found two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, for example, are 96% protective against hospitalization with the delta variant and 88% effective against symptomatic infection. That finding was echoed last weekend by Canadian researchers, while a report from Israel suggested protection against mild delta infection may have dipped lower, to 64%.
>Whether the fully vaccinated still need to wear masks in places where the delta variant is surging is a growing question. In the U.S., the CDC maintains that fully vaccinated people don’t need to. Even before the delta variant came along, the vaccines weren’t perfect, but the best evidence suggests that if vaccinated people nonetheless get the coronavirus, they’ll have much milder cases.
“Let me emphasize, if you were vaccinated, you have a very high degree of protection,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, said Thursday.
In the U.S., case rates have been rising for weeks and the rate of hospitalizations has started to tick up, rising 7% from the previous seven-day average, Walensky told reporters Thursday. However, deaths remain down on average, which some experts believe is at least partly due to high vaccination rates in people 65 and older — who are among the most susceptible to severe disease.
OAKVILLE – A gym in Oakville, Ont., that had been operating using a physical therapy exemption has been ordered to shut down after being linked to a COVID-19 outbreak.
Halton Region Public Health says it is aware of as many as 15 cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant linked to the “Muscle HQ gym.”
Gyms across Ontario are currently not allowed to offer indoor services but Muscle HQ had been operating by allowing members with doctors’ notes that cite the need for physical therapy to train.
Co-owner Ali Siddiqui says in a Facebook video that the gym received a shutdown notice on Saturday, confirming that the Delta variant was found at the facility.
He says more than 400 people could have been exposed to the virus as a result of the outbreak at the gym.
Health Minister Christine Elliott says since the gym remained open during the pandemic, the Delta variant is now “circulating very widely through the population of people that use that.”
On Wednesday, Elliott cited the risk posed by the more infectious Delta variant, which has caused virus resurgences in areas with high vaccine coverage like the U.K. and Israel, and locally in some Ontario jurisdictions that had seen relatively few infections before the variant took hold.
The top doctor in Ontario’s Niagara Region says he wants the U.S.-Canada border to stay closed until the fall despite local businesses and politicians calling for the opposite to support the area’s tourism-reliant economy.
Dr. Mustafa Hirji says the risk of reopening the border this summer is too great, especially with the more transmissible Delta variant spreading in parts of the midwestern U.S.
He says he would recommend extending the border closure for another month and reassessing the situation in the fall so both countries have extra time to vaccinate more people.
His comments come as businesses and political leaders in the city of Niagara Falls call on Ottawa to reopen the border immediately now that COVID-19 trends are improving.
The group says many hospitality businesses in the city that shares a border with New York state earn much of their revenue in the summer months and are in danger of closing.
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati says border cities are in a dire situation and need an urgent reopening plan.
Mutual travel restrictions between Canada and the United States — which prohibit all discretionary travel between the two countries while continuing to allow the movement of trade, essential workers and international students — are due to expire July 21.
The Montreal Canadiens playoff run came to an end Wednesday when they were defeated by the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Tampa Bay won 1 – 0, securing the championship for the second straight year. Rookie Ross Colton scored the game and series-winning goal.
Tampa Bay’s mayor had suggested the Lightning lose Game 4 on the road so they could win at home, and she got her wish as the team became the first since Chicago in 2015 to hoist the Cup on home ice.
The defeat dashed the hopes of Canadiens fans, who haven’t seen their team in the final since 1993. Goalie Carey Price made 29 saves.
In the playoffs, Montreal looked nothing like the team that closed the season 0-3-2 while missing Carey Price and motivational leader Brendan Gallagher to injuries. This was also a team that had to overcome the distraction of a COVID-19 outbreak to pause its season and a coaching shakeup, with Ducharme promoted from his assistant’s role after Claude Julien was fired in February.
Come the playoffs, the Canadiens were transformed into a focused, four-line, opportunistic team which fed off goalie Price shaking off an inconsistent season and regaining a calm, puck-smothering focus in net.
Montreal was catapulted by overtime wins in Games 5 and 6 against Toronto to knock out the Maple Leafs in Game 7. Dismissed again, the Canadiens then swept the Winnipeg Jets in the North Division final and overcame being outplayed by Vegas in a 4-1 semifinal opener to win the series in six games.
The Canadiens remained defiant when falling behind 3-0 to the Lightning, with Josh Anderson delivering on his “we’re not finished” rallying cry to score twice, including in overtime, in a 3-2 win in Game 4.
With files from The Associated Press
Toronto police have released funeral details for Const. Jeffrey Northrup, who was killed in the line of duty.
The 31-year veteran of the service was struck by a car in the underground parking garage at City Hall early Friday morning and killed.
The general public may pay their respects at a visitation at the Kane-Jerrett Funeral Home in Thornhill Sunday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
A funeral service will be held Monday afternoon at BMO Field which will be invitation-only.
Northup had been with the Toronto Police Service for more than 30 years. He is survived by his wife, three children and his mother.
Umar Zameer, 31, is facing a single count of first-degree murder in Northrup’s death.
He has been remanded in custody and is scheduled to appear in court next on July 23, 2021.
Police said a publication ban prevents them from releasing any further details but did say there are no outstanding suspects.
Ontario’s top doctor is calling for all eligible people — especially young adults and teens — to get vaccinated against COVID-19 ahead of the planned return to schools in September.
Dr. Kieran Moore noted on Tuesday that classes in Ontario schools, as well as many colleges and universities, are due to pick up in less than two months, with the goal of holding more classes and extracurriculars in person.
People will need to have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine before the start of the school year to be fully protected, and Moore noted that vaccine uptake is lower among young people than older Ontarians.
“They are the most social, they’re the most able to propagate the virus back into the communities,” Moore said of the high school and college-aged demographic.
He pointed to the situation in England, where the virus is rapidly spreading among young, unvaccinated people, and said Ontario is also seeing “gaps” among younger adults when it comes to vaccine uptake.
“Time is of the essence now as our schools are planning to reopen fully in the fall,” Moore said.
Moore said approximately 83 per cent of COVID-19 cases reported between May 15 and June 12 were among unvaccinated people, 15 per cent were partially vaccinated and just over one per cent were fully vaccinated.
In Ontario, 78 per cent of Ontario adults have at least one dose of a vaccine and 46 per cent are fully vaccinated.
Vaccination coverage is higher among older Ontarians and the rate lags slightly behind when it comes to young adults.
Sixty-eight per cent of the population aged 18 to 29 has received their first dose and 66 per cent of youth aged 12 to 17 have their first shots.
Moore’s “call for arms,” as he described it, came a day after the province started offering Ontarians aged 12 and older the option of scheduling a second COVID-19 vaccine dose at an interval shorter than four months.
That means everyone eligible for vaccination in the province can now receive their shots as soon as four weeks apart, depending on the vaccine type and if supply allows.
Widespread vaccination is a key aspect of Ontario’s plan to resume in-class learning in the fall — though full details of the plan haven’t been shared. The province has promised that all students and education workers would be offered two shots before September and youth-focused clinics were run last month and into this week to get young people vaccinated.
Education Minister Stephen Lecce said this week that high vaccination rates in the community will help keep transmission down and protect students under age 12, for whom no vaccines have currently been approved in Canada, when classes resume.
Moore said the province saw interest in vaccination drop slightly after the long weekend and it aims to sustain its messaging about vaccination.
Ontario reported 164 new COVID-19 cases and nine deaths from the virus on Tuesday, as well as 80 previously uncounted cases from 2020.
Public health restrictions on businesses and gatherings have gradually been rolling back in light of the positive public health trends, but Moore said the picture can change quickly.
“To sustain our progress, we need to see continued improvement in vaccinations through the summer and into the fall,” he said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says it’s a historic moment as control over children in care is transferred to a Saskatchewan First Nation for the first time under federal legislation.
Trudeau is visiting Cowessess First Nation, where he is signing an agreement with Chief Cadmus Delorme and Premier Scott Moe.
It is the first time jurisdiction and control of child and family services has been returned to a First Nation under the federal legislation, which was passed in 2019 and came into force the following year.
Trudeau says every First Nation, Inuit, and Metis child should have the opportunity to grow up with their families and in their communities.
The federal government has said the legislation will reduce the number of Indigenous children in care by affirming the inherent rights of First Nation, Inuit and Metis communities.
Cowessess is also the site of a former residential school where, last month, ground-penetrating radar detected a potential 751 unmarked graves.
More to come
