Ontario could loosen some restrictions for Toronto and Peel Region to allow outdoor restaurant dining and fitness while keeping a lockdown in place, Premier Doug Ford said Thursday as the province tightened measures for another region.
The top doctors in Toronto and Peel have asked to have their communities remain in the strictest “grey lockdown” category of Ontario’s pandemic framework but with the rules modified to allow for some currently shuttered services to be offered outdoors.
Ford said he was open to the idea and noted that the province’s chief medical officer was discussing the issue with the two hotspots.
“Would I be in favour of letting people get outside and get some air? Absolutely,” Ford said. “But I’m sticking with the health and science. And if all three doctors agree, then we’ll take their advice.”
Both Toronto and Peel have been in lockdown since last November, when surging COVID-19 rates caused the province to impose strict public health measures.
The “grey lockdown” category allows retailers to open with restrictions but limits restaurants to takeout and delivery and keeps gyms and personal care services closed.
Toronto’s top doctor said she expects the province will announce its decision on the request to modify the rules on Friday.
Ontario’s chief medical officer of health said Thursday that the province was in a third wave and he was concerned about the rising levels of COVID-19 variants in Toronto and Peel.
“We’re asking ourselves what can we do to work with them?” Dr. David William said of the two regions’ request for adjusted restrictions.
“We hope to be able to come up with some ideas as to how we might be able to help everybody stay at the task and keep this third wave under control, because we really don’t want to see it take off in Toronto and Peel.”
Williams warned that the seven day average for case numbers, positivity and deaths had all increased and urged people to continue to follow public health advice on masking and physical distancing.
“While we are entering the third wave, the question is what type of wave will it be?” he said. “We don’t know right now.”
Earlier Thursday, the government said it would be tightening restrictions for Ottawa on Friday due to a rise in cases there.
The city will move to the second-strictest “red” level of the province’s colour-coded pandemic framework, which means retail stores will have capacity limits, indoor restaurant dining will see restrictions tightened and cinemas will close, among other things.
The government said the decision was made after Ottawa’s medical officer of health requested the change due to “concerning trends” in the region.
The local public health unit said the case rate in the region rose by 24.8 per cent between March 10 and March 15. Eighty-two new cases were reported Thursday.
Meanwhile, Ford said Thursday that nearly half of Ontario residents aged 80 and older had received a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The province’s vaccine booking portal and call centre have now scheduled appointments for 400,000 people, he added.
Ford acknowledged that there were “bumps in the road” when the booking portal came online Monday, but those have been resolved. He asked people to continue to sign up for the shot, and stressed the province needs to receive more vaccines.
“We’re on our way to being able to administer 150,000 doses per day across the province,” he said. “But as I keep saying, that all depends on one thing, the supply of vaccines.”
York Region says residents who were born in 1946 and before can begin booking appointments beginning at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 18.
York says it’s advancing eligible residents for COVID-19 vaccinations to residents age 75 years and older as it continues to deliver vaccines identified in the province’s vaccine distribution plan.
Vaccines will be available for the new eligible priority group at these locations:
- Aaniin Community Centre (Opening Monday, March 22, 2021)
- Cornell Community Centre
- Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital
- Georgina Ice Palace located
- Maple Community Centre
- Ray Twinney Recreation Complex
- Richmond Green Sports Centre
It says the clinic dates and times vary for each location, and recommends visiting York’s website to check for clinic details.
Residents can book their COVID-19 vaccination appointments online or by phone.
“York Region Public Health, in partnership with our hospital and paramedic services partners, is working to ensure all eligible and vulnerable residents who cannot attend a clinic receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The approach to reach these homebound individuals is through our mobile outreach teams; however, some may also find the drive-thru clinics opening soon as a good option,” the region says in a statement. “Outreach will begin to homebound individuals receiving homecare next week. The drive-thru site at Canada’s Wonderland is scheduled to begin operations the week of March 29, 2021. Drive-thru clinics will also be by appointment only.”
York says as the vaccine supply increases, it encourages residents to keep checking for appointments that become available, and is asking residents to cancel any appointments they do not plan to use.
OTTAWA — Asians across North America are in shock after a shooting outside Atlanta, Georgia killed eight people at spas.
WATCH: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/03/17/atlanta-shooting-symptomatic-of-larger-issue-of-asian-women-being-oversexualized-in-media-experts/
Six of the victims were Asian women.
Some say this isn’t just part of the current wave of anti-Asian racism but is part of a longer trend of over-sexualization of Asian women in media.
“They’re shown as submissive people, or as a sex object,” said Anita Liu, human rights and gender equality specialist. “Lucy Liu? She’s always this femme fatale, wearing this leather skin-tight bodysuit. So, we’re either ninjas, or we’re these weak people in need of help of a white saviour.”
Liu says depictions of Asian women in popular media have historically lacked depth — portraying Asian women either as over-the-top dangerous seductresses or submissive stereotypes.
“The stereotype is also that we’re sexualized, we’re objectified, we are not human,” said Amy Go with the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice. “We are sexual beings to be preyed [upon], to be serving the white man at their pleasure. That’s the whole portrayal of Asian women.”
The trend has been propagated for more than half a century. More nuanced, complex depictions of Asian women are only now beginning to emerge.
But many of those perceptions do real harm.
“You watch TV. You watch all these Asian women being sexualized, in terms of portrayal. Your day-to-day life is defined by those messages and that broader, society image of you,” said Go.
WATCH: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/03/17/atlanta-shooting-symptomatic-of-larger-issue-of-asian-women-being-oversexualized-in-media-experts/
While American authorities say the Atlanta spa killings were motivated by sex addiction, a local Korean newspaper reports eyewitnesses said the shooter said he was there to kill Asians.
Amy Go says it’s not just one or the other — the two are inexorably linked.
“This is a racist, misogynist attack. No ifs, ands, or buts. He particularly picked those target places, knowing Asian women were there. Knowing targets were there. Don’t tell me that it is not both,” said Go.
Liu adds that there’s a clear class element to this crime. Though nominally spas, reviews on Google make it clear that at least one of the locations targeted was a brothel.
Liu says women in sex work — especially racialized women — are in a particularly vulnerable position: more prone to violence and sometimes without the ability to find help.
–with files from Xiaoli Li
Intolerably suffering Canadians who are not near the natural end of their lives now have the right to seek medical assistance in dying.
And that will eventually include people suffering solely from grievous and irremediable mental illnesses.
The expansion of Canada’s assisted dying regime went into effect Wednesday night after the Senate accepted a revised version of Bill C-7.
The bill received royal assent a few hours later – just over a week ahead of a final March 26 deadline imposed by the court, which had granted four extensions to bring the law into compliance with a 2019 Quebec Superior Court ruling.
With royal assent granted, intolerably suffering Canadians who aren’t near death immediately gained the right to seek medical assistance in dying.
People suffering solely from mental illnesses will have to wait two years to gain the same right.
The government had originally intended to impose a blanket ban on assisted dying for people suffering solely from mental illnesses. But, under pressure from senators who believed that exclusion was unconstitutional, it subsequently put a two-year time limit on it.
In the meantime, the government committed to setting up an expert panel to advise on the safeguards and protocols that should apply to people with mental illnesses.
The government rejected a Senate amendment to allow people who fear losing mental competence to make advance requests for an assisted death.
But it committed to launching within 30 days a joint parliamentary committee to review that issue and other unresolved matters, including whether mature minors should have access to the procedure.
“For Canadians who are suffering intolerably, this process has taken too long, but their wait is now over,” Justice Minister David Lametti tweeted shortly after the bill received royal assent.
“This is an important milestone but there is more work to do.”
The bill was triggered by two Quebecers with severe disabilities who went to court to successfully fight for their right to choose an assisted death even though their natural deaths were not “reasonably foreseeable.”
But disability rights groups have strenuously opposed the bill, arguing it devalues the lives of people with disabilities, particularly those who are Black, racialized, Indigenous or otherwise already marginalized and face discrimination in the health system. They fear such vulnerable people will be pressured – either directly or indirectly through societal attitudes and lack of support services – to end their lives prematurely.
Many mental health advocates have also weighed in against the eventual inclusion of people suffering solely from mental illnesses. They argue that it’s harder to predict the outcomes of mental illnesses, many of which can be treated, and point out that a wish to die is often a symptom of these illnesses.
But Sen. Stan Kutcher, a psychiatrist and member of the Independent Senators Group who first proposed a time limit on the mental illness exclusion, argued that all competent Canadians suffering from irremediable and grievous illnesses, physical or mental, deserve the right to make their own choice.
“It is not for us to decide if a person’s suffering is intolerable to them,” he told the Senate shortly before the vote.
Dying with Dignity Canada welcomed the Senate’s sign-off on the bill, calling it “a momentous day for end-of-life rights in Canada.”
All 20 Conservative senators voted against the bill, several because they believed it didn’t go far enough but most were fundamentally opposed to expanding the assisted dying regime, particularly to those with mental illnesses.
In an emotional speech just before the vote, Conservative Senate leader Don Plett pleaded with his colleagues to reject the bill.
“If there was ever a time to exercise sober second thought, it is now,” he told the Senate.
“It is not often that we can truly say that with this vote we have the opportunity to save lives, to prevent the unnecessary premature death of the vulnerable, to offer hope to those who have lost it. But today we do.”
For people who are near the natural end of life, the bill relaxes some of the rules for getting an assisted death.
It drops the requirement that a person must be able to give final consent immediately before the procedure is performed. That’s intended to ensure that someone who has been approved for the procedure won’t be denied if they lose mental capacity before it can be carried out.
It also drops the requirement that a person must wait 10 days after being approved for an assisted death before receiving the procedure. And it reduces the number of witnesses required to one from two.
People not near death will face higher hurdles.
Among other things, they’ll face a minimum 90-day period for assessments of their requests for an assisted death. They’ll have to be made aware of all alternatives, including counselling and they’ll have to be able to give final consent immediately before receiving the procedure.
Toronto’s top doctor says the city is not ready to enter the red zone of the province’s COVID-19 reopening framework yet.
WATCH: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/03/17/torontos-top-doctor-says-city-should-not-enter-red-zone-of-covid-19-reopening-framework-yet/
Stay-at-home orders were lifted in Toronto on March 8 and the city entered the province’s grey-lockdown zone — which permits non-essential retail stores to open with capacity limits, among other allowances.
In the city’s daily COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Eileen de Villa said she does not recommend any further lifting of restrictions.
“At this time, it is my view, the data do not support the kind of reopening that would be provided for under the red zone designation,” she said.
However, similar to Peel region, the city is in discussions with the province about modifications to the grey-zone restrictions, particularly in regards to outdoor activities which are lower risk for transmission of COVID-19.
Dr. de Villa said the city has expressed “openness to a modest expansion of the options open to people in Toronto.”
“Everyone sees the exhaustion within the city as it relates to all the limitations COVID-19 has forced upon us,” she added. “This is why modest steps forward in the realm of outdoor activity are a good proving ground at this time.”
Mayor John Tory said some of the activities being discussed include outdoor dining and outdoor fitness and exercise — areas where the city has some past experience in keeping people safe.
But Tory stressed the discussions are currently underway and nothing has been finalized, but officials want Torontonians to know that talks are ongoing.
“Changes to the grey zone, of course, would have to be made by the province,” he said. “No one should start making changes, no one should start making plans or placing orders right now.”
De Villa also added that the changes would be incremental and very cautious. Should any changes lead to an increase in cases, especially as the city grapples with the spread of variants of concern, she will not hesitate to call for actions to reverse course.
“We all need to understand what might happen at any point as we move ahead in the next stretch of time,” she said. “Even small steps forward, permitting additional outdoor activities, do not signal that the threat has been reduced to an extent that we can let our guard down when it comes to self protection,” given that VOC continue to spread.
De Villa said there have been no clear statements from the province about exactly what should or should not reopen under continued grey-lockdown restriction, but said the city was involved in a “collaborative discussion around what makes sense given the unique circumstances in Toronto.”
The province is expected to announce its decision on Friday.
One of Canada’s four approved vaccines is prepared to be tested on children across the country.
On Tuesday, Moderna announced the first 6,750 pediatric participants in Canada and the U.S. have been selected in a Phase 2/3 trial called the KidCOVE study in children ages 6 months to less than 12 years.
Moderna says the study is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
“We are pleased to begin this Phase 2/3 study of mRNA-1273 in healthy children in the U.S. and Canada and we thank NIAID and BARDA for their collaboration,” said Stéphane Bancel, Chief Executive Officer of Moderna.
“It is humbling to know that 17.8 million adults in the U.S. have received the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine to date. We are encouraged by the primary analysis of the Phase 3 COVE study of mRNA-1273 in adults ages 18 and above and this pediatric study will help us assess the potential safety and immunogenicity of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate in this important younger age population.”
As part of the process, Moderna will evaluate the safety, tolerability, reactogenicity, and effectiveness of two doses given 28 days apart.
Moderna says in Part 1 of the study, each participant ages two years to less than 12 years may receive one of two dose levels.
Also in Part 1, each participant ages six months to less than two years may receive one of three dose levels.
Participants will be followed through 12 months after the second vaccination.
Currently, Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use in individuals 18 years of age and older.
“Vaccine effectiveness will either be understood through achieving a correlate of protection, if established or through immunobridging to the young adult (ages 18-25) population,” said Moderna.
Vaccine deliveries from Moderna are expected to bring 846,000 doses in Canada through the week of March 22.
In Ontario, shipments are expected to grow from just over 160,000 through the week of March 8 to over 320,000 doses expected to arrive in the week of March 22.
With the extended intervals between the first and second doses, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) projects 80 percent of Canadians over the age of 16 could receive a first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna shot by the end of June.
The timeline could move up even more once Johnson & Johnson vaccines arrive in Canada.
Toronto Raptors guard Fred VanVleet says he tested positive for COVID-19.
“I wouldn’t wish it on anybody,” VanVleet told reporters after returning to practice for the first time in two weeks Tuesday, according to Sportsnet’s Michael Grange.
VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, Malachi Flynn and Patrick McCaw were cleared to practise in Detroit on Tuesday after being sidelined for health and safety protocols for more than a week. Siakam, McCaw and Flynn were upgraded to “questionable” for Wednesday’s game against the Pistons, while VanVleet is listed as “doubtful.”
Their return would be good news for a Raptors team that has lost five straight to drop to 11th in the Eastern Conference at 17-22.
OG Anunoby remains out for Toronto’s game versus Detroit on Wednesday to COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
Siakam has missed the past six games, while the other five have each missed five in a row.
CAUTION: This story contains graphic content that may disturb some readers.
Two young women who vanished nearly a decade apart were killed and dismembered by a Toronto-area man who then disposed of their remains by tossing them in a lake and flushing them down the toilet, an Ontario judge found Tuesday.
WATCH: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/03/16/adam-strong-murder-trial-verdict/
Adam Strong, 47, was convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of Rori Hache and of manslaughter in that of Kandis Fitzpatrick, after a judge rejected the suggestion he had cut up their bodies but not caused their deaths.
The two women died in Strong’s apartment in Oshawa, Ont., and their remains were stored in a large freezer in his bedroom as he sought to get rid of them over a period of time, Ontario Superior Court Justice Joseph Di Luca said.
“To be blunt, the chances that Mr. Strong would have twice found himself in need of a chest freezer to store the dismembered body parts of young women who met their deaths innocently is so infinitesimally small that it suggests the opposite conclusion,” he said.
Both Hache and Fitzpatrick struggled with drug addiction and their disappearances sparked significant search efforts by their distraught relatives, Di Luca said, noting both women were deeply loved by their families.
Though there are similarities between them and the circumstances surrounding their deaths, the evidence regarding Fitzpatrick’s death is insufficient to support a murder conviction, which requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused intended to kill or to cause harm that was likely to kill, the judge said.
“While Miss Hache and Miss Fitzpatrick were similarly situated in terms of their life circumstances, and may well have fallen in with Mr. Strong for the same reasons, the almost 10-year gap in time and the absence of forensic or other evidence relating to what happened to Miss Fitzpatrick at the time of her death renders a singular inference on this issue impossible,” he said.
Hache, who was 18 and pregnant, disappeared in August 2017. Her torso was found in Lake Ontario the following month, and Strong was charged in her death in late December of that year.
Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, was 19 when she was last seen in 2008. Her body was never found, but in July 2018, police alleged they had found her DNA in Strong’s basement, including on a specialty hunting knife used for skinning and gutting animals.
The trial, in front of a judge alone, heard police were called to Strong’s home in December 2017 after plumbers found a “flesh-like” substance in the pipes. Strong admitted to officers at the scene that the substance was “a body,” court heard.
Investigators later found Hache’s blood and DNA in multiple areas, including the wall and ceiling of his bedroom, and on items such as a bondage device and a pet leash, court heard.
In a ruling delivered in court and by teleconference, Di Luca found Strong killed Hache sometime between Sept. 1 and Sept. 3 by repeatedly hitting her in the head with a hammer or a similar object as she lay bound in his bedroom.
The killing constitutes first-degree murder because it occurred in the course of a sexual assault, he said. It’s possible the encounter was initially consensual, potentially involving paid sex work, but that consent would have been negated once Strong hit Hache, he said.
Strong then “meticulously” dismembered Hache’s body and dumped her torso in the lake on Sept. 4, the judge found.
The rest of her body was stored in Strong’s freezer until Christmas Eve, when he cut it up further and disposed of the pieces by flushing them down the toilet, the judge found.
Some body parts were placed back in the freezer afterwards, though Strong planned to get rid of them at a later date, Di Luca said.
“I am satisfied that if Mr. Strong had not been arrested, he would have followed through with his plan, and would eventually have disposed of all of Miss Hache’s body parts,” he said.
Court heard Strong later told investigators who questioned him that he was surprised when Hache’s torso was discovered in the lake because he had taken precautions to keep it from surfacing.
He also blamed his arrest on “faulty plumbing,” and told police flushing remains down the drain was an efficient disposal method, court heard.
Di Luca ruled that Strong’s surprise stemmed from the fact that he had successfully used those techniques in getting rid of Fitzpatrick’s remains.
Court also heard Strong told investigators he regretted getting caught but otherwise had no remorse, and that he tried to negotiate a deal that would secure him a more comfortable imprisonment.
Three mass vaccination centres in Toronto are set to open their doors on Wednesday.
The vaccination clinics have been set up at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Scarborough Town Centre and Toronto Congress Centre.
“We want to open up these sites and keep them running until the job is done,” says Mayor John Tory.” And the job here, in this case, is as many needles in as many as arms as possible for all groups across the city — reminding people that right now we’re dealing with people who have made a reservation, made an appointment, and who are 80 years of age or over.”
“As people see that these clinics are open and sign up, that we will make huge progress on getting the population of the City of Toronto vaccinated, so that we can bring this pandemic to an end,” Tory added.
According to city officials, inside the 55,000 square-foot clinic at the Toronto Congress Centre, teams of up to 10 immunizers at a time will work to vaccinate five people per hour per team.
Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, who is leading Toronto’s emergency response, says each of the three clinics are currently scaled at 450 appointments per day.
“Of course, as we move through the weeks and the vaccine capacity increases, there’s a corresponding increase in our throughput in the clinic, the amount of vaccine we’re able to deliver so that we’ll increase proportionately as we move forward,” said Pegg.
More than 1,300 people are expected to roll up their sleeves on the first day.
Tory says, “I would urge everybody to explore at getting vaccinated. If you have any need for any information, we have lots of it available to people so that they’ll be comfortable doing what everybody should do for themselves, and for the sake of their family, their coworkers, their friends, which is to get vaccinated — this is a very important thing to help us wrestle COVID-19 to the ground for once and for all.”
The mass vaccination clinics will run from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.
Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine portal launched Monday with tens of thousands of people aged 80 and older booking their appointments, while the province promised to resolve technical issues many users reported.
WATCH: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/03/15/ontario-covid-19-vax-portal-launches-with-tens-of-thousands-of-bookings-some-errors/
The government said more than 63,000 people had booked vaccine appointments by early afternoon.
Premier Doug Ford said any “bumps in the road, or wrinkles in the system” would be taken care of immediately.
“I’m just very grateful that the system never crashed,” he told a news conference. “That’s what I’m shocked about, actually.”
Residents who are eligible to get vaccinated can book online at www.ontario.ca/bookvaccine, while those wishing to schedule by phone can call 1-888-999-6488.
The online booking system and call centre went live at 8 a.m., and the site showed more than 8,000 people in the queue for an appointment a few minutes later, with an estimated wait time of about an hour.
The lineup appeared to grow quickly, with some who went on the site shortly afterwards reporting a longer estimated wait time.
Several health units reported issues with the new system, saying they were working with the province to address the problems.
“Please do not attempt to book an appointment at this time,” the Grey Bruce Health Unit in southern Ontario told local residents just hours after the booking system went live. It said system issues had resulted in booking errors.
The Simcoe-Muskoka Health Unit said some people were encountering error messages that indicated no local appointments were available through the booking site for its region. It said the province had not finished inputting all of its clinics and was hoping to resolve the issue later Monday.
Elsewhere, users reported seeing error messages after filling out the website’s vaccine booking forms.
Eric Weichel logged onto the site at 9 a.m. from his home in North Bay, Ont., in a co-ordinated effort with his mother, who helped from Parry Sound, Ont., and another friend who tried from a cell phone in Guelph, Ont. They were all trying to get an appointment for Weichel’s 85-year-old grandmother, Hazel Wager.
After getting into the queue and filling out basic information like date of birth and postal code, all three kept getting the same message, a blank screen with just the words “form has been tampered with.”
Weichel said his mother then tried the phone number, but gave up after nine attempts to get through. He said he finally was able to book an appointment through the website at 3 p.m., six hours after he started.
His grandmother has her first shot scheduled for next Monday in Parry Sound, Ont., and her second shot appointment in July, he said.
“I’m so excited to hug her after she gets her vaccine,” Weichel said in an interview.
Others who went onto the site shared their successes on social media.
“My in-laws (with the help of their doting son) both got COVID-19 vaccine appointments for next Tuesday at City Hall. I can’t believe how happy and relieved I am,” one Ottawa resident said on Twitter.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health said the government was aware of the technical issues some users were encountering and urged them to book an appointment using the Provincial Vaccine Information Line instead.
Some of Ontario’s 34 public health units have already established their own systems for booking vaccination appointments, but the provincial portal will either enhance or replace those setups in many areas.
The province reported Monday that a total of 1,191,553 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been given out in Ontario so far.
But even as the vaccination drive ramps up, some regions of the province are still dealing with a troubling number of COVID-19 cases.
Sarnia-Lambton moved into the “grey lockdown” stage of the province’s colour-coded pandemic response framework on Monday following a spike in local infections.
Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley wrote to Ford Monday, asking that in future, any region moved into lockdown by the province should be given priority access to COVID-19 vaccines.
“It is a simple step your government can take immediately that would alleviate and diminish the distress as we enter the “Grey Lockdown Zone” and give people here optimism and hope for the future,” Bradley said.
Meanwhile, Ford confirmed Monday that the head of Ontario’s vaccine task force will be leaving the job in a few weeks.
Retired general Rick Hillier’s contract expires on March 31, at which point he will leave the role.
The province has faced criticism about the slow rollout of the COVID-19 immunization process but Ford has said the vaccine effort depends on supplies provided by the federal government.
Ontario reported 1,268 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday and nine more deaths linked to the virus.
With files from Liam Casey
