Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada has been warned of manufacturing problems plaguing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The viral vector vaccine developed by J&J’s subsidiary, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, was authorized by Health Canada as safe and effective last week.
Canada pre-ordered 10 million doses of the vaccine, which is the first and only one in Canada’s vaccine plan that needs only one dose.
But Trudeau says Canada still doesn’t have a date for when it should receive the first deliveries.
“We have heard in many conversations with Johnson & Johnson that there are challenges around production of the Janssen vaccine, but we will continue to engage with them and we look forward to receiving doses as soon as possible,” he said Tuesday at a news conference in Ottawa. “And as soon as we get confirmation of doses being sent to Canada, we will let everyone know.”
Canada’s vaccine rollout has stepped up this month, after deliveries slowed to a trickle in February. Nearly a million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines were delivered last week and 910,000 doses of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are arriving this week.
It took Canada 67 days to vaccinate the first one million people. It should take less than one-third that time to vaccinate the second million.
As of Tuesday, more than 1.9 million Canadians had received at least one dose.
Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said Canada isn’t quite ready to follow the U.S. Centers for Disease Control with guidance for how vaccinated people can relax their public health measures.
The CDC said Monday that two weeks after getting their second doses, Americans can now visit indoors, without masks, with other fully vaccinated people, or those who are not vaccinated but are at low risk of serious illness.
Tam said there are still too many unknowns, including the effect of COVID-19 variants, and how vaccines will affect the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The United States is far ahead of Canada, having now vaccinated more than one in four people. Canada has vaccinated about one in 20.
Tam said there are “initial positive signs” that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are preventing transmission, as well as reducing the severity of illness, but it is still early.
The emergence of variants that aren’t all responding as well to vaccines is also of concern, she said.
Tam said Ontario now believes almost one-third of its new cases are one of those variants, with the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the United Kingdom the most common. That variant also appears to be the most receptive to the current vaccines.
Manitoba said Tuesday it had confirmed five new cases of B.1.1.7 and eight of another variant called B.1.351, but also said there did not appear to be any community transmission.
Saskatchewan said it had 35 new cases of variants among cases testing positive between Jan. 26 and Feb. 27, almost all of them B.1.1.7.
Alberta, meanwhile, said it had 28 new variant cases, for a total of 687.
B.C. had another 182 variant cases for a total of 576, most of them linked to the strain first found in the United Kingdom.
Tam said the next couple of weeks will be critical as many provinces have just begun easing the tightest lockdowns this week.
“We will know pretty soon, I think, as to whether we are able to keep the variants at manageable proportions while vaccines are escalated,” Tam said. “Which is why now is not the time to sort of make too many shifts in the public health measures at this time. But we will be able to do so based on what actually happens next.”
Ontario moved COVID-19 hot zones of Toronto and Peel out of total lockdown Monday, allowing retail stores to admit customers for the first time in 100 days, but is keeping restaurants closed to in-person dining. Quebec adjusted restrictions in five regions, including Quebec City, allowing gyms and restaurants to reopen in limited capacity for the first time since before Christmas.
Saskatchewan said Tuesday it was immediately ending its total ban on household gatherings, allowing people to have up to 10 people over from two or three different households. Next week it will increase capacity limits on houses of worship.
The number of new cases in Canada has plateaued at about 2,900 cases per day for about three weeks, but since Feb. 23, the average number of deaths per day has fallen from 54 to 37.
Newfoundland and Labrador also seems to be recovering from a major outbreak that swept through St. John’s last month. Public health officials reported one new case Tuesday and said active infections are down to 80, from 203 a week ago.
Canada’s vaccine contracts set out expected deliveries by first quarter and all 10 million of Canada’s J&J doses are to come between April and September. But it’s not yet known how many are to come in the spring and how many in the summer.
Johnson & Johnson production problems are affecting Europe and the U.S. as well. Several European countries, where the vaccine isn’t yet authorized, said they don’t expect as many doses of it next month as originally planned.
U.S. President Joe Biden said last week when he took office he was informed Johnson & Johnson was behind on production and efforts began to find more production space. Sanofi was first contracted to help produce the vaccine in Europe and last week Biden announced Merck would help produce it in the United States.
But it will be many months before they have production lines up and running.
A constitutional rights advocacy group is mounting a legal challenge to the federal government’s quarantine hotel policy, arguing it infringes on Canadians’ fundamental rights.
The Canadian Constitution Foundation has filed an application with Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice along with five individuals, seeking an end to the policy. The application names the Attorney General of Canada as the defendant.
A government order that went into effect on Feb. 14 mandates that anyone entering Canada from abroad must stay in a federally approved hotel for the first three nights of a 14-day quarantine.
“The biggest issue is that we have a fundamental right to enter Canada and this is a limit on that right and it’s not a justified limit,” said Christine Van Geyn, litigation director for the CCF. “There are so many alternatives that would be less infringing on rights.”
Travellers are expected to pay for their government-approved accommodations, which can cost hundreds of dollars per night. They may leave the hotels once a COVID-19 test taken at their point of entry comes back negative.
The Canadian Constitution Foundation argues in its legal application that hotel quarantine requirements are “overbroad, arbitrary and grossly disproportionate.”
The applicants are seeking an injunction to suspend the order, but are also asking to have the law struck down for infringing upon the constitutional rights of liberty, freedom from unreasonable detention, and the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment.
The CCF is also seeking damages of $10,000. Van Geyn said the request for nominal damages is to cover off the costs of the five individual applicants for their hotel stays at approximately $2,000 per person.
“The focus is not on the money, the focus is on the ability for them to exercise their fundamental rights,” she said.
The CCF argues that the hotel policy detains people without COVID-19 symptoms who would be able to safely quarantine outside of government-approved accommodation at minimal or no expense.
A spokesperson for Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada said that they were aware of the legal action and that the federal government intended to respond to the application.
When the order came into effect Van Geyn and the CCF asked for people impacted by the quarantine hotel policy to reach out to them. She said that the group received approximately 5,000 letters of support or from people directly effected by the policy.
Van Geyn said that the five individuals participating in the legal challenge were selected because they all had to travel out of Canada for compassionate reasons, in three cases attending to their parents in the final days of their lives.
She noted that Canada has an exemption to its quarantine policy for people entering the country for compassionate purposes, but not for residents who had to leave Canada for similar reasons.
“If you live in Florida and your mother breaks her hip and you need to come to Canada to help her … you can apply for an exemption and be granted one,” said Van Geyn. “But if the situation is reversed, if you live in Canada and your mother lives in Florida, you would still want to go and help her prepare for surgery and recover, but you are not eligible for an exemption when you return.
“It’s strange to me that the government is concerned about these compassionate travellers but only when you’re travelling in one direction.”
Julia Grieve the Accidental Environmentalist
Instagram: @prelovedjules
Recipe:
Future Nostalgia—
A trash twist on the classic Tom Collins, this cocktail calls for a syrup made from citrus scraps!
The Tom Collins recipe was first printed in the 1876 bartender book, it’s a nostalgic cocktail, fresh, fruity and I gave it a sustainable twist because the future is green.
CHOPPING BOARD CORDIAL –
(Example Recipe)
1kg Mixed fresh off cuts
1L Water
240g Granulated sugar
24g Citric acid powder
12g Malic acid powder
- Weigh your off cuts and add the same amount of water
- Cover and leave to soak over night at room temperature
- Strain out and weigh infused liquid
- (Assuming new weight is 1.2kg) add all powders and stir till dissolved
- Bottle and store cold
Future Nostalgia-
- 1 ½ cups ice
- 2 oz gin
- ¾ oz lemon juice
- ½ oz chopping board citrus cordial
- 1 cup ice
- 2 oz club soda
- Lemon wedge for garnish
Fill a glass with ½ cup ice and set aside in the freezer to chill. Combine the gin, lemon juice and cordial in a cocktail shaker with 1 cup of ice, cover and shake until chilled.
Strain into the chilled glass, top with club soda and garnish with a lemon slice and enjoy!
Ontarians won’t be asked to provide proof of their pre-existing health conditions to access a COVID-19 vaccine during the second phase of the rollout, the province’s health minister said on Monday
Christine Elliott said she believes most people will come to clinics when they are permitted and not take advantage of the honour system.
The vaccine will be offered starting in April to people with specific health conditions like organ transplant recipients, those living with obesity and those receiving treatments that suppress the immune system.
Elliott said local public health units will screen people as they arrive at the clinics and may be able to check with a person’s family physician, but that will not be mandatory. She said some people may be asked to come back at another time but that hasn’t been an issue with the rollout so far.
“We haven’t run into very many of those situations,” she said. “People are following the rules, they are coming in at the appropriate time, they’re being very patient, and they want to make sure that people who are the most at risk are going to be given their vaccinations first.”
Vaccinations among the highest-priority Ontarians, including long-term care residents and staff, are wrapping up, and some local public health units have already begun offering shots to the broader public, starting in many cases with those over age 80.
First vaccine doses were completed as of Monday in 31 fly-in Indigenous communities, in what the province called a “milestone” in its effort to provide protection against the virus in remote areas. Ontario aims to complete second doses in those communities by the end of April.
Meanwhile, Ontario reported 1,631 new cases of COVID-19 Monday, but the government said the case count was higher due to a “data catch-up process” in its system.
The province also recorded 10 additional deaths linked to the virus.
Those numbers came as a stay-at-home order lifted in Toronto, Peel Region and North Bay, loosening some pandemic restrictions imposed nearly two months ago.
The three regions are the last to move back to the government’s colour-coded pandemic response framework.
Toronto and Peel entered the strictest “grey lockdown” category, as requested by public health officials in both regions.
The new lockdown allows more retailers to open, with restrictions, but gyms and personal care services remain closed. Restaurants can only offer takeout, drive-thru or delivery.
Shoppers lined up outside Toronto’s Eaton Centre on Monday morning, waiting for the downtown shopping mall to open. Lines also formed outside several larger stores in the downtown core including the Hudson Cay Company, HomeSense, H&M, and Best Buy.
Bianca Charles said she was so excited to go shopping in person that she didn’t sleep the night before. She said she wasn’t looking to buy anything in particular, but was eager to have the outing.
“It’s just nice to have back your freedom, stretch your legs a little bit, to just do something,” said Charles, who was first in line to go into HomeSense.
Some restaurant owners said they won’t be able to survive much longer unless they’re allowed to reopen for on-site dining, even at limited capacity.
“Move us to the red zone (of the pandemic system) so we have a fighting chance. Even 14 days in grey lockdown could mean the end of my business and many others,” Regan Irvine, owner of the Irv Gastropub in Toronto, said in an open letter to officials issued last week.
North Bay moved Monday to the “red zone,” the second most restrictive level of pandemic measures.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2021.
– with files from John Chidley-Hill and Shawn Jeffords
A lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association says some air passengers who refuse to comply with the mandatory hotel quarantine upon arrival in Canada may have a legal ground to stand on.
WATCH: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/03/08/there-may-be-legal-grounds-to-fight-hotel-quarantine-lawyer-says/
As CityNews has been reporting, the federal three-day hotel quarantine rules are being ignored by some Canadians.
Those individuals say that prior to walking out of the airport, officials did tell them to expect a hefty ticket in the mail.
“People who believe that these rules are inappropriate, particularly when applied to their circumstances, have every right to fight these tickets,” said Cara Zwibel, director of Fundamental Freedoms Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
“I can’t predict what a court will do with them but I do think there are good arguments here to point out the arbitrariness of some of these rules. The fact that if I had entered by land I wouldn’t have to quarantine so how is it that I’m such a danger because I’ve entered by air? People who say, ‘I have a perfectly good place to isolate at home.’”
Zwibel also notes that in some cases, the government’s rules seem counterintuitive to public health.
“Flights have been limited to the four airports for international flights, so you’re going to have people who’re going to have to do the hotel quarantine in one city and then potentially fly to another city to actually get home and that again puts them in a situation in which they’re exposed to more people, in an airplane, than they would be if they had just gone directly home.”
As well, since a hotel stay could cost up to $2,000 out of pocket, some may see a financial incentive to disobey. It’s also unclear how much people will have to pay in fines.
“The cost of compliance could be greater than the cost of non-compliance in some cases,” Zwibel said.
She says the result of any court case may depend on the judge and the specific circumstances.
CityNews reached out to Health Canada to inquire about the average cost of fines issued to people who dodged hotel quarantines, as well as how many tickets have been issued so far. We have yet to receive a response to those questions.
Dozens of students who attended Ontario-run schools for deaf children and their families have come forward, sharing disturbing experiences that highlight decades-long systemic issues at special needs schools.
WATCH: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/03/08/exclusive-dozens-of-families-report-abuse-at-ontarios-schools-for-deaf-children/
“This is way bigger than we thought, we had no idea,” said one parent. “The stories we’ve heard are shocking.”
Last month, CityNews spoke to the family of a deaf girl who is preparing to bring a lawsuit against the Ontario government for the alleged mistreatment of their daughter at a Ministry of Education-run school. CityNews agreed to hide their identity to protect their daughter’s privacy.
The family alleges their daughter was abused at the Ernest C. Drury School for the Deaf in Milton. They say school administrators failed to protect her from prolonged bullying that had a devastating impact on her mental health.
Since CityNews shared their story, at least 30 other families and students have revealed their own alleged traumas.
“We’ve heard the same thing over and over, from lots of people, deaf and hearing, all afraid to come forward for fear of retaliation,” said the parent.
The family has created deaftrauma.com, where families and students detail troubling stories, some recent and some going back decades.
A few of the story titles include, “I have no trust in anyone anymore,” “My self esteem was destroyed,” “I have been traumatized by the school admin” and “There is a problem with the deaf education system.”
On the site, the original family states that it’s not staff shortcomings that are causing the problems at Ontario’s schools for the deaf.
“They are awesome and they love the kids,” they write. “The problem has always been leadership and the culture of neglect, which they have perpetuated through two class action lawsuits in the past nine years.”
“This institution, with limited accountability has just wreaked havoc,” the parent told CityNews. “It’s just unbelievably cruel conduct and we’re very concerned for the safety of children.”
CityNews also spoke to a teacher who worked at Ernest C. Drury for 15 years. The teacher also asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. She says her first red flag came soon after she was hired, when in training she was taught how to restrain students.
“I was actually taught how to restrain a child,” she recalls. “That wasn’t in place for a very long period of time, but it struck me that, at the time, it was a very strange thing to be teaching the teachers, rather than crisis prevention and intervention which I had been trained in before.”
She alleged that as a staff member, she and other teachers were bullied and harassed by the principal, who had the support of administration. The teacher eventually had to take a year-long leave.
“There is always retaliation. Always. So with parents trying to make some difference, there is retaliation and they’re terrified their kids are going to bear the brunt of the retaliation,” she said. “What has to change is there has to be some sort of oversight.”
On deaftrauma.com, a parent whose daughter attended a school for the deaf, wrote about an incident that still haunts them years later. The parent explained their daughter was born deaf and had other physical disabilities, including a stomach-feeding tube and learning disabilities.
“One day I was there to pick her up. She was left in a very soiled diaper for the whole day with urine and stools inside,” they wrote. “I broke down in tears there. But they told me ‘sorry, we were short staffed…If you need proper care for your girl, you can contact the local MPP for this issue’.”
The parent added: “The administration struggle to provide proper support at times and often made us feel the school only wanted the students who are deaf with no other issues.”
Eventually, they say they put their daughter into a mainstream school: “Lucky for her, the special ed team in the hearing high school has better services for her.”
In other stories, which have not been independently verified by CityNews, former students allege being sexually assaulted by other children and staff at Ernest C. Drury, and when they reached out to administration for support, they allege their complaints were minimized and they were left to fend for themselves.
“The accountability is not the same as it would be in a school board and I think that’s why so many incidents have happened,” said the parent who launched the website.
In Ontario, special needs schools for deaf and blind students are run directly by the Ministry of Education. In 2016, the province settled a $15 million dollar class action lawsuit with former students who alleged they were physically and sexually abused at three schools for the deaf. Another lawsuit, involving as many as 1,000 children, was settled in 2012 for $8 million.
Currently, Ontario’s coroner is also investigating the death of Samuel Brown, a Brampton teen who died in 2018 while in the care of W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind in Brantford.
The family CityNews spoke with has pulled their daughter from Ernest C. Drury. They have also given the Ontario government notice that they intend on filing a lawsuit against the province in 60 days. In it, the family alleges the school “failed to protect; failed to provide a safe environment, failed to supervise, failed to adequately investigate incidents of assault and harassment, impeded and misled investigators […] failed to implement adequate strategies to prevent future harm and failed to accommodate [her] disabilities.”
“Money is not the most important part of this claim — their daughter’s education is and their daughter’s safety is,” said Marshall Swadron, the family’s lawyer. “Unless the government comes through in a big way, the pattern is continuing.”
Both the attorney general’s office and the Ministry of Education say because this is the subject of litigation, it would be inappropriate to comment. But the Ministry of Education adds:
“The protection of students is our foremost priority. Ontario’s provincial and demonstration schools provide support, safety and meaningful learning opportunities for these students.”
The heads of a prestigious journalism program at a Toronto university have stepped down amid calls for sweeping changes at the school to address systemic racism and discrimination.
Janice Neil, the chair of the Ryerson School of Journalism, and Lisa Taylor, associate chair and the school’s undergraduate program director, resigned on Sunday.
Both noted in their resignation letters that they had worked to address issues of systemic racism and discrimination at the school during their years as leaders.
On Monday morning, Ryerson journalism students issued a public letter accusing the school of failing to represent and support Black, Indigenous, people of colour and LGBTQ students in the program.
The letter said the school has contributed to an unsafe learning environment rife with discrimination that has left students traumatized.
In an email to The Canadian Press on Monday evening, Neil said that under her leadership, the school had increased diversity of the teaching faculty, introduced new courses about reporting on race, Indigenous issues and the LGBTQ community, and offered mental health supports for students.
But Neil also acknowledged that many students think change has not come fast enough or is broad enough to make an impact,.
“One of the things I’ve learned as a leader is to recognize when It’s time for a major reset and that time is now,” she wrote. “To get to the next level will require different leadership.”
In her resignation letter, Lisa Taylor explained her reason for stepping down.
“Some students don’t believe that I’m in their corner, which means they may not turn to me if they’re in need, and having an undergraduate program director who is a trusted resource for only some students is truly inequitable,” she wrote.
A spokeswoman for Ryerson said the school “continues to acknowledge the work that needs to be done to address systemic racism” and will continue to take concrete steps to address the students’ concerns.
Health-care workers across Ontario still struggle to obtain personal protective equipment to shield them from COVID-19, three major unions said Sunday as they called on the province to do more to ensure their safety as the pandemic rages on.
Unifor, the health-care arm of the Service Employees International Union and the Canadian Union of Public Employees also called for a “universal wage” of $25 an hour for all personal support workers regardless of what part of the provincial system they work in.
Both messages are part of a provincewide public awareness campaign set to launch in workplaces on Monday.
The secretary-treasurer of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions said many workers were denied access to PPE at the beginning of the pandemic, contending it was often kept under lock and key by employers.
Sharon Richer said that practice continues today in some cases, despite assurances from the province that it has a stockpile of 12.4 million pieces of PPE such as N95 masks.
“We’re asked to work with a deadly virus,” she said. “We’re not provided with the tools to protect ourselves and not supported if we become ill from it. We demand better from this government and our employers.”
The unions, which represent 175,000 health-care workers, say thousands of them have contracted COVID-19 throughout the pandemic and 20 have died from the virus.
Richer said early in the pandemic there was debate about how COVID-19 was spread and N95 masks were difficult to obtain.
But as the pandemic nears its one-year anniversary, she argued there is no excuse not to provide workers with vital protective gear.
“The masks were very scarce,” Richer said. “They’re not now. … We shouldn’t have to go into work on a daily basis and beg for protection to keep us safe from this virus.”
SEIU President Sharleen Stewart said the unions are also asking the government to raise the wages of personal support workers in all health care settings to $25 an hour.
The pandemic has illustrated the importance of PSWs in hospitals, long-term care, and in home care, she said.
A staffing study released by the province last year illustrated the disparity between PSW wages in different sectors of the health-care system.
It found that PSWs in Ontario long-term care homes make an average hourly wage of $22.69. That compared to the $17.30 average hourly rate paid to PSWs delivering home care.
Stewart said working conditions for PSWs are poor, full-time opportunities and benefits are hard to come by, and wages are low.
“The government … must raise the minimum wage for personal support workers and make it universal in every sector,” she said. “Whether you work in a hospital, a nursing home or in home and community care, a PSW, is a PSW, is a PSW.”
Katha Fortier of Unifor said workers will participate in the campaign in the coming weeks, as Ontario prepares to launch its 2021-2022 budget.
“COVID-19 has over-stressed Ontario’s health-care resources and led to the tragic failure of the long term care system,” she said. “But the truth is the pandemic revealed systemic problems that frontline workers have been struggling with for years.”
During the pandemic, Ontario has spent hundreds of millions to provide temporary pay hikes to workers throughout the health-care sector.
In October, the province said it would provide a targeted wage increase between $2 to $3 an hour to more than 147,000 personal support workers.
That program, which cost $461 million, is set to expire on March 31.
A spokeswoman for Health Minister Christine Elliott said the government is monitoring the impact of that temporary wage increase for PSWs and evaluating next steps.
“We will continue to engage with our sector partners to inform an approach to a wage enhancement intervention after March and in the long-term for the home and community care sector,” Alexandra Hilkene said in a statement.
The government has also spent nearly $1.1 billion on PPE and other supplies for health care workers, she added.
“We have continued to respond to emergency escalations for PPE within 24 hours to hospitals, long-term care and retirement homes, and other facilities in order to support essential workers in all settings and ensuring supplies and equipment are expedited to those most in need,” Hilkene said.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s tourism industry is facing a crisis greater than the combined impacts of Sept. 11, 2001, the SARS outbreak and the global financial crisis, according to a new report.
The depth of the crisis means it will be a long recovery for the tourist industry with potential shock waves for other areas of the economy, says Destination Canada, a Crown corporation whose mandate is to promote domestic tourism. The agency compiled new data for the report to be released Monday on an industry that is linked to one in 10 Canadian jobs, Destination Canada says.
“Tourism has a ripple effect into so many other parts of our quality of life as Canadians,” said Marsha Walden, president and chief executive officer of Destination Canada. “It’s one of those very few industries, maybe the only one, that can be found in every corner of this country.”
The report adds a new dimension to discussions about the pandemic’s uneven effects across different regions and sectors of the Canadian economy, for which limited data had previously been available. It also sheds light on the amount of time needed for certain key areas of Canada’s economy to recover.
Overall, the number of “active” businesses — one that is operating and has employees — in the sector declined by nine per cent between January and November of last year. Half a million people in the tourism industry lost their jobs in 2020, Walden said.
Within the tourism sector, travel services saw the biggest drop in active businesses with 31 per cent fewer firms operating. Rail, scenic and sightseeing transportation saw the second-biggest drop with a 14.9-per-cent decline.
The hotel industry suffered throughout 2020, with losses concentrated in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, whose downtown hotels had the lowest occupancies of any region in Canada. Revenues for hotels in those three cities fell 79 per cent in the last year for a total loss of $2.3 billion across the three cities, the report says.
To compile the data used in the report, Destination Canada conducted original research and relied on information from government and industry reports, Walden said.
The report doubles as a call to action for Canadians to offset the damage to the country’s tourism industry by taking domestic vacations once the public health situation improves. If enough Canadians shift their international travel plans to focus on domestic destinations, that could speed up recovery for the tourism sector by up to one year, the report states.
Without any major change in consumer spending habits, it would take five years for the industry to reach pre-pandemic levels, the report says. But reallocating two thirds of the dollars spent on international travel in 2019 to domestic travel would replace the estimated $19.4 billion shortfall in the industry in 2020 and sustain more than 150,000 jobs, the report says.
“Canadians have been sitting at home, saving a lot of money this year, which is great for individuals and not so great for the economy,” Walden said. “We really need them to get out there and travel the country and spend money across the country once it’s safe to do so.”
Guidatour, which sells walking tours of downtown Montreal and other areas, is one of the small tourism-dependent businesses whose revenues plummeted last year as its usual customer base of international tourists disappeared. The company’s revenues were down 95 per cent last year, said the company’s owner, Angele Vermette.
Prior to the pandemic, Guidatour employed eight people full-time and had a network of about 100 tour guides that worked on a freelance basis, Vermette said.
Guidatour sometimes arranged more than 100 tours per day, but during the pandemic there were often days when it didn’t give a single one, Vermette said.
“These are passionate people that love their job,” Vermette said. “Being a tour guide, you don’t do that for your retirement, you don’t do that for the pay, you do that because you love history and you love tourism, you love your city.”
Improving economic activity in Canada’s downtown centres, where Guidatour primarily operates, will be key to a recovery for the tourism sector as a whole, Walden said, because visitors to a region typically travel first to a city core before continuing on to other areas.
Vermette said her staff have been working on developing new programming, some of which could also appeal to locals, in order to capitalize on any uptick in travel later this year. With the rollout of the vaccine, Vermette said she was hopeful that Guidatour would have more customers this year, but she noted that sales still won’t be close to what the company saw in 2019.
Similarly, Frontiers North Adventures, a family-owned business that offers tours to Churchill, Man., where visitors can see local attractions like polar bears and beluga whales, has been changing its offerings to appeal to Canadians looking to take domestic vacations this year.
In the past, around 80 per cent of the company’s customer base has been made up of foreign travellers, who begin the tour in Winnipeg before flying to Churchill, said John Gunter, the company’s president. But anticipating another weak year for international travel, the company is adding flights to Churchill directly from Calgary and Montreal in the hopes of tapping into the domestic market for northern adventures.
“We had to rejig our offerings to be more attractive to domestic and local audiences,” Gunter said. “If we have only Winnipeg to rely on, then it’s going to be another year of losses.”
In a wide-ranging interview aired Sunday, Harry and Meghan described painful discussions about the colour of their son’s skin, losing royal protection and the intense pressures that led the Duchess of Sussex to contemplate suicide.
WATCH: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2021/03/07/harry-meghan-to-delve-into-tough-royal-split-with-oprah-2/
The interview with Oprah Winfrey was the couple’s first since they stepped down from royal duties and the two-hour special included numerous revelations.
Harry told Winfrey that he felt trapped by royal life and was surprised that he was cut off financially and lost his security last year. He also said he felt his family did not support Meghan, who acknowledged her naivete about royal life before marrying Harry, as she endured media attacks and false stories.
Meghan, who is biracial, described that when she was first pregnant with son Archie, there were “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.” The statement led Winfrey to ask “What,” incredulously and sit in silence for a moment.
Meghan declined to say who had this conversation with Harry that he relayed to her, saying revealing their name would be “very damaging.”
“I was trapped, but I didn’t know I was trapped. My father and my brother, they are trapped.” – Harry
In a rare positive moment in the interview, Harry and Meghan revealed their second would be a girl and that she would be born sometime in the summer.
Their first child, son Archie, turns 2 in May.
The couple also revealed that they will likely not have any more children. “Two is it,” said Meghan.
Harry said “to have a boy and then a girl, what more can you ask for? But now we’ve got our family. We’ve got the four of us and our two dogs.”
The interview opened with Winfrey gushing over Meghan’s pregnancy and lamenting that COVID-19 protocols kept them from hugging.
The interview aired Sunday night in the United States, a full day before it will air in Britain. The revelations aren’t over: Winfrey teased additional bits of the interview would be shown Monday morning on CBS.
In response to a question from Winfrey, Harry said he wouldn’t have left royal life if he hadn’t married Meghan, but that it was their relationship that revealed the strictures of royal life.
“I wouldn’t have been able to, because I myself was trapped,” Harry said. “I didn’t see a way out.
“I was trapped, but I didn’t know I was trapped,” Harry said, before adding, “My father and my brother, they are trapped.”
Harry acknowledged that he does not have a close relationship presently with his brother William, who is heir to the throne after their father, Prince Charles.
The prince disputed rumours that he intentionally blindsided his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, with his decision to split. He suspects the rumours came from the institution.
“I’ve never blindsided my grandmother,” he said. “I have too much respect for her.”
Meghan, too, was complimentary toward the queen, despite saying at one point she realized some in the palace were willing to lie to “protect other members of the family.”
“The queen has always been wonderful to me,” Meghan said.
“It’s easy to have an image of it that is so far from reality. And you’re being judged on the perception, but you’re living the reality of it.” – Meghan
Winfrey at various points in the interview ran through headlines about Meghan and at one point asked about the mental health impact. Meghan responded that she experienced suicidal thoughts after marrying Harry, but when she asked to get help for her mental health, she was told it would be bad for the family if she did.
Meghan said she grew concerned about her son not having a royal title because it meant he wouldn’t be provided security.
Meghan said digesting everything during while pregnant was “very hard.” More than the “prince” title, she was the most concerned about her son’s safety and protection.
“He needs to be safe,” a teary-eyed Meghan recalled. “We’re not saying don’t make him a prince or princess, whatever it’s going to be. But if you’re saying the title is going to affect their protection, we haven’t created this monster machine around us in terms of click bait and tabloid fodder. You’ve allowed that to happen, which means our son needs to be safe.”
Meghan said it was hard for her to understand why there were concerns within the royal family about her son’s skin colour. She said it was hard for her to “compartmentalize” those conversations.
Sunday’s interview special opened with Meghan describing how naive she was about the ground rules of royal life before she married her husband, Harry, nearly three years ago. “I didn’t fully understand what the job was,” she said. She also noted that she did not know how to curtsy before meeting Queen Elizabeth II for the first time, and didn’t realize it would be necessary.
“I will say I went into it naively because I didn’t grow up knowing much about the royal family,” Meghan said. “It wasn’t something that was part of conversation at home. It wasn’t something that we followed.”
Meghan said she and Harry were aligned during their courtship because of their “cause-driven” work. But she did not fully comprehend the pressure of being linked the prestigious royal family.
“It’s easy to have an image of it that is so far from reality,” she said. “And that’s what was really tricky over those past few years, is when the perception and the reality are two very different things. And you’re being judged on the perception, but you’re living the reality of it. There’s a complete misalignment and there’s no way to explain that to people.”
At the top of the interview, Winfrey ran through several key points: that the production was following strict COVID-19 protocols, no topic was off limits and that Meghan and Harry were not being paid for the special.
Royal interviews that aren’t tied to a specific topic are rare, and prior televised sessions have often proved problematic. Prince Andrew’s 2019 BBC interview about his links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein led to his own departure from royal duties after he failed to show empathy for Epstein’s victims.
Harry and Meghan’s departure from royal duties began in March 2020 over what they described as the intrusions and racist attitudes of the British media toward the duchess.
In Britain, the interview is seen as poorly timed. It will air while Harry’s 99-year-old grandfather Prince Philip remains hospitalized in London after undergoing a heart procedure.
It is unclear what public reaction, if any, the queen and other royal family members will have to Sunday’s interview. The U.K.’s Sunday Times newspaper, citing an anonymous source, reported that the queen would not watch it.
On Wednesday, the palace said it was launching a human resources investigation after a London newspaper reported that a former aide had accused Meghan of bullying staff in 2018.
A spokesman for the duchess said she was “saddened by the latest attack on her character, particularly as someone who has been the target of bullying herself.”
Harry and Meghan’s departure from royal life was supposed to be reviewed after a year. On Feb. 19, Buckingham Palace confirmed that the couple would not return to royal duties and Harry would relinquish his honorary military titles – a decision that made formal, and final, the couple’s split from the royal family.
