The Tilbury Times

Year: 2021

  • As provinces limit PCR testing, should Canadians be able to report rapid test results?

    As more provinces scale back PCR testing for COVID-19 and the Omicron variant continues to surge, many people in Canada are relying on results from take-home rapid antigen tests, if they can get their hands on them.
    However, in much of the country, rapid tests are going uncounted and are not included in official provincial case counts. Some medical experts are warning it’s important to document those results to keep tabs on the pandemic’s progress.
    We need it for a number of things, said Sally Otto, a UBC evolutionary biologist and member of B.C.’s COVID-19 Modelling Team.
    In order to predict when we’re going to be at the peak, when we’re going to be at the downside of this Omicron wave, we need to know how many people are infected. If we don’t have a good sense of that, it’s really hard to know, are we still at the beginning of this wave or are we at the end of this wave?
    The tracking of positive results from rapid tests is extremely limited, with most jurisdictions forgoing any kind of reporting system, and it’s getting more difficult for people to access other forms of testing in several parts of Canada.
    On Thursday, for example, Ontario changed its testing guidelines to say people who receive positive results on rapid antigen tests no longer need to get PCR tests (new window) for confirmation. And as of Friday, the province is also limiting PCR testing to high-risk people who are symptomatic, vulnerable populations and workers in high-risk settings.
    A patchwork of approaches to documenting rapid test results are in place in jurisdictions throughout Canada to document rapid test results, such as:

    A piecemeal effort is not going to be as good in terms of the ability to have a good sense of actually how many people are infected right now, what’s the predicted burden that’s going to lead to with hospitalization and when will we be through this, Otto said.
    The best data we’ve had about the COVID pandemic has been from the United Kingdom and that’s been because of their strong data analytic framework. They have data on cases linked to hospitalization and vaccination and that’s world class, Otto said.

    Next steps

    Jarvis Schmid of Calgary tested positive for COVID-19 on a rapid test on Boxing Day.
    After he processed the news, Schmid next wondered what he needed to do with his result.
    I remember someone saying something about it’s good to have these records on hand. What if you have long term symptoms or it helps with diagnoses? said the 38-year-old, who has been isolating from his family.
    There is no system to track rapid test results in Alberta so Schmid instead uploaded a photo of his rapid test along with the date he took the test into his electronic medical records.
    I understand they probably couldn’t get something in place right away. I hope they end up putting something in place that you can easily log this. But right now it’s a bit of a scramble mode, he said.
    However, not everyone agrees a portal similar to what Schmid suggests would be helpful.
    Dr. Stephanie Smith, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Alberta, said that type of tracking would require people to be proactive about inputting their results.
    I think the time and effort and money it takes may not actually result in a huge amount of benefit in terms of giving us more information than what we have from the subset of people that are still getting PCR tested, Smith said.

    Down the line

    Alberta family physician Dr. David Keegan said something is better than nothing when it comes to tracking rapid test results.
    He’s primarily concerned with the bureaucratic consequences for patients who only have a positive rapid test rather than PCR confirmation.
    Will disability, insurance companies accept those when later on, people are looking at long-term disability for benefits and for access to services? Will those self-reported results be accepted? We don’t know, Keegan said.
    Let’s hope they are. It would just be ideal if governments had figured out a way to gather such data, rapid test results objectively.
    Julia Wong · CBC News

  • ‘God seemed to have other plans’

    By: Peter Jackson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Telegram
    When I get where I’m going
    There’ll be only happy tears
    I will shed the sins and struggles
    I have carried all these years
    And I’ll leave my heart wide open
    I will love and have no fear
    Yeah, when I get where I’m going
    Don’t cry for me down here.
    — From “When I Get Where I’m Going” (Rutherford/Teren)
     
    Jamie Badcock didn’t want to go through a second double-lung transplant when his first set of transplanted lungs started failing in the fall of 2020.
    “I had to make a huge decision, and it was really difficult to make because I had a really, really difficult first transplant and I vowed to myself that I would never go through a transplant ever again,” Badcock said in June 2021 from Toronto, where he and his mother had travelled to be available for a transplant at a moment’s notice.
    It was the second time since the 2017 operation that he battled rejection. The first time was touch and go.
    “When he was in ICU, they told me he was going to die, but luckily he survived it, which is a huge, huge thing,” said his mother, Charmaine Skiffington.
    At 34, Badcock had already beaten the odds of survival for cystic fibrosis patients of his generation.
    But in the early hours of Monday, Dec. 27, three days shy of his 35th birthday, the clock finally ran out.
    “Early this morning, we lost our beloved Jamie,” his husband, Steve Badcock, wrote in a Facebook post that evening. “Jamie was so unbelievably courageous and determined. He was determined to get better, he was determined to return home to his family and friends. He struggled, he pushed, he fought. But God seemed to have other plans.”
     Final push
    Steve had travelled back to Toronto last month after Jamie’s transplant team said he was too weak to undergo surgery should a set of lungs become available.
    Jamie — who changed his name to Badcock from Chafe when the two were married — had been in hospital since July, but with Steve’s help, he started on a daily regimen of food and exercise. Doctors were impressed with his improvement, but just before Christmas, his health deteriorated again.
    “To say that my heart has been shattered into a million pieces doesn’t even begin to describe the pure ache I feel in my entire body,” Steve wrote in his post.
    Asked by the minister at their wedding what attracted him to Jamie, Steve said it was his kindness.
    “That sounds simple, but that response has so much meaning for me,” he wrote. “He never had an ill word for anyone. He treated everyone with compassion and empathy. He put others above himself.”
    Funeral arrangements are being made. In lieu of flowers, the family is asking that donations be made to the Jamie Chafe Memorial Fund. Email transfers can be sent to sladesfuneralhomenl@gmail.com, password: jamiec. Include a note stating what or whom the donation is for.

  • Betsy McGregor named to the Order of Canada

    By: Brendan Burke, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter,  Peterborough Examiner
    Lakefield’s Betsy McGregor has been appointed to the Order of Canada for her  contributions to women and girls in the fields of science, technology,  engineering and mathematics (STEM) and her dedication to developing future  leaders, Governor General Mary Simon announced Wednesday.
    “I am honoured to be recognized,” McGregor stated in a press release.
    “There is a ‘leaky pipeline’ in Canada. Far fewer girls enter and stay in  science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Our nation has yet to  maximize its full talent pool. Especially at this critical time of climate  change and the COVID pandemic, we need to propel the full spectrum of our  nation’s best and brightest youth forward to build an even better Canada.”
    McGregor has delivered science presentations to local students and takes  Lakefield College students to Harvard University as part of her leadership  initiatives.
    She ran twice as the Liberal party candidate for Peterborough riding in the  2008 and 2011 federal elections, losing to Conservative incumbent Dean Del  Mastro. She then wrote a book called “Women on the Ballot” about diversity in  politics, featuring 95 women from all political parties.
    She has served on the boards of the Rotary Club of Peterborough and Camp  Kawartha and as head coach of Peterborough Special Olympics soccer for seven  years.
    Nationally, McGregor belonged to the Canadian organization called SHAD which  builds youth leadership and entrepreneurship on such themes as climate change,  while also serving on the board of the Canadian Association of Girls in Science  and as deputy director of the Gender Institute at the Canadian Institutes of  Health Research.
    Highlighting the impact of pandemic on women and girls, she recently  organized four global Feminist Forums on the role of women on the front lines  and in leadership.
    McGregor was born and raised in Peterborough and on Clear Lake and attended  Queen Mary Public School and Peterborough Collegiate. After graduating from  McMaster University, she taught physical education and geography at St. Peter’s  High School and then earned a master’s degree in geography at McMaster  University.
    She went on to obtain a degree in veterinary medicine in 1987 from Ontario  Veterinary College, University of Guelph, and then founded the World Women’s  Veterinary Association.
    She worked in rural areas of developing nations on field projects which aided  women and children. She served as a federal civil servant with Industry Canada  and Agriculture Canada working on food safety and biotechnology ending with a  Head of Public Service Award.
    For the UNESCO World Science report, McGregor wrote about “The Gender  Dimension of Science and Technology.” She also wrote a “Guidebook on  Mainstreaming Gender in Ministries of Industry” for the 54 nations of the  Commonwealth Secretariat.
    Her other achievements include serving as director of studies for the UN  Commission on Science and Technology’s ‘Gender Working Group’ for two years. Her  book “Missing Links” and a Universal Declaration on Gender in Science and  Technology were both endorsed by the United Nations.
    She is one of 135 Canadians who received appointments Wednesday from Simon,  who is a former chancellor of Trent University.
    Among the other new appointees is Trent University alumnus Yann Martel, who  is now based in Saskatoon, Sask.
    The novelist writes in English, although his first language is French, and  his work — including “Life of Pi” — has been translated into dozens of languages  and adapted for both stage and screen. “Life of Pi,” released 20 years ago, has  sold more than 12 million copies.
    For years, the author and his wife, novelist Alice Kuipers, have helped  Indigenous people and at-risk mothers and babies in Saskatchewan. The couple  have donated a house rent-free in Saskatoon to a series of refugee families from  Syria, Sudan and Eritrea.
    Joining Martel as a companion of the Order of Canada, the highest level, is  former senator Murray Sinclair, the noted Indigenous advocate who chaired the  Truth and Reconciliation Commission into Canada’s residential school  history.
    The commission released its final report in 2015 after hearing testimony from  residential school survivors and their families over several years about the  lasting trauma on generations of Indigenous people.
    — with files from Marie Woolf, The Canadian Press

  • Staying afloat the goal for local business

    By: Sara Beth Dacombe, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Niverville Citizen
    For two years, local businesses have been asked to endure the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Restrictions have been tightened and loosened. Getting supplies into the heart of the country has gotten more difficult. Also, interest rates are rising and loans being recalled.
    Recently, the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce (MCC) commissioned a survey of Manitoba business leaders to determine to what degree the pandemic continues to plague the economy.
    According to the results of that survey, four out of five Manitoba business leaders say that COVID-19 continued to have some level of impact on their business in 2021. However, the overall sentiment has brightened dramatically, with 89 percent of respondents describing themselves as optimistic about their business operations.
    “Manitoba business leaders seem to have a renewed sense of confidence that we’re moving in the right direction—in terms of business operations and growth predictions, government pandemic management, and competitiveness—but there are challenges,” reads a new release from the MCC, published in early December.
    Maranda Rosko, executive director of Southeast Commerce Group, agrees.
    “The effects of the pandemic’s restrictions and lockdowns have definitely impacted local businesses,” Rosko says. “Some businesses are seeing a lingering negative effect from the pandemic while others are beginning to recover. Some businesses have also noticed that the pandemic offered them new opportunities to connect with their customers in different ways, being a positive impact. At this time, our region is happy to not be under heavy restrictions to allow our local businesses to find their groove in this ‘new normal’ and continue to serve their customers.”
    Of course, that was before new capacity restrictions arrived in late December, in response to the surge of new COVID-19 infections due to the highly transmissible omicron variant.
    Many businesses pivoted to a curbside pickup and takeout model, with some success. And if they didn’t have an online presence before, many businesses finally took the opportunity to create websites equipped with online appointment portals, payment systems, and full catalogue of their products and services.
    “We are seeing a significant shift from in-person shoppers to online shoppers,” says Rosko. “Offering an online shopping option can benefit your current customers and even gain you some new ones.”
    She also encourages many businesses to continue utilizing the resources provided by their local Chamber to network with other businesses in their region.
    The Southeast Commerce Group spent some time at the end of November actively planning for the next one to three years. In those sessions, they discussed their intention to continue providing business support through ventures like the Southeast ChamberMarket.
    “The Southeast ChamberMarket is like an online mall for southeast Manitoba where businesses can sell their products and services, and customers can shop locally from the comfort of their home,” Rosko explains. “We plan on continuing to grow the Southeast ChamberMarket beyond the holiday shopping season for years to come.”
    Busier than Usual 
    Some businesses, like St. Adolphe Pharmacy, have been able to stay open throughout the lockdowns because they offer essential services.
    But just being able to stay open hasn’t been a guarantee that business would go smoothly.
    Massoud Horriat, who owns the pharmacy, says that the biggest challenge they had to overcome was sanitization. Like many other businesses, they had to hire extra staff to help with these extra cleaning procedures.
    “By itself, COVID was just such a challenge, but I had to stay open because I was essential,” Horriat says. “I was needing extra staff for the extra sanitization. For me, I have extra cleaning criteria in place because I do vaccinations out of this location.”
    Initially, Horriat had to change the layout of his pharmacy to accommodate foot traffic and ensure social distancing. This was time-consuming, of course, but his long hours continued long afterward.
    “I’m the only one who does vaccination locally because I’m licensed to do it,” he adds. “Doing it at my location added a lot of extra steps and cautionary measurements. It just adds on a lot of time, and I am the one that needs to do it. For example, I was doing vaccinations today so I’ve been here since 4:00 a.m., because vaccination requires lots of paperwork, data entry, and monitoring. It’s just so many long hours.”
    Another new task that takes up his time is navigating the COVID-19 inspections that regularly come his way.
    “We get visits from the COVID inspectors daily and we have to meet the requirements,” says Horriat. “We are a pharmacy, so we have to be very careful.”
    Horriat explains that his business was stable, or perhaps even busier than usual, during the pandemic.
    But there is one type of customer that he hasn’t been happy to see coming back more often. The pharmacy owner says that he now has to deal with people coming to his business to try and debate with him the merits of the COVID-19 vaccine.
    “I’m having increased visitors that are anti-vaccine actively come to try and debate me,” says Horriat. “I’m doing vaccinations and once or twice a week people are stopping in to ask me why I’m doing vaccinations… As recently as this morning, people came into the store to promote an anti-parasitic medication instead of the vaccine and I’m not encouraging that.”
    Horriat is hopeful that the more people get vaccinated, including their booster shot, the more society will be able to return to normal, allowing businesses to feel less pressure.
    “I’m hopeful in the future, as the pandemic turns to endemic, that there will just be so much less hassle, less worry about sanitization and everything on and on,” he says. “Some people who are anti-vax, with the new rules coming into play there are new places, more and more, that they can’t go to, and they are realizing they need the vaccine. I’m hopeful. The more we are educating people, we will see things going back to normal.”
    Repaying Loans and Meeting Demand 
    While the pharmacy remained stable and businesses that could offer remote services did so, other industries have had an even harder time.
    The hospitality and wellness sector has been particularly hard-hit.
    Nicole Devloo is a registered massage therapist with The Body Repair Shop in St. Adolphe. She says that she had to take on loans to stay afloat during the two lengthy lockdowns in Manitoba.
    Emergency loans were made available and helped many businesses pull through. These businesses may otherwise have been forced to close their doors forever.
    However, many businesses are now feeling the pinch as loan repayments come due.
    “I had to do CERB and the [Manitoba] bridge grant,” says Devloo. “Being self-employed, yeah, it’s tough. I mean, taxes beat you down anyway so [the loans] are, like, just throw it on there. I’ll be paying it off sometime anyway, so it may as well be now. Taxes are a big hit for the self-employed, and I’m always trying to stay on top of what I owe.”
    Devloo says that the health and wellness industry often sees an increase in business before people’s benefits plans end for the fiscal year, so she has personally been seeing a lot of clients lately.
    But not all of her clients are completely comfortable coming in to see her in person, as they perceive an ongoing risk to being in close contact with service providers like massage therapists.
    “Most are returning to us if they had been seeing massage therapists before the pandemic hit, and those who are just now coming to see us again are typically happy when they come in,” says Devloo. “They want to use their benefits before they expire for the year, which may be prompting their return. And then we’ve had a few who we can tell are quite hesitant. They haven’t really left their homes except for grocery shopping and now they are needing massage so they are coming to us, so they are a bit nervous.”
    The Body Repair Shop was so busy as of mid-December that they were recruiting a new massage therapist to join their team. However, finding staff has been a challenge.
    “I am looking at hiring a new massage therapist,” says Devloo. “We are trying to find one who complements our team… It’s hard for people to switch to a new therapist, so we need to find a good fit. But a lot of people just aren’t changing jobs right now. It’s a tough time to want to work in the service industry if you don’t need to or don’t love it.”

  • Waning protection from 2 doses shows need for COVID-19 boosters, says head of Ontario’s science table

    Protection provided by COVID-19 vaccines against infection by the novel coronavirus has waned dramatically since the highly infectious Omicron variant started spreading across Ontario, according to data from the province’s Science Advisory Table.
    The data shows that while having two doses does protect against severe illness among those who contract the virus, its ability to prevent infection altogether is plummeting, said Dr. Peter Jüni, the group’s scientific director.
    Vaccine protection has fallen to 14.9 per cent — from nearly 90 per cent a month ago — for people who have received two doses, according to the data.
    Vaccine protection against infection is melting like snow under the sun, Jüni said in an interview on CBC News Network. “Omicron is evading the immune system.
    In reality, there is no way — if it comes to infection — to distinguish anymore between a person who is not vaccinated and a person who has received two doses.
    Vaccine protection refers to the reduction in the risk of getting infected.

    Data shows boosters decrease risk

    Jüni said data from the U.K. has shown a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine can decrease the risk of infection by up to five times, and he called for an acceleration of the campaign to provide them.
    We need to get these doses into people’s arms as soon as possible so you see this purple line again go up, Jüni said, referencing the above chart. “Based on everything we know, you’ll probably need to wait roughly two weeks before the third dose offers full protection again.
    Full protection means then that your risk of getting infected is decreased roughly by four to five fold.
    Omicron contains more than 30 mutations in the spike protein — the part of the coronavirus that helps it enter human cells — some of which are associated with resistance to neutralization from antibodies.
    Ontario discovered its first case of the Omicron variant on Nov. 28, just days after South African researchers alerted the world to its existence. Around three weeks later, Omicron became the dominant variant (new window), making up the majority of new daily infections in the province.

    2 doses prevent severe outcomes: data

    Despite the clear weakening in protection from infection, the data shows that two doses continue to offer over 90 per cent protection against hospitalization and intensive care unit admission.
    Jüni said that’s proof that the vaccines have been successful at achieving their primary goal, although he warned that the situation could change in the coming days and weeks because, up until now, most people who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 were infected with the previously dominant Delta variant.
    Only in the next few days, we will start to see an uptick in patients admitted for Omicron infections, said Jüni. That’s the delay you typically see.… We saw the uptick in case numbers for Omicron and now we will see the uptick in hospitalizations.

    9,418 new cases Monday

    Ontario reported 9,418 new cases on Monday, according to Health Minister Christine Elliott, a slight dip in infections after hitting a record-high 10,412 cases on Saturday and logging 9,826 cases on Boxing Day.
    The rolling seven-day average of new daily cases now stands at 7,550, up from 2,863 one week ago.
    Experts have said the actual number of cases is likely far higher than those reported each day, because many public health units have reached their testing capacity.
    Public Health Ontario reported an additional five deaths linked to COVID-19 on Monday, pushing the provincial death toll to 10,162.
    Health Minister Christine Elliott said there were 480 people hospitalized with COVID-19 and 176 of them were in intensive care units.
    The number of people hospitalized increased from 373 on Sunday, although she noted that not all hospitals report COVID-19 data on weekends.
    The seven-day rolling average for COVID patients in the ICU is 168, Elliott said.
    Elliott said more than 45,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered on Boxing Day.
    Thank you, #TeamOntario, for taking time out of your holidays to get shots into arms, she tweeted.
    COVID-19 data will be limited over the holidays, as the Ministry of Health will not be updating its website until Dec. 29.
    CBC News

  • Canada-based Pakistani filmmaker faces death threats in home country over blasphemy-related work

    By: Laura Steiner/Local Journalism Initiative
    Police in Pakistan are investigating threats to a Halton area journalist, who has been vocal against the draconian blasphemy laws in the South Asian country. Mohsin Abbas worked as a producer for an award-winning documentary by BBC Storyville about Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which prescribe death or life imprisonment for people accused of insulting Islam.
    The BBC documentary titled ‘The Accused: Damned or Devoted?’ details Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws and the punishment they prescribe for the alleged violators. Many Pakistanis, who have criticised these laws for being too harsh, risk being charged with blasphemy or assassinated. Critics say these laws have been used to persecute and unfairly target minorities.
    The documentary explores the long-running case of Asia Bibi, the Christian woman accused of blasphemy, against the backdrop of the 2018 elections in Pakistan, and the rise of the fundamentalist religious outfit Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and its leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi.
    In October 2018, the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted Asia based on insufficient evidence and she was later allowed to leave Pakistan for Canada where she is currently living along with her children and husband. Since March last year, the BBC documentary has been aired around the world in various languages. The documentary highlights a split within the Pakistani society over (mis)use of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan. Producer Abbas, is feeling the heat

    Peter Bhatti of Brampton, Ont., left, with his brother, Shahbaz, during a visit to Parliament Hill. Shahbaz, who was a Christian federal minister in Pakistan, was killed after speaking out against the country’s blasphemy laws. (David Bhatti)

    The situation is intense in his hometown, Sialkot, where a 49-year-old Sri Lankan citizen Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana, was lynched by a mob on December 3 over allegations of blasphemy. The  mob consisted of hundreds of charged protesters, including employees of a sports equipment factory where Kumara worked as a manager.
    Hundreds of people have so far been detained by the police in Punjab, the largest province of Pakistan, in connection with Kumara’s lynching.  However, an atmosphere of fear still prevails in Sialkot where two brothers were lynched in the most horrific way a few years ago.
    Soon after Sri Lankan citizen Kumara was lynched in Sialkot, some men approached Abbas’ family, warned them to stop Abbas from doing documentaries critical of blasphemy laws.  They  told his brother that Abbas would meet a fate like Salmaan Taseer, the late governor of Punjab. Taseer was assassinated by Mumtaz Qadri, the police guard deployed for his security. Qadri shot Taseer 27 times with an automatic gun in Islamabad’s Aabpara Market on January 4, 2011 because he believed that the Punjab governor had committed some sort of blasphemy.
    This isn’t the first time Abbas and his family have faced threats due to his work. Few years ago, a failed Mississauga mayoral candidate was charged with threatening Abbas and his family.  Riazuddin Ahmad Choudhry was charged with threatening Abbas in a phone call after the latter published a commentary critical of the candidate on Dawn.com, Pakistan’s largest and oldest English-language newspaper.
    Watch the full trailer below:

  • A place for everyone at the Norfolk County library

    By: J.P. Antonacci, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Hamilton Spectator
    Heather King says she is loath to give any advice to Norfolk County council about how to appropriately fund the cash-strapped county’s library system.
    But the outgoing Norfolk County Public Library CEO did urge councillors to consider the intangible benefits provided by the library’s five brick-and-mortar branches and robust online offerings.
    Chief among those benefits, King said, is acting as a check against misinformation.
    Whether by talking in person with reference librarians or browsing the “credible virtual library” of trustworthy academic and news sources, library patrons can skip the unverified social media rabble and get the straight goods on important issues like COVID-19 vaccination.
    “It’s our role to search out and provide legitimate information for people,” King said.
    “With websites, social media, you don’t know what’s fact or fiction. When you come to the library, it’s a trust issue that you’re going to be able to find something or talk to someone who can point you in the right direction.”
    Libraries are good for democracy, she added, as they give everyone equal access to information and encourage critical thinking.
    “They’re places where you can challenge your own knowledge base, your own thoughts about different topics,” King said.
    “In ways of race, in ways of hot topics like truth and reconciliation, climate change, gender issues, LGBTQ communities. We need to be that place where there’s a depository of information that you can come and search out at your own pace.”
    King is retiring at the end of the year after seeing the library system through what she hopes is the worst of the pandemic.
    In her eight years at the helm, she guided the library out of a financial deficit and tripled active cardholders from 7,000 to around 21,000 today.
    More than 2,000 people visited a library branch in October to get their COVID-19 vaccination certificate laminated for free, while the recent federal election campaign brought in droves of residents to vote.
    “Many of them hadn’t been in a library before,” King said. “They’ll see what we’re all about and then come back and get a library card.”
    Talk of a branch closure has subsided at town hall. But the library is still under pressure to generate more revenue as part of the system’s $2.7-million operating budget.
    Patrons and local businesses have responded to the library’s call for donations, and King is confident NCPL will reach its $61,000 fundraising target by New Year’s Eve.
    “It’s only because our library patrons have been very generous,” she said. “To see people really come through has been really uplifting. I think the library will survive.”
    To illustrate the return on investment of a publicly funded library system, King points to a recent study that conservatively estimates for every taxpayer dollar invested, Norfolk’s libraries return $7.13 in spinoff economic activity and social benefits such as literacy development and health and wellness.
    “We did that study as part of the budget reduction plan to go back to council and say, ‘Libraries are worth your investment, and libraries are serving way more people than you can imagine they are,’” King said.
    Still, she added, even the best ROI calculation cannot accurately reflect the value in giving a homeless person a safe and warm place to apply for a job online or meet their social worker.
    Nor can a dollar value be put on the cries of delight King hears from outside her office door as the library’s youngest patrons spy the colourful cover of what could be their next favourite book.
    Her office at the Simcoe branch is steps away from the Canadiana Room, where historical titles, scrapbooks and bound newspapers dating back to the mid-19th century tell Norfolk’s story.
    “You have a lot of people now interested in genealogy, or just stories that happened a long time ago, and they’re trying to put the facts together,” King said.
    The library, she notes, is one of the few remaining public spaces you can enter for free and stay all day, with no expectation to buy anything and no one hovering in judgment.
    “It’s also a place where all walks of life, all different people, all ages can be in the same space without having a paid membership,” she said.
    “It doesn’t matter what background you come from, economics, your diversity in terms of your culture — you’re equal here.”

  • Quebec’s Jean-Marc Vallée, director of Big Little Lies, Dallas Buyers Club, dead at 58

    Quebec filmmaker and producer Jean-Marc Vallée, who won an Emmy for directing the hit HBO series Big Little Lies and whose 2013 drama Dallas Buyers Club earned multiple Oscar nominations, has died. He was 58.
    His representative Bumble Ward said Sunday that Vallée died suddenly in his cabin outside Quebec City over the weekend.
    Vallée was acclaimed for his naturalistic approach to filmmaking, directing stars including Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal over the past decade.
    He directed Emily Blunt in 2009’s The Young Victoria and became a sought-after name in Hollywood after Dallas Buyers Club, featuring Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, earned six Academy Awards nominations, including best picture.
    He often shot with natural light and hand-held cameras and gave actors freedom to improvise the script and move around within a scene’s location. The crew roamed up and down the Pacific Crest Trail to shoot Witherspoon in 2014’s Wild.
    They can move anywhere they want, the filmmaker said of his actors in a 2014 interview with The Associated Press. It’s giving the importance to storytelling, emotion, characters. I try not to interfere too much. I don’t need to cut performances. Often, the cinematographer and I were like, ‘This location sucks. It’s not very nice. But, hey, that’s life.‘
    He re-teamed with Witherspoon to direct the first season of Big Little Lies in 2017, and directed Adams in 2018’s Sharp Objects, also for HBO. Vallée won DGA awards for both.
    Vallée’s French Canadian films helped him catch Hollywood’s attention. They include C.R.A.Z.Y., which was released in 2005, and the romantic drama Café de Flore, which garnered 13 Genie nominations in 2012 and won three.
    In an interview in 2018, the Montreal-born filmmaker said his roots gave him a unique perspective on the industry.
    Being a foreigner in the States, I have to do more homework to try to really get into the culture, understand the culture, and understand the world of the characters that I am trying to depict. And so I become a student, he said .
    The Associated Press 

  • Work for yourself? Canada has fewer and fewer people like you — and here’s why

    On the surface, Canada’s labour market has made a complete comeback (new window) since losing nearly three million jobs at the start of the pandemic, but dig a little deeper, and you’ll see that the recovery hasn’t been for everyone, including self-employed Canadians.
    Self-employment in Canada had been growing steadily for several years, but over the course of the pandemic, it fell to its lowest level in more than a decade. There were nearly 2.9 million self-employed Canadians in February 2020. Now, there are just over 2.6 million.
    Some of the losses in self-employment have been made up by gains in paid employment in the same industries, according to Statistics Canada. Those include professional, scientific and technical services.
    But in other industries, such as agriculture, construction and services, including personal care, declines in self-employment haven’t been offset.
    Richard Dias, founder and head of research at Acorn Macro Consulting in Halifax, blames the drop on government pandemic policies that weren’t tailored to support the success of Canada’s self-employed. These policies include blanket business closures and capacity restrictions, complicated applications for financial support and PPE requirements.
    It favoured giant corporates, who obviously are structured much, much better to navigate difficult situations … versus the humble shopkeeper, said Dias.
    Statistics Canada breaks self-employment into several categories, including people who own an incorporated or unincorporated business, farm or professional practice, or those without a business, such as newspaper carriers or babysitters. Most self-employed Canadians are a business-of-one, but about one-third employ other people.
    Dias is also worried about those self-employed Canadians who stretched themselves financially to survive the pandemic.

    fter doing all the right things, they burned through their savings, he said. There’s no recognition, frankly, of that profound systemic error and the prolonged impacts that it’s going to have on our economy.

    Business on the brink

    Michelle Palmer has been self-employed for eight years, but the owner of Pause Beauty Boutique in Toronto said the pandemic has made her question it.
    I’ve encountered the idea and the thought of closure so many times in the last two years, I can’t even count, said Palmer.
    She was forced to close her spa business for 10 months out of the past two years because of public health lockdowns. Despite applying for all the financial help she could, she reopened her doors deep in debt.
    Our debt load is in the six figures right now, and that’s not going to go away overnight.

    Falling through the cracks

    Some self-employed Canadians fell through the cracks of government support programs, according to Dan Kelly, the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
    I’ve talked to thousands of self-employed people who really got almost no support through the COVID emergency, said Kelly.
    He says many of them didn’t qualify for programs that their large or medium-sized counterparts did. For example, the Canada Emergency Business Account provided interest-free loans of $40,000, but initially, applicants had to show they had an annual payroll of at least $50,000 in 2019 to access it.
    Self-employed workers were eligible to apply for the Canada emergency response benefit (CERB) and its replacement, the Canada recovery benefit (CRB), but Kelly argues the income support was not enough to keep a business going.
    Palmer says she was cut off from the personal support programs this year because her 2020 taxes showed she didn’t make the required $5,000 to be eligible for CERB or CRB. That’s because she is a sole proprietor, which means that her business and personal taxes are filed together, and because of the closures, Palmer’s business operated at a loss.
    The message that we’ve sent to entrepreneurs over the last two years has been a pretty negative one, said Kelly.
    The CFIB expects a wave of business closures in 2022 as the federal pandemic support programs wind down.
    I think many business owners will not see a pathway back to profitability, said Kelly.

    Potential new cohort of entrepreneurs

    But a new wave of self-employment could be on the horizon. According to a recent survey (new window), 30 per cent of traditionally employed Canadians expect to transition to self-employment in the next two years.
    The online survey of 3,000 people who work full-time was conducted in August and September of 2021 by data company Dynata for cloud accounting firm Freshbooks. The survey results were balanced against Statistics Canada data on age, gender and industry.
    Such a shift to self-employment would be welcome news to the CFIB’s Kelly, who wants to see the group of self-employed Canadians grow — not shrink.
    They are the group that we’re counting on to replace many of the businesses that are now boarded up, he said. We’re also counting on them to create jobs for other Canadians.

    Seeking out job security

    In the professional, science and technical fields, the trend may be headed in the opposite direction: toward salaried positions, which increased by close to 22 per cent between November 2019 and November 2021. Statistics Canada suggests the rise is a sign a pandemic-related shift to more standard forms of employment may be underway.
    Many of those newly hired employees likely want the stability of a salaried position, according to Scotiabank deputy chief economist Brett House.
    It’s not a sign that Canadians are becoming less entrepreneurial. It is a sign that the labour market recovery is continuing and getting firmer, said House.
    Copywriter Shannon Mulligan is among that crowd. While freelancing was a lifeline during the pandemic, a position with a tech start-up in Toronto recently won her over.
    Moving from freelance to full-time was not something I was really ready to do, but… it was just an overwhelmingly exciting opportunity, said Mulligan.
    Her new job comes with the flexibility of working from home, something that was more common for freelancers than paid employees pre-pandemic.
    Being able to have that still helped seal the deal for me, said Mulligan.

    Sticking with self-employment

    But others aren’t ready to give up their self-employment status just yet.
    Despite having thoughts of walking away from Pause Beauty Boutique, Palmer says she hasn’t followed through with it yet because she still loves it despite the stress and the financial cost.
    [Working for myself] is the most empowering thing I’ve ever done … and I am not willing to give that up lightly.
    Jacqueline Hansen · CBC News

  • Canada welcomed more Immigrants in 2021 than it has ever before in its history

    By Shazia Nazir / Local Journalism Initiative
    Canada has welcomed 401,000 permanent residents in 2021.  The historic high was announced by Immigration Minister Sean Fraser Thursday.  The previous high was recorded in 1913.
    “This is a historic moment for our country, as we welcome the highest number of newcomers in one year in our history”  Immigration Minister Sean Fraser said. The target was set as part of the Immigration plan for 2021-2023 tabled in October, 2020.
    The achievement is significant in the wake of the challenges caused by the pandemic.   In 2020, the country admitted 184,500 permanent residents. “Canada is built on immigration, and we will continue to welcome the immigrants that Canada needs to succeed. I can’t wait to see the incredible contributions that our 401,000 new neighbours make in communities across the country,” Fraser added.  Immigrants own one in 3 businesses, and account for 1 in 4 health care workers. 75% of Canada’s growth comes from Immigration.
    “This is very good for our country. We welcome the highest number of newcomers in a century, said Ratan Kumar, a Milton resident. Kumar is looking forward to expanding his business with two new employees who immigrated to Canada under the skilled category.