The Tilbury Times

Year: 2021

  • Ontario’s top doctor speaks as province releases vaccine verification app for businesses

    Ontario’s vaccine verification app for businesses, Verify Ontario, appears to be ready for download ahead of schedule, rolling out on the Google and Apple app stores Thursday afternoon.
    Ontario’s vaccine verification app for businesses, Verify Ontario, appears to be ready for download ahead of schedule, rolling out on the Google and Apple app stores Thursday afternoon.
    According to its description, the app gives businesses and organizations the ability to scan the QR codes on province-issued vaccine certificates. After the code is scanned, a green checkmark will appear indicating a valid vaccine certificate, a red X for an invalid certificate or a yellow warning for a QR that cannot be read.
    The province had said it would release a digital verification app by Oct. 22, giving people a safer, more secure and convenient way to demonstrate that they’ve been vaccinated, according to the province.
    To ensure the app was available to businesses and organizations in real time tomorrow, the verification app was added to app stores today, Premier Doug Ford’s press secretary Ivana Yelich said Thursday.
    Ontarians still have the option of using paper vaccine receipts to prove their vaccination status.
    The app description says it also scans most government-issued QR codes from B.C. and Quebec, and that nation-wide capabilities are in development.
    It also says it does not request users’s specific locations or collect information linking visitors, businesses or locations together.
    Ford is set to speak about the enhanced vaccine certificate and verification app Friday morning.
    Meanwhile, the province reported 417 new cases of COVID-19 and the deaths of three more people with the illness on Thursday.
    The number of people being treated for COVID-related sickness in the province’s intensive care units ticked upward to 158 from 153, a second day of increases. About 64 per cent of those patients needed ventilators.
    Critical Care Services Ontario says 13 adults with COVID-related symptoms were admitted to ICUs on Wednesday, and the seven-day average of COVID-19 patients in ICUs stands at 153.
    Meanwhile, the consistent decline in new cases that began around Sept. 5 continued with today’s figures. The seven-day average of daily cases fell to 476, its lowest point since mid-August.
    Speaking to reporters Thursday, Moore said it’s too early to know the impact of the Thanksgiving weekend on the province’s COVID numbers, but said he hopes the numbers will remain on the low end, pointing to the upcoming Diwali and Christmas seasons.
    The numbers come after CBC News first reported that the Ontario government will announce plans next week to exit the ‘Roadmap to Reopen ‘ The further easing of pandemic measures will include ending capacity limits in all locations where proof-of-vaccination requirements are in place, such as restaurants, bars and gyms, a senior official in the government said Wednesday.
    The official declined to say when the relaxed measures will take effect. Dr. Peter Jüni, scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, said that will be a key element of the plan.
    In an interview with CBC Radio’s Metro Morning on Thursday, Jüni said the province should wait at least three weeks before making further changes. That’s because the government announced last Friday that it was lifting capacity limits on some major venues while continuing to impose restrictions on smaller businesses, a move that Jüni called “an experiment.
    The point is, now, that nobody knows how that will impact the pandemic. We should wait three weeks to figure out what’s happening, and then do the next step. But I know the pressure is very high, he said.
    The policy change was immediately questioned by small business groups, like the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
    Critics called on the province to explain its reasoning, saying businesses like restaurants, gyms, yoga and dance studios, swimming and martial arts venues, and bowling alleys continue to see their customer capacity restricted to 50 per cent. Similarly, restaurants need to maintain two metres of physical distance between tables.
    Jüni said he’d like to see the government wait until any potential impacts of the capacity changes for major venues to show up in pandemic data. He added that he has particular concerns about lifting distancing measures in restaurants.
    Ontario is not currently experiencing exponential growth in new cases.
    We are in a place right now where, if we don’t get ahead ourselves and just continue to do what we’ve been doing — keep masking and have the vaccine certificates in place — all of this could work out really well. But we need to be ready that things could change very swiftly.
    If new cases were to start doubling every eight or nine days, that would be an indication that capacity limits may need to be reimposed in some settings, Jüni said.
    Forecasting is complicated by the impending arrival of winter, he added. It is difficult to project how the current level of vaccination coverage in Ontario, nearly 83 per cent of all those 12 and older, could work to counteract people spending more time indoors, he said.

    126 new school-related cases reported

    Here are some other key pandemic indicators and figures from the Ministry of Health’s daily provincial update
    New school-related cases: 126. About 93 per cent were students. Four of the 4,844 publicly-funded schools in Ontario are closed due to COVID-19.
    Tests completed in the last 24 hours: 35,421, with a positivity rate of 1.5 per cent.
    Active cases: 4,022, with roughly one-third associated with the public school system.
    Vaccinations: 28,756 doses were administered by public health units on Wednesday. For a second day, more than 10,000 of those were first shots.
    CBC News with files from Lucas Powers

  • Saga of how conservation land was illegally paved over by developer

    By: Evan Saunders, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Lake Report
    The Vrancor Group managed to pave over a conservation area near the Holiday Inn Express in Glendale because town staff are simply too busy to inspect every project regularly, Lord Mayor Betty Disero says.
    The town also has to trust that developers and builders will not break the rules, she said.
    “Staff aren’t in a position to inspect everything constantly and make sure people are (following town directives),” Disero said in an interview Monday.
    She said the illegal construction at 524 York Rd. occurred between inspections by town officials.
    Coun. Sandra O’Connor shared the mayor’s view.
    “Staff is very busy and it’s very hard to follow up on every single development all of the time,” O’Connor said.
    Coun. Allan Bisback looked for accountability during a public meeting on Sept. 13, asking town planner Rick Wilson who was responsible for approving the as-built plan.
    Wilson said the project had not been approved after discovery of the illegal construction.
    “How did this get overlooked? That still needs to be discussed,” Bisback said in an interview late September.
    He said he expects the issue to return to council once a staff report on the situation is finished.
    Sometime after 2017, Vrancor built a parking lot and connecting road on top of protected environmental land north of York Road.
    “It could happen any number of ways,” Disero said.
    “People don’t follow their site plan or they get the town to sign off and then do unapproved additions.”
    While the inability of staff to inspect every development daily and the trust placed in the developer can lead to this kind of situation, the problem was compounded by the site’s location and the fact that the town traditionally works “on a complaint basis,” Disero said.
    Bisback added: “You would never know unless you were going to stay at one of those hotels. I don’t think a lot of residents know the conservation overlap on approved lands.”
    Disero was unsure who noticed the problem first and chief administrative officer Marnie Cluckie was unable to comment on the situation as of Tuesday.
    “I’m not really 100 per cent sure whether there was a complaint brought in about this or whether the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority noticed it and reported it,” Disero said.
    She said the town was alerted to the illegal paving a while ago but couldn’t say exactly when.
    “It’s not that (staff) just found out last week. It would have been something that they’ve been trying to work towards compliance — which means the zoning change and pre-consultation meetings and applications,” Disero said.
    Now that the illegal construction has been identified, Disero said there are only two options for council to take: either rezone the area so the road is no longer in a conservation area or order the developer to tear up the road and replant the land.
    The latter option has a precedent, she said.
    “That’s happened before in Niagara-on-the-Lake, although it was in respect to woodlots,” Disero said.
    “There have been a couple of farmers that have actually had to reforest areas at the requirement of the conservation authority,” she said.
    But Disero was frank in saying she was unsure what recommendation the conservation authority would make in this instance and that the agency’s determination could affect council’s final decision.
    “In some occasions they are very lax and in some occasions they are very strict.”
    The region is now looking after the conservation land in question and reviewing an ecological impact study supplied by the developer.
    Either way, some councillors were not shy in expressing their dissaproval of the developer’s actions.
    “It is disappointing that we’re at this juncture,” Bisback said.
    “You grant approval to build a development and then you find out later that it wasn’t built correctly.”
    Coun. Norm Arsenault did not hold back during the September public meeting.
    “It just makes me crazy when I see developers taking over conservation areas like this without asking permission,” Arsenault said.
    O’Connor sought assurance from Wilson that the work had in fact been done illegally. “I was quite surprised about that,” she said.
    “That’s why I had to reinforce it and say, ‘Are you saying that they paved (the conservation lands) illegally?’”
    Wilson repeatedly affirmed that the work had been done without the town’s approval.
    O’Connor took issue with the environmental impact study by Myler Ecological Consulting.
    “(Myler) was saying because of the emerald ash borer and the demise of the ash trees the lot didn’t have the same value to the environment,” she said.
    That narrow view didn’t consider the long-term growth potential of the area, she said.
    “In the long run, we won’t just have buckthorn brush there. We will have tall oak trees. It takes time. That woodlot does have value, but that’s just my view,” she said.

  • Afghans targeted by the Taliban say they have no idea how to secure Canadian visas

    Nelofar Akbari is the kind of woman officials in Western nations liked to cite as an example of progress in Afghanistan — right up to the point when all that progress came crashing down and the Taliban came back.
    A graduate of Balkh University in Mazar-i-Sharif, northern Afghanistan, she worked with the German government’s overseas development agency on rule-of-law advocacy and passed the bar in 2015. Almost every job Akbari did in the years that followed was risky.
    In Mazar e-Sharif, she was involved in domestic violence cases. She worked on terrorism cases involving accused who were Taliban. She toured remote villages, teaching village woman about their legal rights relating to marriage and divorce.
    All that work made her a Taliban target. Today, many of the men Akbari helped to put behind bars are free, while she sleeps in a different place almost every night.
    As a human rights activist and member of civil society, I’m afraid of those fundamentalists and extremists that think that my words and activism are agnostic beliefs, and as a defence lawyers I’m afraid of those criminals that I have run their cases in court and seen sentenced to jail, she said.
    She wants to come to Canada. But she doesn’t know how. And she’s not the only one.
    When Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15, Canada and many other Western countries were taken by surprise and scrambled to assist Afghans who had worked for them directly — often as military interpreters or as locally-engaged staff at embassies and on development projects.
    The Trudeau government has so far brought about 2,500 such people to Canada and has issued special visas to roughly another 7,000.
    In September, the government also announced a separate humanitarian visa program to help Afghans who may not have worked directly with Canada, but who would face a high risk of retaliation from the Taliban — those who put themselves at personal risk by defending democracy and upholding human rights, as Foreign Minister Marc Garneau put it.

    ‘I feel very hopeless’

    Canada became the first country in the world to announce a program that will address the growing humanitarian need and welcome 20,000 vulnerable Afghans and we are reaffirming our commitment by increasing the number of vulnerable Afghans to be resettled to 40,000, Emilie Simard, spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), told CBC News.
    This work focuses on women leaders, human rights defenders, religious and ethnic minorities like Sikhs, Hindus and Hazaras, LGBTQ individuals, journalists and others.
    Akbari is one of many Afghans who check more than one box on the government’s priority list — but she said she has no idea how to get herself noticed, or how the program will work.
    She has sent emails to IRCC but has received no response.
    I feel very hopeless. Sometimes I cry, she said. I hope to get a visa and leave Afghanistan.

    No direct applications

    IRCC is not accepting applications for the humanitarian visa program — nor is it selecting refugees directly.
    Instead, the program will draw from a pool of people recommended by outside agencies such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
    It’s the same process Canada has used to resettle thousands of refugees in the past, mostly from long-established refugee camps.

    No ‘immediate solution’

    The lack of a direct avenue to apply for a humanitarian visa is leaving likely candidates for the program in danger, said one Ottawa lawyer working to bring them into Canada.
    I’ve had numerous people reaching out to me — judges, woman advocates, doctors, people who have obviously done the kind of work that would put their lives at risk, said Arghavan Gerami, a Farsi-speaking lawyer who is part of a Canadian Bar Association volunteer group working to help vulnerable Afghans — particularly those like Akbari whose legal work has left them in danger.
    They’ve reached out looking to see if there’s any programs, immediate options that they can pursue. And unfortunately, there isn’t a direct permanent residency path or any other program that is practical and provides an immediate solution.
    Gerami said a program that permits direct applications would speed the process up.
    “So, for example, a permanent residency program with criteria similar to the the health pathway (new window) that opened up several months ago,” she said.
    This is not in place right now, so what we’re left with is really … the very standard visitor visa option — which we know will be rejected because these individuals will not be able to say that they’re going to leave at the end of their authorized period of stay — or … a temporary residency permit, which is also a very long shot, is an exceptional remedy to overcome not being able to meet a requirement under the [Immigration and Refugee Protection Act].
    Gerami said the government’s promise to Afghans resembles its 2015 commitment to bring Syrian refugees to Canada. But that promise led to 25,000 arrivals in the space of a few short months.
    Gerami said this program looks likely to take much longer.
    It shouldn’t just be a pre-election sort of promise or something that’s political, that there isn’t the momentum and the willpower to actually get it off the ground, she said. Let’s get the ball rolling on this.

    Stranded in Tajikistan

    The story of Hasina Muaser and her family shows how difficult it might be to identify and locate the Afghan refugees who most closely fit the government’s desired profile — the ones who most clearly need help to escape Taliban retribution.
    The 18-year-old Muaser started Afghan Koodak (Afghan Child) magazine when she was only 12. She was invited to meet President Hamid Karzai and got the attention of national and international media — and also of the Taliban, who kidnapped her.
    Muaser was able to escape her captives by hurling herself through a third-storey window. She survived the fall but lost the use of her legs.
    Two years ago, the young activist suffered severe burns to one foot while sitting near a hot stove because her paralyzed legs couldn’t feel the heat. Today, that injury needs regular treatment Muaser is unable to receive in Tajikistan, where eight members of her family live precariously in rented accommodation in a town 20 kilometres outside the capital of Dushanbe.

    Scattered around the world

    Her father, who stayed to protect the family’s property when his wife and children fled, disappeared in the chaos of the takeover and they feared he had been killed. They later learned that he had made it out in the chaotic evacuations and is now a refugee in Germany.
    Her brother-in-law, Abdul Sharifi, served alongside the Canadian Army as an interpreter since the earliest days of its Afghan mission, and was evacuated under the special visa program. He is now in Toronto with his own wife and children, but remains worried about his sister-in-law Hasina.
    As a woman with a track record of human rights activism, a documented history of being targeted by the Taliban and family connections to Canada, Muaser appears to fit exactly the criteria Canada has prioritized for resettlement.
    But stranded in a dusty corner of Tajikistan, running out of money and with her foot at risk of amputation, help feels very far away to her.
    I know that the Government of Canada will help us, she said. But I don’t know how we can get to Canada. And I hear my brother-in-law that when you go to Canada, you come and be here and you will walk again.
    Evan Dyer · CBC News

  • MPP Lindsey Park no longer a Parliamentary Assistant

    By: Dan Cearns, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Standard Newspaper
    DURHAM: The Ontario provincial government has relieved MPP Lindsey Park from her role as a parliamentary assistant after new information was learned about her COVID-19 vaccination status.
    “Ms. Lindsey Park will no longer serve as Parliamentary Assistant to the Attorney General, as we recently learned she misrepresented her vaccination status. Ms. Park has, however, provided proof of medical exemption. We subsequently verified the vaccination status of caucus members, and as such, our caucus is fully vaccinated with the exception of two members who have received medical exemptions,” read a statement from Government House Leader Paul Calandra.
    MPP Park’s office did not respond to a request for comment. All caucus members were required to show either proof of vaccination or a medical exemption to remain as a member of the party, and there will be a similar requirement for any Conservative candidate looking to run in the 2022 election.
    “All of our candidates are going to be vaccinated [or] they just aren’t running for our party. [It’s] as simple as that,” Premier Doug Ford said, at a press conference last month.
     

  • Special envoy on combatting antisemitism will be permanent role, Trudeau says

    Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism is now a permanent role, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday.
    Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism is now a permanent role, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday.
    Trudeau made the remarks at an international forum on Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism in Malmo, Sweden.
    In November 2020, the government appointed Irwin Cotler, an international human rights lawyer and former minister of justice, to the role. Now, Trudeau said, Cotler’s office will be supported by dedicated resources.
    This is in line with Canada’s commitment to promote and defend pluralism, inclusion and human rights, Trudeau said.
    Education and awareness will always be key to combatting Holocaust distortion, antisemitism and all other forms of racism.
    It’s the special envoy’s job to work with the minister of foreign affairs, the minister of diversity and inclusion and youth and other implicated ministers to inform Government of Canada policy and programming, according to the federal government .
    Trudeau also highlighted actions taken by his government on Holocaust remembrance and fighting antisemitism, including convening a national summit on antisemitism in Canada and adopting the working definition of antisemitism developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
    Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities, the definition reads.
    Trudeau spoke about fighting hate online — an effort Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, highlighted as being a priority for the European Union.
    Trudeau said his government will work on a national plan to combat hate, calling antisemitism a canary in the coal mine of evil.
    Antisemitism isn’t a problem for the Jewish community to solve alone — it’s everyone’s challenge to take on, especially governments, he said.
    And that’s why we’ll develop and implement a national action plan on combatting hate, working in concert with Jewish communities and our special envoy.
    Richard Raycraft · CBC News

  • Star Trek captain chides B.C. premier over old-growth forests

    By: Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada’s National Observer
    ​B.C. Premier John Horgan, a self-proclaimed Star Trek fan, has disappointed a high-ranking member of the federation who is calling for action to protect the province’s old-growth forests.
    Canadian actor William Shatner, who famously played Capt. James T. Kirk in the original Star Trek TV series, is one of more than 200 celebrities, scientists, artists, and Indigenous and political leaders who have joined a campaign to pressure the NDP government to protect B.C.’s irreplaceable and iconic tall trees.
    “There’s nothing like standing next to a giant ancient cedar to make one recognize how small our place in the universe really is. Some wonders are irreplaceable,” said Shatner, in support of the open-letter initiative first launched by the environmental non-profit Canopy in June.
    “Premier Horgan, these forests should live long and prosper,” Shatner said.
    Horgan has publicly declared his favourite Starfleet captain to be Kathryn Janeway of the USS Voyager, but a rebuke from Capt. Kirk is likely to sting a little for such a devoted fan of the franchise, said Torrance Coste, a campaigner with the Wilderness Committee.
    “The premier is very upfront about the fact that he’s a Trekkie,” said Coste, adding that under other circumstances, Horgan’s NDP would be eager to amplify a message to the B.C. government from a Star Trek legend.
    “Horgan should listen to one of his apparent heroes and go where no premier has gone before,” Coste said.
    Jokes aside, campaigns that involve such a large number and range of influential people are indicative of the effectiveness of harnessing “star power” to pressure political change and the importance of the issue, he said.
    Former NASA scientist James Hansen, actor Judi Dench, primatologist Jane Goodall, former federal environment minister Catherine McKenna, and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip are just some signatories to the open letter sent directly to Horgan urging him to protect at-risk old-growth forests as a shield against the climate crisis.
    But it’s the voters in Horgan’s backyard who are most passionate about the issue, Coste said.
    “The celebrity endorsements of old-growth protection shows how widespread the popularity (of the issue) is outside of B.C,” he said.
    “But nowhere is the support for protecting old-growth as widespread and important as it is right here.”
    Repeated polls indicate deep support for old-growth protections, and virtually every environmental organization in the province has collected thousands of signatures calling for action by the government, said Coste.
    On Wednesday, B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau tabled a petition with the signatures of 52,204 B.C. residents collected by Stand.earth calling for the government to keep its promises to implement deferrals on old-growth logging.
    “It has been a year and a half since the strategic review panel report recommended a six-month timeline to defer logging in old-growth forests at risk of irreversible biodiversity loss,” Furstenau said in a statement.
    “In June, the BC NDP promised more deferrals were forthcoming — but we still haven’t seen them.”
    Old-growth logging was continuing apace, Furstenau said, noting many Indigenous communities have called for logging deferrals in their territories and financial support as they transition away to sustainable economic models in light of the climate crisis.
    “Despite the BC NDP’s grandiose statements on reconciliation and old-growth protection, only a handful of deferrals have been granted,” she said.
    B.C. residents suffered serious impacts and loss as climate change claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed homes during the heat dome and wildfires this summer, she said, adding saving old-growth forests is a key component of climate adaptation.
    What’s more, the Fairy Creek old-growth blockades in southern Vancouver Island graduated over the summer to become the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, Coste said.
    Given the circumstances, it’s ironic that in short order the federal government is headed to the United Nations climate conference, COP26, to negotiate with leaders around the globe to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Coste said.
    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government could be doing more to exert leverage on the province, he added.
    “Canada is going to go to that conference to talk about its role as a climate leader, but no climate leader continues to log the most carbon-dense forests in the world,” Coste said.
    “I think those before-and-after images of some of the biggest trees in the world being cut down on their watch doesn’t bode well for Horgan or Trudeau heading into a global summit like COP26.”
    The forests have global significance when it comes to combating climate change, he added.
    “There are no other forests like them, and they have importance to every single person on the planet, from people like Neil Young to Capt. Kirk.”
    ​

  • Grey Bruce OPP working to add in-person mental health clinician to their team

    By: Greg McGrath-Goudie, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, CollingwoodToday.ca
    The Grey Bruce OPP detachment is working to hire an in-house mental health worker to complement their police services.
    Grey Bruce OPP is the only detachment in the OPP West Region without an embedded mental health clinician, although they do have access to mental health workers who provide telephone support to people in crisis, and in-person support when possible.
    “We currently have available to our officers, if they require a mental health clinician, a 24/7, 1-800 number that we can call that have clinician staffing,” interim Detachment Commander Insp. Debra Anderson said.
    Embedded mental health clinicians directly assist police in their work with people in crisis.
    The detachment is partnering with the Grey Bruce chapter of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) to work on creating the role.
    The Grey Bruce CMHA has partnered with other police departments in the past to hire embedded mental health clinicians. In September, they appointed a worker for the Owen Sound Police.
    Anderson said aside from directly benefiting people in crisis, embedded mental health clinicians can ease pressure on the police and hospitals alike.
    “The benefit of having a clinician attend with an officer if it’s safe to do so is, oftentimes, the clinician was properly trained in mental health issues and how to deal with somebody that’s in crisis,” Anderson said. “They can often deal with [them] as an outpatient, or they may have already an open file on that person and know who their assigned clinician is, and they also can navigate through the mental health system much easier than officers can.”
    With the aid of mental health clinicians, officers may be freer to continue their work without having to remain with patients in a hospital emergency room.
    “As far as the policing side goes, from our perspective, we often have to guard a patient if there is an escape risk, or if they’re combative, and so that ties up the officers dealing with that patient until they’re seen by a doctor,” Anderson said.
    “I think any time we can avoid an apprehension of someone it’s a great benefit for all.”
    The Grey Bruce OPP received 523 mental health calls for service in 2020.
    Amanda Ain-Johnson, a crisis worker who spends two days a week with the Collingwood OPP, said her job expedites the process of getting people the help they need.
    “One of the benefits of having a crisis worker directly on the scene is that we can kind of delve in a little bit deeper, and do a bit more of a crisis assessment that would be happening in the hospital, but we’re doing it right on scene,” she said.
    “We’re supporting the person and giving them resources right then and there,” she said. “We can do referrals, we can try and set them up with some follow up appointments so that they’re hopefully not [ever having] to go to the emergency department. When those situations arise …  we’re trying to keep people out of hospital if it’s possible – it frees up the hospital, it frees up the officers, and it’s better for the person that’s involved if we can just sort of deal with it right then and there and get them the support they need.”
    The Collingwood OPP has had embedded mental health workers since 2017, and they also have a police officer, Cst. Clyde Vivian, trained specifically for mental health calls.
    Ain-Johnson said police work and mental health work create a fruitful partnership.
    “The situation unfolds itself and it just becomes clear who needs to take the lead. Whether Clyde needs to take the lead or I need to take the lead, sort of based on what’s happening with the person,” Ain-Johnson said.
    “If I’m getting a sense from the person that there’s really no imminent risk of them being harmed and myself being harmed, and I can see that they’re maybe feeling intimidated, or they’re wondering, you know, am I in trouble because the police are here … then I’ll take the lead a little bit more. So it’s sort of this back and forth that happens.”

  • Election Sign Debate 2021

    Election Sign Debate 2021

    By: Laura Steiner
    Council is debating the merits of a ban on election signs on public property. It’s the third time an outright ban has been before Milton Council; it has failed in 2014, and 2018.
    The Region banned roadside election signs in 2018. The motion argues that among other things a ban would:

    • End sign wars, which would give unfair advantage to wealthier candidates, and help incumbents.
    • Cut the waste,
    • And is what the public overwhelmingly wants.  The motion cites online polls saying 90% of respondents who favour outright bans, or prohibition on election signs.

    The last point is a little precious. Online polls lend themselves to yes or no/ this or that options. The questions can be manipulated to suit the party who’s conducting the poll. There is a whole spectrum of opinion in between that only talking to people in person would reveal. That’s a councilor’s job.
    If you ask people right after an election if they want signs banned of course they’re going to say yes because they’re sick of politics. With this federal election , voters have been through a five-week campaign that achieved little, and highlighted growing divisions among Canadians.  So the idea they want little to remind them of that is no surprise.  It’s like asking someone who’s eaten too much ice cream if they want to go back for more.  The answer is going to be no.
    It is undemocratic, and it risks setting that up as the final impression voters take away from this council. In 2016 they voted to go against a staff report recommending an increase in wards for the 2018 municipal campaign.  They went from 11 councilors to nine.  When you add a potential sign ban it makes getting a name out there challenging, if not impossible.  In doing this, it limits the candidate pool; and that doesn’t benefit anyone.
    Fortunately there were some compromises on the table, including one on the establishment of sign zones in each of the four wards.  This one passed combined with a request for legal advice on if a ban on election signs would violate the Charter in a recorded vote 7-2.  A report is due at next week’s council meeting.

  • Still worried about getting a vaccine for COVID-19? Here’s how to understand the rare-but-real risks

    Whether you’re scrolling through your Facebook feed, checking texts from friends and family, or chatting with fellow parents from your kid’s hockey team, you’re bound to encounter questions about whether or not it’s safe to get vaccinated.
    Billions of people around the world have signed on to get their shots to ward off COVID-19. But millions of others are waiting — and wondering.
    Are these vaccines safe? Do they cause major side effects? What are the long-term health impacts? Can they kill you?
    The questions, to some degree, make sense. No drug is risk-free. And there are some known, headline-making adverse reactions following COVID-19 vaccines, including rare cases where people have died.
    There’s also plenty of misinformation circulating around, from debunked studies on vaccination risks  to anecdotal, unproven accounts of negative outcomes after a shot.
    Yet there’s also overwhelming evidence that these vaccines are saving countless lives while carrying far, far lower risks than the disease they’re designed to prevent — one that has so far killed close to five million people around the world.
    So why does it sometimes feel like concerns about vaccines are taking up rent-free space in so many people’s brains?
    Dr. Esther Choo, a professor at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore., puts it this way: If you hear a scary story about someone’s vaccination experience, whether it proves true or not, it typically counts more on an emotional level than any reassuring safety statistic.
    That means navigating fraught discussions around vaccination requires taking a step back to evaluate all the evidence beyond the anecdotes.
    The known threat looms larger in your brain than the numbers that people may bring up to you, she said. Our brains are just so consumed by COVID.

    Adverse event reports remain rare

    Our emotional reactions to negative vaccination stories, whether they’re misinformation or accurate instances of adverse reactions, can feel a bit like our response to airplane crashes.
    All the evidence shows that your risk of dying in a plane crash is extremely low, particularly when you compare it to getting behind the wheel of a car. But spotting one headline about a rare-but-tragic air accident might bring up fears that no amount of data can sway.
    There are lots of studies that show that, as humans, we do a really bad job at assessing statistics and relative risk when it comes to things that impact us, said Matthew Miller, an infectious diseases researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton.
    It’s the same reason why people feel, in general, that they are more likely to win the lottery than someone else, despite the fact that the chances are extremely small — and the odds of them winning, versus someone else winning, are exactly the same.
    So what do we actually know about the risk profile of leading COVID-19 vaccines?
    For starters, there’s a massive body of data available to gauge how safe these shots are. But knowing how to navigate it can be tricky.
    Globally, more than 6.2 billion vaccine doses have been administered to date, according to World Health Organization figures, and researchers in various countries have been tracking potential adverse reactions while vaccinations have ramped up.
    In Canada, that includes the Canadian Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS) and Canada Vigilance Program which both allow people to report health issues post-vaccination which might be linked to the vaccine.
    So far, there have been more than 17,000 reports of adverse events post-vaccination in Canada, totaling just 0.031 per cent of all doses administered. And there could even be fewer actual events than that already-low tally suggests.
    Vaccination-reporting systems can be a major source of confusion for the general public, Miller explained, because they’re a bit of a free-for-all.
    Those systems are really meant to sort of catch anything and everything that could possibly be associated with a vaccine — even things that are highly improbable, he said.
    A lot of data is collected on things that have nothing to do with the vaccine. So, for example, let’s imagine that an individual with a history and high risk of stroke gets a vaccine. And then, two weeks later, has a stroke. In the vast majority of cases, the stroke had nothing to do with the vaccine.

    Canada monitoring 3 ‘early signals’ of health issues

    All reports of adverse events following immunization are included in the government’s reporting, regardless of whether they have been linked to the vaccines, confirms the federal government’s vaccine side effects website.  
    This is because we need to look at all the data available to us so we can detect any early signals of an issue.
    That means while many reports likely have no connection to a vaccine, other trends can emerge, showing possible connections between getting a shot and developing certain health issues.
    Currently, Canada is monitoring three safety signals: reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), myocarditis and a rare but serious form of blood clotting.
    In the case of GBS, an autoimmune disorder in which a person’s own immune system damages their nerves, Canadian data indicates a higher number of cases than would normally be expected in the general population.
    As for myocarditis, a condition involving inflammation of the heart muscle, it typically impacts younger males, and is now being linked to mRNA-based vaccines like those made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
    One study from Israel published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed a slight increased risk of myocarditis after vaccination — but the researchers stressed that COVID-19 is more likely to cause the condition than the shot.
    Other early studies, including a not-yet-peer-reviewed preprint paper  published on Thursday, are also showing that people typically experience a smooth recovery and prompt cardiac-function improvement if they do develop myocarditis post-vaccination.
    Most of these people are treated for a couple of days with standard, over-the-counter anti-inflammatories, said Miller.
    They don’t require steroid treatments or prolonged hospital stays. And there’s no evidence to suggest that those sort of acute [myocarditis] flares cause any sorts of long-term damage.
    It seems to be a very rare side effect and one that is usually very mild, echoed Dr. Christopher Labos, a Montreal-based cardiologist. So not, generally speaking, something that should dissuade somebody from getting vaccinated.
    A different blood-clotting condition marked by low platelet levels, which has been linked to the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines, has proven more serious.
    In Canada, as of late September, federal data shows there have been six confirmed post-vaccination deaths involving this rare form of blood clot — though it’s unclear how many of those were deemed vaccine-induced.
    For those worried about longer-term health impacts, Miller stressed those kinds of post-vaccination issues are historically very rare, and far more likely with other drugs used on a regular basis for months or years on end.
    The vaccine is a drug akin to a pill or any other one-time injection we get, where the drug is removed from our system very quickly, he said.
    For the small number of people who do wind up having vaccine-related health issues, the government does have a vaccine injury support program (new window) that provides funding.
    You could be one of the unlucky few, in the case of these vaccines, who develops one of these severe adverse events, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with the University of Saskatchewan’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization.
    But what you should also understand specifically about the COVID-19 vaccines is that these adverse outcomes are extremely rare.

    Post-vaccine deaths ‘not necessarily related’ to the shot

    Canadian data shows there have been 194 adverse-event reports in total where someone wound up dying following a COVID-19 vaccination — out of a whopping 55 million doses that have been administered in the country to date.
    Seventy-four of those deaths were unlikely caused by the vaccine, 70 could not be assessed due to insufficient information, while 44 remain under investigation.
    Although these deaths occurred after being vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine, they are not necessarily related to the vaccine, reads that federal website.
    Outside medical experts say it’s important to keep those numbers in context, given how many vaccines have been safely administered in Canada — and how the handful of confirmed vaccine-related deaths compares to the massive death toll from COVID-19 itself.
    Roughly 28,000 Canadians have died while infected with the coronavirus since the pandemic began. There’s also a growing body of evidence showing that Canada’s approved vaccines offer much higher protection against that kind of dire outcome, while unvaccinated individuals make up the bulk of serious infections.
    By not getting the shot, to a certain degree, you’re actually choosing to put yourself at higher risk for getting COVID, Rasmussen said. And, you know, everything is a choice, including not doing anything. That’s a choice, too.
    But making that choice, for some Canadians, can still feel overwhelming. The barrage of numbers, the hearsay, the rampant online misinformation — it’s all tough to parse.
    These are really high-anxiety times. It seems everywhere you go, there’s something scary: It’s scary to get the infection. It’s scary to get a medication you’re not familiar with, said Choo.
    But based on her lived experience, Choo says getting a shot remains the safest option.
    When you see COVID day in, day out, and it’s overwhelming our hospitals — and none of you can think of a case you’ve treated of severe vaccine side effects — you have this perspective on it.
    Lauren Pelley · CBC News

  • Viral trend targets school bathrooms

    Viral trend targets school bathrooms

    By: Maggie Macintosh, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter,  Winnipeg Free Press
    At a time when public health officials are touting the importance of proper hand hygiene amid the COVID-19 pandemic, soap dispensers at Kildonan-East Collegiate keep disappearing.
    More than 10 students who attend the high school on Concordia Avenue in Winnipeg confirmed that thieves have continuously targeted their school bathrooms since classes resumed in September.
    “The soap dispensers are always missing,” said one Grade 12 student, who told the Free Press he is annoyed by the trend and stocks hand sanitizer in his backpack. “They put hand sanitizer in the washroom and it was gone the next day.”
    Another senior student, who also stopped to talk to a reporter outside the school over the lunch hour Friday, echoed those sentiments: “(The students involved) don’t care about our safety,” she said. “It’s basically just to get more likes on their videos.”
    The thefts can be traced to a viral trend on TikTok that encourages students to steal, damage and vandalize school property and then post videos about their exploits to the social media platform with a hashtag.
    Dubbed the “Devious Licks” challenge, the trend has gained traction across North America and has prompted some divisions to issue warnings and police to lay criminal charges against students who have partaken in it.
    While soap is a popular target, Kildonan-East students said ceramic toilet tank lids, paper towel rolls, and a hand dryer have gone missing from various bathrooms in the building in recent weeks.
    One student said the clock in her math class has disappeared and has overheard students talk about stealing other items, such as printers.
    A Grade 10 student who claims he witnessed a peer stuffing a backpack with soap earlier this year said the trend is funny — until you’re the one sitting on the toilet, unable to flush because a handle is missing. “When it happens to you, it sucks,” he said, adding he’s watched many entertaining #licks videos on TikTok.
    The school has yet to issue a notice to students or families about the incidents. Principal Darwin MacFarlane did not respond to a request for comment.
    A spokesperson for the River East Transcona School Division, however, indicated the trend has not been an issue in its schools and declined to provide much detail.
    “We did have some soap dispensers go missing and they have or will be replaced as soon as possible,” wrote Amanda Gaudes, senior communications officer at the division, in an email, adding hand sanitizer can be found throughout division schools.
    Radean Carter, spokeswoman for Manitoba’s largest division, declined to comment on the trend, saying doing so would be irresponsible because it would promote problem behaviour in Winnipeg School Division communities.
    Meantime, the local chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents school custodians across the province, indicated it has heard from members that soap theft is an issue in Sunrise School Division.
    The trend is popular because it’s a way for defiant teenagers — a group that has been severely affected by social isolation throughout the pandemic — to attract attention. It allows them to garner likes and build up a reputation, said Matthew Flisfeder, a social media theorist and associate professor of rhetoric and communications at the University of Winnipeg.
    “Too often, we say that ‘our media, our social media, our platforms are creating the problem,’ but I don’t think that (TikTok) is creating the problem. I think that, if anything, social media platforms are giving us access to understanding dimensions of our culture that are being amplified online,” said Flisfeder, author of Algorithmic Desire.
    Flisfeder said it’s important to contextualize the behaviour being captured via the trend by acknowledging “these very destabilizing and depressing times in which we’re living.” Citing the above, he said adults should be understanding of students’ need to act out and lash out right now.