Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said they are imposing the temporary ban as more passengers arrive in Canada with positive test results from India and Pakistan. “Given the higher number of cases of COVID-19 detected in air passengers arriving in Canada from India and Pakistan, Transport Canada is issuing a notice to airmen, or NOTAM, to halt direct passenger air traffic from those countries,” said Alghabra.
OTTAWA – Canada has immediately banned all commercial and private flights from India and Pakistan effective Thursday at 11:30 p.m. EST, as COVID-19 infections continue to surge in those countries.
Ministers of health, immigration, transport, public safety, and intergovernmental affairs delivered the update in a joint press conference Thursday evening, as the government faces pressure to curb variant spread domestically.
OTTAWA How long it takes the federal government to turn its bold child-care plan into a reality is up to the provinces and territories, says Canada’s deputy prime minister and finance minister. In an interview on CTV’s Question Period airing Sunday, Chrystia Freeland says the government is entering into negotiations with its provincial counterparts in “listening mode.” “I ve been through a few negotiations at this point in my life as a politician and I think it s important to go into a negotiation, especially with our partners in Canada, with the collaborative attitudes, and that s what we re going to do,” said Freeland, speaking to host Evan Solomon.
MONTREAL Quebec Solidaire (QS) is inviting citizens to continue demonstrating and writing to Housing Minister Andree Laforest and Premier Francois Legault to decry the housing crisis in the province. The opposition party organized an assembly of the evicted on Saturday, which included spokesperson Manon Masse and the MNA responsible for the file, Andres Fontecilla. They listened for more than an hour to the testimonies of representatives of organizations and citizens who have to fight with their landlords not to leave their housing. Some suggested a moratorium on evictions during the pandemic and a registry of delinquent landlords. Masse argued that the ten QS MNAs were taking this fight to the National Assembly, but, she said, it would not be enough to turn the government machine around.
My Take: By Gordon Lambie 22 April 2021 at 19 h 02 min Reading time: 30 s
On Thursday morning, when asked about whether the front-page announcement of the arrival of “the Indian variant” by the Journal de Montreal could feed into prejudice toward minority groups, Premier Francois Legault responded that, “we always need to be careful when we speak of certain communities.”
It’s an answer so careful that it barely says anything at all.
Words have power, and it is important to pick them carefully when in a position of authority, but when a person in power works that hard to avoid making a clear statement about defending the rights and wellbeing of minority groups, it just reinforces the invisibility of those groups, and opens up the door for prejudice to grow.Linking virus mutations to regions or ethnic groups is irresponsible messaging and has clearly been observed as a cause of harm to those groups. We should stop doing it.
MONTREAL The family of an 86-year-old woman who was found dead on a floor at the Lakeshore General Hospital says they want answers, and aren t getting them, despite a coroner s investigation. Nearly two months after Candida Macarine’s death, her family says their many unresolved questions are making the grief harder to bear. Macarine, 86, was admitted to Lakeshore on Feb. 27 because of respiratory distress and died several hours later. Although her family was told the day of the death that it was due to cardiac arrest, the circumstances weren’t explained to them until two weeks later, after a CBC story about a woman found dead on the floor. That’s when the hospital admitted the woman was, in fact, Macarine.