Laval mayor Marc Demers says a teleconference meeting on Tuesday, during which he and other city officials discussed re-starting Laval’s post-COVID-19 economy with Quebec Finance Finister Eric Girard and Economy and Innovation Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon, was a success and a sign the provincial government is taking the issue seriously.
Laval mayor Marc Demers is seen here on Tuesday May 19 in his office at city hall during a teleconference call with Quebec cabinet ministers to discuss re-launching the Laval economy.
“This virtual meeting allowed everyone to talk about the many challenges that await us following the pandemic,” the mayor said in a statement. “Our business people were badly impacted by this crisis and we see it as our duty to implement measures that will be adopted to meet the reality.
“We are pleased to see that the government of Quebec has serious intentions about re-starting the economy and is listening to the concerns of our business community,” added Demers. “I thank ministers Fitzgibbon and Girard for their valuable cooperation.”
Laval city councillor Stéphane Boyer, vice-president of the executive-committee and responsible for economic development dossiers, said the city has already begun the arduous task of rebuilding Laval’s post-COVID-19 economy.
“Our teams at the city, including the economic development service, is already on the job to work out, in conjunction with the business community, a plan to re-launch our economy,” said Boyer. “The meeting allowed everybody to express their preoccupations, while also suggesting opportunities, as well as paths towards solutions to be explored.”
After formally announcing last Friday that everything was in place to begin taking in the first of an eventual 50 recovering COVID-19 patients at Place Bell, the CISSS de Laval still hasn’t opened the site because of a lack employees to staff the temporary facility, CBC Montreal is reporting.
The CISSS de Laval still hasn’t opened a temporary ward for COVID-19 patients at Place Bell, after announcing that it had.
“We expect to be able to open very soon,” Judith Goudreau, a CISSS de Laval spokesperson, told the broadcaster on Friday. According to the CBC, a new date has been set for Place Bell to start receiving patients.
The regional health authority announced in a press release that May 15 would be the first day that patients recovering from COVID-19 would start to be taken into the temporary hospital ward set up on one of the ice rinks at Place Bell.
The patients are from Cité de la Santé, where there is an overflow, as well as from retirement residences in Laval that are currently besieged by COVID-19.
The CISSS de Laval reports that as of mid-day on Saturday May 16, 448 persons in Laval had died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, while there were 4,596 confirmed cases of infection, 130 persons in hospital, 27 people in intensive care, and 2,160 persons who recovered.
The CISSS also updated a sectorial map, showing that Sector 1 (Saint-François/Duvernay/Saint-Vincent-de-Paul) continues to have the highest number of infections (1,085 persons) per 100,000 inhabitants. Sector 3 (Chomedey) now has the lowest infection count (544 per 100,000 inhabitants).
The Canada Revenue Agency has announced that free tax clinics, which in past years have allowed a growing number of eligible Canadians to file their annual income tax return at no charge, will continue despite the covid-19 pandemic – but with special protective safeguards in place this year.
Due to concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, many community organizations had to close, postpone, or scale back on the free tax clinics they normally offer, the federal tax collection agency noted in a press release issued on May 12.
The CRA says penalties and interest will not be charged if tax payments are made by this year’s extended deadline of Sept. 1.
However, the CRA says the free tax clinics will continue to be offered by local organizations, in partnership with its Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP) and the joint CRA and Revenu Québec Income Tax Assistance – Volunteer Program.
It is the CRA’s hope that by going virtual, community organizations will have the opportunity to host clinics before the June 1, 2020 filing deadline and beyond.
“By filing a tax return, Canadians can get benefits and credits that can significantly improve their quality of life,” said Diane Lebouthillier, federal Minister of National Revenue. “I am reassured to see that tax clinics will now be able to provide virtual services to continue supporting vulnerable Canadians.”
“The Income Tax Assistance – Volunteer Program has a major impact on the lives of thousands of low-income individuals in Quebec,” added Quebec Minister of Finance Eric Girard. “The measures announced today will make it possible to help taxpayers through online and telephone tax clinics.”
The tax filing season has been extended from April 30 to June 1, 2020 as part of the measures introduced to deal with the various hardships created by the COVID-19 pandemic. The CRA says that penalties and interest will not be charged if tax payments are made by the extended deadline of September 1, 2020.
According to a poll conducted by the agency responsible for promoting tourism in the Laval region, there has been a 33 per cent rate of cancellation for events scheduled in Laval since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, while 40 per cent have been postponed until next year, and 27 per cent will be taking place online to minimize risks of COVID-19 infection.
“For several weeks now, COVID-19 has been transforming our reality,” says Tourisme Laval president and general director Geneviève Roy. “Our partners and our clients are facing incredible challenges. Despite the uncertainty, sharing the findings of this survey is encouraging reflection towards a gradual return to normal. I am confident that our industry will be able to meet the challenges and will turn a new page. Creativity is our strength.”
The survey was conducted last week among more than 100 event organizers in Laval on the challenges they felt lay ahead. Other findings in the survey found that 91 per cent of organizers have been considering alternate ways for holding events, including videoconferencing (45 per cent), and smaller scale events (18 per cent).
Up to 50 per cent of survey participants said they were anticipating losing half their budget for holding events, while 13 per cent thought they could lose up to 75 per cent of budget for events. Twenty-six per cent did not anticipate any drop in their budget.
The City of Laval’s executive-committee says it is donating $40,304 to the Société Saint-Vincent de Paul for a project the non-profit charity is undertaking to help families that have children up to 17 years old and who are struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to a statement issued on May 15 by the executive-committee, the subsidy will help to boost a food program run by the society at a time that is proving to be very challenging for many families.
The Fonds Place du Souvenir is named after the outdoor gathering place in front of Laval City Hall on Souvenir Rd.
“Thanks to this subsidy, the Société de Saint-Vincent de Paul will be able to distribute food vouchers to families in Laval that need them,” said Mayor Marc Demers. “In the current context, where a vulnerable clientele is more vulnerable than ever, it is important that we stick together.”
The subsidy is being drawn from the Fonds Place-du-Souvenir, a special fund created by the Demers administration in 2017 specifically to assist children and youths in Laval up to age 17. The fund was created from sums successfully reclaimed by the city from former municipal contractors who were found to have benefited from collusion and corruption over the many years the previous administration was in power.
Friday May 15 marked the first day that patients recovering from COVID-19 have started to be taken into a temporary hospital ward set up on one of the ice rinks at Place Bell, the CISSS de Laval announced in a statement.
According to the regional health authority, 15 patients are initially being accommodated and more may be accepted as soon as next week. The hospital beds and other equipment were set up on the rink surface at Place Bell in order to free up space to take in recovering COVID-19 patients from Cité de la Santé Hospital, as well as from retirement residences throughout the Laval region.
Part of Laval’s Place Bell will be taken over to accommodate COVID-19 patients from Cité de la Santé and retirement homes.
Officials with CISSS de Laval pointed out that the operation wouldn’t have been possible without the cooperation of Cité de la culture et du sport de Laval, which manages Place Bell, and the City of Laval, which owns the facility, as well as from labour unions.
The temporary medical unit is equipped to take in up to 50 patients, all of whom are accommodated in private cubicles equipped with a bed, an easy chair, a table and a bedside lamp. Between 75 and 100 CISSS de Laval employees are being assigned to work at the Place Bell unit.
“This non-conventional site is meant to be a convalescence centre where it is possible to offer quality care to users, while freeing up acute care beds at Cité de la Santé Hospital,” said CISSS de Laval president and CEO Christian Gagné.
The City of Laval has announced that with water levels along the Rivière des Prairies and the Rivière des Mille Îles back to normal, the annual flood-risk season appears to be finished and temporary anti-flood barriers that were intalled several weeks ago in several riverfront locations can now be taken down.
According to a statement issued by the city on May 14, the dismantling of the barriers will be taking place in stages. The first of these will be the removal of a pedestrian overpass that was installed between Île Verte and Île Bigras in the south-east of the Laval-Les Îles sector.
Flood barriers installed a few weeks ago by the City of Laval along Riviera St. in Laval-Ouest will soon be removed with the spring flood-threat now over, the city says.
Following this, during the week of May 18 other temporary measures that were implemented in Laval-Ouest and other areas will be removed, the city says. The removal operation will be taking place over a period of several weeks because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The city says that sand bags which were distributed over the past few weeks in these areas will be picked up by public works crews beginning on May 25. Regarding the steps to follow for sand bag removal, residents will be informed by telephone.
After announcing the opening of a COVID-19 screening clinic at the Cartier Arena in Pont-Viau/Laval-des-Rapides, the Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux (CISSS) de Laval says another clinic has now opened – this time at the Pierre Creamer Arena in Chomedey.
With that, there are now two screening clinics available for screening COVID-19 in Laval. They are open from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, and from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday. Appointments can be made by calling 450 644-4545 or 1 877 644-4545.
According to the CISSS, groups prioritized for testing are
• People with flu-like or COVID-19 symptoms (fever, onset or recent worsening of a cough, breathing difficulties, sudden loss of smell without nasal congestion with or without loss of taste).
• People who have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
Public health officials say they are stepping up their efforts to track the evolution of COVID-19 by increasing the number of tests done every day. “Screening tests are our best bet to slow and contain the spread of the virus in our area and to identify new outbreaks,” said Dr. Jean-Pierre Trépanier, Director of Public Health at the CISSS de Laval.
By appointment or walk-in clinic: Pierre-Creamer Arena, 1160 Pie-X Boulevard, Laval (Chomedey sector). The clinic offers drive-thru or walk-thru testing.
Walk-in clinic: Cartier Arena, 100 Montée Major, Laval (Pont-Viau-Laval-des-Rapides sector).
Plandemic, an upcoming documovie has caused a stir among a North American population that has to deal with an avalanche of information concerning COVID-19. Dr. Christos Karatzios, Assistant Professor of Paediatrics/ Infectious Diseases at the Montréal Children’s Hospital, decided that enough was enough with the conspiracy theories which in the end endanger public health. Here is his rebuttal:
Dr. Christos Karatzios rebuts a range of dangerous myths he says are being promoted by a recent documentary on COVID-19. (Photo: courtesy Dr. Christos Karatzios)
So many people have sent me the video clip of a supposedly upcoming “documovie” called “PlanDEMic” asking me what I think? So…what do I think? It’s like sending an FBI agent a link to the X-Files series and asking if it is true.
Is the world this gullible and dangerously naive? Or are you on the fence or actually secretly/publicly believe that this pandemic is a colossal hoax in order for the “Deep State” or “Illuminati” or some other malevolent secret society (these people target the WHO and the UN now) to set up a “One World Government”? Have all the doctors and nurses and health care workers who have fought to save the lives of all those unfortunate people who have died or come near death from COVID-19 been secretly working for this evil society? Have all those families who lost loved ones been lying to everyone? Ask yourselves if you are willing to accept this shameful theory. Have we lost all faith in our doctors and nurses? How dangerous is that for the fabric of our society?
So what do i think of Judy Mikovits, who is the “protagonist” of this trash that is supposedly a “documentary”?
Here we go: Almost everything she says is a lie. She has a bone to pick with Anthony Fauci it seems. She also has a new book and needs to make money after being stripped of her job and being arrested for falsifying data and stealing lab material including laboratory cells delivered to her house “by mistake”.
She was hired in the 90s by an alcohol, tobacco, and gambling magnate in the US Midwest who has a daughter with the controversial “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”. She was a paid researcher in his lab and she had a vested interest to make the link of a mouse retrovirus (similar to HIV) as a cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. His “institute” had a vested interest to come up with results so then they could create some form of therapy or cure for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She manipulated data and came up with results that were later retracted completely from the medical literature because no one was able to reproduce them ever again.
Does this remind you of Andrew Wakefield and his study of a link between MMR vaccine and autism? It should. Robert Kennedy Jr, the lead antivaxxer in the USA, is Judy Mikovits’s friend and collaborator. He is a supporter and sponsor of her. He wrote the prologue for her recent book. So when she says she is not “anti-vaccine” in the video, she lies. In the past she has claimed that 30% of global vaccines contain a cousin of HIV and are making us ill. In the video she claims that the flu shot makes people susceptible to “coronavirus”. By the way, she laments how patents and “Big Pharma” have tainted science. Does she forget how Paul Wakefield actually had a secret patent to create his own measles vaccine while discrediting the established MMR? Oops. How about the fact that she worked for a millionaire tycoon out in Nevada to find the “cure” for “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”? Oops.
She even performed another study for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (after the original was criticized by everyone) that showed no link with the mouse retrovirus and she even admitted to this. Her colleagues on the original Science paper that was retracted admitted to faulty science. She was eventually fired from that institute and then stole its lab material. This is what she was arrested and not for “speaking the truth”.
What she says about HIV and coronavirus are dead wrong.
What she says about the flu shot “causing coronavirus” is completely false. The army study she quoted did not claim what she claims it did:
The study concluded that when you vaccinate people against the flu…you get immunity and stop seeing as much flu and start seeing other common viruses being more prevalent (such as cold viruses like the simple cold coronaviruses and human metapneumoviruses)…Because you are getting rid of the main culprit of respiratory disease in the winter (the flu). Therefore, you can see the background noise with common cold viruses that is usually drowned out by the massive flu when there’s no vaccine.
This was the highlight of that study:
1. We examined virus interference in a Department of Defense dependent population.
2. Vaccinated personnel did not have significant odds of respiratory illnesses.
3. Vaccinated personnel were protected against influenza.
4. Odds of virus interference by vaccination varied for individual respiratory viruses.
So what she is saying is nonsense to those not trained to pick up the gibberish she is peddling. It is dangerous nonsense during a deadly pandemic and she is simply crazy.
I think I almost fell off my chair when she stated that masks activate our own covid and we get reinfected.
The same people behind this video are the same people who believe vaccines kill, who believe Bill Gates will inject us with microchips, who believe that 5G is what is causing COVID-19, who believe that the lockdowns that happened to save our health care system before the first wave were wrong, and they are the same people who are out protesting in the US to open beaches and casinos and whatever they deem necessary.
I think that’s all I have to say about this person and anyone similar to her. Beware of quacks! She and others are allowed to be storytellers but if she is endangering public health, she will find herself behind bars again.
I have a job to do for which I gave an oath when I accepted to sacrifice my youth, to eventually be able to save lives; Your lives and the lives of your children. Enough.
Christos Karatzios, MD, is Associate Investigator, RI-MUHC , Glen site Child Health and Human Development Program Centre for Innovative Medicine Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases, MUHC
