A cargo plane arrived April 12 at Vancouver International Airport from Shanghai, carrying millions of pieces of personal protective equipment.
CargoJet PPE flight from Shanghai on April 12 in Vancouver (theBreaker.news Exclusive)
The CargoJet Boeing 767 later continued on to Edmonton with gear earmarked for Canadian healthcare workers on the frontlines in the battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
A CargoJet flight also arrived April 11 at YVR, en route to Hamilton. The company said it the gear totalled 75,000 pounds. Costs have not been released.
British Columbia Health Minister Adrian Dix said 109,500 N95 respirators, 51,000 face shields and 1.2 million gloves arrived over Easter weekend.
“Our supply continues to arrive in amounts that’s keeping us ahead of the need,” Dix said at an April 13 news conference. “We’d love to say we’re in a position that where we’re flush for a long time. That is still no longer the case. We still have to work on this, both on the supply side and ensuring that we use PPE properly.”
The CargoJet deliveries are part of the better-late-than-never effort to outfit doctors, nurses, paramedics and others.
Just over two months ago, the head of the World Health Organization said demand was 100 times normal and prices 20 times higher than normal for masks, respirators, goggles, gloves and gowns. Stockpiles were exhausted and factory orders backlogged as much as six months.
Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations donation at VGH on April 9 (Dawa)
That did not stop the Trudeau Liberal government from shipping a 16-tonne donation to China in early February. Around the same time, business and cultural groups in Metro Vancouver that are loyal to the Chinese Communist Party, and its United Front foreign influence campaign, went on a buying spree.
The Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations sent hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scarce Canadian PPE to China.
Just before Easter weekend, CACA said it donated $120,000 worth of PPE and cash to Vancouver-area hospitals.
CACA head Yongtao Chen traveled last year as a guest of the Chinese government to the national congress and celebrations for the 70th anniversary of Communist Party rule.
On this week’s edition of theBreaker.news Podcast, Jim Mullin of TSN and Football Canada provides the View from Bowen Island, the idyllic home to 3,700 in Howe Sound.
Mullin has been under the weather with flu and is among the many in British Columbia who have been unable to get tested for coronavirus in B.C. Coincidentally, he stayed at a downtown Vancouver hotel near the Pacific Dental Conference in early March, which turned out to be the site of a well-publicized coronavirus outbreak.
Jim Mullin (Twitter)
“I’m well on my way to getting better, but it’s still kind of frightening to know that without a test, you don’t really know how you can function in society yet,” Mullin told host Bob Mackin.
Mullin also gave his take on the Canadian Football League’s decision last week to delay the start of the 2020 regular season until at least July. Mullin, who hosts Krown Gridiron Nation on TSN, said the CFL is facing a more complicated situation than it appears.
American players would need to be quarantined for two weeks upon arrival, at a hefty cost to the teams. A Labour Day weekend kickoff would be likely. Would the season be as few as eight games with playoffs culminating in the Grey Cup, as scheduled, in Regina? Or would there be a 12 to 16 game season, with the Grey Cup in January?
“There are sources that have said to me everything is on the table,” Mullin said.
Then there are the fans. Would they be comfortable returning to stadiums after social distancing in the spring? Would they be able to afford tickets anymore? And what about the potential for a dreaded second wave of the virus?
“You could start a season that could conceivably not have an end,” Mullin said.
Listen to the full interview.
Also, listen to highlights of free press advocates discussing the challenges for media in a time of crisis. United Nations special rapporteur David Kaye and Committee to Protect Journalists’ Courtney Radisch spoke on the International Centre for Journalists webinar on April 8.
Plus coronavirus headlines from the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim,
Yongtao Chen (second from right) with Chinese consul officials on Feb. 12 (Canadian Sichuan Association)
The real estate investor who heads a Richmond-based umbrella group aligned with the Chinese Communist Party led a campaign to donate $120,000 in medical supplies and money to Lower Mainland hospitals on April 9.
But, three months earlier, Yongtao Chen of the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations spearheaded the bulk purchase of Canadian supplies of masks, goggles, disinfectant and clothing for shipment to China, as the coronavirus was spreading from Wuhan around the country.
Just before Easter weekend, Chen and members of CACA visited Vancouver General Hospital, Richmond General Hospital and Burnaby General Hospital, where they delivered boxes containing 36,000 masks and 1,700 pieces of clothing. They also came with $8,000 cheques for each of the hospitals. Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver was also provided a $5,100 cheque.
“With the domestic epidemic situation in our home country gradually stabilizing and the Canadian epidemic situation intensifying, we should contribute to this beautiful home where we live in the spirit of connecting hands, guarding the soil, working side by side, and fighting the epidemic together,” read a translation of the post on the Dawa website.
In January, Chen and CACA raised $150,000 to buy masks, gloves and clothing in Canada to send to China. On Feb. 12, he was photographed with officials of the Chinese consulate in Vancouver arranging logistics for the donation of 1,400 cases of personal protective equipment worth almost $500,000 for shipment to Sichuan province in China.
Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations donation at VGH on April 9 (Dawa)
CACA, which Chen chairs, is an umbrella organization for hundreds of businesses and cultural groups aligned with consulate and affiliated with the Communist Party’s United Front foreign influence and lobbying program.
Chen was one of 40 foreign delegates invited by the Chinese government to attend the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in March 2019. He returned to Beijing last October for the 70th anniversary celebration of Communist Party rule and travelled with Hilbert Yiu, the president of the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Yiu coordinated an ad campaign last summer against the Hong Kong pro-democracy protest movement.
On April 3, Consul General Tong Xiaoling and her staff hosted a so-called “health package” distribution ceremony at the consular mansion in Shaughnessy. The packages were offered via WeChat to students from China in K-12 and university who are in the area.
Yongtao Chen (left), Wang Dianqi and Hilbert Yiu at China’s 70th anniversary celebration in Beijing. (Canada TCNews/WeChat)
“The safety and health of overseas Chinese students has always been a concern of the party and the country,” read a translation of the consular website’s Chinese page. “To help everyone do their personal epidemic prevention work, the party and the government promptly distribute to Chinese students in countries seriously affected by the epidemic with masks, disinfectant wipes, and guidelines for epidemic prevention.”
The previous week, Tong donated 500 N95 masks to Vancouver General and St. Paul’s hospitals.
Dr. Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, warned Feb. 7 that PPE demand was 100 times normal and prices 20 times higher because of the widespread non-medical use of PPE.
“There are now depleted stockpiles and backlogs of four-to-six months,” Tedros said. “Global stocks of masks and respirators are now insufficient to meet the needs of WHO and our partners.”
The federal government went ahead anyway with a 16-tonne donation shipment to China that was announced Feb. 9.
Chinese consulate mansion in Vancouver April 3 (Frank Qi/Canadian Program Centre)
On March 25, B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry called B.C. was going through “way more PPE than we expected, so we are on a tenuous level.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on April 4 announced chartered cargo flights by Cargojet and Air Canada to import more PPE from China where the government had leased a warehouse in China to collect and distribute items as quickly as possible.
Did the donations pass quality control and get into the hands of doctors and nurses treating coronavirus patients? Vancouver Coastal Health spokeswoman Carrie Stefanson declined to comment on specific donations.
PPE imports have not been without pitfalls. Netherlands, Toronto and Ireland have been forced to recall hundreds of thousands of masks and other items. Former UFC champ Conor McGregor took to Twitter to complain about shoddy quality and price gouging.
Consul General Tong Xiaoling on April 3 (Frank Qi/Canadian Program Centre)
At his April 9 news conference, B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix said “we’re taking our time to inspect and test any and all PPE that comes into B.C. before it gets near the health care system.”
Dix said the B.C. government bought 800,000 surgical masks, 54,000 N95 masks, 157,000 isolation gowns and 85,000 pairs of gloves, and received 900,000 surgical masks and 36,000 N95 masks from the federal government.
Dix also said there were donations of 100,000 surgical masks, 83,000 N95 masks, 20,000 pairs of gloves and 1,760 protective coveralls.
The sudden halt to the economy due to the coronavirus pandemic has led to layoffs in the thousands at one of Canada’s biggest privately owned hotel and restaurant companies.
Northland Properties senior VP Taj Kassam (Twitter)
Northland Properties Corporation of Vancouver continues to employ hundreds to operate its Sandman Hotels and Sutton Place hotel chains and Denny’s and Moxie’s restaurants for take-out and delivery.
“We’ve been hit as an industry, deep and severe,” senior vice president of corporate affairs Taj Kassam said in an interview.
Kassam declined to specify how many of the company’s 12,000 employees were let go and how many remain.
“We are a major employer,” he said. “We basically looked at how to keep the company in a position where it can come out of this dire state.”
Northland Properties-owned North Shore Denny’s (Mackin)
Senior leadership took 40% pay cuts, bonuses are suspended and they are working longer hours. “There’s a lot of dedicated senior leaders in this company, this is a family-owned company with a lot of family values and we’ve maintained that all along.”
The family is the Gaglardi family. Patriarch Bob Gaglardi was ranked 15th on the CEOWorld magazine list of richest in Canada last year, with an estimated $3 billion fortune. His son, president Tom Gaglardi, declined an interview request.
“We were, on a Friday, talking about some business strategies and, by Monday, the world had changed,” Kassam said, referring to the pivotal final weekend of winter. “It came very quickly, we have reacted accordingly.”
Mass-cancellations and legislated closures came on the cusp of what was expected to be a busy spring break and Easter period with favourable conditions at its ski resorts, Revelstoke Mountain Resort and Grouse Mountain. Instead, they are like ghost towns after public health officials and politicians implored citizens to stay home.
Northland Properties CEO Tom Gaglardi (right) and Gary Bettman (YouTube)
In the company’s hockey division, Kamloops Blazers laid-off about a dozen staff. The rest of the Western Hockey League season and playoffs were cancelled, as was the Memorial Cup. For the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League, the rest of the regular season and the Stanley Cup playoffs are both in limbo. Commissioner Gary Bettman told NBCSN April 7 that it “may not be possible” to complete the regular season.
Stars president Jim Lites and general manager Jim Nill both took 50% pay cuts.
“The Gaglardis have been really good to us, they’ve always said yes to us on things we’ve needed to do to build the franchise,” Lites told the Dallas Morning News.
The economic crash came on the heels of major resort acquisitions: Portmarnock Hotel and Golf Links in Dublin last October and the January purchase of Grouse Mountain from Chinese concern China Minsheng Investment Group (CMIG). Northland has not revealed what it paid, but Portmarnock was offered for the equivalent of $76.35 million, while Grouse’s asking price was $200 million when CMIG bought in 2017.
In February, Northland also bought two blocks in Dallas on the north and west sides of the Stars’ home rink, American Airlines Center, with plans to build a hotel and a conference centre. The company also has hotel projects on the go in Saskatoon and Halifax.
Tourism Industry Association of B.C. said member hotels saw occupancy drop to below 10%at a time of year when 60-70% occupancy is normal. Kassam said some of Northland’s downtown and airport hotels dropped to 10-15% occupancy, but those in northern B.C. still enjoy blue collar guests.
Is the company capitalized to withstand the storm?
“We intend to get through this, that’s the reason we’ve taken the measures we’ve taken, we are committed to get through this,” Kassam said.
“At this stage, when we look at the horizon, we don’t have [sale of assets] on our horizon. With all the help the government has done to make sure our employees are well-protected and looked after, we have a plan in place.”
Restaurants Canada estimates 800,000 foodservice jobs were lost nationwide since March 1. It jointly lobbied the federal government for relief, with Hotel Association of Canada and the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. Part of the $107 billion federal plan includes deferred GST and HST payments until June, loans, credit and the 75% Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy. The latter program is for employers that suffered a plunge in monthly revenue of at least 30%, on a year-over-year basis.
“We’re in trying times and I hope we get through this very quickly and put everybody’s lives on track again,” Kassam said. “So we are certainly diligently working towards making sure that we as soon as we can bring our employees back.”
A Port Moody real estate agent is involved with a proposal for the British Columbia government to import coronavirus test kits from a company in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the pandemic originated.
(Wuhan Easy Diagnosis Biomedicine Co. Ltd.)
According to a March 31 entry in the Registry of Lobbyists, Bruce Young of Earnscliffe Strategy Group wants to share information with government regarding Wuhan EasyDiagnosis Biomedicine Co. Ltd. test kits for COVID-19 that have been deployed in other jurisdictions.
Deputy Health Minister Stephen Brown and Minister Adrian Dix’s assistant Lucinda Yeung are listed as target contacts.
Client Wuhan EasyDiagnosis Biomedicine Co. Ltd., is described as a “leading in vitro diagnostic manufacturer, specializing in development, production and sales of point of care testing rapid diagnostic reagents and related equipment.”
The company’s contact address is the Port Moody office of real estate agent Bill Laidler’s Laidler Wang Investment Corp., a company incorporated last November in Washington State.
Laidler declined comment when contacted April 4.
The company is located in Wuhan’s National Biological Industry Base, also known as Biolake, and listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange. It was one of 17 manufacturers of test kits approved by the Chinese government, according to a March 24 World Health Organization list.
Wuhan, China, the blue dot on the world map. (Wuhan Easy Diagnosis Biomedicine Co. Ltd.)
Wuhan EasyDiagnosis applied March 26 for Health Canada approval under the interim express order for coronavirus diagnostic products. On April 5, the Health Canada list of authorized products showed eight companies: 1Drop Inc. (imported from South Korea by Luminarie Canada Inc.); Abbott Molecular Inc.; Roche; Diagnostic Hybrids; Luminex Molecular Diagnostics Inc.; and Cepheid.
B.C. is not mass-testing for coronavirus. Instead, it focuses on testing healthcare workers, those who present at hospitals with severe symptoms and to identify outbreaks. That is contrary to the advice of the World Health Organization, which urges countries to test every suspected case and identify contacts, who should also be tested if they are sick or showing symptoms.
Bill Laidler
“Many countries have not been systematically testing all suspect cases, and it’s one of the reasons why we’re behind in this epidemic,” Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program, said at a press conference in Geneva.
In a YouTube video on March 28, Royal Columbian Hospital emergency room physician Dr. Sean Wormsbecker accused B.C. officials of “low-balling” the numbers because there is no widespread testing for suspected cases of coronavirus.
“One of the frustrations that we’re seeing as frontline providers, that’s the fact that based on our current resources we are very much under-testing the population,” Wormsbecker said.
Between March 1 and April 4, a total 47,569 tests were conducted at B.C. Centre for Disease Control Public Health Laboratory, Vancouver General Hospital, B.C. Children’s & Women’s Hospital, St. Paul’s Hospital, Victoria General Hospital Microbiology Laboratory, Kelowna General Hospital Microbiology Laboratory and LifeLabs.
Hard-hit seniors home lobbies for aid
The site of the worst coronavirus outbreak in B.C. hired lobbyist Michael Bailey of Western Policy Consultants on March 27.
Lynn Valley Care Centre (Mackin)
Lynn Valley Care Centre (aka North Shore Private Hospital) registered Bailey on April 2 to brief Ministry of Health officials “on the need for government assistance for long-term care homes through the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Lynn Valley Care Centre administrator and environmental safety coordinator Noori Shahkar did not respond for comment. At least 15 residents of the North Vancouver care home have died of coronavirus.
Ex-NDP MP reps Sysco
Former NDP MP Nathan Cullen registered on behalf of Sysco, the multinational food and food equipment distributor and wholesaler.
Cullen retired from parliament as the member for Skeena-Bulkley Valley last fall. He joined Strategy Corp. in January as a strategic advisor.
Nathan Cullen (right) with John Horgan and Melanie Mark in 2017 (BC NDP)
“Sysco is one of their clients, I’m simply putting them together to have a conversation,” Cullen told theBreaker.news. “I wasn’t privy to any of the conversations.”
The company wanted to meet with Premier John Horgan aide Don Bain and Dave Peterson, assistant deputy minister of Emergency B.C., to offer assistance with “supply chain and coordination of the distribution of food and other goods in the fight against COVID 19.”
Cullen recently acted as a go-between for the B.C. government in the dispute with the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs over the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Canada, B.C. and the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs reached a tentative agreement March 1 on rights and title. The B.C. government is refusing to release a copy of the deal under the freedom of information law.
In 2014, Cullen supported Horgan’s successful bid for the B.C. NDP leadership.
Kim for Tims
Global Public Affairs’ Kim Haakstad, who was an aide to former Premier Christy Clark, registered March 26 for Restaurant Brands International, the parent company of Tim Hortons and Burger King.
Haakstad listed the Jobs, Economic Development and Competitive Ministry as the target, to “inform and clarify issues related to the franchise industry and the impact of COVID-19 on the restaurant industry, as well as discuss measures the government is taking to mitigate this impact.”
Canadians are beginning to adapt to social distancing life in the coronavirus pandemic shutdown. The usual venues of work, play, shop, study and worship are mostly closed and the economy on pause.
On this edition of theBreaker.news Podcast, pollster Mario Canseco of Research Co. discusses the findings of his research. Canadians, he said, are praying more (especially if they are in higher income brackets), finding distractions like streaming movies and board games, and consuming more news. But there are fewer advertisers willing or able to pay, because most businesses are closed.
Research Co. pollster Mario Canseco (Mackin)
“I’ve never seen this many Canadians following the news unless there’s an election happening,” Canseco told host Bob Mackin. “During elections you have a lot of expenditures from government and those parties wanting to stay in government and the opposition.”
The only gender gap he found was the world of sports: 41% of men miss watching live hockey, basketball and baseball. Only 24% of women long for sports. Sports played a big role in helping heal Canadians after 9/11 and the 2008 Great Recession. “We don’t even have that now. It’s more complicated.”
Listen to the full interview on this edition.
Plus coronavirus headlines from the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim, and analysis of the changing messages of provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C. health minister Adrian Dix and federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu.
On April 2, at the Legislature, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and NDP Health Minister Adrian Dix announced six more British Columbians died of the novel coronavirus.
The province’s death toll reached 31.
Public employees appearing in Pandemic: a shark’s story (B.C. Ministry of Health)
Meanwhile, behind the scenes at the Ministry of Health headquarters, shark shenanigans during business hours on the day after April Fool’s Day.
theBreaker.news exclusively obtained a copy of a five-slide presentation titled “Pandemic: a shark’s story,” which was produced in the Ministry of Health and circulated by employees on April 2.
It tells the story of a shark that came to Victoria to help humans deal with the pandemic.
A bureaucrat dressed-up in a shark suit was photographed walking across Blanshard Street in downtown Victoria, in a hallway with a senior bureaucrat and beside the 2018-erected Crossing Cultures and Healing totem pole outside the ministry headquarters at the Richard Blanshard Building.
The penultimate slide of Pandemic: a shark’s story (B.C. Ministry of Health)
In the penultimate slide, the shark character has an epiphany beside the shark-less totem pole: “Shark realizes that sharks are not appreciated by humans,” reads the thought balloon.
So the shark character changes plans and “decides to eat last human in Victoria.”
The last slide shows the shark-suited bureaucrat chasing a female employee on a downtown sidewalk.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the province, a state of emergency continues.
Offices, stores, restaurants and schools are shut indefinitely. Layoffs are multiplying.
Five million citizens are warned to stay home. Dix did not respond to a text message seeking his comment. Ministry communications staff did not call theBreaker.news to ask a question during the teleconference on April 3. Prior to taking limited questions, Dix lauded staff “who everyday are working their guts out.” He did not refer to Pandemic: a shark’s story.
“The people who work here in the Ministry of Health in Victoria, on Blanshard Street and across B.C., have been doing unbelievable amounts of overtime everyday working hard,” Dix said. “Sometimes from home, sometimes in office, but are doing exemplary and extraordinary work, I’m very proud of them. I think they’re an exceptional group of people, they provide enormous support to Dr. Henry and to our deputy minister Steve Brown, and I’m very, very proud of the work that they do.”
First it was toilet paper disappearing from store shelves across the province.
Now it is the Nanaimo Bar, British Columbia’s delectable, chocolate-topped dessert bar.
The Nanaimo Bar, a B.C. masterpiece. (City of Nanaimo)
Or, more precisely, the butter that forms an integral part of the venerable recipe.
Many quick serve bakeries and cafes are closed because of the coronavirus public health emergency. British Columbians are rediscovering home cooking while obeying orders to stay home, which has led to a butter shortage at supermarkets. For those reasons, the beloved Nanaimo Bar has suddenly become harder to find and harder to make.
How much butter is needed?
Joyce Hardcastle’s recipe that won her the best in Nanaimo in a 1986 civic contest calls for 1/2 cup of butter on the bottom layer, 1/2 a cup on the second layer and 2 tablespoons of butter on the third layer.
Mike Farnworth
Under the Emergency Program Act, Solicitor General Mike Farnworth has the power to ration butter and classify Nanaimo Bar bakers an essential service.
An announcement on the NDP government’s Nanaimo Bar plan, which theBreaker.news has been told will be called #ButterBC, is scheduled at The Bastion in Nanaimo for just before noon today, with associate deputy minister of public safety, Prima A. Prilis.
When British Columbia hospitals treating coronavirus patients began running low on personal protective equipment, the People’s Republic of China consulate in Vancouver turned to mask diplomacy.
Dr. John Yee (left) and Consul-Gen. Tong Xiaoling (PRC Consulate Vancouver)
On March 26, the consulate published a statement and photographs on its Chinese website about the donation of N95 masks to two hospitals. A translation of the statement says the diplomats “urgently donated some” to Vancouver General Hospital and St. Paul’s Hospital. The statement does not appear on the consulate’s English website, nor did it mention the quantity of the donation.
Tong was photographed outside the golden door of the government of China’s Shaughnessy mansion handing over two large boxes to Dr. John Yee, director of thoracic surgery with Vancouver Coastal Health. Another photograph shows a consular official presenting two smaller boxes to an unnamed physician outside St. Paul’s.
By email, Yee told theBreaker.news that the consulate donated 500 N95 masks.
The self-congratulatory statement on the consulate website cast China as the hero in the battle against coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan last November and was declared a pandemic on March 11 by the World Health Organization.
“With a highly responsible attitude towards the health and safety of the people, the Chinese government, with the resolute support and joint efforts of the people across the country, quickly adopted scientific and effective prevention and control measures, effectively cut off the virus transmission channels, and effectively curbed the spread of the epidemic,” a translation of the statement reads.
(PRC Consulate Vancouver)
“Facts have proven that China’s measures taken in a timely and effective manner have earned valuable time for curbing the development of the epidemic and achieving the current results of the epidemic, and also for the world to respond to the epidemic. Of course, China’s fight against the epidemic also received support from many countries, including Canada, and the Chinese people are grateful.”
However, evidence shows that China’s response lagged while millions of people began travelling inside and outside the country, in anticipation of Lunar New Year.
The government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, on Jan. 23. Initially, Wuhan officials spent more time censoring the virus than containing it.
Doctors blew the whistle on a WeChat group in December after seven people from a seafood market were hospitalized with SARS-like symptoms. Chinese police detained Dr. Li Wenliang and accused him of rumour-mongering. In a tragic twist, Li was diagnosed with the virus in January and died Feb. 7 in hospital.
China finally allowed a World Health Organization delegation into the country on Feb. 10 to investigate.
On March 25, B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry admitted stocks of masks, gloves, goggles and gowns were “on a tenuous level.”
Wuhan whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang
“The burn rate, as we call it, is much higher than we would have expected and we are putting in place measures now to try and control that and be more efficient and effective in how we’re using PPE,” Henry said.
In February, the Liberal federal government donated 16 tonnes of PPE to China, including 200,000 nitrile gloves, 50,118 face shields, 36,425 coveralls, 3,000 aprons, 1,820 goggles and 1,101 masks. There were other bulk shipments of PPE from Canada to China in January and February arranged by groups in Vancouver and Toronto that are affiliated with the Communist Party’s United Front foreign influence program.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa announced a March 27 donation by the Bank of China of 30,000 medical masks, 50,000 pairs of gloves and other items. Federal officials said the donation would be subject to Health Canada inspection. Netherlands recalled 600,000 masks imported from China.
On March 31, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said $2 billion would be spent on urgently manufacturing and buying PPE, ventilators and coronavirus testing kits, at home and abroad.
The Canadian Olympic Committee played a key role in ending the dithering by the International Olympic Committee and the organizers of Tokyo 2020.
Team Canada’s March 22 statement that the coronavirus pandemic meant it would boycott the Olympics if they went ahead as scheduled forced the IOC two days later to cancel its planned month of study. For the first time, the Games are postponed for a year.
Jules Boykoff (Brian Lee)
“Thank goodness Canada and other countries stood up, and athletes, too, around the world, because that was the catalyst for actually postponing the Olympics,” Portland University political science professor and author Jules Boykoff tells theBreaker.news Podcast host Bob Mackin.
With a global recession inevitable, a 2020 Games suddenly became economically infeasible.
Boykoff is critical of IOC president Thomas Bach, who tried to save face, claiming the decision was solely to protect the health of athletes.
“That doesn’t ring true on any level because it’s those economic relationships that the IOC holds with the broadcasters, like NBC, but also with those corporate sponsors,” Boykoff said. That’s where more than 90% of the IOC revenue comes from.”
Listen to the full interview with Boykoff.
Plus: Richmond city council was told eight people tested positive for coronavirus in their jurisdiction. What about patient and hospitalization stats for City of Vancouver? Are B.C. health officials ignoring the latest recommendations from the World Health Organization?
Hear what Dr. Patricia Daly, the chief medical officer of Vancouver Coastal Health, said when Bob Mackin asked those questions.
Plus coronavirus headlines from the Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim, and highlights of a surreal afternoon at the B.C. Legislature on March 23, when a dozen MLAs came together to pass a $5 billion aid package.
