TORONTO // VANCOUVER – June 10, 2021 – On Tuesday, June 8, the Public Health Agency (PHAC) of Canada announced $2.5 million in funding to boost the work of Community Health Centres (CHCs) in increasing vaccine confidence and uptake across Canada, with special emphasis on the continued roll out of COVID-19 vaccines.
We express our sadness, grief and solidarity with the Muslim communities of London, Ontario, and Canada after the white supremacist, Islamophobic-fueled killing of a four family members and the serious injuring of another in London on the evening of June 6. We remember and we grieve Salman Afzaal, Madiha Afzaal, Yumna Afzaal, and Salman's mother. We hold young Fayaz Afzaal in our thoughts and hearts as he is treated for serious injuries from this attack.
Two hundred and fifteen. Two hundred and fifteen lives taken. Not a footnote for Canada’s history books. Not part of a “dark chapter”, as if it were a story told long ago and now just remembered or revealed to the original authors with surprise. No, 215 lives, the lives of children violently ripped from families, from their communities, their cultures, their languages, their lands. Children whose ruptured and denied histories transmitted trauma out for generations of their loved ones.
The Alliance has provided written submissions this week for the following bills that are tabled at the Ontario Legislative Assembly:
TORONTO – April 30 – Simply put, this just isn’t enough. As well, far too many workplaces are still classified as “essential” in Ontario, putting workers, their families, and the stability of our health system at risk.
Toronto – April 17, 2021 – The organizations of the Primary Care Collaborative echo the alarms being sounded by our healthcare and public health colleagues since Friday. There was no doubt given the modelling from the Ontario COVID-19 Science Table Advisory Board on Friday afternoon that additional measures were and are necessary to help slow the spread of the virus in our province, particularly the spread of the more contagious and deadly Variants of Concern.
TORONTO – April 13, 2020 – Throughout COVID-19, we’ve seen the devastation in marginalized communities caused by health inequities and barriers, including systemic racism, poverty, isolation, lack of housing and homelessness, precarious work, as well as other factors related to the determinants of health. Many people wonder what they can do to help effect change, and what steps they can take to begin.
The Primary Care Collaborative welcomes the Ontario government’s announcement of new provincial measures to stop the alarming spread of COVID-19. While the vaccine rollout continues across the province, we are in a race against the variants, and bold action was needed to protect all Ontarians, particularly those most marginalized. We recognize the collective exhaustion with COVID-19 restrictions, including among primary care providers, yet the stay-at-home order is necessary if we are to turn the tide on the pandemic.
