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Police say several investigations into protest-related incidents are underway but Ottawa police Chief Peter Sloly on Monday declared the response on the weekend a success.

“The question was, is the bar of success no riots, no injuries, no death? Absolutely,” he said.

Sloly has said the volatility of the protests and the risk of escalating a situation — possibly endangering residents and first responders — make it difficult to lay charges or issue tickets when incidents occur.

“That is the reality of policing these large scale, dynamic demonstrations,” he said Monday.

Coun. Catherine McKenney, whose Somerset ward covers the protest area, suggested the chief was ignoring some significant problems that have occurred in their ward. Several protesters have been accused of violence, harassment, racism and homophobia. Ottawa paramedics have also confirmed rocks and verbal abuse were hurled at an ambulance and first responders over the weekend.

While Sloly brought up the size and scope of the protest as significant factors when comparing the unrest to previous demonstrations seen in the city, it was not a satisfying comparison for Robin Browne, co-lead of the advocacy group 613-819 Black Hub.

“We suspect that if the truckers had been Black and Indigenous, the police would have reacted very, very differently,” said Browne.

Ottawa police were giving an update on the situation on Wednesday afternoon, which you can follow here.

In southern Alberta, meanwhile, an RCMP spokesperson said the safety of police and those in the immediate area is the primary concern as a trucker blockade escalated three days after it formed near the Canada-U.S. border.

An alleged assault occurred after Mounties announced earlier Tuesday that they would be clearing the roadblock outside the border crossing in Coutts, Alta., about 300 kilometres southeast of Calgary. The RCMP decided to pull back after confusion led to drivers clearing in opposite directions, leading to a head-on collision and the alleged assault.

“This kind of conduct is totally unacceptable,” Premier Jason Kenney said. “Without hesitation, I condemn those actions and I call for calm.”

The border checkpoint is the primary conduit for cross-border trade between Alberta and the U.S.. The demonstration is tied to the wider protests over the trucking industry vaccine mandate.

Kenney called for people to stay away from the area while the RCMP carry out their action against the blockade. He said about 100 individuals are preventing thousands of truckers from doing their job of delivering food, goods and medicine to Albertans and Canadians, emphasizing that blocking a key piece of infrastructure is against the law.

The opposition NDP said it’s in the Kenney government’s power to help trigger an end to the standoff, through a court injunction.

At the time of this writing, police had not provided more details regarding the collision and alleged assault.

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Inflation isn’t the main factor driving Canada’s sky-high housing costs, some experts say 

The House of Commons is examining the effects of inflation on the Canadian economy through a special parliamentary committee that launched in January.

The first meeting of that committee saw a thorough discussion of housing prices. The price of the average Canadian home hit $713,500 in December 2021, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA).

But some who took part say the committee risks conflating two issues that are distinct in some ways.

Conservatives point out that housing prices in Canada surged by 33 per cent from March 2020 to November 2021 — something the party blames on what it calls the federal government’s reckless spending during the pandemic.

“The inflation in house prices followed the government printing about $400 billion of new cash, dumping it into the financial system, much of which was lent out in mortgages,” Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre told CBC News.

“More dollars chasing fewer goods means inflation, and in this case, housing inflation.”

But many housing experts point out that Canadian housing prices have been rising steadily for more than 20 years now, far predating the recent spike in inflation.

“These issues have predated our conversations about inflation, or even concerns about inflation,” said Murtaza Haider, a professor in real estate management at Ryerson University who appeared before the committee this month as an expert witness. “To assume as such, we would make the mistake of thinking that if we solve the inflation problem, we will solve the housing problem and that would be a big mistake.”

CREA sales figures show a 318 per cent rise in home prices since 2000, suggesting today’s high housing prices have been decades in the making.

Sahar Raza, a manager at the National Right to Housing Network, said changes to taxation rules for investors and developers would do more to lower prices than broadly trying to reduce inflation.

“These are major gaps that don’t even come into the picture when we’re just talking about inflation as this overarching concern,” Raza said. “The housing sector is experiencing something very specific.”

Above all, says the head of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, there is an acute “mismatch” between demand and supply, with longstanding issues in many provinces in terms of adequate supply.

“Canada has the fastest population growth of any G7 nation, and housing has not kept pace with this growth,” said Romy Bowers told the committee.

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Canada just experienced its 4th deadliest pandemic month

As discussed in this newsletter last week, the number of hospital admissions tied to COVID-19 infections averaged more than 8,000 per day in January as the month neared an end, well above the previous average high of 4,400 in the same month last year. Intensive care admissions, meanwhile, were near the previous peaks of April and May 2021.

The totals on COVID-19 mortality for the first month of 2022 offer a mix of sobering and heartening news.

According to CBC tracking, which you can see in the graph further down, the astonishing exponential math of Omicron did not lead to a record monthly total in COVID-19 deaths. It appears Canada just completed the fourth deadliest month in its pandemic experience.

The deadliest months nationally were in January 2021 and December 2020. Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia all experienced their worst COVID-19 fatalities in one of those two months.

The third deadliest month nationally, May 2020, was influenced by far the most devastating month a province has experienced in the pandemic to date — Quebec’s total of more than 2,700 deaths, spurred in significant part by long-term care home outbreaks.

But with more than 3,500 deaths according to CBC tracking, the month just passed is by far the deadliest for Canada since COVID-19 vaccines were widely available to eligible Canadians. No other month since the supply of vaccines became consistent even broached the 1,500 mark.

In addition, while Atlantic Canada has dealt with restrictions that curtailed movement and societal activity throughout the pandemic, its individual provinces have just experienced their deadliest months.

For Alberta and Manitoba, COVID-19 deaths in January 2022 have exceeded their share of the Canadian population, while that hasn’t been the case in Saskatchewan.

The experience in a Kitchener, Ont., hospital right now appears instructive and consistent with CBC reporting elsewhere in Canada.

St. Mary’s General Hospital president Lee Fairclough told CBC News this week that for many people who are in hospital but don’t need to be in intensive care, their stays are shorter and they’re not as sick compared to previous waves. Often it’s because they have at least two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, she added.

“It does allow us to care for more patients outside of that ICU environment. Thank goodness because we certainly wouldn’t have the ICU beds.”

Tabulating COVID-19 months obviously has some limitations, as the coronavirus waves don’t tidily begin on the first of a month. As well, some researchers believe there’s an undercount going on, with deaths at home attributable to COVID-19 going missed in official counts.

Statistics Canada recently reported a preliminary total of 307,205 deaths in Canada in 2020, representing a 7.7 per cent increase from 2019. An Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development estimate of excess deaths also provides further context for the 18 months since January 2020, with Canada estimated to have experienced an eight per cent increase in deaths over what would normally be expected in recent pre-pandemic trends.

February, meanwhile, may not bring a massive reversion back to pre-Omicron months.

“We are still seeing a lot of very sick patients with Omicron, particularly among the unvaccinated,” said Fairclough, noting people in the ICU “are predominantly people that are unvaccinated.”

Countries currently reporting the most recent COVID-19 deaths

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