1) Potential listeria contamination causes frozen waffle recall in Canada, U.S.

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Canadian Press Staff, October 22, 2024

An American food manufacturing company has issued a voluntary recall of various frozen waffle products in the United States and Canada because of potential listeria contamination.

The Canadian portion of the recall covers some waffles sold under brands including Compliments, Great Value, No Name, Selection and Western Family.

Illinois-based TreeHouse Foods says the issue was discovered through routine testing at its manufacturing facility in Brantford, Ont.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says it is conducting an investigation that may lead to further recalls.

No illnesses have been reported so far.

The agency says food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes may not look or smell spoiled but can still make you sick, with symptoms including vomiting, nausea, persistent fever, muscle aches, severe headache and neck stiffness.

TreeHouse Foods said late last week that it recalled hundreds of frozen waffle products in the U.S. sold in leading retailers including Walmart and Target, due to the concerns over listeria bacteria.

It said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Canadian food regulators were aware of the recall.

2) ‘Alarming’: Report says Canadian homes show higher levels, exposure to radon gas

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Bill Graveland, October 23, 2024

A countrywide study says radioactive radon exposure is on the rise and continues to be a critical public health concern. 

The study, released Wednesday, is the first update on radon exposure in Canada since 2012. 

“We’re more than a dozen years out from understanding how the Canadian residential radon problem has changed, and indeed it has changed,” said the scientific lead on the report, Aaron Goodarzi, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine. 

Radon is a colourless, odourless, radioactive gas that forms naturally when uranium, thorium or radium — radioactive metals — break down in rocks, soil and groundwater. Exposure comes from breathing radon in air that comes through cracks and gaps in buildings and homes. 

It’s the second-leading cause of lung cancer in Canadians, especially for those who don’t smoke. 

Goodarzi said that in 2012, about seven per cent of homes in Canada were found to have above Health Canada’s safe level of radon — 200 becquerels per cubic metre. 

In 2024, 75,000 readings were taken from urban and rural residential buildings across Canada. Data from the 2021 census was also used. 

“This is now 17.8 per cent, so that’s up more than double, 2 1/2 times greater, in terms of a property exceeding Canada’s guideline,” he said. 

“From my perspective as a researcher studying this over the past 10 years, it’s no surprise. As a lung cancer prevention advocate, of course it is alarming.” 

Goodarzi said there are an estimated 10.3 million Canadians living in houses with high radon, increasing their risk of developing lung cancer. 

The study says one in five Canadian residential buildings are at or above Health Canada’s safe level. 

In Atlantic Canada, the B.C. Interior and Yukon, it’s one in three. 

“There’s no area in Canada that is risk-free,” Goodarzi said. “Canada is amongst the highest that has been mapped globally in the world.” 

Goodarzi said the rise in radon could be partially because readings were taken on a ground floor or in a basement compared to the rest of a home. He said new home builds are also more energy efficient and trap radon inside. 

He said the new report also contains five times more readings than the 14,000 taken in 2012. 

Goodarzi said people need to install radon detectors in their homes and take measures to remove high levels of the gas. He said he also hopes changes will be made in the construction of new homes to account for radon. 

A coalition of researchers behind the report also includes scientists from Health Canada and CAREX Canada. 

Alison Wallace, a thoracic surgeon at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, is a co-author. 

“I’m very concerned. I think the data accuracy of the new report is more robust,” she said. 

“It’s more real numbers and people should take it seriously.” 

“It’s more real numbers and people should take it seriously.” 

The Lung Health Foundation praised the report for it’s “clear and urgent message.”

“We now know that nearly 18 per cent of Canadian homes contain dangerous radon levels that require swift action. It’s worse than we previously thought,” said Jessica Buckley, president and CEO of the foundation.

“We think it will inspire a record-breaking number of Canadians to test their homes and workplaces.”

3) Tobacco companies unlikely to shift business models despite proposed settlement: prof;

Courtesy: Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Sammy Hudes and Nicole Ireland, October 18, 2024

Tobacco policy experts say without further pressure, major companies are unlikely to shift their business models toward less harmful alternatives despite a proposed settlement reached that would see three industry giants pay out billions to smokers and their families.

Under a newly proposed deal filed in court on Thursday, JTI-Macdonald Corp., Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, and Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. would pay nearly $25 billion to provincial and territorial governments.

More than $4 billion would go to Quebec class-action members and another $2.5 billion would be paid to smokers in other provinces and territories who were diagnosed with lung cancer, throat cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease between March 2015 and March 2019.

The three tobacco companies would also pour more than $1 billion into a foundation to fight tobacco-related diseases.

But University of Toronto professor Michael Chaiton, who studies tobacco and addiction, said the agreement offers little incentive for companies to abandon tobacco products that continue to drive their profits.

“The lesson of these lawsuits is that cigarettes … should not be a profitable consumer product and that there are alternatives available,” he said.

“Functionally, I think some of the settlement protects the companies to allow them to continue to sell those products in particular, rather than switching over.”

Chaiton said major industry players have maintained a willingness in recent years to promote tobacco-based products and fight proposed regulations that would curb their use, despite offering alternatives such as e-cigarettes.

He said companies have marketed vaping products as a way to transition toward a “smoke-free world,” but their actions haven’t matched that pledge.

“We haven’t seen a huge number of people who used to smoke cigarettes move over to these products,” he said.

“The large percentage of the people who use vaping products are those people who have never smoked cigarettes at all. So it’s really not been a public health thing.”

David Hammond, a public health professor at the University of Waterloo, said he was disappointed the proposed settlement does not require the companies to adopt reforms affecting their business models.

“Their business practices essentially haven’t changed and won’t change,” said Hammond.

“The industry still generates billions of profits from cigarettes, and so I think they will continue the practices that have been generating that revenue.”

He said industry revenues from cigarettes have actually increased over the past decade as companies have adopted “aggressive” price increases. Now facing billions of dollars in damages, the companies are unlikely to phase out their most profitable products, said Hammond.

“If they’re trying to find ways of paying for these settlements, well, if nothing else, it gives them even more incentive to increase those revenues,” he said.

The $32.5-billion agreement proposal, which is subject to a vote by creditors and court approval, is the result of a corporate restructuring process set off by a legal battle over the health effects of smoking.

The three companies sought creditor protection in Ontario in 2019 after Quebec’s highest court upheld a ruling ordering them to pay nearly $15 billion in two class-action lawsuits.

Jacob Shelley, co-director of the Health Ethics, Law and Policy lab at Western University in London, Ont., said this case has broad implications for other industries beyond tobacco that manufacture food or beverages that can cause harm. 

”At the end of the day, we have a bunch of products currently on the market where the same obligations to provide warnings for the risks that follow from their use exist,” Shelley said.

“We know that alcohol is a carcinogen. We know of the risks, but we also know that consumers aren’t aware. We know that they’re not aware of the risks of cancer.”

Shelley said the same legal principle applies to products such as highly-caffeinated energy drinks and sugary drinks. 

“If you’re putting a product into the market … you have an obligation to ensure that you warn consumers about the risks,” he said. 

“You can’t just bury your head in the sand.” 

3) Ontario mayors ask for mental-health law reviews in wake of opioid, encampment crisis, though Barrie mayor pushed for something stronger

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Liam Casey, October 18, 2024

A person who experienced homelessness sits with their belongings as city workers move to clear an encampment on Toronto’s Bay Street on May 15, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Ontario Big City Mayors are asking the province to review mental-health laws and whether to expand the scope of involuntary treatment for people who are addicted to drugs and live on the streets.

The organization that represents 29 mayors of cities with more than 100,000 people say they are taking no position on treatment given without consent — a practice British Columbia’s government recently committed to expanding. 

But they say they want to spark a discussion with the provincial government, noting homelessness has risen across Ontario since the COVID-19 pandemic, in communities big and small. 

Encampments have popped up in recent years throughout the province, while the cost of both purchasing and renting housing has increased significantly.

Toxic overdose deaths are also up, and the mayors are demanding immediate action from both the province and the federal government. 

Last year, nearly 2,600 Ontarians died due to opioids, a 50 per cent increase from 2019, with fentanyl and its derivatives especially affecting users in the homeless population. 

“For those suffering from mental health and addictions in this province, there are not proper facilities that have capacity to give everyone who requires the care they need to get that care in a timely fashion,” said Josh Morgan, the mayor of London, Ont. 

“That is an absolute crisis across this province and something that we know we need the government to move on.”

The mayors said Friday they would like the province to “urgently review” two laws, the Mental Health Act and the Health Care Consent Act, which allow for short periods of involuntary hospital admissions.

“The scope of the mental-health crisis that we’ve seen and how widespread it is was never necessarily contemplated when those acts were written,” Morgan said.

“So our ask to immediately review and update those acts in consultation with proper medical and health-care professionals, as well as municipalities and those impacted by the challenges faced on our streets, is a reasonable ask — to say, ‘Is that sort of treatment, or compulsory, or however you want to call it, mandatory treatment, the right thing to do?'” 

Neither Health Minister Sylvia Jones nor Associate Minister of Mental Health Michael Tibollo has ruled out expanding involuntary treatment, but both say they prefer treatment to be voluntary. 

They have also both said they are working on increasing the number of treatment beds. 

In its upcoming legislative sitting, Premier Doug Ford’s government promised to legislate new rules to eliminate 10 existing supervised consumption sites that are within 200 metres of schools and daycares, and do away with needle exchange programs.

Instead, the province has said it will shift to an abstinence-based model, with plans to launch new “homelessness and addiction recovery treatment hubs” next year, plus create 375 highly supportive housing units at a cost of $378 million.

The province’s fundamental shift has sparked outrage among homeless people, advocates and health-care workers. 

Alex Nuttall, the mayor of Barrie, Ont., was among several city leaders who were calling on mayors to take a collective position and outright ask for mandatory involuntary treatment laws from the province. 

He said he’s happy with their softened position.

“When I sit there and make calls for the city of Barrie asking for more mandatory treatment and rehabilitation, I don’t know what those lines look like in terms of where those lines need to be created, what the pathways are into it, what the pathways are out of it,” he said Friday.

“And what you’re seeing here in this motion is a call for the provincial government to determine whether they need to strengthen what already exists in terms of mandatory care in this province.”

Encampments and open drug use have become a huge issue for the mayors, who launched a “solve the crisis” campaign earlier this year to spur the province to do more to help homeless people and beleaguered businesses.

There are 1,400 encampments across Ontario, the mayors say.

Among other asks, the mayors would like to see both provincial and federal governments join any court cases that may end up restricting the ability of municipalities to regulate and prohibit encampments.

They are calling for a vast expansion of residential and community-based treatment programs. The mayors also want reforms to the justice system to allow for referrals to rehabilitation centres for some offences rather than punitive measures such as incarceration. 

They also want the federal government to spend the $250 million for municipalities it announced in the spring, as part of a promised national encampment strategy. 

Cam Guthrie, the mayor of Guelph, Ont., said he is exasperated and fed up.

“We have an encampment and opioid addictions and mental-health crisis in our province and we should not be at another podium again asking for help,” he said. 

“So we need the help of the province and we need it urgently, we need it now.”

4) Ontario appoints former federal Liberal health minister as chair of primary care team

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Allison Jones, Oct. 21, 2024.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government is appointing former federal Liberal health minister Jane Philpott to a new role overseeing attempts to connect every Ontarian to primary care within the next five years.

The Ontario Medical Association says there are more than 2.5 million Ontarians without a family doctor.

Philpott, dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Queen’s University and director of its School of Medicine, says in a statement that she wants to see 100 per cent of Ontarians attached to a family doctor or nurse practitioner working in a publicly funded team.

Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones says there is no one she trusts more than Philpott to achieve that goal.

Philpott’s new role as chair of a new primary care action team in the Ministry of Health starts Dec. 1 and the government says she will draw on an interprofessional model of primary care that she designed with colleagues in the Frontenac, Lennox and Addington Ontario Health Team.

The government says the plan will include ensuring better service on weekends and after-hours, reducing administrative burden on family doctors and other primary care professionals and improving connections to specialists and digital tools.