COVID-19 in Quebec: What you need to know this weekend
CBC
Sports tournaments will be allowed to resume in Quebec, bars will be allowed to reopen, and working from home will no longer be mandatory, all as of Monday, as the province moves into the next phase of its plan to lift most COVID-19 restrictions by mid-March.
Bars, which have been closed since Dec. 20, will have to operate at 50 per cent capacity, with last call for food and alcohol at midnight and a closing time of 1 a.m. Customers must remain seated, with a maximum of 10 people per table, or the residents of three households. Dancing and karaoke will remain banned until March 14.
As well, venues that accommodate 10,000 spectators or fewer will no longer have any capacity limits as of Monday. Capacity limits will also be lifted for places of worship and funerals.
Working remotely for jobs that could be done from home will no longer be mandatory as of Monday.
As well, Quebec's workplace health and safety board (CNESST) says masks will no longer be required in the workplace, provided there are physical barriers between people or a distance of two metres can be kept between them. Masks must still be worn in common areas.
Health Canada has approved Canada's first homegrown vaccine against COVID-19.
It was developed by Medicago, a pharmaceutical company based in Quebec City, and the British-American vaccine giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
Health Canada says the vaccine, under the name Covifenz, can be used in adults age 18-64. It comes on the heels of Health Canada's approval of the Novavax shot last week.
It is the sixth COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in the country, and a medical officer for Medicago has said that it is the first plant-based vaccine ever approved for human use.
Quebec and Montreal public health officials say the Omicron wave is slowing, with indicators like hospitalizations and the number of students absent from school showing infections are on a downward trend.
Officials say the province now estimates three million Quebecers likely caught the Omicron variant in the fifth wave, with about one million of those infections seen in Montrealers.
"Things are heading in the right direction," said Quebec's interim director of public health Dr. Luc Boileau."But this wave is not over," he added, urging people to remain cautious as Quebec continues to ease restrictions.
A man who terrorized women in St. John's in 2012 is now suing the federal government, saying he'll never walk again after being stabbed at a prison in Renous, N.B.
When help finally came for snowmobiler Dave Metcalfe, he'd almost given up hope it was coming at all.
The City of Montreal is asking residents to stay home as much as possible until Monday evening, as crews work to clear a second round of snow dumped on the city by Sunday's winter storm.
An internal government report warned a year ago that allowing "the trend of negative rhetoric" about the security of the Canada-U.S. border could lead to a thickening of the 49th parallel, adversely affecting trade and travel.
Saskatchewan RCMP says it's investigating three stabbing incidents on Big River First Nation.
Police in Surrey, B.C., say they have arrested a suspect believed to be involved in two unprovoked stranger assaults last week.
Liberal leadership candidate and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said on Sunday that former prime minister Stephen Harper asked him to join his cabinet as finance minister in 2012.
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The sudden closure of Yellowknife's Great Slave Animal Hospital has left both pet owners and animal care non-profits in the N.W.T. scrambling to find veterinary care.
Nearly the entirety of Alberta is in for a bout of frigid temperatures beginning Saturday, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC).
Seemingly never-ending snow, extreme cold, and a mix of ice pellets and freezing rain. Across much of Canada, it's been a nasty holiday weekend for weather.
A Sunday storm is brewing, and it's also set to usher in Islander Day with a mixture of snow, ice pellets, freezing rain and wind across P.E.I.
A winter storm warning has been lifted for London and Middlesex County as residents continue to dig themselves out from the region's second major snowfall in less than a week.