An Ontario senator is recommending colleagues bang pots and pans at home after the Chamber voted itself into adjournment for a month. Senator Donna Dasko (Independent-Ont.) called it a symbolic call-out to doctors and nurses fighting the pandemic: “It’s a wonderful way to connect with people.”
A cabinet proposal to regulate plastic as toxic now makes no sense, a plastics manufacturer told the Commons finance committee. The Department of the Environment prior to the pandemic said it would list plastic along with asbestos and mercury as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act: “Masks, ventilators, hoses, intravenous bags, that sort of thing.”
More federal aid for corporate media is untenable amid mammoth pandemic-related job cuts in other industries, says Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer. A publishers’ lobby that earlier won a $595 million federal bailout complained of crashing advertising revenues: “There’s a lot of hurt out there.”
Canada Day may be cancelled, says the Department of Canadian Heritage. Public health officers have warned July 1 would coincide with an expected second wave of pandemic infections: ‘The top priority is health.’
Cabinet has replaced top management of the Crown-financed Canada Infrastructure Bank only nine weeks after MPs ordered an audit of all federal infrastructure spending. The Prime Minister gave no explanation: “If they know, they aren’t telling us.”
Any new pandemic relief bill must include the rollback of a fifty percent increase in the carbon tax, say Conservative MPs. House leaders are negotiating a return of Parliament into emergency session to pass a $71 billion wage subsidy bill: “We don’t believe it makes any sense.”
The federal prison system says it is considering release of some inmates due to fears of Covid-19 infection. Wardens have already suspended all public visits and temporary leave for 14,000 convicts “unless medically necessary”: “They don’t even know what is happening.”
To increase awareness
of the new pandemic
I named my cat
Covid.
It seems to do the trick.
I tell my friends,
I am at home with Covid.
They stop inviting me to their daily stroll.
I tell my boss,
I am dealing with Covid.
He tells me to forget work, just to stay home.
I put a sign outside the house,
Beware of Covid.
My neighbours keep a mile distance.
Covid and I
are the masters of social isolation.
It is easier than we thought.
I sit by the kitchen table,
enjoying my Cheerios.
Covid gets an extra portion
of real tuna-flavoured kibble.
We read the morning paper,
watch CNN, CBC.
The numbers are still climbing,
but the trend is changing.
I smile at him.
Covid and I
are flattening the curve.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
The Canada Revenue Agency yesterday said it is prepared to handle a million calls a day for $8,000 pandemic relief payments to uninsured workers. MPs said application criteria are so restrictive many people will lose out: “We’re going to get lots of questions, I guarantee.”
Pandemic fears yesterday prompted the Department of Veterans Affairs to cancel a wreath-laying ceremony for the dead of the Battle of Vimy Ridge at the National War Memorial. A planned May 8 pilgrimage of Second World War veterans to the Netherlands is also cancelled: “These events would have resulted in the gathering of large groups.”
Two-thirds of restaurant workers nationwide have been laid off, a total 800,000 people, says a trade group. New data follow the Prime Minister’s March 27 appeal to restaurant owners to keep staff amid Public Health Agency of Canada warnings that customers should stay home: “Nobody even had time to plan.”
The Department of Public Safety yesterday listed zookeepers but not spiritual leaders as “essential” workers in the pandemic. The Public Health Agency has advised that all masses, temple and prayer meetings be cancelled to avoid spreading the coronavirus: “Canadians want the services they rely on every day.”
A pharmaceutical company accused of withholding essential drug data from generic manufacturers yesterday settled out of court with the anti-trust Competition Bureau. Federal investigators had filed a Federal Court claim against Otsuka Canada Pharmaceutical Inc. of Saint-Laurent, Que.: “I remain very concerned.”
More than two million Canadians have applied for employment insurance in the past two weeks, says Minister of Employment Carla Qualtrough. All workers and employers will pay for pandemic-related claims through higher premiums in future years: “Our employment insurance system was not designed to address a public global health crisis.”
This year’s deficit will top $130 billion, the highest in Canadian history, according to figures detailed yesterday by Finance Minister Bill Morneau. The shortfall is triple the modern equivalent of Parliament’s 1942 wartime deficit of $39.3 billion: “Extraordinary.”
