Canadians should brace for multiple waves of Covid-19 infections that could continue for months, the Chief Public Health Officer said yesterday. Dr. Theresa Tam earlier signed a Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan that forecast as many as 58,000 Canadians could die from a virus without a vaccine like Covid-19: “This virus is going to be with us for some time.”
Federal agencies have approved billions in emergency aid to corporations to stem a Covid-19 recession. Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz, asked how much the agency was prepared to spend, replied: “According to need, okay?”
The Department of Health in a 2006 pandemic master plan predicted even a mild outbreak would kill from 11,000 to 58,000 Canadians, see ten million others take sick days from work, and last a full year. The prophetic study predicted the pandemic would originate in Asia: “It is unlikely an effective vaccine will be available.”
Cabinet yesterday said it may invoke extraordinary measures under the Emergencies Act to stem the Covid-19 pandemic. “I did not expect to have it invoked in my lifetime,” said a former Conservative minister who wrote the law thirty-two years ago.
Thousands of small businesses already face ruin due to the Covid-19 pandemic, says a Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey. Cabinet said it will detail an aid package today: “We’ve never seen this before in Canada.”
SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. received another federal contract the very day it pleaded guilty to fraud, records show. The company was awarded $23.3 million in federal contracts in a year it spent awaiting trial: “Staggering.”
A British Columbia landlord who asked an Indigenous tenant to stop smudging in the apartment has been ordered to pay $23,300 in damages. The tenant cited the 2015 final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as evidence of system discrimination against First Nations: “The smoke cleanses negative energy.”
Cabinet has approved an executive order naming Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Veterans Affairs Minister Lawrence MacAulay as successors in case the Prime Minister is incapacitated. Justin Trudeau has been in self-quarantine since March 12 when his wife Sophie was diagnosed with Covid-19: “This is not the time to quibble.”
About a quarter of Canadians would not take a vaccine against Covid-19 even if it was available, suggests a Department of Health study. Researchers found a significant minority of people including parents are wary of vaccinations: “I don’t believe in them.”
A federal agency that put a fifth of its parliamentary grant in the stock market yesterday would not disclose losses. The Canada Race Relations Foundation had millions in equity wiped out in the 2008 panic and was forced to cut staff salaries forty percent: “It was a huge impact.”
A European Union boycott has reduced Arctic seal hunting to a weekend pastime, says the Department of Fisheries. The Inuit commercial hunt is now entirely reliant on federal aid, wrote auditors: “Few hunters are hunting seals.”
Canada’s chief librarian Leslie Weir in her first act in office last September 7 accepted a Communist Party-paid junket as guest of the National Library of China in a celebration of “socialist culture,” according to records. The Beijing conference was held only weeks before Party librarians admitted to book burning.
Weir did not reply to an interview request, and Library and Archives Canada did not comment. The former University of Ottawa librarian was named to the $243,000-a year post by cabinet last August 30.
Records indicate a week later Weir billed $983 in expenses to fly to Beijing as guest of China’s National Library in celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the Communist takeover of the mainland. Thousands in additional expenses were paid by her hosts. “Accommodation costs, meals and a portion of the air fare cost were paid by the National Library of China,” according to filings.
Weir’s visit to the two-day conference came nine months after Beijing police jailed two Canadian consultants, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. A total 123 Canadians were in Chinese prisons at the time, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Weir did not disclose a text of her speech to the conference of the International Symposium of Libraries. Only nine other countries sent delegates, according to minutes of the meeting.
The conference opened with remarks by China’s Minister of Culture who said he “hoped the National Library of China and public libraries around the country would stick to the Communist Party Central Committee’s decisions and plans…and make greater contributions to the great development and prosperity of socialist culture,” according to minutes.
Written greetings from Chinese President Xi Jinping “aroused prolonged and warm applause.” A statement by the Party-run Xinhua news agency read: “Xi Urges National Library To Stick To Correct Political Direction,” explaining Party leaders expressed “the hope that the Library will make new contributions to the building of a socialist country with great cultural strength.”
Party-run press only weeks after the librarians’ convention reported Chinese authorities in Gansu Province held a public book burning as part of a “thorough clean-up” of “illegal publications and religious publications, especially books, pictorial publications and visual content that showed leanings.”
The official Red Star News on December 6 reported the book burning complete with photo. The stories were later deleted by Party censors but confirmed December 9 by the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong daily.
China’s Ministry of Education in an August 7 decree only weeks before the library convention issued new textbooks on “moral education.” “As a big improvement on previous versions, the textbooks have fully incorporated socialist traditions and values, traditional Chinese cultural expressions and China’s revolutionary history,” the ministry said in a statement.
By Staff 
Parliament has granted cabinet wartime spending powers for ninety days. The bill was introduced in the Commons at 10:15 am, sped through the Senate and was signed into law by 12:14 pm Friday amid fears of the coronavirus pandemic: “We do what it takes.”
Canada’s submarine fleet has defective welds and diesel engines so obsolete the navy cannot find parts, says a newly-released audit. The entire fleet spent last year in dry dock at a cost of $325.5 million: ‘Obsolescence has made it difficult.’
Cabinet has no “business case” to grant more carbon tax exemptions to farmers, says Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau. Two private bills introduced in Parliament would extend multi-million dollar tax breaks for grain growers: “I want to question your data.”
