Applications open May 25 for a $2 billion commercial tenants’ relief package that MPs warn will not work. “We didn’t want to be bailing out failing businesses,” said the CEO of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation: “I don’t know if people think they can negotiate a program with us, but that’s not the way the world works.”
Persistent shortages of pandemic supplies for health care workers leave the country unprepared for an expected second wave of Covid-19 infections this summer, says the Canadian Medical Association. The group compared doctors’ dilemma to dispatching firefighters into a burning building without personal protection: “They are being told to ration.”
Canada’s national civil aviation authority yesterday said it cut management salaries following the sharpest decline in air traffic in peacetime. Major airports are down to as few as 95 flights a day on average, data show: “The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the aviation industry has been profound.”
Federal agencies recommend Canadians avoid reference to China when discussing the pandemic. Origins of the coronavirus are irrelevant, the Treasury Board wrote in a guide for employees: ‘Don’t blame people from a specific country.’
Canada Post yesterday cited “fierce and dynamic” competition from non-union Amazon and other rivals in reporting a $153 million pre-tax loss for 2019. The report follows cabinet’s April 1 award of a sole-sourced contract to Amazon to manage distribution of pandemic supplies: “Our inflexible and high-cost structure threatens our ability to effectively compete.”
One in five homeowners is expected to defer mortgage payments by Labour Day amid a forecasted decline in average home prices of up to eighteen percent, says CMHC. The agency’s CEO yesterday said mortgage rules must be tightened to curb household debt one MP called “bloody terrifying”: “As much as one fifth of all mortgages could be in arrears if our economy has not recovered sufficiently.”
Cabinet waited too long to close the nation’s borders, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam last night told the Commons health committee. Tam acknowledged foreign visitors should have been prohibited long before cabinet restricted travel: “In hindsight, yes, I think people could act faster.”
Incoming Auditor General Karen Hogan yesterday vowed to investigate the Public Health Agency’s failure to prepare for the pandemic. The Agency has admitted throwing away millions of high-grade masks and failing to maintain a national stockpile of emergency supplies: ‘I am known for telling it like it is.’
Facebook makes an average $1.40 per day from active users in Canada, according to details of a federal Competition Bureau investigation. The California corporation in a compliance agreement with Canadian regulators agreed to pay $9.5 million to settle privacy complaints: “Canadians expect and deserve truth from businesses in the digital economy.”
Cabinet yesterday said it will expand a small business relief program that disqualified the smallest operators. “I heard the concerns,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters.
Cabinet in an unprecedented measure last night proposed to freeze civil court proceedings from Tax Court challenges to bankruptcies for the next four months. Attorney General David Lametti cited a “problematic situation” due to the pandemic: “There is a risk.”
Taxpayers won’t know for more than a year whether billions budgeted for pandemic relief were well spent, says incoming Auditor General Karen Hogan. Speaking in the Senate, Hogan said auditors aren’t even aware how much has been spent in the past ten weeks: “It’s important to make sure you get to the bottom.”
MPs vow to “get to the bottom” of mismanagement of a $300 million national stockpile of pandemic supplies that led to costly shortages of equipment. Sally Thornton, vice-president of the Public Health Agency in charge of the stockpile, invoked national security in refusing to disclose how much equipment was thrown away before the pandemic: “These supplies literally went into the garbage.”
Cabinet has approved another bailout for newspapers, the second in a year, but only for publishers endorsed by the Canada Revenue Agency. Regulations exclude small, family-run weeklies in favour of large, money-losing media corporations: “I’m a large-L, hard core Liberal.”
A federal hunt for pandemic masks is so haphazard the Department of Public Works prepaid millions to Chinese suppliers of shoddy goods while dismissing offers from Western contractors, MPs were told. The department refused to name its contractors in China: “I think Canadians need to know.”
