Canada has received a small fraction of pandemic supplies it’s ordered from China and must check every shipment for shoddy goods, says the Department of Public Works. Inspections take days at a time after thousands of coronavirus test kit swabs were found contaminated with mold, the Commons health committee was told: “How is that possible?”
Cabinet yesterday rewrote a pandemic relief bill to fix benefits for under-employed Canadians. The Department of Employment would not detail costs or explain if the bill must now return to Parliament for approval, slowing billions in payouts: “It’s a little premature.”
Cabinet yesterday put in force new “urgent” regulations allowing border agents to send illegal immigrants back to the U.S. The number of illegal border crossings had increased eighteen percent in months prior to the pandemic: “We are comfortable with this.”
The economy has shrunk more quickly than feared with national production falling 2.6 percent in the first quarter of the year including a nine percent decline in March alone, Statistics Canada said yesterday. New data follow an admission by the Department of Industry it has no formal plan on when or how pandemic shutdowns may be lifted: “What have they been doing?”
The Public Health Agency of Canada yesterday confirmed it closed “strategically located” warehouses stocked with pandemic supplies and landfilled millions of unused items last year. “That was pre-pandemic,” said Health Minister Patricia Hajdu.
Canadians are so distraught one MP yesterday told the Commons health committee she knew of constituents who’d made a suicide pact. The Canadian Mental Health Association said uplifting messages must be balanced with hard facts on the financial impact of Covid-19: “My heart sunk.”
The Department of Employment yesterday said it is still issuing permits to temporary foreign workers though Canadian unemployment is forecast to reach a forty-year high. “Why?” one MP told a hearing of the Commons health committee: ‘What signal does that send to people without a job?’
Cabinet yesterday enacted new regulations allowing police to ticket cross-border scofflaws up to a thousand dollars – $100 for children – for ignoring quarantine orders. Ticketing would save the cost of prosecutions under the Criminal Code: ‘It reduces pressure on the courts.’
The Public Health Agency is downplaying the full impact of the pandemic with a resulting threat of needless deaths and economic turmoil, the Commons health committee was told yesterday. An epidemiologist testified federal forecasts severely underestimate the infection rate in an inevitable second wave due this summer: ‘It will take over a year.’
The Department of Industry yesterday said it has no formal plan to reopen the economy though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said pandemic regulations may lift on “certain industries” within weeks. “The reality is it’s going to be weeks still,” Trudeau told reporters.
An Ontario tribunal has agreed to hear a political dispute as a human rights case. Allegations of discrimination follow a claim a Liberal city councilor threatened to fire a Conservative staffer in Hamilton, Ont.: “You realize if you choose to run for Council I will fire you.”
The Department of Agriculture yesterday said it will pay a $1,500 grant for every foreign worker hired by farmers, meatpackers and seafood processors though Canadian jobless number 1,547,000. Cabinet said the subsidy would offset higher costs of quarantining migrants: “Canadians should have the first crack at every single job.”
A federal target to halt landfilling of plastic garbage could cost up to $8.3 billion, says the Department of Environment. It would require construction of dozens of new recycling plants nationwide: ‘Business as usual will not be sufficient.’
Work on the costliest renovation in Canadian history will continue regardless of the pandemic, says the Department of Public Works. MPs have noted they still have no final deadline or budget for the multi-billion dollar refit of Parliament’s Centre Block and iconic Peace Tower: “We don’t know.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs says decades of medical records prove Gulf War veterans have a lower suicide rate than the general public. Researchers said there was no evidence to support repeated claims of long-term health effects: ‘They had a significantly lower risk.’
