Blacklock's Reporter

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.”

The Department of Health yesterday acknowledged it failed to stock up on pandemic supplies in a $300 million national emergency stockpile despite repeated warnings. The admission came seven weeks after it shipped sixteen tonnes of masks, medical gloves and face shields to China: “Someone needs to be held accountable.”

Parliament must be recalled into emergency session to rewrite a garbled $71 billion wage subsidy bill. Finance Minister Bill Morneau yesterday acknowledged payments to business will now be delayed several weeks: “They should have made sure they were getting it right.”

Opposition Leader Andrew Scheer yesterday donated his $3,800 pandemic pay raise to the Regina Food Bank. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised all charitable donors, but did not discuss his own $5,300 pay hike that took effect yesterday: “You are doing your part.”

Cabinet has granted itself unprecedented powers to borrow $350 billion for pandemic relief programs, a sum greater than last year’s entire federal budget. Wartime spending powers were approved by Parliament in a bill that passed the Commons in fifteen minutes: “We made this decision together.”

A federal pandemic preparedness agency that’s run short of Covid-19 face masks spent millions on climate change programs last year, accounts show. Spending by the Public Health Agency of Canada included a half-million grant for “science and storytelling regarding climate change”.

MPs yesterday told the Commons health committee they can’t get straight answers on the scope of pandemic equipment shortages. Cabinet said it is spending $2 billion on masks, ventilators, test kits, medical gowns and gloves: “Canadians have a right to know.”

The Department of Women and Gender Equality paid a pollster $69,562 to gauge Canadians’ views on the #MeToo movement. Staff said the spending would “inform future efforts to shift attitudes in Canada that contribute to gendered inequalities.”