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 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: ‘Make greater contributions to socialist culture.’
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."
Poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday: “Physicists claim nothing in nature can be lost. All changes are merely transformations of matter and energy…”
