Hello,
Circle next Monday in your calendars, because it’s the first day in a long time that we will get a glimpse of Ottawa’s books.
The Liberal government says it will table its fall fiscal statement in the House of Commons after 4 p.m. ET on Monday.
The Liberals have often used these statements to announce new measures, such as the Canada Infrastructure Bank in 2016. But this year’s update will be even more crucial, given the state of the pandemic, the need to support public health and economy, and the fact that the government hasn’t tabled a real budget since March of 2019.
Economists told The Globe they expect this year’s deficit to be upwards of $400-billion, larger than the last time the government estimated it in July.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged today that Canada won’t be first in line for COVID-19 vaccines because the drugs won’t be manufactured here.
The federal government spent $5-million in consulting fees to set up the COVID-19 relief program for large employers, but the fund has only delivered two loans so far in its six months of operations.
Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne says it’s up to the Canadian Olympic Committee to decide if Canada should boycott the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
A new RCMP union is pushing back on the Liberal government’s assault-rifle ban.
U.S. president-elect Joe Biden’s transition process is officially under way, after the General Services Administration deemed Donald Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the vote were not going anywhere.
And snowbirds gonna snowbird: plenty of Canadian seniors are going ahead with their annual plans to spend the winter in warmer climes down south, and at least one helicopter company is helping them hop across the border to Buffalo, N.Y. The Canadian government is, officially, recommending against the travel in light of the pandemic, but cross-border flights are still operating.
Robyn Urback (The Globe and Mail) on how political leaders are dealing with the second wave of COVID-19: “Second-wave restrictions were supposed to be better – smarter, targeted and evidence-based – thanks to the new knowledge and tools ostensibly collected over the past eight months. But it’s as if premiers Brian Pallister and Doug Ford spent the past few months just fortifying their sledgehammers, deaf to the information that should have convinced them to opt for needle-nose pliers instead. The result is that small businesses have been forced to close their doors ahead of the busiest shopping time of the year, all while big-box retailers enjoy their governments’ blessings to welcome their customers inside.”
Edoardo Campanella (The Globe and Mail) on why low-skilled workers are the essential ones: “It turns out that there are still no good technological substitutes for the street cleaners, shopkeepers, utility workers, food deliverers, truckers, or bus drivers who have kept the economy running through the darkest days of the crisis. In many cases, these workers perform tasks that require situational adaptability and physical abilities of a kind that cannot easily be coded into software and replicated by a robot.”
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on why U.S. president-elect Joe Biden’s plan for a common front against China could work: “President Donald Trump made confronting China a big part of his rhetoric, but he did it primarily on trade balances, and threatened allies with the same tariffs – offending friends, scaring partners and killing any notion of a U.S.-led common front. But now Mr. Biden is promising to revive U.S. alliances and to work with them to counter China.”
John Ivison (National Post) on Canadian groups – including two MPs – who are calling for the release of Chinese businesswoman Meng Wanzhou: “We can probably all agree that we do not welcome a cold war with the Chinese, far less anything warmer. But to present, as the Canadian Peace Congress does, Meng’s detention as ‘an unprovoked kidnapping,’ or Canada’s participation in naval operations in east Asia as an attempt to ‘provoke and encircle the PRC,’ is to take adolescent gullibility to dangerous levels.”
Stephen Maher (Maclean’s) on reforming the RCMP: “The RCMP showed up with SWAT teams, snipers and attack dogs when Mi’kmaq protested fracking in New Brunswick in 2013, but stood by and watched when non-native fishermen terrorized Mi’kmaq fishers this summer in Nova Scotia. What are Indigenous people supposed to conclude from that?”
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Chris Hannay