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The federal government has extended its rent-relief program by another month, a move that comes a week after most businesses would have already paid their September rent.
The Liberals are still working out what will replace the rent-relief program when it expires at the end of the month. The current program, launched in April, has been criticized for its design and the requirement that landlords apply instead of tenants. About 100,000 small businesses so far have accessed the program, which the main small-business lobby group estimates is about a quarter of those eligible for it.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently flagged that the government would be spending less than half of what it had budgeted for the program, due to the low uptake.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
Thousands more students are returning to class today after the Labour Day long weekend. Public-health officials say they are closely monitoring new cases to make sure there aren’t many school-fuelled outbreaks.
Health Minister Patty Hajdu has ordered a review of the government’s pandemic early-warning system, after a Globe and Mail investigation showed the system was effectively wound down in the months before the novel coronavirus began to spread.
The RCMP says it cannot follow a Saskatchewan law, modelled after one in Brtain, to protect vulnerable people at risk of intimate-partner violence because doing so would violate the Privacy Act.
Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole has named his shadow cabinet. Pierre Poilievre remains as finance critic, while Michelle Rempel Garner takes the health portfolio and Michael Chong becomes foreign-affairs critic. Former leader Andrew Scheer was given a post as critic of the infrastructure file.
Mr. O’Toole also nominated long-time fundraiser and TD Bank executive James Dodds to take over as chair of the Conservative Fund, the money arm of the party.
Mr. O’Toole is either well known or unknown, according to a new Nanos poll. The survey found that about four in 10 respondents viewed him favourably, and another four in 10 said they did not know enough about him, while the final two in 10 did not have a positive impression of him.
And Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde says he is hoping to see Indigenous issues prioritized in the upcoming Throne Speech, as many Liberal promises remain unfulfilled.
John Ibbitson (The Globe and Mail) on the true class and political divides: “But the forklift operator, the cashier, the courier, the office assistant and whoever still works at whatever mills and factories remain can no longer look to the left as their champion. Its leadership is consumed by a civil war over race and privilege and gender, over colonialism, cultural genocide, defunding the police. Few on the left pay much attention any more to ’the little guy,’ as Ontario Premier Doug Ford calls them, which is why so many of what we used to call the working class in North America and Europe have migrated to conservative parties.”
Goldy Hyder (The Globe and Mail) on the pandemic’s impact on immigration: “The collapse in immigration means Canada’s population is currently experiencing its slowest growth since 2015. That will have important implications across many sectors, including residential construction, industries with labour shortages, and Canada’s postsecondary education system.”
Irfan Dhalla (The Globe and Mail) on guarding against a second wave of COVID-19: “Winter is coming. Canada needs a plan. That plan should be to stop untraced community spread of COVID-19. Knowing exactly how community spread is happening allows public-health officials to control outbreaks as they arise, gives governments the confidence to further relax restrictions, lets parents feel confident about sending children to school, and helps families and friends feel comfortable about gathering indoors.”
André Picard (The Globe and Mail) on what might happen with the virus in the coming months: “What is not certain, though, is an inevitable second wave. Increasingly, it appears that the coronavirus pandemic will play out as one long wave, with the occasional ripple when we become complacent.”
Lorne Gunter (National Post) on new Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s positions: “All of that is going to make it much harder for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to portray the Tories as scary, out-of-touch, social conservatives who, if elected, would re-criminalize abortion, end same-sex marriage, deport immigrants and, while they’re at it, pluck the wings off defenceless flies.”
Leslie Gavel (CBC) on the trouble with school streaming: “Streaming has been practiced in Canada for over a century. It was first conceived as a way to address a social problem that no longer requires a solution, if it ever did. Secondary schools were finding it difficult to assimilate the increasing racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the student population. The theory held by the government and administrators was that children born to lower classes and recent immigrants were lazy, slow, irresponsible and most suited to manual work, unlike the children of longer-established Canadian families, who were assumed to be literate and most suited to intellectual work.”
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Chris Hannay