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As the federal government announced continued COVID-19-related subsidy supports, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland today pushed back on critics of the Liberal approach.

“As former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz has pointed out, a firefighter has never been criticized for using too much water,” Ms. Freeland said at a news conference, noting the government had to act quickly to help Canadians to prevent economic scarring. “Sometimes the greatest danger is not to act,”

Ms. Freeland said some have pointed to rising household disposable incomes in the first nine months of last year as a sign the government acted too quickly and “too effectively” to support Canadians.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at the same news conference, announced that the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy as well as the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy will be extended until June.

The wage subsidy is to continue providing 75 per cent coverage to eligible employers. The maximum rent subsidy remains at 65 per cent.

Despite encouraging signs of a recovery, Ms. Freeland said Canada continues to face challenges, noting that 800,000 fewer Canadians are working now than at the beginning of the pandemic. “We cannot definitively say we have turned the corner,” she said.

On Tuesday, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole criticized the Liberals for comparatively failing to manage the economy as well as other G7 countries.

“The fact is Canada spent more per capita in this crisis and is achieving the worst outcomes in the G7 when it comes to employment, vaccine rollout, and business confidence,” Mr. O’Toole said in a statement.

TODAY’S HEADLINES

COVID-19:

An expert panel that advises the federal government on vaccination has determined that second doses of COVID-19 vaccines can be given up to four months after the first. The shift from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), which previously supported extending the interval between doses to no more than six weeks, would open the door for more people to receive their first vaccination while supplies are still limited. It would also lend support to other provinces to follow the new vaccine schedule B.C. adopted on Monday. Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, talks about the shift here.

The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be deadlier for Canadians living in long-term care and retirement homes, particularly in provinces that failed to prepare for a resurgence of the coronavirus.

POLITICS:

Ottawa says it’s willing to intervene if necessary in the Line 5 energy dispute between the state of Michigan and Enbridge Inc. Michigan’s governor has ordered the May, 2021, shutdown of a major pipeline running through her state: a line that serves as a key energy conduit for Ontario and Quebec.

An advocacy group for blind Canadians is accusing the federal government of negligence after the organization applied for a funding program to support people living with disabilities through an online process it says was not accessible to those with visual impairments.

The federal government has provided nearly $3.5-million in funding for vending machines that will dispense a medical-grade opioid to drug users in four cities - Vancouver, Victoria, London, Ont.; and Dartmouth, N.S.- in an effort to prevent overdose deaths.

OTHER HEADLINES

Thousands of Uyghur workers in China are being relocated in an effort to assimilate Muslims, documents show. Chinese authorities have loaded large numbers of Uyghur workers onto trains bound for factories thousands of kilometres away as part of a plan to assimilate Muslim minorities into mainstream Chinese culture and thin their populations in Xinjiang, the northwestern region that has been their home for centuries, an internally circulated research document shows.

From The National Post, former soldier Corey Hurren said he expected he would get “shot down” as he, last July, crashed his truck through the security gates of Rideau Hall, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lives. In an interview with a psychiatrist hired to assess his mental state after his attack, Mr. Hurren, who has pleaded guilty to seven gun charges and a mischief charge for damaging the Rideau Hall gate, said his death was to be his message of discontent with the government’s response to COVID and gun control.

EVEN LIBERAL MPS ARE WARY ABOUT A FEDERAL ELECTION BEFORE THE END OF THE PANDEMIC:

Amid continuing speculation about a federal election, a House of Commons committee - including Liberal members - is unanimously urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to promise he won’t call a federal vote while the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

From Campbell Clark, chief political writer - The Globe and Mail: “Even Liberals on a Commons committee supported a recommendation that there be no election during the Covid-19 pandemic, unless PM Justin Trudeau’s minority government is defeated. But this is politics, so it depends what you mean by “pandemic.” The recommendation is not binding on Mr. Trudeau, but at any rate he’d be foolish to call an election before vaccinations are rolled out to many more people. Yet Mr. Trudeau, ahead in polls, will still be looking for an opportunity to regain a majority. His government is already suggesting the opposition is blocking the government’s agenda - including legislation to make it safer to have an election in a pandemic. And later, if millions are vaccinated and the current wave of COVID-19 subsides, Mr. Trudeau might well decide it’s no longer the kind of pandemic that gets in the way of a vote.”

POLLING:

The Angus-Reid Institute, in partnership with Cardus, a research and educational institution, is out with a new poll whose findings include the conclusion that a majority of Canadians surveyed say there should be more investment in affordable options for child care. However, the poll also finds Canadians evenly divided between allocating funds directly to child-care providers or parents themselves. In particular, Albertans are most supportive of direct-to-family funding, British Columbians and Atlantic Canadians inclined to more funding to expand centre-based care, and Ontario and Quebec evenly split. Details of the poll are here.

PRIME MINISTER’S ITINERARY:

Aside from “private meetings,” the sole item on the prime minister’s Wednesday itinerary was an address on the COVID-19 situation and a media availability, with Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne present.

OTHER LEADERS:

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet holds a press briefing on the party’s expectations for the federal budget. Finance critic Gabriel Ste. Marie is also attending.

OPINION

Vincent Lam (The Globe and Mail) on `Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada’s Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic’ - the new book by André Picard, health reporter and columnist for The Globe and Mail: “Canada has the worst record among wealthy nations for COVID-19 related deaths in long-term care, with residents accounting for more than 80 per cent of lives lost. André Picard asks us to not look away from the care of elders after the news cameras have swivelled away from the death toll of COVID-19. The larger story is that this was a tragedy foretold. Neglected No More, he writes of his new title, “isn’t a book about COVID, except peripherally. It’s a plea to stop dehumanizing elders, and to reimagine long-term care.” Many COVID-19 deaths of elderly Canadians in long-term care were preventable, Picard explains, because “eldercare in this country is so disorganized and so poorly regulated, the staffing so inadequate, the infrastructure so outdated, the accountability so non-existent and ageism so rampant, there seems to be no limit to what care homes can get away with.”

Globe and Mail Editorial Board on the “airports mess” piece of Canada’s pandemic response: “Right now, Canada’s pandemic response remains located somewhere between comparatively mediocre and completely FUBAR. Take the Trudeau government’s new hotel quarantine rules for international airline passengers. It involves testing for the virus on arrival, and quarantining travellers at a hotel until the test comes back negative, which usually takes a day or two. Well-governed countries from Australia to Hong Kong have long been smoothly enforcing even tougher rules, with enforced isolation-hotel stays of two weeks in the former and three weeks in the latter.”

Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on Erin O’Toole’s need to pick a policy lane: “For all Mr. O’Toole’s personal failings, the greatest part of the problem remains his persistent casting about on policy. If the Tories have failed to capitalize on the government’s growing unpopularity – of the five in 100 Canadians who have left the Liberal fold since the spring, according to the polls, just one has gone to the Conservatives, while four have gone to the NDP – it is because the party has given people no positive reason to support it. Six months into Mr. O’Toole’s tenure,”

Phil Gursky (The Ottawa Citizen) on the need for Canadian action on Saudi Arabia targeting dissidents: “What is Canada doing about this? It is hard to say. The best we have had so far from Public Safety Canada is “We are aware of the situation.” I imagine my former colleagues at CSIS and friends at the RCMP are also “aware.” There may be efforts to get to the bottom of all this. But shouldn’t the Trudeau government at least be showing its displeasure in public? Maybe punt a Saudi diplomat or two? Bring someone home from our embassy in Riyadh? Is our relationship with the Kingdom that important? In a rapidly changing world, where everyone is moving to green sources of energy, a country that has little to offer but crude oil would seem to be of lesser significance, no?”

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