Justin Trudeau’s Saturday presser had a couple of items of news – the first was that the Northwest Territories was shutting its borders to non-essential travel, which was a move Trudeau supported. That was announced just hours before it was announced that the Territory had its first confirmed COVID-19 case. While other provinces may want to contemplate shutting their own provincial borders (which would be incredibly difficult, particularly given Charter rights around freedom of mobility), the Territories are isolated enough and mostly fly-in, so that makes it easier – something you can’t say about the other provinces except maybe for Newfoundland and Labrador (and to an extent PEI, if they closed the Confederation Bridge and halted all ferries). Trudeau also noted that the government was working with airlines to get flights into countries that have closed their airspace in order to get Canadians out, naming Peru and Spain as their first priorities.

The more salient – and perhaps poignant – point was made by Patty Hajdu at the ministerial presser that followed, where she stated bluntly that if Canadians don’t voluntarily do more social distancing, the government may have to implement measures that will start to encroach on their civil liberties – in other words, harsher police enforcement of quarantine orders and orders to shut down the country like we saw in places like Italy. Where a really big concern is where all of these Canadians – snowbirds especially – are returning to the country and we’ll see how many of them properly self-isolate upon their return. There are warnings to the effect of “Go right home, don’t stop for supplies first,” which will be hard for a lot of people, but that message will need to be drilled home effectively.

We also have some news on the return of Parliament on Tuesday, where 30 MPs will come back to pass the extraordinary spending measures and question Bill Morneau about them, followed by the Senate on Wednesday to pass the bill in their chamber. (My look at what this Skeleton Parliament may look like is here).

Good reads:

• The government is making assurances that temporary foreign workers needed for the agricultural sector will be allowed in the country (with self-isolation time).
• Some models suggest that we may have to aggressively socially distance for eight months to make a real impact, though those numbers are being disputed.
• Kevin Carmichael runs through some of the tools the Bank of Canada has at its disposal to deal with the current pandemic-inspired global downturn.
• Jesse Klein suggests it’s not too soon to start thinking about how we’ll restart the economy once this is all over.
• Paul Wells reflects on the past week, and how despite the digital economy, this crisis is showing us the value of being present for events.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a look inside the Montreal factory running 24/7 to ensure that the nation doesn’t run out of Kraft Dinner as people stockpile.

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