Roundup: The Queen urges calm and restraint

Posted on by

For his Sunday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau was once again in blue jeans and tie-less, and he spoke about how the CERB opens for applications today, and gave some rough timeline about when people can expect those benefits to start making their way to their accounts. He also said that Health Canada was looking for volunteers to help with things like contact tracing (and as for why these aren’t paid positions, I would imagine that the bureaucratic hoops to make that happen are simply too numerous to contemplate at the moment – federal hiring rules are complex). He also said that farms were looking for workers (given that there may be problems getting the temporary foreign workers that these farms depend on), and that the Canadian Forces were busy turning reserve forces into regulars. During the Q&A portion, he did talk about how he and his Cabinet were cognisant of their own potential for burnout during this crisis, as well as saying that civil servants were working to ensure that the CRA’s systems were not overloaded when the CERB portal opens, and he wouldn’t engage too much on speculation around the American president and his utterances around N95 masks.

During the presser that followed with Dr. Theresa Tam, she said that they were looking at ways to disinfect masks so that they can be reused several times in order to extend supplies, and asked that they not be thrown out.

A couple of hours later, we heard the address from the Queen on the current situation. While it was geared more toward the UK than to the Commonwealth, she did send a separate letter to Canada, which the Governor General posted to her site along with a message of her own.

Good reads:

  • The Liberal House Leader wrote to the Speaker asking for guidance on setting up virtual sittings of the Commons; the Conservatives are (rightfully) opposed.
  • Advocates are warning that there need to be better guidelines for physical distancing for migrant workers on farms, lest we start courting disaster.
  • Former military commanders and submariners offer tips on how to get through this period of being indoors for long periods of time.
  • Several groups are offering suggestions on how to make the economic recovery from the pandemic part of the transition to a lower-carbon economy.
  • Éric Grenier looks to history to see how times of crises didn’t always bridge federal-provincial divides like the current one seems to be.
  • Economists Blake Shaffer and Trevor Tombe call out Jason Kenney’s dishonest claims about Alberta’s situation as he fires education workers and buys pipelines.

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.

2 thoughts on “Roundup: The Queen urges calm and restraint”

  1. “…on setting up virtual sittings of the Commons; the Conservatives are (rightfully) opposed.”

    But that’s not what the linked Canadian Press story says. Quite the opposite, in fact:

    “…Pierre Poilievre said Sunday the party is very willing to work with the government to find ways for more committees to be held via phone or video conferencing, or for all of Parliament to meet virtually. ‘Conservatives will be fully supportive of any virtual return of Parliament,’ he said.”

    • That’s not what Scheer said in a press release he put out, which I tweeted.

Comments are closed.