For his daily presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau once again praised the wage subsidy, and highlighted yet another business who had used it to great effect – part of his ongoing campaign to convince more businesses to take it up and re-hire their employees as the economic restart continues to ramp up. By way of announcements, he spoke of new resources being made available for people and businesses who had questions about the re-opening, and then spoke about a $100 million investment in the Merit Functional Foods plant in Winnipeg as part of the “Protein Supercluster,” and creating more plant-based foods in Canada. Trudeau also spoke about a $94 million investment that Minister Karina Gould would be announcing at the SheDecides Conference, which would go toward the health, and sexual and reproductive rights of vulnerable women around the world.

During the Q&A, he was asked about the situation of temporary foreign workers from Mexico, to which he said that they were working with source countries and business owners to ensure that there were proper protections in place, and warned that there would be consequences for those employers that failed their workers, as three have now died in Canada. On the subject of airlines’ pleas to reopen international travel, Trudeau said that they needed to be very careful about reopening it, otherwise we would see a new spike in cases as they are experiencing in some other countries who opened sooner and not as carefully as most of Canada has. And then there were a raft of questions on the fraught questions of the arbitrary detentions of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, and Chinese officials sniping at Trudeau to stop making “irresponsible” comments that link the case, even though they themselves have done so.

If there was anything newsworthy out of that was the fact that when asked if Trudeau would consider making a deal to halt the extradition in exchange for releasing the Two Michaels, Trudeau gave an unequivocal no, that he would not make any deal that would undermine our judicial system. When presented with the notion that Kovrig’s family sought a legal opinion to say that the minister could indeed interfere, Trudeau again poured cold water on that suggestion, again citing the need to keep our judicial independence in place. It’s worth remembering that Trudeau was part of a G7 announcement about governments making a commitment not to pay ransoms in order to protect their citizens from being the targets of kidnappings around the world, and hostage diplomacy is just that. (And for all of the smartasses over social media who said “He already interfered with the judiciary with SNC-Lavalin,” he did not interfere with the judiciary – the charge was that he tried to interfere with the prosecution, which was not the same thing, and I remain unconvinced that it was what actually happened, no matter some of the unsavoury things that did happen with the deferred prosecution agreement legislation).

Good reads:

• Jean-Yves Duclos is reviewing permanent teleworking changes and needed changes for any return to office for federal civil servants.
• Duclos also admits the government needs to do better when it comes to Access to Information, but also notes some requests can’t be fulfilled by teleworking.
• Seamus O’Regan says that net-zero carbon emissions is a “moon shot,” meaning they have a goal and experts have been given permission to find solutions.
• The Auditor General says she needs a bigger funding boost because of everything she’s been asked to audit as a result of the pandemic. Doing MPs’ homework costs.
• The Public Service Commission posted and then removed a video featuring five cartoon public servants, who were all white. Oops.
• The leadership of the Canadian Forces is apologizing for their slow response to systemic racism in the ranks, and privileging white male troops.
• A third migrant worker from Mexico has died over the weekend, as the provincial government rails about those farms not getting their acts together on infections.
• The Senate Ethics Committee, chaired by Senator Murray Sinclair, says that Lynn Beyak has completed training and apologised, and is ready to lift her suspension.
• Erin O’Toole’s campaign claims they have a confession letter from an MP’s staffer who provided log-in information to someone in Peter MacKay’s campaign.
• Here’s a look at Alberta mulling the re-creation of its own provincial police force (which was initially created to enforce prohibition, as the RCMP refused to).
• Thomas Mulcair profiles Dominique Anglade, the new leader of the Quebec Liberal Party and the only Black woman to lead a political party in Canada.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column takes a more expansive procedural look at the incident around Jagmeet Singh’s ejection from the Commons last week.
• Kevin Carmichael parses new Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem’s first speech, and how inflation measurement is all askew in these pandemic times.
• Susan Delacourt remarks on the utter banality of the Canada Angle™ revelations in the John Bolton book when it comes to Trump’s relationship with Trudeau.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a look at the experiences of the few Black reporters on the Hill.

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