It’s year-end interview season, and prime minister Justin Trudeau had a number of them yesterday, so let’s dig through what he had to say in them. To CityTV, Trudeau said that if he could do anything over again, it would be that he would act faster on procuring more personal protective equipment for front-line workers (and here I would have thought he’d say he’d step back from the whole WE Charity/Canada Student Grant decision). This also appears to have been an influence in the decision to hedge bets when it came to vaccine procurement and get options on a wide variety of options from a variety of suppliers in a wide variety of countries. When asked when he planned to get the vaccine, he said that he wouldn’t until they open it up for healthy people in their 40s.

To The Canadian Press, Trudeau hinted that provinces who don’t sign on for national standards to long-term care won’t get additional funding to meet those standards, which sounds like a much tougher stance than the provinces are hoping to get away with. Of course, we have enough instances in recent memory of provinces who took health transfers and spent them on other things, or other transfers to address “fiscal imbalances” that got turned into tax cuts, so you can bet that federal governments are going to be gun-shy about provinces who think that they should get money without strings attached. On the subject of the next Chief of Defence Staff, Trudeau said that he expects their priority will be to address systemic racism in the Forces, which sounds about right.

Finally, the year-ender for Global’s West Block won’t air until this weekend, but they released a preview clip wherein Trudeau says he’s hoping for good news on the two Michaels in Chinese custody before the year is out. I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen, but it’s certainly on-brand for Trudeau to try and strike an optimistic note about it.

Good reads:

• The Public Health Agency says that it’s looking like Canada could have its vaccinations completed by the end of September, if all goes according to plan.
• Canada has signed onto the Gateway Treaty, formalizing our role as a participant in the new Lunar Gateway station, which will include the Canadarm3.
• Here’s an interview with Carla Qualtrough, who candidly assesses what went right and what went wrong with the pandemic response. More candour like this, please!
• François-Philippe Champagne is optimistic that a Biden administration will be good for Canada, as well as the climate and COVID files internationally.
• Here’s a good look at the country’s foreign policy challenges over the coming year.
• Part of the government’s climate change plans include investments in hydrogen, but those are being criticized for being “blue” hydrogen coming from fossil fuels.
• A recent study shows how political staffers were handling the pandemic, with increased workloads because people turned to them when Service Canada closed.
• Erin O’Toole has half-heartedly walked back some of his comments on residential schools, but didn’t offer an apology or a commitment to do better.
• Kady O’Malley’s Process Nerd column looks at how the assisted dying bill managed to go off the rails like it did.
• Matt Gurney is boggled that Canada’s military procurement system is really just a local job creation scheme.
• Chris Selley walks through the history of Egerton Ryerson and his role with residential schools, on his way to condemning Erin O’Toole’s remarks.
• Colby Cosh ponders the government going ahead with its carbon price increases before the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled on their constitutionality.
• Robert Hiltz looks back at his 2020 predictions.

Odds and ends:

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