You can tell that the pandemic is subsiding because politicians are starting to travel again — and more to the point, the prime minister and Cabinet members are starting to spread out across the country in order to start making funding announcements. Naturally, this is immediately being billed as election speculation, never mind that this happens every year once the House of Commons rises, and that there is certainly a pent-up desire on the part of government to be back in the spotlight doing these kinds of announcements. (But seriously, let’s ban the phrase “campaign-style” from news copy).

The major announcement yesterday was announcing $420 million in fully repayable loans to Algoma Steel to move away from coal-fired production to electric-arc production, which aims to reduce as much as 300 million tonnes of GHGs from their process every year, which is huge. Steel and cement are some of the biggest producers and some of the toughest to achieve GHG reductions with, so this is a fairly substantial announcement that will have a meaningful impact when it comes to reducing Ontario’s emissions.

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1412085236264013825

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1412089902326587399

Heather Scoffield, meanwhile, complains that while the announcement sounds good on its face, too many of the details are obscured and not made transparent, so we don’t know if it’s really a good deal for Canadians or not — though I will note that Power & Politics interviewed one of the Algoma executives who said that some the details around who much of the loan could be forgiven if carbon reduction targets were met are still being negotiated, so perhaps the rest of those details will be made public once they are finalised.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau and Scott Moe will sign an agreement with the Cowessess First Nation to return child welfare jurisdiction to them, away from the province.
• The federal government spent nearly $20 million on the COVID Alert app, which didn’t get the uptake they were hoping for (among other issues it had).
• Omar Alghabra pre-announced that the government will procure dedicated rail lines for VIA in the Toronto—Quebec City corridor, for faster and more reliable service.
• Following his visit to the Middle East, Marc Garneau reiterated support for a two-state solution and called on Israel to halt settlement activities.
• The government’s plan to refurbish search-and-rescue helicopters has been paused after costs spiralled, and next steps remain unknown at this time.
• A new court challenge has been launched by families whose ancestors had relinquished their Indian Act status, and are looking to reclaim it.
• Here is a look at the effect that Jagmeet Singh hopes to have in the next election by being the one leader to dominate TikTok.
• Nova Scotia premier Iain Rankin admitted to a DUI in 2003, which may be an attempt to defuse it before it comes up in a potential election.
• Kevin Carmichael takes aim at the Conservatives and Bloc who teamed up to kill funding for a transition office for a future national securities regulator.
• Colby Cosh resolves that taxing churches is probably a better way to forward than arson, though it too has its share of complications.

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