Morning Update: Pandemic endangers meat supply to grocery stores, farming industry

Good morning,

We asked Canadians to share their appreciation for the professionals battling COVID-19 and highlight how communities are showing their support. Take a look at our readers’ tributes to front-line workers in the coronavirus fight from across the country.

“For those who are doctors and nurses, I thank you for putting yourselves on the line for so many others. You are the heroes. Thank you for all you do every day," writes Angela Renwick from Calgary. Read more.

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In Canada: A high number of virus cases in long-term care homes could be what propelled Canada’s death toll significantly higher than what officials predicted just last week. We stand at almost 500 deaths above what was predicted in one week, but the models are not meant to be exact. They are supposed to inform decision-makers and help them plan during the pandemic. But now people are asking, why aren’t these shared publicly?

• B.C. first province in Canada to give cities more leeway to run deficits
• Ottawa funds COVID-19 research project that is collaborating with Wuhan virus lab
• Correctional Service of Canada releases first federal inmate owing to medical vulnerability to COVID-19

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Food supply: The meat industry across the country says it faces a looming crisis if COVID-19 cases continue to disrupt work at slaughterhouses, warning that a sustained backlog of live animals on farms could lead to financial trouble for farmers and shortages at the grocery store. The president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture said on Thursday it is time to “sound the alarm” about the realities that the farming industry faces.

Small businesses were among the first to feel the acute damage of COVID-19. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that the $25-billion Canada Emergency Business Account loan program will now be available to companies that spent between $20,000 and $1.5-million in payroll in 2019, but entrepreneurs are saying there are still many gaps in the plan for help.

• Pandemic can be a jolt to Canada’s productivity, BMO head says
• Canada’s 5G technology roll-out could be delayed

In world news: Across China, authorities have declared a partial victory against COVID-19. But it is taking considerably more time to nurse the economy back to health. China said its economy in the first quarter contracted by 6.8 per cent compared to 2019, its worst quarterly economic performance since 1976. In Europe and the U.S., leaders are anxious to reopen factories, schools and shops and to repair the economic damage but troubling data indicate the worst may still be to come in many parts of the world. Back home in Canada, an organization representing the country’s largest corporations is urging first ministers to take a cautious approach to reopening the economy.

• British government extends lockdown restrictions for at least three more weeks
• India charges Muslim leader with culpable homicide for coronavirus surge
• Africa to roll out more than one million coronavirus tests next week

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ALSO ON OUR RADAR

A hundred days after Flight 752 tragedy, governments prepare for compensation talks with Iran: Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne did not say when talks would begin, and warned that settlement negotiations can take years. All options are on the table if Iran doesn’t provide appropriate compensation to families.

Supreme Court of Canada won’t hear La Loche school shooter’s sentencing appeal: Last fall, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal denied his bid to be sentenced as a youth, Randan Dakota Fontaine was 17 when he killed two of his cousins in January, 2016.

MORNING MARKETS

World stocks race toward second best week on record: World stock markets made a super-charged sprint towards an 11% weekly gain on Friday - their second best of all time - after President Donald Trump laid out plans to gradually reopen the coronavirus-hit U.S. economy following similar moves elsewhere, In Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 was up more than 3 per cent just before 6 a.m. ET. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 gained 3.22 per cent and 3.69 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei rose 3.15 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.56 per cent. New York futures were higher. The Canadian dollar was trading at 70.86 US cents.

WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

Canada should take its cues from countries where the virus is under control, not from the WHO

Robyn Urback: “One of the lessons from SARS, according to our own SARS Commission, was that ‘reasonable steps to reduce risk should not await scientific certainty.’ ”

After a month of transformation, it’s time for Canada’s hospitals to resume services

Blair Bigham: “But the consequences to people’s health go far beyond those triggered by the coronavirus and its resulting COVID-19; the domino effect it has on our usual medical practice could be more harmful when the dust settles.”

TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON

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LIVING BETTER

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The shockingly long, delightfully comforting legacy of NBC’s The Office

The series was one of NBC’s biggest draws when it originally aired on the network from 2005 through 2013. It is a certified hit of the streaming age, with frequent reports that The Office is the most-watched Netflix offering, period. Audiences had been discovering, and rediscovering, The Office long before anyone sought easy domestic distraction from COVID-19. The Globe’s Barry Hertz takes a look at the world of Scranton, and ranks the characters.

The ironing-board desk and other work-from-home hacks from an ergonomics expert

While these impromptu office setups may have sufficed for a short period, we’re now into yet another week of working from home at these ergonomically questionable surfaces. For advice on how to help your back, wrists and neck listen to Marnie Downey, a Canadian certified professional ergonomist and founder of the ergonomics consulting company Ergo.

MOMENT IN TIME

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British Library buys Europe’s oldest book

April 17, 2012: If you’re handling an old book about the size of a new paperback book, and it’s worth £9-million (almost $16-million), you’d best be careful. On this day in 2012, that’s how much the British Library paid to the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) for the oldest intact European book. The early eighth-century manuscript, a copy of the Gospel of St. John, was slipped into the oak coffin of St. Cuthbert sometime after his death in 698 AD at a monastery in northeast England. The Gospel was rediscovered in 1104 when the saint’s coffin, moved originally to elude Viking raiders, was relocated to a shrine at Durham Cathedral. It is exquisitely beautiful with its original red-leather binding, pages and sewing structure perfectly intact. (It predated the printing press by about 750 years.) But it is the manuscript’s 1,300-year-old link to the Anglo-Saxon period of its origin that makes it one of the world’s most important books. It was described by the British Library as "a landmark in the cultural history of Europe.” The Jesuits used the proceeds for education and restoration work. And the manuscript, in public hands for the first time in its history, is now fully digitized and available free online. - Philip King

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