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During his daily press conference Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled a sweeping package for small business owners, including loan guarantees and significantly higher wage subsidies to help them cope with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The small business community has been pressing Ottawa to boost wage subsidies well beyond the 10 per cent the government announced last week.
“It is clear we have to do more, much more so we are bringing that percentage up to 75 per cent for qualifying businesses,” Mr. Trudeau told his daily news conference.
The new wage subsidy will be backdated to March 15, Mr. Trudeau said.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
News is currently dominated by the COVID-19 outbreak. For a full rundown, you can subscribe to our Coronavirus Update newsletter (sign up here). Here are some stories that speak to the political and governmental response.
The Bank of Canada cut its key interest rate Friday by another half-percentage point to 0.25 per cent – matching its all-time low. The bank also announced two new programs, headlined by a minimum $5-billion-per-week of market purchases of Government of Canada bonds, “to address strains in the Government of Canada debt market and to enhance the effectiveness of all other actions taken so far.”
In a report released Friday, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said the fiscal and economic fallout of COVID-19 remains extremely uncertain, but could lead to a deficit of more than $112.7-billion. The PBO report assumes that current social distancing measures remain in place through August, or for six months in total.
The leader of the Independent Senators Group says the Canadian government should be prepared to buy stakes in companies in order to steer the economy out of the pandemic. Yuen Pau Woo, the head of the the largest bloc in the Senate, cited industries such as airlines, transportation companies and the food sector.
Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer says some Canadians who return from abroad showing symptoms of the new coronavirus could be taken to a federal quarantine site for two weeks, as all levels of government looked to ramp up enforcement.
The federal government is shutting its 317 Service Canada Centres on Friday after employees refused to work. The decisions means Canadians won’t be able to apply for employment insurance, Old Age Security, pension benefits and passports in person.
The federal Conservative party suspended its leadership race late Thursday night, as the country copes with the novel coronavirus pandemic. The decision from the Conservatives’ Leadership Election Organizing Committee came in the face of mounting pressure to put a halt to the race. The leadership convention was set for June 27 in Toronto.
Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on the economic response for Canada’s coronavirus shutdown: “Government cannot do much to stimulate activity at the same time as it is enforcing inactivity. What it can do is try to limit the damage: to put a floor under incomes, yes, but also a ceiling on expenses, sparing individuals and businesses from the sort of large non-discretionary payments they are usually obliged to make, from taxes to mortgages to utility bills to payroll.”
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on the G20′s response to the pandemic: “There’s an international version of what’s happening at your supermarket: shortages of items that are in hot demand or irrationally hoarded. Countries that expected to import items such as masks now find they can’t get them. Some companies and countries have cut off exports of key items. That screams for some co-ordinated expansion of production and measures to keep supply chains moving.”
Robyn Urback (The Globe and Mail) on the Conservative leadership race: “Well, Earth to the CPC: Joe just got laid off, he might not make his rent, and he has better things to think about than which candidate has the best resource-extraction plans."
Andrew MacDougall (Maclean’s) on Peter MacKay’s chase for a Pyrrhic victory: “Has Peter MacKay lost his mind? To be fair, lots of people are losing it over the coronavirus. But only Peter MacKay is losing it by losing sight of the virus itself. MacKay is literally the only Canadian pretending the virus isn’t upending absolutely everything.”
Don Martin (CTV News) on pandemic divides: “When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau washes his hands, it’s to scrub off the coronavirus. For Donald Trump, it’s an economic clean-up procedure. But the blood from tens of thousands of lost American lives won’t wash off with just soap and water.”
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