Politics Briefing: Ottawa clears Boeing 737 Max for take-off theglobeandmail.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theglobeandmail.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Western Canada: Long, complex job of COVID-19 vaccinations begins Bookmark Please log in to listen to this story. Also available in French and Mandarin. Log In Create Free Account
Getting audio file . This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy. Full Disclaimer
Good morning! It’s James Keller in Calgary.
Provinces in the West and across Canada have started vaccinating against COVID-19 – the start of a complex and painfully slow operation that has raised optimism that the end of the pandemic is in sight.
Health Canada approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine last week and the shipments began arriving in Canada within days. The first vaccinations in the country happened in Ontario and Quebec on Monday, with other provinces, including B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan following suit yesterday. Manitoba expects to get its first vaccines today.
Federal Carbon Tax Hike Raises Ire
News Analysis
The federal government’s plan to hike carbon taxes contradicts earlier assurances and will hinder economic recovery, say critics.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several Liberal ministers made the surprise announcement on Dec. 11, a day after Trudeau met with the provincial premiers.
Philip Cross, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said it’s a bad time to announce tax hikes when Canada’s GDP is still below the pre-COVID level in February.
“We’re still in deep trouble economically. The last thing we need is a punitive hike in gasoline prices. And it wouldn’t just be gasoline prices the carbon tax applies to all forms of fossil fuels,” Cross said in an interview.
By Mitchell Blair
Dec 13, 2020 4:11 PM
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and NDP leader Ryan Meili have both expressed their anger with comments made by a man during an anti-mask rally that were directed at provincial chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab.
A video taken by Global News shows the man purposely mispronouncing Shahab’s name before saying “I can’t get these foreigners names right.” After the comment was made, the crowd cheered.
Moe went to social media on Sunday to criticize the comments which he said were racist along with posting a video taken on the last day of the legislative session Thursday in which former health minister Jim Reiter praised Shahab for the work he has done since the pandemic started.