Skip to content

Trudeau to Offer Billions to Provinces, Territories for COVID-19 Mitigation

  • World

Dozens of Louisville Officers Walk out on Mayor Amid Protests

Dozens of officers in Louisville, Kentucky, appeared to walk out on the mayor on Wednesday as he tried to address them, according to video footage of the incident. Fraternal Order of Police President Ryan Nichols, who was not in attendance, confirmed the walkout. He said that police are frustrated with Mayor Greg Fischer, a Democrat, while they have been responding to protests, riots, and looting since last week. “They feel completely unsupported and disrespected by this administration,” Nichols said, according to the Courier-Journal, which obtained the video of the walkout. “They feel whatever he was going to say would have been nothing more than lip service, and he does not care about them at all.” The video footage showed Fischer trying to address the police department as officers and detectives…

Trudeau to Offer Billions to Provinces, Territories for COVID-19 Mitigation

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is to offer premiers billions in federal funding to help them safely reopen provincial and territorial economies without triggering an explosive second wave of COVID-19 cases.

Trudeau is expected to present the offer to premiers during their weekly conference call today—the twelfth such call since the pandemic sent the country into lockdown in mid-March.

Precise details, including how to allocate each province’s share of the cash, are to be negotiated in the coming days, but federal officials hope agreements can be reached quickly to get the money flowing fast.

The offer comes with some strings attached, according to federal officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Trudeau is offering to transfer the money to provincial and territorial governments, provided they agree to spend it on a number of areas the federal government considers necessary to reduce the risk of a second surge of the deadly coronavirus.

They include testing, contact tracing, personal protective equipment, bolstering municipalities, helping the most vulnerable Canadians, and strengthening the health care system, possibly including improving conditions in long-term care homes linked to more than 80 percent of the deaths in Canada so far.

Making a difference in just one of those areas—municipalities—is a pricey proposition. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates communities across the country, which have been on the front lines of the pandemic, need $10-15 billion to make up for the loss of revenue resulting from reduced transit fares, user fees, and deferred property taxes.

At the start of the pandemic, the federal government boosted transfer payments to provinces and territories for health care by $500 million—an amount that seemed large at the time but which has since paled in comparison with the more than $150 billion Ottawa has shovelled into direct financial aid to Canadians and economic stimulus measures.

While Trudeau is now offering provinces and territories substantially more money, there is likely to be some push back from some premiers over his attempt to direct the general areas on which it should be spent rather than letting them spend it as they see fit.

The prime minister is also expected to announce financial support for nearly four million disabled Canadians, who already faced some of the highest costs of living before the pandemic made daily life even more expensive.

Among other things, the pandemic has resulted in many people with disabilities having to rely on in-home care, pay delivery fees for groceries and other items, and fork out higher dispensing fees for prescription drugs.

Focus News: Trudeau to Offer Billions to Provinces, Territories for COVID-19 Mitigation

Journalists Demand Police to Stop Attacks Against Press at George Floyd Protests

Journalists are urging state and law enforcement leaders to stop attacks on the press following a series of reports that journalists have been shot at, pepper-sprayed, manhandled, and arrested while covering the George Floyd protests. Reporter groups and individual journalists are taking action to demand police officers to stop targeting members of the press, who are credentialed and identifiable, and to hold officers accountable for any alleged misconduct. One reporter, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, has taken his fight to a federal court by filing a class-action lawsuit alleging that the “extraordinary escalation of unlawful force deliberately targeting reporters” by police officers violates the U.S. Constitution. “It violates the sacrosanct right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press that form the linchpin of a free society.…