Doses abound in the U.S. (if you can get there) Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Ontarians have a vaccine ally in New York. Brian Higgins, the congressman who reps Buffalo and Niagara, urged Governor Andrew Cuomo to allow Canadians to cross the border for a shot. "If there is excess supply of the vaccine, we should do everything in our power to see that those doses do not go to waste," Higgins wrote in a letter. "The stakes of this pandemic are too high to do anything less." North Dakota, Alaska, Washington, and Montana have already made similar moves—though American border guards are still not cleared to let vaccine-hunting Canadians into the country. The think-tankers at Cardus are jumping on the incentive bandwagon as a means of reaching vaccine-hesitant Canadians. Brian Dijkema and Sean Speer are arguing for a $60-90 sum for everyone who gets a shot, which would then be donated to charities or local businesses who need the help. "While some might be dubious about more public spending at a time of unprecedented budget deficits, this one is arguably the most productive expenditure that governments could undertake." Talking for votes: On Tuesday, Tory leader Erin O'Toole popped up at The Line, the feisty Substack powered by Maclean's contributing editor Jen Gerson. Yesterday, CBC's Frontburner aired an interview with O'Toole. A newsletter and a podcast are decidedly mainstream, but their audiences aren't that of a typical newspaper or broadcaster. Not unrelated: Justin Trudeau sat down for a 15-minute convo with Today's Parent via Instagram Live. Gotta lock up every key demo, after all. Earlier this week, this newsletter spelled out a few concerning findings in last year's annual public servant employee survey. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service registered the worst score on stress caused by COVID-19 exposure, and near-worst results on key questions about senior leadership. Maclean's asked the PMO for comment, and they bounced us to the office of Public Safety Minister Bill Blair. What did his office have to say? In part: "We thank [CSIS employees] for their tireless efforts during these unprecedented times to keep us safe and secure from threats." Read the full response. Margaret Wente was appointed to the Independent Judicial Advisory Committee for the province of Ontario. Before you go tweeting about it, keep reading—this is not that Margaret Wente, though they're related. Incredibly, enough journalists amplified their hasty misidentification that the national wire service ended up crafting an entire story around the erroneous info, which ended up on a national newspaper's website. False news travels fast. You mean this isn't how to kill the NDP? That's the cheeky headline atop Paul Wells's take on Avi Lewis's decision to run for the NDP. Lewis co-helmed the Leap Manifesto that owned the narrative at the 2016 party convention where Tom Mulcair was turfed. At the time, Lewis et al were at odds with Alberta's then-premier, Rachel Notley, over how to deal with the emissions-belching oil patch. What of that schism, which once graced the cover of Maclean's ? Wells asked Anne McGrath, now the party's national director and then a senior player in the Notley crew: “One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot, actually, over the last few years is how we reconcile some of the differences we have,” McGrath said. “It has always been the case—I’ve talked to Rachel about this as well—that there are some regional differences in the country.” She mentioned the constitutional debates of the 1990s, and uranium in Saskatchewan: How can you be anti-nuclear in a place with uranium mines? Sometimes, the NDP found, you can’t. Doug Ford takes a hit: In his latest analysis, 338Canada's Philippe J. Fournier takes a closer look at a Mainstream Research poll in Ontario. Ford's party holds a modest lead over the Liberals and NDP among only decided voters, but a whopping one-in-five Ontarians are undecided: Among all the poll’s respondents, the PC leads with 26 per cent of support. The NDP and Liberals are tied for second place with 23 and 22 per cent respectively. The Greens are a distant fourth with 5 per cent. However, no fewer than 20 per cent of the poll’s respondents claim to be undecided. Considering the poll’s margin of error of ±3 per cent (19 times out of 20), these numbers indicate a statistical tie between the main three parties. NDP MP Linday Mathyssen asked the parliamentary budget office to game out the costs of her party's suite of proposed student loan reforms. The PBO obliged. New Democrats want to slap a moratorium on loan repayments, offer up to $20,000 in debt relief per individual, cut out interest payments and extend a non-repayment period to five years. The number crunchers said all of that would cost $3.9 billion over five years. Jagmeet Singh called that an affordable sum. Today in tenders: The feds are spending $572,332 on a temporary parking lot at a new government building in Shawinigan, Que. And Natural Resources Canada is putting up $187,223 for a study on "safety outcomes of fuel-efficient highway driving, including crash reduction and crash severity" for long-haul trucks. Hello, Your Majesty: Canada officially has a new high commissioner in London. Ralph Goodale presented his credentials to the Queen—virtually, of course—from what appeared to be an unnecessarily COVID-safe distance. A table sat between Goodale and Her Majesty. Royals whiz Patricia Treble tells us the four-legged buffer was there simply because new foreign envoys can't hand formal papers to the Queen—so the table receives them in her stead. Here's a twist: Goodale didn't present a letter. Patricia also asked the question of the day: which Queen was Goodale actually meeting? —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
