What's 762 days between friends? Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. 762 days: That's how much time will have passed between Finance Minister Bill Morneau's last budget and Chrystia Freeland's first kick at the can. In 2019, the Liberals were in the final year of their first term. COVID-19 was nowhere to be found. That budget book, wrote Paul Wells, offered "glimpses of an activist and imaginative government." Now, Freeland gets her turn. She'll rise in the House of Commons at 4 p.m. on April 19. The government's critics will mock the two-year gap between robust fiscal plans. The sticklers among the Liberal set will counter that they've tabled two modest fiscal plans—a "snapshot" last July and an "update" in November—as well as spending estimates that, like clockwork, keep funding the government. Those are also facts. But budget plans aren't trivial. Freeland will present hers on a sombre day: the one-year anniversary of the Nova Scotia shooting that took 22 lives. Meanwhile, at Queen's Park: Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy will table his own budget. TVO has the deets on what to expect from Doug Ford's Progressive Conservatives. Yesterday, the Tories called for a different kind of plan—a roadmap for reopening. The Conservative opposition motion (read the full text) demanded a "clear data-driven plan to support safely, gradually and permanently lifting COVID-19 restrictions," and set a 20-day time limit on a government response. The Tory motion elicited Twitter tut-tutting about provincial jurisdiction , since it's premiers who control lockdowns. But a careful reading of the text reveals nothing heavy-handed or top-down—simply a plan to "support" reopening. A party backgrounder on the motion quoted a strange bedfellow: Unifor. Legislators on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border are champing at the bit for that part of reopening. Rep. Brian Higgins, a Democrat who represents Buffalo, N.Y., joined Liberal MP Wayne Easter in calling for a "synchronized strategy" on "quickly resuming normal operations" at the border. Canadians don't appear too keen on moving all that hastily. The cost of loss: Tory MP Kerry Diotte was curious about just how much the feds spent on Morneau's failed campaign for secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Diotte put that question on the order paper. This week, Global Affairs responded. The price tag was $10,899.73. The bulk of the costs went to hospitality. A separate response to another question said 19 public servants worked on the campaign. Another Tory MP, Marty Morantz, wondered who allowed Meng Wanzhou's family into Canada last year. Both Global Affairs and Public Safety Canada said they offered no pandemic travel exemptions "for family members of individuals awaiting extradition." Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino's response didn't get into specifics, but did say his department issued 7,600 reunification letters to foreign nationals whose immediately families live in Canada. More from the order paper: It's Kevin Lamoureux's job to table his government's answers to questions asked on the order paper. On Monday, Lamoureux plunked down 19 responses. Some of what we learned: In 2018, the Liberals passed a law that allowed LGBQ Canadians to apply for expungement of convictions for conduct that's no longer unlawful—including consensual sex with a same-sex partner. NDP MP Randall Garrison wanted to know how many expungement applications have been successful. The answer: nine. Tory MP Rob Morrison had questions about the Columbia River Treaty, a cross-border agreement on responsible use of the river of the same name that's up for renegotiation. Morrison wondered when negotiations would occur, who had gained observer status, who had applied for that status and been unsuccessful, and why those particular applications were rejected. Global Affairs confirmed 10 rounds of talks had occurred. The department granted observer status to the Ktunaxa, Okanagan-Syilx and Secwepemc nations. They'd rejected just one person, Tory MP Rob Morrison, because, they say, only "non-political public servants" are allowed at the table. Tory MP Bob Saroya asked Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to estimate just how many illegal firearms had made their way into Canada since 2016. The department's response didn't directly answer the question, though the bureaucrats did lash out at Conservative comments at a 2019 committee meeting. But the feds were willing to offer one statistic: From Jan. 1, 2014 until Sept. 6, 2020, they seized 4,263 undeclared firearms at the border—that's 1.7 guns per day. The Competition Bur-who? A federally commissioned poll, recently published online, found that very few Canadians are aware of the Competition Bureau—only 12 per cent of consumers were familiar with the agency, and only one in 20 can "clearly recall hearing anything" specific about its work. Two-thirds of the same respondents do remember hearing about the infamous bread price fixing scandal. And a plurality of consumers—36 per cent—say the bureau should focus its work on telecom. Evergreen fleet: A giant container ship ran aground in the Suez Canal. Now that's a traffic jam. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
