Today's jobs report will be historically bad Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Brace yourself for a nasty graph, Canada. Yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians that today's jobs report would be a "hard day" for the country. Everyone knows it. Millions of Canadians have applied for federal assistance in a matter of weeks. We all know people, often close family, who have lost their jobs. Jason Kirby wrote a long feature in Maclean's about Canada's economic abyss (and we can't blame coronavirus alone for what's to come). Frances Donald, the global chief economist at Manulife Investment Management, tweeted a stark visualization of the "consensus forecast," which she admitted likely understates the actual number and will only get worse in the next jobs report. As businesses deal with more uncertainty than they've ever collectively faced, they can apply today for a Canada Emergency Business Account, available through big and small banks in the form of a $40,000 loan ($10,000 of which is non-repayable under certain conditions). At the presser making that announcement, Finance Minister Bill Morneau gave a sense of where parliamentary negotiations on the next emergency aid bill stand. "We’ve had both constructive comments and support from the Bloc Québécois," he said. "We really need the other parties in Parliament to move forward and support this." The House always wins: Or it should, in theory, write Tory MPs Michael Chong and John Williamson in Maclean's. The Conservative pair argues the last Liberal attempt at emergency legislation, Bill C-13, was botched so badly, and overreached so much, that it took fair-minded opposition MPs to salvage the bill. As the Commons prepares to meet again to modify the federal wage subsidy, Chong and Williamson say parliamentary oversight is paramount. As evidence, they point to a troubling section of the law: Perhaps more worrisome is the provision in Bill C-13 that allows a minister to bypass Parliament and change a law—the Employment Insurance Act—by ministerial order. This is deeply worrying. It also opens the door to the introduction of a permanent guaranteed annual income without any scrutiny from Parliament or endorsement from Canadian voters in a general election. Given the urgent need to help Canadians quickly, it’s a risk the country will accept, for now. These are challenges MPs need to resolve when the pandemic has passed. Testy about tests: Ontario has the lowest per-capita coronavirus test rates of any province or territory (Global News crunched the numbers). But the province's capacity for testing has increased substantially since cases started to surge. So what gives? Premier Doug Ford said yesterday that he's had enough. "My patience is running thin," he told reporters. Ontario's top public health officials said an expert panel was set to report on how to expand testing. Every government plays its own roles in a pandemic. Billion-dollar bailouts? Leave it to the feds. Eviction bans? Go to your provincial legislature. Pedestrian takeovers of busy streets to help with physical distancing? That's on the agenda of city hall watchers across Canada. Ottawa mayor Jim Watson is so far opposed to closing lanes to cars, but his Montreal counterpart, Valérie Plante, is set to "review the layout" of a long stretch of trendy Mont Royal Avenue—though she warns the road "must not become a destination." Awkward moment of the day: Peter MacKay sent an email to supporters that called Canadians a resilient people who have "overcome diversity before." Of course, he meant adversity. Was this a case of autocorrect gone rogue? A nefarious plot to undermine multiculturalism? A lack of editing? Our money is on the third option. (The MacKay camp got it right the second time.) The video you didn't think you'd love, but definitely do in these strange times, is an auto-tuned Trudeau singing about mask etiquette and the perils of "speaking moistly." —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
