Mary Simon takes her place Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Mary Simon's installation as Governor General today will be smaller than previous such ceremonies because of public health rules—just 44 people will be in the Senate, CP reports. Simon is the first Inuk to hold the post, which will be reflected in the ceremony. Before the installation ceremony starts, there will be a lighting of a traditional Inuit oil lamp, called a Qulliq, inside the Senate chamber. It will remain lit during the ceremony. Simon is also to be greeted at the Senate building by the Ottawa River Singers, an Indigenous drumming circle. Once inside the building, and after being greeted by Indigenous leaders, Simon will make her way to the chamber being accompanied by a traditional Inuit drummer. Simon had her first chat with the Queen last week. Probing hesitancy: Canada's first-dose vaccination campaign is jabbing fewer than 50,000 people a day, down from a peak of over 185,000 last month. CBC's John Paul Tasker takes a look at why the campaign is running out of steam. Hesitancy seems like a hard problem to tackle. "Unfortunately, the small proportion are quite vocal and there's a perception that they're bigger than they are," said University of Alberta associate professor Shannon MacDonald. "I think focusing on people who have really legitimate questions—and when I say legitimate questions, I don't mean their concerns are necessarily based on facts—is really key." She said the best way to convince the hesitant is to show them data. Separate queues: Toronto's Pearson International Airport said Saturday it may be splitting passengers into vaccinated and partially or non-vaccinated customs queues, the Canadian Press reports. No passport until December: Politico reported Friday that Canada won’t have a national COVID-19 vaccine passport system until December 2021, at the earliest, according to leaked presentations. While there are no plans to make such a vaccine passport mandatory, a lack of a standardized, national, vaccine record could hobble Canadians’ ability to travel abroad as the world slowly reopens. As it stands, each Canadian province and territory issues its own immunization record: Some are entirely paper-based, while others, like Quebec, have begun issuing digital records as well. As part of its phased plan, Ottawa hopes to get all 13 provinces and territories to issue standardized digital vaccine records by “mid-Fall,” the presentation reads, which “will encourage acceptance by [foreign] countries.” Bump for the Tories: A new poll from Ipsos finds the the Liberals down two points at 36 per cent and the Tories gaining four points in the last month to get to an even 30 per cent nationally, Global reports. The NDP are steady at 20 per cent. Pollster Darrell Bricker says the Liberals need to be further ahead in Ontario, Quebec or B.C. to win a majority: “They’ve got to find a place where they’re going to pick up enough votes, [where] they’re going to establish enough gap between themselves and their main opponent from the last election campaign. And so far, they haven’t really found that.” O'Toole leaks: Conservative MPs are anonymously complaining to the Star after the paper revealed last week that Erin O'Toole's deputy chief of staff is moonlighting by helping social conservative candidates secure party nominations. Spying Mounties: Writing for the Canadian Press, Jim Bronskill has an interesting deep dive based on access-to-information documents that show the RCMP was keeping tabs on the Committee for an Independent Canada in the 1960s and 70s. The Mounties were on the lookout for communist infiltration but appeared never to find any evidence of it. — Stephen Maher | 
