What did the defence minister do about the Vance allegations? Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. "The minister didn’t want to see the evidence." With that claim, former military ombudsman Gary Walbourne raised serious questions about Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan's judgment. Walbourne told a parliamentary committee investigating sexual misconduct allegations against former chief of the defence staff Jonathan Vance that he raised concerns directly with Sajjan in 2018—but the defence minister refused to hear them. "I reached into my pocket to show him the evidence I was holding. He pushed back from the table and said, 'No,' and I don't think we exchanged another word," Walbourne said. Sajjan insists he followed protocol at the time, but has never explained what he actually did after hearing the allegations. Walbourne said the Privy Council Office contacted him shortly after his meeting with Sajjan. He refused to turn over documents, surprised that PCO officials even knew about the informal complaint. The PCO review apparently went nowhere. (Vance denies the allegations.) Meanwhile, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Lt.-Gen. Chris Coates, the government's pick for a senior NATO position based in Italy, was pulled from the assignment after Sajjan learned of a personal relationship between Coates and an American civilian co-worker. Coates was deputy commander of NORAD at the time. Jody Thomas, the deputy minister at DND, is Coates's sister-in-law. The nation's hottest federal advisory group dropped a new recommendation yesterday. The National Advisory Committee on Immunization gave the all-clear to administering COVID-19 vaccines at intervals as far apart as four months. That flexibility allows provinces, which are still dealing with limited supply, to quickly ramp-up first doses. NACI says those extended intervals could see 80 per cent of Canadians receive a first dose by the end of June. Brad Wouters, the executive vice-president of science and research at Toronto's University Health Network, called the new advice a " population-level experiment ." On Tuesday, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh's plan to boost the fortunes of small business promised to extend the federal wage and rent subsidies. Yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did Singh one better—and extended both measures until June. "This isn't the time to pull back on support for workers or business owners," said Trudeau. China's ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, insisted to a group of journalists that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor's two-year detention is not related to Meng Wanzhou's arrest. At his press conference, Trudeau sharply disagreed. “Nothing the ambassador can say now will dissuade me from understanding that is the case.” Justin Ling, whose recent Houses of hate feature in Maclean's dissects Canada's broken prison system, asked Trudeau why prisoners are still subject to solitary confinement—even though that's no longer constitutional. "Making a commitment to end solitary confinement, administrative segregation, is very important to this government," said the PM. "We will move forward on that." As Ling wrote yesterday for Vice News, Trudeau didn't elaborate on how the feds will "move forward." Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, the man responsible for moving forward on prison reform, was preoccupied with happier news: the arrival of AstraZeneca vaccine. Seeing red: The PM also has a revamped website. Anyone else who thought the link to the current cabinet committee membership was unnecessarily buried in a footer at the bottom of the old site will be happy to learn that page is now much easier to find. The new site has a distinctly red colour scheme—but it's a darker hue, #780c1c, than the current Liberal shade of #d81c1c. Thanks, but no thanks: Last week, former WE Charity donor Reed Cowan told the Commons ethics committee that after he funded a Kenyan school, a plaque in his name was swapped for that of another donor. In the wake of that latest revelation, two Commons committees asked WE Charity brothers Craig and Marc Kielburger to appear. They declined those requests. Those committees could issue a summons, which applies to anyone on Canadian soil—and would compel the brothers to testify. Inside the mind of Corey Hurren: The National Post's Adrian Humphreys obtained a 13-page psychiatric report on the man who crashed his truck through the gates of the Rideau Hall grounds last July. In the document, Hurren claims that he expected a dinner at The Keg the night before to be his last. In a two-page letter he left in his truck, Hurren worried that Canada had transformed into a "communist dictatorship," and said new gun regulations were the last straw. Tory MP David Sweet has joined the anti-lockdown crowd. Sweet, an MP who represents a riding on the outskirts of Hamilton, Ont., appeared alongside former Tory MPP Roman Baber to condemn economic restrictions as unproductive. Earlier this year, Sweet was removed as chair of the ethics committee after he turned a party-approved essential trip to the U.S. into an extended vacation. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
