Ottawa's face time vs. FaceTime spat comes to a merciful end Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. As Nova Scotians pulled together and mourned the victims of this weekend's tragic rampage—including RCMP Const. Heidi Stevenson—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau diverted from his typical daily pandemic presser to address a grieving province and country. "No one man’s action can build a wall between us and a better day, no matter how evil, how thoughtless, or how destructive," he said. (Read Trudeau's full remarks here, and our up-to-date explainer on the tragedy here.) Later in the day, the PM and the rest of his Liberal team joined most opposition parties in facing off against the Conservatives on how often MPs should physically sit in the Commons. Tories had initially pushed for four face-to-face sittings a week, then cut that to two during prolonged negotiations. But the united front that surrounded them simply refused to budge. By the end of the day, the 37 MPs in the chamber had passed a motion that suspended regular sittings of the House until at least May 25. A special COVID-19 committee will meet once in-person—every Wednesday in the Commons—and by videoconference on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yesterday's question period in the quieter, slimmed-down chamber also produced a surprising result: at least some direct answers. Conservative leader Andrew Scheer asked Trudeau how many ventilators Canada has produced since it launched a national procurement strategy. The PM's answer: 400, and another 30,000 by May. Scheer also followed up on reports that personal protective equipment from Canada's national stockpile ended up in a dumpster last year. The PM said those masks and gloves had expired five years earlier, but said the feds need to get equipment where it's most needed before it expires. "Obviously that did not happen and we need to make sure we have better protocols going forward so we do not find ourselves in a situation like this." Questions answered. How novel. The case for accountability: It sometimes feels like just yesterday that Stephen Harper was in power, the opposition was howling about a total lack of transparency, and journalists in Ottawa complained about Tory secrecy gone rampant. Oh, how the tables have turned, writes Andrew MacDougall in Maclean's as Canada's MPs haggled over how often they should look each other in the eye: If anyone had told you a few years ago the Conservative Party of Canada would be leading the charge for accountability via the House of Commons and the Liberals resisting it, you would have been kicked out of the club and told to stop drinking. Sure, the Conservatives are now the opposition, but overtly championing the role of Parliament in applying scrutiny? Actively singing Parliament’s praises? What’s next? The Liberals pledging to report back to Parliament quarterly on Canada’s Quarantine Action Plan and having Mike Duffy MC the first event? The price of oil, which has crashed of late, hit even newer lows yesterday. The Saudi-Russian spat that sent prices spiralling downward this spring might be over, but even as countries scale back production, the industry now faces a new problem: as the pandemic slashes global demand, storage facilities for the massive glut of oil are nearly full. A little more than a decade ago, oil was trading at all-time highs. Yesterday, the value of a barrel of oil dipped below zero for the first time in history. Federal and provincial budget projections, which depended on much higher price forecasts, are in for huge shocks. Is a fiscal crisis on the horizon for Canada's biggest cities? Municipalities don't have many tools to raise revenue at their disposal, so a drastic reduction in recreational fees, building permits, transit ridership and property tax deferrals could spell disaster, and soon. Jack Lucas and Trevor Tombe, writing in Maclean's, report that mayors and councillors have dramatically shifted their opinions about the fiscal health of the cities they govern. On the other side of that link are Lucas and Tombe's proposed fixes. Ontario released new COVID-19 modelling yesterday (these are the charts). There was good news: the wave of new community spread, said the modellers, "appears to have peaked"—beating earlier expectations by weeks. The collective sacrifices of millions of Ontarians are, they say, "making a difference." But with the good news came the bad. COVID-19's spread in long-term care homes, precisely the places we're all trying to protect, "seems to be growing." Ryan Meili, Saskatchewan's NDP leader, renewed his medical licence to work part-time at a coronavirus testing and assessment facility in Saskatoon. Meili, a family doctor before elected life, joins former cabinet minister Jane Philpott among the ranks of politicians who don medical gowns. There's really no time for parties these days, but the folks who keep canada.ca running must have quietly toasted their ability to keep the federal government's website from crashing hard as Canadians' demand for emergency funding surged. Over the past month, canada.ca saw more than one billion page views. The press release announcing the Canada Emergency Response benefit racked up 4.2 million views on its own. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
