Welcome to 2021, which is looking a lot like 2020 Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Welcome back, and happy new year! If you didn't get to go on a far-flung vacation this year, worry not: a surprising number of Canadian politicians vacationed on your behalf. A quick recap: it began with Ontario's finance minister, Rod Phillips, who ended up resigning his cabinet position after days of public outrage over his secret Caribbean vacation. (His social media team sent messages implying he stayed in the country; he later called the debacle a "dumb, dumb mistake.") After Phillips broke the ice, a flood of elected Canadian officials across parties and provinces were found to have also travelled internationally in December. Not all travels were purely for fun and sun, but the fact that so many Canadians couldn't visit their own families (sick or healthy) still stung. Here's a rundown of who left the country as of yesterday evening: - Calgary-Signal Hill Conservative MP Ron Liepert has visited California twice to perform "essential house maintenance" on a home he owns in the Golden State
- Two federal Liberals, Pierrefonds—Dollard MP Sameer Zuberi and Brampton West MP Kamal Khera, resigned from their government roles and committees after revealing they'd travelled to the U.S. to, respectively, visit a sick father-in-law in Delaware and a late uncle's funeral in Seattle
- The NDP MP for Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, Manitoba, Niki Ashton, tweeted that she was in Greece to be with her sick grandmother; she has since been removed from her shadow critic duties
- Saskatchewan's Highways Minister Joe Hargrave finalized a house sale in Palm Springs, California
- In Quebec, Liberal MNA Pierre Arcand visited Barbados, while Coalition Avenir Québec MNA Youri Chassin flew to Peru to visit his spouse
- Several United Conservative Party MLAs in Alberta have travelled abroad, including Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pat Rehn (Mexico), Red Deer-South MLA Jason Stephan (American road trip), Calgary-Klein MLA Jeremy Nixon (Hawaii), Calgary-Peigan MLA Tanya Fir (visited sister in the U.S.) and Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard (also Hawaii), whose constituency office in Grande Prairie has been angrily decorated by residents with a banner reading "Welcome Home #AlohaAllard".
Most, if not all, of those politicians have since returned from their winter getaways. And while they presumably quarantined for 14 days upon arrival, they weren't tested for COVID upon their return. That's because Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc last week announced the introduction of such a law, forcing anyone entering Canada to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test from within 72 hours of arrival. A source in the airline industry told CBC News the news "blindsided" them with short notice and little consultation. The more things change... We know many of you fine newsletter readers are feeling optimistic about 2021, especially with vaccines coming and Donald Trump going. But if you're hoping for seismic change this year, Scott Gilmore has some bad news for you: 2021 is going to look a lot like 2020. As he wrote for this latest issue of Maclean's: Even after the pandemic is gone, the impact of the virus will linger for a very long time. The world has experienced the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and while markets are up, high levels of unemployment will continue to plague us into 2021. Many of the small businesses that closed will not be coming back, as Amazon and other online megafauna continue to dominate the ecosystem, and as some customers permanently adopt their pandemic habits of shopping on the web or realize they don’t actually miss going to the movies. Next in line. Health Canada approved two COVID-19 vaccines last month, by Pfizer and Moderna. A third, by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, was recently approved in the United Kingdom, where it will begin rolling out today. But Health Canada is waiting on more data before making a decision on whether to move forward with the 20 million doses ordered by the feds. If approved, those 20 million vaccines could rapidly speed up the timeline, as their storage requirements (mere refrigeration) and low costs make them much easier to dole out. As of Sunday evening, more than 119,202 doses of a vaccine have been administered. Setting a high bar. In an indication of when provinces will begin to open up again, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs told Global News yesterday his government won't lift travel restrictions until his province's residents have achieved at least a 70 per cent vaccination ratio. Higgs didn't offer a timeline, but Health Canada is aiming for 50 per cent nationally by June and completion of the vaccination rollout by the end of 2021. A question of unity. Writing in Maclean's, former NDP leader Tom Mulcair reminds us that the divisions in Quebec—between separatists and federalists, and between supporters and opponents of the notorious Bill 21—are more closely tied than you might think. These views, couching the debate as being about secularism of government, are now being pushed strongly by separatist and nationalist thinkers and opinion leaders. They see that major dividing point as being a key to hastening the direct or indirect breakaway of Quebec from Canada. It’s in full flight here in Quebec and yet it’s going largely under the radar in the rest of Canada. Will 2021 end the era of the disinformed voter? So asks Stephen Maher in Maclean's. After Trump, Russia and social media convinced millions of voters to believe things that simply weren't true, the West is finally waking up to the threat. Our assumption about how elections work—the idea that rational voters assess their options based on a shared understanding of reality—is inoperative when large numbers of voters believe that the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is the leader of a pedophile ring, that 5G towers cause COVID, that Dominion Voting Systems was designed by Hugo Chavez to steal the presidency from Trump. —Michael Fraiman | 
