All quiet on the Easter front Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Easter Monday is always a quiet day in Ottawa. Most public servants salvage the last gasp of a four-day weekend (and it was a sunny one in the nation's capital). That means no action on the federal procurement front, no press releases celebrating government spending and no updates to federal datasets that produce noteworthy nuggets. The House of Commons is on a two-week break. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau followed the zeitgeist and took his fourth "personal" day in a row. In the absence of news, Ottawa never passes up an opportunity to speculate about the next election. Global News reporter David Akin drilled down into the closest races of 2019—the kinds of ridings that nabbed a second majority from Trudeau's Liberals. The Hill Times asked pollster Nik Nanos and a clutch of formerly elected Liberals about all the rural districts that swung away from the party last time 'round—another look at the majority that wasn't to be. We have spreadsheets, too. And we also have Philippe J. Fournier's 338Canada, a powerhouse election projection project that offers up-to-date snapshots of the electoral landscape. Your newsletter correspondent counts 15 rural ridings that Liberals couldn't hold in 2019. (They still won 39.) 338Canada's current forecast—including Fournier's helpful and colourful map—track Trudeau's uphill battle in those key ridings. Liberals are ahead in the polls by an average of seven points and are projected to win 172 ridings. That's 16 short of a majority , and the bad news for that crew is they're not ahead by any meaningful margin in any of those lost rural districts. They trail in seven, and the rest are tossups. Two ridings stand out: Kenora, Ont., where a Tory youngster named Eric Melillo snuck between the Liberals and New Democrats to score an upset win. Melillo appears to be in a close fight with the Liberals. Fournier also projects a tight race on the other side of the province in Hastings-Lennox and Addington. That's Derek Sloan's riding, and it's currently a toss-up with the slightest red hue . The last Liberal to hold the riding won in 2015 by 225 votes—a margin of 0.45 per cent. The Liberals inch closer to majority territory: In his latest at Maclean's, Fournier crunches the latest polling numbers. He finds the governing party is gaining strength, and notes a wild variance in the NDP's popularity. The Tories typically require a strong NDP and a fractured centre-left to secure a win. Even then, says Fournier, it'll be tough for Erin O'Toole: The Conservatives win an average of 108 seats, including 31 in Ontario, 30 in Alberta, 19 in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and 13 in British Columbia. For the Conservatives to win an election with these numbers, they would have to win all close races (toss up and leaning districts), and hope for a favourable vote-splitting between the Liberals and NDP. Oh, and the polls would obviously have to underestimate the CPC considerably, which is possible, but it has not occurred in the previous two federal elections. Paid sick leave: Yesterday, Toronto mayor John Tory said "the time has certainly come" for the province to introduce paid leave for workers who are sick with COVID-19. The city's top doctor, Eileen de Villa, said that measure would help in the short-term before widespread vaccinations. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has refused to go for it. The small biz lobby has long opposed employers being forced to take on additional costs—though an NDP bill would compensate those employers. The father of the Euro: Robert Mundell, a Canadian economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1999, died over Easter weekend at the age of 88. Mundell's bio at the Nobel website explains that he believed a common currency "could be advantageous for several countries ... provided that the labor force has a great deal of mobility." If that sounds like he laid the groundwork for the Euro, that's because he did. Hangin' out in the Quad: The Globe and Mail quotes various observers saying Canada should join the quadrilateral alliance of India, Australia, the U.S., and Japan as a means of countering Chinese military ambition in the Indo-Pacific. The Globe has a top Indian official saying Canada shouldn't yet formally join the informal alliance—but instead beef up its presence in the Arctic. A milquetoast Global Affairs statement played up Canada's dalliances with the Quad. The department previously gave a similar statement to Maclean's, which an editor noted at the time never mentioned China in 161 words. Good news of the day: There is a lot of anxiety out there. We all feel it. Whenever we can, we'll inject a positive development into this newsletter. Here's one: Pfizer's vaccine prevented serious illness in every single case the company measured in third-phase clinical trials—including in South Africa, where the B.1.351 variant was first detected. We know there is good news to share. Canadians are receiving vaccines. Some parts of the country are evading a third wave. Resilience is everywhere. So we want to ask you: Can you please send us your good news? We'll post some of the most uplifting tales in this newsletter in the days to come. Thanks in advance for brightening your fellow subscribers' days. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 
