Cancel those spring election plans Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Squashing any hopes (or fears) for a spring election, the New Democrats are poised to approve Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland's massive budget this evening. Appearing on CTV's Question Period yesterday, Freeland was asked whether her government has completely abandoned any effort to try and balance the budget. She answered by immediately pointing out that the Parliamentary Budget Officer predicted a 2021 deficit of $360 billion, whereas the government has successfully come in below that, at—drum roll, please—$354 billion. Unsurprisingly, voters are divided on the budget along geographic lines. Guess which half of Canada isn't on board? In vaccine news, AstraZeneca continued to dominate the headlines over the weekend. Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization advised provinces lower the age threshold for that vaccine to 30, given how the virus is spreading through hotspot areas across the country. The caveat: those with health conditions, which would elevate the risk of getting blood clots, should continue to hold off. Nonetheless, the vast majority of healthy adults should accept the AstraZeneca vaccine if offered—which, for example, the Trudeaus did on Friday. Amid the excitement, one frightening fact got lost: our PM looks at the needle as it goes in. $8.18: That's how much a single dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine cost the Canadian government, as revealed in PMO emails earlier this month. The price tag is about double that of other countries. Procurement Minister Anita Ananad confirmed to iPolitics this was because Canada didn't have any domestic manufacturing capacity. But she wouldn't say anything more, citing those pesky contract confidentiality clauses. Leftward ho: Traditionally, older Canadians have voted for right-of-centre parties, while the NDP and Liberals have vied for younger interest. But this year, that's changed: Canadians over 55 started flocking to the Liberals, according to a slew of recent polls analyzed by Philippe J. Fournier. In his latest 338Canada column for Maclean's, Fournier crunches the numbers to verify the data and figure out the trend: So, this raises the question: Why are older Canadians suddenly keener to support Trudeau’s Liberals than in recent months? As Occam’s razor rule of parsimony wisely states, sometimes the simplest and most obvious explanation is the correct one. From the graph above, it appears that the Liberal Party started distancing the Conservatives in February, which coincided when many senior voters in Canada were getting their first jab. Nova Scotia yesterday announced a slew of new restrictions after 115 new cases popped up on Friday and Saturday. The move also follows a Saturday night house party in Halifax, whereafter police fined 22 young people $1,000 apiece for gathering indoors. Premier Ian Rankin was "infuriated" after seeing the rule-breakers post a photo of their tickets on social media with the caption, "Tickets on tickets #worthit." In response, Rankin yesterday slapped even harsher restrictions on indoor gatherings and doubled fines from $1,000 to $2,000. Still #worthit? Another hot-ticket item: At an anti-lockdown protest in Peterborough, police issued tickets against People's Party leader Maxime Bernier, who has given speeches at several such events so far, and independent MPP Randy Hillier, who was ousted from the Ontario PC party in 2019 (and later compared lockdowns to the Holocaust). Police doled out a total of eight tickets among the event's 200-odd attendees. Last Thursday, the feds announced a travel ban on all flights to and from India and Pakistan. The move has been mostly met with praise, though critics have suggested it will only delay the inevitable. (Layover flights between both countries are still operating, for example.) India is facing a particularly horrible stretch right now, breaking global records for daily cases (adding more than 34o,000 every day this weekend) and suffering from critical oxygen shortages. The U.S. has signalled it will send supplies to help the struggling subcontinent, including PPE and medical equipment, but will stop short of sending vaccines. It's still every country for themselves. Bingo gone wrong. A regular bingo night in Inuvik, N.W.T., is taken so seriously by so many locals that any minor scandal could erupt the entire enterprise. That's exactly what happened earlier this year. In Maclean's, Jason Markusoff has the story: But one momentous night in February, a number that didn’t get called got all the attention—with disastrous effect. N36. The air-pressure machine popped that ball to the edge of the chute, and many at-home players daubed their cards accordingly. Then, before the bingo caller could seize it and put it into play, the machine sucked N36 back in . Another ball popped out and was called, and someone called in a bingo for that night’s $25,000 jackpot. Then, in the ensuing confusion and outrage, a bingo volunteer made a misbegotten offer over the airwaves to provide refunds. That’s when Saturday night boiled over, in a way that residents of Northwest Territories’ third-largest town are still coming to grips with weeks later, especially the organizations that have long been reliant on bingos for survival. —Michael Fraiman | 
