If you hear a honking freezer truck behind you, pull over Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Good news travels fast. As rumours fly that Health Canada could approve a COVID-19 vaccine as early as this week, a chief executive at one of the drug manufacturers—BioNTech, which has partnered with Pfizer to create the vaccine expected to get approved soonest in Canada—said it's possible that early doses could ship within 24 hours of government approval. Sean Marett , the company's chief business and chief commercial officer, told CBC News his company worked that quickly for the United Kingdom after their health department sent an approval letter at 1 a.m. "Canada is in a good position to approve the vaccine shortly," Marett confirmed. Health Canada is also currently reviewing vaccines by Moderna, AstraZeneca and Jannsen. Once a vaccine is greenlit and doses start rolling in, the unprecedented and much-anticipated rollout will begin. Dany Fortin, the major-general overseeing the entire operation, appeared on CTV's Question Period yesterday to drop a few hints at the behind-the-scenes work going into this massive project. He's hoping to get everything ready to roll by mid-December, and is arranging a dry run to take place today. So if you see freezer trucks racing down the highway, now you know why. Get in line. Just as critical as the vaccine supply chain is the order of recipients. Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization has already, to no one's surprise, recommended seniors and frontline health-care workers get dibs on the first doses, as well as Indigenous communities living in remote areas. But just in case anyone was curious, politicians don't get to jump the queue. A scoop by Maclean's: Eight months after being appointed to chair the board of the Canada Infrastructure Bank (and 13 months after joining the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto), Michael Sabia has been tapped by the federal Liberals to become Canada's new deputy minister of finance after an abrupt departure by the man who's held the post since the Stephen Harper years. Paul Wells has the scoop: Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Sabia has been outspoken in calling for sweeping new ambition for government, beginning with an op-ed he published in the Globe and Mail in March, only days after the worldwide lockdown began in March. In retrospect that piece now stands as a sort of manifesto. His appointment to run the $35-billion infrastructure bank came less than two weeks after it was published. Last call for motions. Only five more days before the House of Commons adjourns for winter holidays, so parliamentarians will be scrambling to approve the federal government's budget. A final confidence vote will take place this week to approve the Liberals' 12-digit debt numbers, but the Conservatives plan on using their final opposition motion of the year to force the feds into providing more detailed figures affecting businesses in the tourism, hospitality, arts and air travel sectors. Leader Erin O'Toole has also hinted at wanting to push the Liberals to boost the Child Canada Benefit, and pundits believe that may become a negotiation tool that ends up in the final bill, despite not being talked about much on the House floor. An anchor by any other name. While last week's economic update didn't have a fiscal anchor per se, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland has indicated the government does, indeed, have numbers it wants to see before it reels back the recovery spending. But those are economic numbers (e.g. unemployment, though specifics are still hazy), not a spending cap. Freeland is quick to use the language of fiscal constraint, however: "Once we start driving down the road, let me assure you, there are going to be some very clear, anchored, material, concrete guardrails there," she said on The West Block . Gross misunderstanding. Numerous Canadians are being informed they have to repay their CERB payments after a recent letter from the Canada Revenue Agency informed them they didn't actually qualify for the $2,000-per-month payments. These are self-employed workers who made at least $5,000 gross income in 2019, but have now been informed that they needed to have earned a $5,000 net income (a.k.a. after expenses) to qualify. The CRA, which is now requesting refunds of the $14,000 doled out this year, claims these rules have been clear from the get-go, but one contractor told CBC News he kept every letter of correspondence he had with CRA since April, and not a single one mentioned the word "net". Gutting the Greenbelt. Ontario's 7,200-km stretch of protected green space, the Greenbelt, may be under threat after seven members of the Greenbelt Council resigned over the weekend. The first was former Progressive Conservative MP and Toronto mayor David Crombie, whose Saturday night resignation prompted six more to follow suit on Sunday. All the resignation letters mentioned recent proposed changes by the provincial government that would chip away at the power of conservation authorities. Premier Doug Ford, ever since his campaign to lead the Ontario PCs, has had an on-again , off-again relationship with the protected area, simultaneously holding talks to open it up to development, then backing away after public outcry. The latest news in the glacially slow-moving investigation into the Nova Scotia mass shooting from April: RCMP have charged the killer's common-law spouse, as well as her brother and brother-in-law, with providing the ammunition ultimately used to kill 22 people. While there's no indication any of them knew what gunman Gabriel Wortman was going to do with the ammo, the charges nonetheless carry jail time of up to five years. Digging himself deeper. As if Justin Trudeau really needed to become less popular in India, he set off the nation's prime minister, Narendra Modi, after expressing support for Indian farmers who are protesting against a new law that could drive down their prices at the expense of corporate exploitation. Local protests have been met with tear gas and water cannons. Trudeau's comments, which weren't even that strong ("This situation is concerning," he said; later: "Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest") led to the Indian government releasing a statement calling Trudeau's words "an unacceptable interference in our internal affairs." On Friday, Trudeau doubled down on his support of the protests, seemingly brushing off Modi's scolding. The more things change, the more they stay the same. So goes the moral of new political polling data in Canada, according to 338Canada's Philippe J. Fournier, who added new polls into his tracker of government support over the weekend. If you've read 338Canada at all over the last several months, you'll notice that the numbers have barely moved. Regardless of their mistakes or unpopularity out West, the Liberals are still poised to win another minority if an election is called soon. If vaccinations do begin early in 2021 (we should assume that health workers and senior citizens will be first in line), and the rollout goes mostly smoothly throughout winter and into the spring, the Liberals could be tempted to try to take advantage of this unique situation and trigger a spring election to regain a majority—perhaps even before the ominously historic budget is tabled by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. —Michael Fraiman | 
