Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government will not allow companies that use offshore tax havens to receive COVID-19 bailout funds.

During the House of Commons’ first virtual sitting Tuesday, Trudeau was pressed by the Bloc Québécois to prevent companies that don’t pay their fair share of tax from benefitting from government aid.

Last week, under repeated questioning from both the BQ and NDP, Trudeau had refused to make the same commitment, saying that his government would not withhold wage subsidies from a worker just because of the behaviour of their employer.

As a protest against the provincial lockdown measures in Ontario played out in Queen’s Park on Saturday, Premier Doug Ford didn’t mince words when it came to expressing his thoughts on the event and those who were participating.

Ford commented on the situation after being asked about it during his daily COVID-19 briefing.

“We have a bunch of yahoos out in front of Queen’s Park sitting there protesting that the place isn’t open,” he said. “They’re breaking the law and putting everyone in jeopardy, and God forbid one of them end up in the hospital down the street.”

Ford then mused about what would happen if every Ontarian acted followed the actions of the protesters.

“It would set us back months,” he said. “That’s what they’re doing through these reckless protests, they’re setting us back. I don’t know who these people are, but obviously they don’t care about everyone else in Ontario. It just burns me up.”

Ontario health officials have revealed updated coronavirus modelling data that shows the province has already peaked in cases among community spread and numbers appear to be trending downwards towards a best case scenario.

“Projections now show Ontario’s COVID-19 outbreak behaving more like best case,” the report highlighted.

However, Brown said that while community spread of COVID-19 has peaked, cases in long-term care homes, retirement homes and any other congregate settings appear to continue to grow.

“We should all be proud that as a province we stepped up, we faced this enemy head on, we did not shy away from difficult decisions, we did the right thing, we listened to the experts and thanks to our collective efforts, thanks to all of you, we have so far avoided the worst case scenario that we were all dreading,” said Premier Doug Ford on Monday.

Now the cumulative cases for the span of the entire outbreak is less than 20,000, “substantially lower” than 80,000 cases previously predicted for the end of April and 300,000 cases for the end of the pandemic.

Matt Elliott
@GraphicMatt
You can actually see the curve start to flatten in Toronto ~15 days in, which would be around March 26. Bars/restaurants/closed March 17, emergency declared March 23, playgrounds closed March 25. Physical distancing appears to be working. Need to keep it up.
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