Economy
‘No plan’ for economy will work without more access to COVID-19 tests, vaccines: O’Toole – Global News
Canada will not see economic stability until there is wide access to rapid tests and vaccines for the novel coronavirus, Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole says.
O’Toole made the remarks during a press conference Sunday morning.
“There is no plan for the economy if we don’t have rapid testing and vaccines as swiftly as possible,” he told reporters.
O’Toole’s comments come as the federal Liberal government prepares to release a fall economic update on Monday.
The government has not tabled a budget for this fiscal year, but in July delivered what it called a “fiscal snapshot” that estimated the deficit was heading for a record of $343.2 billion.
O’Toole said there can’t be a “full economy, a growing economy, people working, people being productive without the tools to keep that happening in a pandemic.
“Those two tools are rapid tests and a vaccine,” he said.
O’Toole said Canada is “months behind our allies” when it comes to the large-scale rollout and use of rapid COVID-19 tests.
Health Canada has approved more than three dozen different tests for COVID-19, but only six of them are “point-of-care” versions more commonly referred to as rapid tests.
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Millions of rapid tests have been delivered to the provinces, however, health officials have been slow to utilize them as questions about best use and reliability remain unanswered.
O’Toole also said it appears as though Canada will be “months behind our allies on vaccines.”
“These are critical tools,” he said. “The vaccine is the hope we’re all looking for.”
Canada has signed contracts to secure 400 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, however, the federal government says only six million of those doses — enough to vaccinate three million people — will be in the country by early January for distribution once approved by Health Canada.
However, both the United States and Britain have said they expect to have millions of vaccine doses by next month and expect to have larger portions of their populations inoculated more quickly.
O’Toole said Canadians are going to be “rightly frustrated” when other countries are “rolling out millions of doses” of COVID-19 vaccines before Canada.
“I hate to see us trailing,” O’Toole said. “I don’t compare ourselves to the worst response, I want Canada’s response to be the best, that’s why I want to see a plan and I want to see a plan for the economy — we need to get people working.”
O’Toole is not the only one who appears to be frustrated. In an interview with The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said it is “troubling” that only a small segment of the Canadian population could be vaccinated immediately.
Moe said the federal government communicated to the country’s premiers how many doses they would receive, adding that the first round of doses will likely treat about 100,000 people in Saskatchewan.
“We need to receive more and we need to receive it in a much more timely fashion,” he said.
Moe said Canada needs a “more ambitious procurement program for sure.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said Canada’s lack of domestic manufacturing capabilities for the highly sought-after coronavirus vaccines — several of which use brand new mRNA technology — means it will be slightly further back in the queue than countries that produce the vaccines domestically.
Still, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said on The West Block on Sunday that Canada is still positioned to be in the “top five” in the global queue for vaccines.
— With a file from the Canadian Press
© 2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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China’s world-beating electric vehicle industry, at the heart of growing trade tensions with the US and Europe, is set to receive a big boost from the government’s latest effort to accelerate growth.
That’s one takeaway from what Beijing has revealed about its plan for incentives that will encourage Chinese businesses and households to adopt cleaner technologies. It’s widely expected to be one of this year’s main stimulus programs, though question-marks remain — including how much the government will spend.
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German business sentiment improved to its highest level in a year — reinforcing recent signs that Europe’s largest economy is exiting two years of struggles.
An expectations gauge by the Ifo institute rose to 89.9. in April from a revised 87.7 the previous month. That exceeds the 88.9 median forecast in a Bloomberg survey. A measure of current conditions also advanced.
“Sentiment has improved at companies in Germany,” Ifo President Clemens Fuest said. “Companies were more satisfied with their current business. Their expectations also brightened. The economy is stabilizing, especially thanks to service providers.”
A stronger global economy and the prospect of looser monetary policy in the euro zone are helping drag Germany out of the malaise that set in following Russia’s attack on Ukraine. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said last week that the country may have “turned the corner,” while Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also expressed optimism, citing record employment and retreating inflation.
There’s been a particular shift in the data in recent weeks, with the Bundesbank now estimating that output rose in the first quarter, having only a month ago foreseen a contraction that would have ushered in a first recession since the pandemic.
Even so, the start of the year “didn’t go great,” according to Fuest.
“What we’re seeing at the moment confirms the forecasts, which are saying that growth will be weak in Germany, but at least it won’t be negative,” he told Bloomberg Television. “So this is the stabilization we expected. It’s not a complete recovery. But at least it’s a start.”
Monthly purchasing managers’ surveys for April brought more cheer this week as Germany returned to expansion for the first time since June 2023. Weak spots remain, however — notably in industry, which is still mired in a slump that’s being offset by a surge in services activity.
“We see an improving worldwide economy,” Fuest said. “But this doesn’t seem to reach German manufacturing, which is puzzling in a way.”
Germany, which was the only Group of Seven economy to shrink last year and has been weighing on the wider region, helped private-sector output in the 20-nation euro area strengthen this month, S&P Global said.
–With assistance from Joel Rinneby, Kristian Siedenburg and Francine Lacqua.
(Updates with more comments from Fuest starting in sixth paragraph.)
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When Moscow resident Zoya, 62, was planning a trip to Italy to visit her daughter last August, she saw the perfect opportunity to buy the Apple Watch she had long dreamed of owning.
Officially, Apple does not sell its products in Russia.
The California-based tech giant was one of the first companies to announce it would exit the country in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
But the week before her trip, Zoya made a surprise discovery while browsing Yandex.Market, one of several Russian answers to Amazon, where she regularly shops.
Not only was the Apple Watch available for sale on the website, it was cheaper than in Italy.
Zoya bought the watch without a moment’s delay.
The serial code on the watch that was delivered to her home confirmed that it was manufactured by Apple in 2022 and intended for sale in the United States.
“In the store, they explained to me that these are genuine Apple products entering Russia through parallel imports,” Zoya, who asked to be only referred to by her first name, told Al Jazeera.
“I thought it was much easier to buy online than searching for a store in an unfamiliar country.”
Nearly 1,400 companies, including many of the most internationally recognisable brands, have since February 2022 announced that they would cease or dial back their operations in Russia in protest of Moscow’s military aggression against Ukraine.
But two years after the invasion, many of these companies’ products are still widely sold in Russia, in many cases in violation of Western-led sanctions, a months-long investigation by Al Jazeera has found.
Aided by the Russian government’s legalisation of parallel imports, Russian businesses have established a network of alternative supply chains to import restricted goods through third countries.
The companies that make the products have been either unwilling or unable to clamp down on these unofficial distribution networks.
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