Trudeau held to his September target, but said with vaccine deliveries being moved up and new candidates being approved, the timeline could be moved up
Author of the article:
Ryan Tumilty
Publishing date:
Mar 04, 2021 • 8 hours ago • 4 minute read • 41 Comments
“We’re very optimistic that we’re going to be able to accelerate some of these timelines,” Trudeau said.Photo by Gary Clement/National Post
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OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday morning he was hopeful Canada’s vaccine timelines could be moved up, but offered no assurance the vaccine rollout here won’t be completed months after the United States.
But late on Wednesday afternoon, a national panel of vaccine experts recommended extending the interval between the two doses of a COVID-19 shot when faced with a limited supply.
Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization’s updated guidance is for the administration of all COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in Canada. It says extending the dose interval to four months will create opportunities to protect the entire adult population against the virus within a shorter timeframe.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Tuesday evening America would have enough vaccines delivered to cover the entire population by late May. The rollout of those vaccines into arms will follow, but America is still likely to be able to vaccinate its entire population months ahead of Canada.
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Trudeau’s long-held timeline is to have all Canadians vaccinated by the end of September. He held to that target at his Wednesday morning press conference, but said with vaccine deliveries being moved up and new candidates being approved, it is possible the timeline could be moved up.
“We’re very optimistic that we’re going to be able to accelerate some of these timelines,” he said. “We’re going to continue to do everything we can to allow our population to get through this challenge as quickly as possible,” he said.
Trudeau said COVID has had a much more devastating impact on the U.S. and that will have a significant impact on the recovery.
“Obviously, the pandemic has had a very different course in the United States with far greater death tolls and case counts and that has had its own impact on the American economy,” he said.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, the party’s health critic, said the government should be providing a clearer, more detailed explanation of its vaccine plan, to help businesses have confidence about what comes next.
“We don’t have any of that data. We don’t actually know what the realistic time horizon is for delivery of vaccines,” she said.
With Canada set to be months behind the U.S., United Kingdom and potentially other countries in the rollout, Rempel Garner said the government should be offering information about what else it will do to ease the pandemic in the meantime.
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“I think we’ll have a problem on compliance and certainty for business reopening, so this is why we’re saying look, be honest with Canadians, and then let’s work together to come up with a plan B,” she said. “COVID fatigue is a real thing. There’s a lot of frustration.”
Trudeau announced that both the government’s rent subsidy for small business and the wage subsidy will be extended into June as the pandemic continues. The extension of the rent subsidy is forecasted to cost an additional $2.1 billion and the wage subsidy will cost the government an additional $13.9 billion.
Finance Minister Chyrstia Freeland said the government would continue to support businesses with the goal of keeping the economy moving so it can resurge quickly when restrictions are lifted.
“Our government will continue to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to help Canadians through this bleak time, to prevent economic scarring and invest in a way that allows us all to come roaring back,” she said.
Biden moved up his timeline to May, from what had been the end of July, after announcing the U.S. government had approved a third vaccine candidate from Johnson and Johnson. Canada is expected to approve that vaccine soon.
Canada received 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the first shipment in a total of two million doses expected before mid-May, on top of a further 20 million doses expected between April and September.
Despite all the recent vaccine announcements, Trudeau said it was too early to formally move up the deadline, because there could still be issues with manufacturing or deliveries.
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“These are new processes for new vaccines that are being manufactured in the millions and even billions in order to cover everyone on Earth,” he said. “We’ll be facing continued challenges, which is one of the reasons why we made such a deliberate effort to sign more deals with more different companies than many of our fellow countries.”
While the Biden administration has said it won’t ship vaccines from the U.S. to other countries until all Americans are vaccinated, Trudeau said Biden knows the challenge is global.
“It was very clear that they understand, like us, we know that you don’t get through this pandemic, anywhere, not fully, until you get through it everywhere.”
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Tesla has promised to start selling cheaper models next year, days after a Reuters report revealed that the company had shelved its plans for an all-new Tesla that would cost only $25,000.
The news that Tesla was scrapping the Model 2 came amid a drop in sales and profits, and a decision to slash a tenth of the company’s global workforce. Reuters also noted increased competition from Chinese EV makers.
Tesla’s deliveries slumped in the first quarter for the first annual drop since the start of the pandemic in 2020, missing analyst forecasts by a mile in a sign that even price cuts haven’t been able to stave off an increasingly heated competition on the EV market.
Profits dropped by 50%, disappointing investors and leading to a slump in the company’s share prices, which made any good news urgently needed. Tesla delivered: it said it would bring forward the date for the release of new, lower-cost models. These would be produced on its existing platform and rolled out in the second half of 2025, per the BBC.
Reuters cited the company as warning that this change of plans could “result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected,” however. This suggests the price tag of the new models is unlikely to be as small as the $25,000 promised for the Model 2.
The decision is based on a substantially reduced risk appetite in Tesla’s management, likely affected by the recent financial results and the intensifying competition with Chinese EV makers. Shelving the Model 2 and opting instead for cars to be produced on existing manufacturing lines is the safer move in these “uncertain times”, per the company.
Tesla is also cutting prices, as many other EV makers are doing amid a palpable decline in sales in key markets such as Europe, where the phaseout of subsidies has hit demand for EVs seriously. The cut is of about $2,000 on all models that Tesla currently sells.
Divisions within the Bank of Canada over the timing of a much-anticipated cut to its key overnight interest rate stem from concerns of some members of the central bank’s governing council that progress on taming inflation could stall in the face of stronger domestic demand — or even pick up again in the event of “new surprises.”
“Some members emphasized that, with the economy performing well, the risk had diminished that restrictive monetary policy would slow the economy more than necessary to return inflation to target,” according to a summary of deliberations for the April 10 rate decision that were published Wednesday. “They felt more reassurance was needed to reduce the risk that the downward progress on core inflation would stall, and to avoid jeopardizing the progress made thus far.”
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Others argued that there were additional risks from keeping monetary policy too tight in light of progress already made to tame inflation, which had come down “significantly” across most goods and services.
Some pointed out that the distribution of inflation rates across components of the consumer price index had approached normal, despite outsized price increases and decreases in certain components.
“Coupled with indicators that the economy was in excess supply and with a base case projection showing the output gap starting to close only next year, they felt there was a risk of keeping monetary policy more restrictive than needed.”
In the end, though, the central bankers agreed to hold the rate at five per cent because inflation remained too high and there were still upside risks to the outlook, albeit “less acute” than in the past couple of years.
Despite the “diversity of views” about when conditions will warrant cutting the interest rate, central bank officials agreed that monetary policy easing would probably be gradual, given risks to the outlook and the slow path for returning inflation to target, according to the summary of deliberations.
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They considered a number of potential risks to the outlook for economic growth and inflation, including housing and immigration, according to summary of deliberations.
The central bankers discussed the risk that housing market activity could accelerate and further boost shelter prices and acknowledged that easing monetary policy could increase the likelihood of this risk materializing. They concluded that their focus on measures such as CPI-trim, which strips out extreme movements in price changes, allowed them to effectively look through mortgage interest costs while capturing other shelter prices such as rent that are more reflective of supply and demand in housing.
They also agreed to keep a close eye on immigration in the coming quarters due to uncertainty around recent announcements by the federal government.
“The projection incorporated continued strong population growth in the first half of 2024 followed by much softer growth, in line with the federal government’s target for reducing the share of non-permanent residents,” the summary said. “But details of how these plans will be implemented had not been announced. Governing council recognized that there was some uncertainty about future population growth and agreed it would be important to update the population forecast each quarter.”
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Shares in US tech giant Meta have sunk in US after-hours trading despite better-than-expected earnings.
The Facebook and Instagram owner said expenses would be higher this year as it spends heavily on artificial intelligence (AI).
Its shares fell more than 15% after it said it expected to spend billions of dollars more than it had previously predicted in 2024.
Meta has been updating its ad-buying products with AI tools to boost earnings growth.
It has also been introducing more AI features on its social media platforms such as chat assistants.
The firm said it now expected to spend between $35bn and $40bn, (£28bn-32bn) in 2024, up from an earlier prediction of $30-$37bn.
Its shares fell despite it beating expectations on its earnings.
First quarter revenue rose 27% to $36.46bn, while analysts had expected earnings of $36.16bn.
Sophie Lund-Yates, lead equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said its spending plans were “aggressive”.
She said Meta’s “substantial investment” in AI has helped it get people to spend time on its platforms, so advertisers are willing to spend more money “in a time when digital advertising uncertainty remains rife”.
More than 50 countries are due to have elections this year, she said, “which hugely increases uncertainty” and can spook advertisers.
She added that Meta’s “fortunes are probably also being bolstered by TikTok’s uncertain future in the US”.
Meta’s rival has said it will fight an “unconstitutional” law that could result in TikTok being sold or banned in the US.
President Biden has signed into law a bill which gives the social media platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to sell off the app or it will be blocked in the US.
Ms Lund-Yates said that “looking further ahead, the biggest risk [for Meta] remains regulatory”.
Last year, Meta was fined €1.2bn (£1bn) by Ireland’s data authorities for mishandling people’s data when transferring it between Europe and the US.
And in February of this year, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg faced blistering criticism from US lawmakers and was pushed to apologise to families of victims of child sexual exploitation.
Ms Lund-Yates added that the firm has “more than enough resources to throw at legal challenges, but that doesn’t rule out the risks of ups and downs in market sentiment”.
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