‘We’re in the middle of the most serious public health emergency Canada has ever seen:’ Trudeau says relaxing restrictions will take time

Apr 28, 2020 | 9:10 AM

Canadians will hear new forecasts for the Covid-19 outbreak today from the federal government and health officials.

“Based on the best data available, this is an updated picture of where we think we are right now, and where we think things will go from here,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau says the bottom line is the measures taken so far are working but we’re not out of the woods yet.

“”We’re in the middle of the most serious public health emergency Canada has ever seen, and if we lift measures too quickly we might lose the progress we’ve made,” warned Trudeau at his national address Tuesday.

Ottawa will be providing basic principles to the provinces for reopening their economies such as the ability to test and trace for Covid 19 to control the spread, and specific measures and new equipment to protect people at work.

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“We must continue to stay home, shop for groceries once a week, keep a two mete distance from others and follow the public health directives,”he added.

On other matters, Trudeau said over 44,000 businesses applied for the 75 per cent wage subsidy on the opening day of applications Monday.

Trudeau’s also passed on an update about his mother, Margaret, saying she is ‘just fine’ after suffering smoke inhalation in a Montreal fire, and thanked people for their well wishes.

The PM also took criticism from Quebec media for Health Canada allowing cleaning products to be sold in Quebec with just English language on them as they came from the U.S.

“In an extreme situation like this there needs to be a proper balance, and in some situations we are ready to provide unilingual on some packaging but companies are trying to rectify that,” said Trudeau who said in most cases products must be labelled in both languages.

by Pete McIntyre

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