Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is unveiling a plan to have companies produce supplies of urgently needed medical equipment to cope with the increasing number of cases of COVID-19 across Canada.
“This initiative will help companies that are already making things like masks, ventilators, and hand sanitizers to massively scale up production,” he said on Friday morning. “It will also provide support to those who want to retool their manufacturing facilities to contribute to this fight.”
The push to re-tool to produce life-saving medical equipment is being considered a “war-like effort.”
Ottawa has also been working with the provinces and territories to determine where gaps exist in the healthcare system and to try to fill them before COVID-19 becomes a significant problem.
“What I am focused on is to say that we want to be over-prepared,” said Industry Minister Navdeep Bains on Friday. “We want to take all of the additional measures that we possibly can and one of the ways to do that is to build domestic capacity and mobilizing our industry to do so.”
Bains says the plan is to redirect government funding toward research and commercialization related to fighting the pandemic, noting that companies looking to help out can do so online.
“Funds will be deployed on an accelerated basis with wider flexibility to be able to tackle COVID-19 related problems through shortened applications and faster approvals,” Bains added.
“We will also leverage the purchasing power of government to address the immediate need to build domestic capacity and to help make sure that Canadian innovations get to the market faster.”
The federal government has secured more than 11-million N-95 masks, which will be immediately delivered to parts of the country where they are needed.
Border to Close Friday as Canada tries to repatriate Canadians abroad
The government is also in discussions with airlines to repatriate Canadians who are overseas, with the first flight leaving Morocco this weekend. As well, the Canada-U.S. border will close to non-essential travel as of midnight Friday. That means, as of tomorrow, tourists and visitors will not be allowed in.
The PM also says irregular migrants will now be turned around at the Canada-U.S. border instead of allowing them in and isolating them, as had been the earlier practice.
The House of Commons is set to reconvene early next week to pass legislation that was unveiled this week offering financial assistance to Canadian families and businesses feeling the economic impacts of the pandemic. There have been over 500,000 applications this week for government assistance.
As of Friday morning, there are 873 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in Canada.
– With files from The Canadian Press
