The face-off between Trudeau and Morneau

The budget hangs in the balance

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After days of speculation over a deepening rift between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau, the two men will meet today to hash out their disagreements in person. According to inside sources, the PM and his longtime finance minister have clashed over the direction the government should take with coronavirus relief spending, especially as it fills the 2021 budget. Trudeau, allegedly worried about the size of the national defecit, wants to push ahead with an environmental agenda that Morneau disagrees with. As one source close to Morneau told Reuters: "He was not very keen on a huge deficit; that’s not what he wanted as his legacy."

CRA downtime. On Saturday, the Canada Revenue Agency confirmed that about 5,500 taxpayer accounts had been hacked in two separate cyberattacks, leading to the agendy to temporarily shut down its online services Sunday. The CRA says the leak is now contained, but only after multiple Canadians, over the past month, took to social media to question why they were getting emails saying their CERB applications had been successful (when they hadn't applied) and that their direct deposit information and emails had been changed. The attack was a fairly simple tactic called "credential stuffing": these 5,500 victims had reused usernames and passwords from other accounts online , which had been previously harvested. Take this as a friendly reminder to sign up for that password encryption app you keep putting off.

"Peaks and valleys." That's what Canada's top health officials are predicting will happen with COVID-19 until 2022, starting with a peak hitting this fall and lasting until January. The goal, as always, is to keep the peaks ("curves," if you will) low ("crushed," if you prefer), in order to not overwhelm hospitals, especially during flu season. Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam noted Friday that the severity of these peaks will depend on Canadians' behaviour: "Everything is sort of in our hands."

It's convenient, then, that of the 40,328 ventilators Canada ordered this year, some will start actually showing up soon. Several companies have confirmed their production lines are speeding up in order to fill demand before the fall. So far, only 606 have arrived in Canada, though Procurement Minister Anita Anand has previously pointed out that the government never expected to get them all before 2021.

The legal fight for a million-dollar estate. The perpetrator of the worst mass shooting in Canadian history, Gabriel Wortman, was killed by RCMP officers after he murdered 22 people in Nova Scotia in April. Now comes the bitter legal aftermath: who gets his million-dollar estate? His former common-law partner, who says Wortman abused her regularly, has filed a claim over his holdings, setting off what will likely be an emotionally fraught courtroom battle with families of the victims. Read Stephen Maher's full summary in Maclean's.

Shifting attitudes. On Friday, two police leaders told the House Public Safety Committee that they supported a shift away from police being relied on as first responders to mental-health calls. Chief of Peel Regional Police Nishan Duraiappah and Bryan Larkin, a board member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, agreed that provinces should develop a new framework that trains first responders to understand and speak to people suffering from mental-health issues, because, as Duraiappah pointed out, "If you sent two officers, their only tool available is to transport the individual to a hospital."

Another Atlantic election? Earlier this month, ostensibly to handle their province's economic recovery, the minority Conservative government of New Brunswick attempted to stave off an election until at least 2022 by essentially getting the other parties to sign a document promising they won't call an election. That offer expired Friday, and Liberal Leader Kevin Vickers ultimately rejected it. While Vickers acknowledged in a press conference it would be "irresponsible" to hold an election during the pandemic, Premier Blaine Higgs has been more coy about the idea of attempting to win a majority: "We are prepared [for an election]," he told reporters.

Thirty more days. The border between Canada and the United States will, officially and unsurprisingly, remain closed until at least Sept. 21. This has been the fifth 30-day renewal, which everyone expects will continue for the rest of the year. Same rules as before: trade and essential workers can still pass, but tourists and most divided families are a no-go. That last category may change, however: Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino says he sympathizes with family members in dire circumstances who have been kept on opposite sides of the border, including adult children who can't be with their parents in their final hours . Young children are allowed to cross in such circumstances, but it's unclear why the rules aren't consistent.

Speaking of our southern neighbours, while the decision to put Kamala Harris as veep on the Democratic ticket is historic for women and people of colour everywhere, Maclean's columnist Andre Domise notes that she is far from an ally of marginalized people of colour.

—Michael Fraiman

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