Welcome to The Hub’s Federal Election 2021 Policy Pulse, where we’ll be tracking all the policy announcements from the major parties, with instant analysis from our crew of experts.

With the election scheduled for Sept. 20, we’ll be monitoring 36 days worth of policy ideas, so watch out each morning for the day’s live blog where we’ll be tracking every announcement as it happens.

5:00 p.m.

5:00 p.m. — Daily recap: The Conservatives offer some relief for gig workers

The Conservatives tackled the gig economy, the Liberals made an appeal to seniors and the NDP kept its focus on housing. Here’s the rundown, with more news and analysis below.

• Conservative leader Erin O’Toole would require gig-work companies to make contributions equivalent to CPP and EI premiums into a portable, tax-free savings account when they pay their workers. This money can be withdrawn by the worker at any time.
• NDP leader Jagmeet Singh promised that an NDP government would double the first-time home buyers’ credit and turn it into a rebate, allowing home buyers to get the money immediately, rather than at tax time.
• Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was in Quebec City this morning to announce a plan to increase the Guaranteed Income Supplement by up to $500 per year for Canadians aged 65 and older.

4:30 p.m. — Canada’s evacuation mission in Afghanistan has ended

Early this morning, it was announced that Canada’s evacuation mission in Afghanistan has ended. Overnight, an additional 1,000 were airlifted out — half by a Canadian C-17 and half by the US. With these new numbers, Gen. Wayne Eyre confirmed that over 3,700 Canadian citizens, permanent residents, Afghans, and other nationals have been evacuated by the CAF.

Below are the updated approximate totals of evacuees per country:

1. United States: 95,700+
2. UK: 11,000+
3. Germany: 5,100+
4. Italy: 4,400
5. Australia: 4,000
6. Canada: 3,700+
7. France: 2,500+
8. Netherlands: 2,500
9. Spain: 1,584
10. Turkey: 1,400

As observed from the figures above, Canada remains at 6th of 10 countries in total evacuations. Among G7 countries, Canada still remains at 5th place out of seven countries, only just ahead of France and Japan, with the latter only promising to evacuate 500 people from Afghanistan.

Last night, most CAF left Kabul. A small coordination team remained with allies on the ground and will stay there for a day or two.

Gen. Wayne Eyre said that the government “wished [they] could have stayed longer and rescued everyone who was so desperate to leave.” He added that Canadian personnel will have to reflect about their efforts in Afghanistan, but that Canadians still made a difference in the lives of thousands.

Despite the end of the mission, Canada will continue to help. A senior official from Global Affairs stated that the Canadian government will continue working closely with allies and other countries in the region to support Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and Afghans who had worked with Canadian military and governmental personnel.

Under a special Afghan immigration program, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada received 2,500 applications, including 8,000 people. Close to two-thirds of applications are processed and approved, and the rest will be finalized by immigration officials.

Hours after the announcement, an explosion went off outside of Kabul airport, as confirmed by Sec. of State John Kirby. A second explosion erupted near the Baron hotel, close to the airport. At least 60 Afghans and 12 U.S. service members were killed, and 15 others were injured. All CAF members are safe and accounted for.

It is believed that the Islamic State carried out the attacks.

Note: The evacuation numbers issued by France yesterday were incorrect. The correct numbers are now reflected in this list.

3:00 p.m. — Money for health care, and the autonomy that goes with it, tops Legault’s ‘grocery list’

Antonia Maioni, a professor at McGill University, looks at Quebec’s health-care wishlist:

Quebec Premier François Legault just presented his “grocery list” of issues to the federal political parties in this fall’s election race. To no one’s surprise, an increase in health care transfers tops the chart.

While this may be a common theme for provincial premiers, in Quebec’s case it means not just more money but, just as important, lots of autonomy.  Legault seemed to signal out Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s promise to dedicate money to hire more family doctors and nurses as absurd. And he has a point. Health care, whether in Quebec or elsewhere, is a primarily provincial jurisdiction.

The federal government can’t actually “hire” anyone to deliver care in provincially governed health care systems nor can they train doctors or nurses in provincially funded medical schools.  

Will it matter? The health care card has long been a winning hand for Liberal leaders in Ottawa. But, after a long pandemic experience in which Quebecers have relied on Legault’s CAQ government to bring them through this public health crisis, they may be more attentive to their premier’s wish list. And to the political party that can ensure not just money for health care but the autonomy that goes with it.   

2:00 p.m. — Conservative animal welfare policies are modest, but symbolically significant

The Hub contributor Dean Tester examines the Conservative animal welfare policies:

For the first time, Conservatives have included a plan for animals in their platform.

Since Boris Johnson became leader, the U.K. Conservatives have campaigned on animal protection. And it’s been a vote winner for them because it helps show the compassionate side of a party that is often branded as not. Their Action Plan for Animal Welfare has made them a world leader on the issue.

The Canadian Conservative proposals are very modest in comparison, but as a symbol, their plan is a huge step for animal welfare.

Their commitments include:

• Cracking down on puppy mills and inhumane breeders;
• Banning cosmetic testing on animals;
• Strengthening the CFIA’s ability to enforce current regulations and seize animals imported under poor welfare conditions; and
• Supporting the closure of global wildlife markets that increase the risks of future pandemics.

The plan mostly focuses on protecting pets and pet-owners. It largely ignores animal welfare issues in the domestic animal agriculture industry.

Nonetheless, they are the first party to release a plan for animal welfare — making them the leaders in this space in Canada.

This may not be a game changing policy in this election, but expect animal issues to get more attention over time. These issues play extremely well with pet owners — according to the Conservatives, over 90 percent of pet owners view their pets as a family member. But on a broader scale Canadians are also starting to recognize the damage being done by large-scale factory farming. Animal suffering is immense in the industry, and animal agriculture is widely recognized as one of the leading causes of climate change.

Elections in other countries have shown there is real value for politicians who campaign on protecting animals.

If the Conservatives and other parties want to do more, they should consider farmed animals. There would be considerable backlash from industry, but there are also many votes to win from those who care about animals. A more ambitious plan would likely resemble the U.K. Conservative plan.

Potential ideas include:

• Ending live animal exports for slaughter
• Increasing monitoring and penalties for animal cruelty on farms
• Improving conditions for farmed animals, by setting minimum standards for journey times, space allowances, and temperature controls
• Subsidies to help farmers transition from animal agriculture to plant-based farming

1:00 p.m. — On National Dog Day, take a deep dive into Conservative animal welfare policies

The Hub’s content editor L. Graeme Smith takes a look at the animal welfare section of the Conservative platform:

It is National Dog Day. How are you planning to celebrate? Ample pets, pats, scratches, walks, belly rubs, and treats, surely. Perhaps take the afternoon off and bask in the theatre glow of our country’s most popular pet-themed CanCon export. 

Or you could take the day to read the 160 page Conservative Party platform document. Sure, it may be a dog’s breakfast, but so far in this campaign only one party is looking to corner the Rufus, Spot, Daisy, and Bella constituency.

The platform contains a host of pooch-approved promises you may have missed, as well as a host of pledges to improve animal welfare, fight cruelty, and mitigate the abuse of both animals and humans. These include: 

• Banning puppy mills 

• Stopping unethical breeders and dealers from misleading the public by claiming to offer rescue animals or pets bred humanely when that isn’t the case. 

• Banning the importation of animals bred inhumanely. 

• Strengthening the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s ability to enforce current regulations and seize animals when imported under poor welfare conditions

• Covering the cost of PTSD service dogs for veterans and creating training standards for them

• Banning cosmetic testing on animals and amending the Food and Drug Act and its regulations to implement a ban modelled on the European Union ban

• Addressing the links between violence against animals and violence against people, including providing $10 million per year to train judges and prosecutors on the links between violence against animals and violence against people

• Increasing cross-reporting between animal welfare and child welfare agencies

• Adding animal cruelty as an aggravating factor in domestic violence prosecutions to go after abusers who hurt their spouse by hurting their spouse’s pet

•  Supporting pet owners fleeing violence by working with the sector to ensure that there are better options for women to leave abusive homes without having to abandon their pets

• Supporting and encouraging the closure of poorly regulated wildlife markets globally that carry an elevated risk of becoming sources for future pandemics

• Ending the importation of and trade in wild or exotic animals and their products that carry an elevated risk of spreading zoonotic diseases

We’ll have more analysis on the animal welfare side of the election campaign later this afternoon.

12:10 p.m. — Erin O’Toole announces Conservative plan for gig workers

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was in Ottawa this morning to make an announcement about the gig economy.

The Conservatives would require these companies to make contributions equivalent to CPP and EI premiums into a portable, tax-free savings account when they pay their workers. This money can be withdrawn by the worker at any time.

The Conservative platform says 1.7 million Canadians are currently engaged in this kind of work.

11:30 a.m. — Singh promises to double the first-time home buyers’ credit and turn it into a rebate

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was in Winnipeg today to talk about a familiar topic on the campaign trail: housing affordability.

Singh promised that an NDP government would double the first-time home buyers’ credit and turn it into a rebate, allowing home buyers to get the money immediately, rather than at tax time.

10:30 a.m. — Hub Dialogue: How your brain is constantly making predictions about the world

Looking for a break from the election campaign? In this Hub Dialogue, The Hub’s editor-at-large Sean Speer speaks to Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of Seven and a Half lessons about the Brain.

Here’s an excerpt from the fascinating conversation. You can read the full discussion at The Hub.

Sean Speer

The book observes that most of the brain’s activities happen outside of our awareness. You even explain how the brain is constantly making predictions about what it expects to see – something you describe as “carefully controlled hallucinations.” How do our brains anticipate what’s going to happen or what will see next?

Lisa Feldman Barrett

As a person, if somebody told me, “You know, you’re not really reacting to stuff in the world, your brain is predicting everything,” I would be like, “What? How can you say that? That’s not my experience.”

But even as a really skeptical scientist, I experienced something really interesting when I was reading research in neuroanatomy. It suggested that the way a brain is structured is to predict what’s going to happen next. It’s not waiting to be stimulated by the world. It’s actually neurally-generating its own predictions, meaning it’s changing the firing of its own neurons, to anticipate sights, sounds, smells, and so on. At the same time, I was reading work in electrical engineering on signal processing, because the brain is a signal processor – there’s a lot of electrical drama going on in your neurons – and it suggested that the brain is predicting, not reacting. And I was reading other literatures that suggest prediction, too.

All these different literatures that don’t talk to or mention each other are pointing in the same direction, which is this really counterintuitive idea that brains are not structured and don’t function to react to things in the world, because that is metabolically inefficient. Instead, brains are structured to run an internal model of the world – to predict what to do next and what will be experienced next – and then adjust when that model is wrong.

10:00 a.m. — Trudeau announces boost to Guaranteed Income Supplement

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was in Quebec City this morning to announce a plan to increase the Guaranteed Income Supplement by up to $500 per year for Canadians aged 65 and older.

Trudeau also took the opportunity to highlight some previously announced policies, such as a pledge to double the home accessibility tax credit and a new tax credit for multi-generational home renovations.

8:30 a.m. — Our superficial debate about health care will only lead to more privatization

The Hub’s editor-at-large Sean Speer examines the debate around two-tier health care:

We’ve reached that predictable point in the federal election campaign when we have a superficial debate about the role of the private sector in Canada’s health-care system.

Earlier this week, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau accused Conservative leader Erin O’Toole of supporting “private, for-profit health care” and fact checkers and other journalists have since speculated that this could ultimately undermine Medicare.

There are various problems with this kind of analysis but let’s just unpack one: Canada’s Medicare model of compulsory, single payer insurance is already a hybrid model.

Single-payer insurance only covers “medically necessary” services that are narrowly defined as those provided by a physician or in a hospital. It doesn’t extend to other parts of Canadians’ health care including prescription drugs, long-term care, or home-care services. For these non-insured services, we have a combination of public subsidies (usually based on age or income level), employer-provided insurance, or out-of-pocket spending.

What portion of overall health care is covered by single-payer insurance? Less than half. The parts of the health-care system not subject to Medicare now represent about 55 percent of all health-care spending in Canada. (A big part of the explanation here is that prescription drugs surpassed doctor billings as the second-largest expenditure in the 1990s and have generally been the fastest-growing expenditure across the health-care system.)

One way to think of it as follows: Canada has 100-percent, first-dollar public coverage for physician and hospital services and a mostly private model for the majority of health-care spending such as drugs, dental and home care.

This two-tier design of our public health insurance makes us an outlier around the world. The Medicare system of public insurance can be characterized as a “mile deep and an inch wide.”

Most other countries with universal health coverage, by contrast, are able to provide some amount of public insurance across a broader range of health-care services by relying on a mix of cost-sharing (such as co-payments or co-insurance), regulation, and public subsidies for private insurance. These jurisdictions in effect have systems of public funding that are less deep than Canada’s but extend across a wide set of health-care services.

There are pros and cons of these different designs of public health insurance. The Canadian model may better protect against out-of-pocket spending for acute care but it’s less egalitarian in other areas because it dedicates so much of its resources to spending on hospital and doctors.

It would be useful for our political parties to debate these trade-offs and what, if any, adjustments that we ought to make to the Medicare model to improve its efficiency, equity and sustainability. I’ve previously written, for instance, in favour of amending the Canada Health Act to enable means-tested co-payments for hospital and doctors services and in turn redirecting some of the fiscal savings to expand public support for drug coverage.

The political rhetoric thus far in the campaign though suggests that such a reasoned and dispassionate debate is unlikely and Medicare will remain unchanged from its current form.

This could produce an ironic outcome: all things being equal, Canada’s Medicare model is likely to become more private and less public over time due to a combination of its two-tier design and health-care consumption patterns — namely, the projected growth of prescription drug and long-term care spending over the coming years due to aging demographics.

The result could be that, for all of the talk about the ills of private health care, our inability to have something beyond a superficial debate about these issues may ultimately lead to the precise problem that the party leaders claim they want to solve.

7:00 a.m. — Where the leaders are today

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau will be in Quebec City to make an announcement about seniors at 9 a.m.

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole will be in Ottawa to make an announcement at 12 p.m.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh will make an announcement on housing at 9:30 a.m. local time in Winnipeg (10:30 a.m. ET).

Welcome to The Hub’s Federal Election 2021 Policy Pulse, where we’ll be tracking all the policy announcements from the major parties, with instant analysis from our crew of experts.

With the election scheduled for Sept. 20, we’ll be monitoring 36 days worth of policy ideas, so watch out each morning for the day’s live blog where we’ll be tracking every announcement as it happens.

4:30 p.m. — How Canada’s progress on Afghanistan evacuations compares to other countries

The Hub’s associate editor Amal Attar-Guzman examines the evacuation mission underway in Afghanistan:

As of today, more than 2,700 Afghans, permanent residents, Canadian citizens, and other nationals have been evacuated by Canadian forces, according to a government press conference today.

At the moment, approximately 1,000 evacuees from Afghanistan have landed in Canada since leaving Kabul, and more than 300 evacuees have completed quarantine. In the last day, more than 500 people have been airlifted to safety.

With these new numbers, how is Canada faring in the evacuation mission in comparison to other G7 nations and others?

Below are the approximate totals of evacuees per country:

1. United States: 82,300
2. United Kingdom: 10,000+
3. Germany: 3,000+
4. France: 2,961
5. Canada: 2,700+
6. Australia: 2,700
7. Italy: 2,659
8. Turkey: 1,404
9. Spain: 1,200+
10. Japan: N/A

As shown by the numbers above, Canada is 5th out of 10 countries in total evacuations. But when it comes to G7 countries, Canada remains 5th place out of the seven countries, only just ahead of Italy and Japan, who have recently been accepted to send evacuation aircrafts and enter Afghanistan.

There has been some speculation that Canada will stop evacuating people ahead of the 31st deadline. In fact, an unnamed source told CBC that Canada could have just 24 to 48 hours left, since Canadian forces only have a limited number of flights remaining.

Since the evacuation started, criticisms on the Canadian government’s efforts have risen, as seen in opinion pieces from the Globe and Mail and the National Post. The situation also raises questions about Canadian foreign policy and Canada’s role on the global stage, as mentioned in a Hub viewpoint published earlier this month.

3:30 p.m. — Any plan for telecoms must recognize that developing infrastructure and reducing prices are at odds

Peter Menzies, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and former CRTC vice chair, examines the NDP telecoms proposal announced this morning:

Internet and cell service access, particularly for remote, rural, and low-income households, is in fact a major problem, and it is good to see the NDP are interested in tackling it and bringing costs down to more reasonable levels. Unfortunately, their approach would likely raise costs indirectly, to be subsidized by taxpayers rather than by service users.

The reality is that price is not itself the problem. It is a signal of other problems informed by a number of factors, including the size and scope of the network in Canada, the lack of effective competition, regulatory factors, and yes, corporate profit motives. A price cap tackles the latter item but ignores all the former items, meaning that telecom providers will either stop providing services to remote markets or will reduce the quality of said services. It will also make the prospect of attracting competition more challenging. 

To cover this, the NDP propose that a Crown corporation would pick up the slack. Though this model does have some success, such as in Saskatchewan, it is unclear whether that is the right vehicle nationally. It risks being slow and inefficient, it would undermine competition, and risks stymying innovation, thereby raising the costs in the form of greater expenses on government.

After a quarter of a century growing competition in an industry previously dominated by provincial Crown corporations, moving back to a 1980s model hardly seems the progressive approach. Saskatchewan, for instance, doesn’t have the nation’s lowest mobile prices because it has a Crown: it has the lowest prices because its Crown is a strong, efficient competitor battling for market share with national private sector companies.

A better approach would recognize and grapple with the fact that developing infrastructure and reducing prices are fundamentally at odds with one another. Moreover, a lack of competition, a regulator fixated on facilities-based competition at the expense of consumers and an inefficient regulatory apparatus must be fixed if we are to improve services and access without increasing prices. Thus, the government’s role is to create a balance based on a core set of goals that harmonize regulatory decisions with market forces.

1:50 p.m. — There could be inadvertent consequences in the Conservative bankruptcy plan

The Hub contributor Greg Boland examines a Conservative plan to protect pensions in the wake of corporate bankruptcies:

Yesterday Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole promised to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to give pensioners priority status over other creditors in the event of a corporate bankruptcy.

This issue has permeated federal policymaking for several years. High-profile bankruptcies such as Nortel and Sears have brought considerable advocacy and debate about such changes to Canada’s bankruptcy regime. Successive governments, however, have opted not to enact them.

Although pension security is highly important, there could be inadvertent consequences to the Conservative proposal that make it more difficult for distressed companies to ultimately come out of bankruptcy protection. These risks need to be weighed against the understandable concerns about the well-being of pensioners.

Let me highlight three specific risks that policymakers ought to consider:

1) Typically in an insolvency, a company needs quick access to capital to have a hope of recovering. Suppliers and service providers demand immediate payment and normal sources of capital are typically unavailable. This creates a sudden vacuum in liquidity that can halt operations of a company. Normally, a company can execute “debtor in possession” financing to keep the lights on and the business running while it restructures. Debtor in possession financings rank at the top of the capital structure in order to facilitate rapid execution in the face of great uncertainty. If eventual legislative amendments placed pensioners ahead of these rescue financings, there is a high probability that they would be unavailable, leading to sudden business closures.

2) Pensions entitlements are typically granted over time as a result of negotiations between the company and its employees. It is impossible to say what they might be years in the future. Pensions are also valued using relatively complex math that incorporates market inputs such as interest rates and asset prices. Finally, the methodology of valuation is prescribed in law and subject to change. As a result, a potential lender has little visibility to how large a pension might be when it comes time to get repaid years or decades in the future. If pensions rank ahead of other lenders, this uncertainty will raise the cost of capital or in some cases prohibit access to capital at all.

3) Finally, many larger or older companies have pension obligations that are close to or even exceed the entire value of the company. These companies can continue to operate and pay wages and benefits to their workers, but they often need operating loans. Again, these loans would be unavailable if they couldn’t be ranked ahead of the pension obligations to some degree.

Every restructuring is different and it’s hard to generalize the impact of this proposal. However, if these legislative amendments were made, it will definitely lead to higher capital costs for many companies and ultimately contribute to more sudden business closures.

12:50 p.m. — Trudeau announces corporate tax hike on big banks

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was in Surrey, British Columbia today to announce a plan to raise the corporate tax rate by three percentage points on banks and insurance companies with more than $1 billion in revenue.

Trudeau said the plan will raise about $2.5 billion and the revenue will go towards paying for the party’s housing plan that was announced Tuesday.

12:40 p.m. — It’s true — Canada is a huge outlier when it comes to mobile data rates

The Hub’s content editor L. Graeme Smith examines mobile data rates around the world:

A report released this summer from the Sweden-based mobile analytics firm Tefficient examined mobile usage trends in 2020 and during the pandemic from 44 countries in all regions of the world. Included are figures on affordability. 

As Tefficient highlights, mobile data usage has never been higher, and mobile data has never been cheaper. 

And yet, Canada is an extreme outlier when it comes to how much consumers have to pay for mobile data. It is a sobering document for Canadians, emphasizing just how expensive our rates are compared to global averages. 

Canadians, in fact, pay the highest total revenue per gigabyte in the world (utilizing data from 2019), at 14 Euros in mobile service revenue per gigabyte, or about $20 CAD. In comparison, most other countries that were studied paid in the range of zero to seven Euros, or about $10 CAD at the most.

Jagmeet Singh spoke this morning on the affordability issues consumers face when accessing telecom services. The NDP platform promises to remedy this imbalance in respect to mobile plans with several proposals earlier this morning.

The Conservative platform, likewise, seeks to address affordability through increased competition, promising to allow foreign telecommunications companies to provide services to Canadian customers provided that the same treatment is reciprocated for Canadian companies in that company’s country.

11:45 a.m. — O’Toole highlights mental health action plan in Ontario

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was in Brantford, Ontario this morning to discuss his party’s “Canada mental health action plan.”

The program includes $150 million over three years in grants to non-profits and charities that are delivering mental health services. It also includes a plan to encourage employers to add mental health coverage to employee benefits plans with a 25 percent tax credit.

The Conservative plan would also create a nationwide three-digit suicide prevention hotline.

O’Toole said a Conservative government would also encourage the provinces to devote a “significant portion” of health funding to mental health.

11:30 a.m. — NDP unveils plan for affordable telecom services

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh was in Windsor this morning to highlight his party’s plan for affordable telecom services.

Singh has promised to put a price cap on cell phone and internet bills that would keep rates below the global average. The NDP leader would also declare high-speed internet an “essential service.”

The NDP would also require providers to offer a basic plan for these services that is “comparable with the affordable plans… in other countries.” The NDP platform also contains a plan to create a Crown corporation to delivery telecom services to every community and another plan to introduce a “Telecom Consumers’ Bill of Rights.”

10:15 a.m. — The real key to fixing long-term care is higher wages

Johanna Lewis and Brian Dijkema explored the NDP proposal from Day 10 of the campaign to ban for-profit long-term care providers last year for the Cardus think tank. Here’s what they found:

Blaming “greedy profit-driven corporations” for long-term care’s problems is easy and makes for a politically popular sound bite, but banning for-profit providers from LTC is a simplistic response that fails to solve the underlying, structural issues with LTC and its labour-market challenges.

In a healthy market, diversity of options and competition between them would hold all players accountable. Different homes (including for-profit, non-profit, and public) would compete to attract residents by offering better care and to attract skilled workers by offering better compensation. These positive forces have been stifled by a bloated wait-list that deprives seniors and their families of real choice in where to receive care and by structural distortions that have prevented the LTC labour market from responding as it should to a severe labour shortage in a competitive environment: with higher wages.

Even if Ontario had unlimited funding for an overhaul of this magnitude, throwing money at these groups would not be enough to develop thriving homes from scratch.

The NDP’s plan recognizes that preserving seniors’ communities is critical. And one of the major strengths of non-profit and charitable homes is the connections many of them maintain with their local communities. Cultivating a sustainable base of social, financial, and volunteer support is an organic process that takes time, patience, and the right people; government is severely limited in its ability to create an engaged community of care.

7:00 a.m. — Where the leaders are today

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau will be Surrey, British Columbia to make a housing announcement at 9 a.m. local time (12 p.m. ET).

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole will be in Brantford, Ontario to make an announcement at 11:30 a.m.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh will be in Windsor, Ontario to make an announcement on affordability at 10 a.m.