Pfizer gets approval for younger teens Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Pfizer broke some unquestionably good news in a morning press release yesterday. Health Canada officially authorized the company's COVID-19 shot for children between the ages of 12 and 15. Two provinces almost immediately announced plans to expand access to that cohort. Alberta will open appointments on Monday. Manitoba will do the same on May 21. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai appeared open to a global vaccine game-changer. "The U.S. supports the waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic and we’ll actively participate in World Trade Organization negotiations to make that happen," she said. A waiver would allow more facilities all over the world to manufacture doses, which could dramatically increase the supply. Canada won't commit to supporting a waiver—yet. Meanwhile, the most vaccinated country in the world was enforcing stricter public health measures. Seychelles, a tiny island nation that has inoculated almost two-thirds of its population, used the Chinese-manufactured Sinopharm for 59 per cent of those doses. Still, cases are spiking. Critics of Ottawa's vaccine strategy often point to places like Seychelles to embarrass the feds. But that country is only the latest to demonstrate that even widespread immunization doesn't conquer the pandemic on its own. Justin Trudeau and Jason Kenney got on the horn yesterday. The short "readout" that recounted the convo could best be described as milquetoast. Surely there was more to it than that. Help for India: Nine days after the feds announced emergency assistance to India, four ministers explained exactly what Canada is sending: 25,000 vials of the antiviral drug remdesivir and up to 350 ventilators, as well as 1,450 oxygen concentrators. Ottawa is making a separate $10 million donation to the Canadian Red Cross. Here was the scene as military officials loaded up a transport plane. Help for Americans: Brian Higgins, a Democratic congressman who serves the border city of Buffalo, N.Y., "expressed deep concern" about one of the revenue generators in Budget 2021: the 1 per cent tax on non-Canadian owned residential property left vacant or underused. Higgins said Americans who vacation up north deserve an exemption, lest the measure "weaken the bond between our two countries." Maclean's cheekily asked if Higgins also supported sending more U.S.-manufactured vaccines our way in order to expedite the opening of the border. His spokesperson's answer: yes . A strait-up showdown: The office of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is holding firm on a demand that Enbridge cease operations on its Line 5 pipeline that transports oil underneath the Straits of Mackinac that separate Lake Michigan from Lake Huron. Whitmer's flack told the Globe and Mail that Line 5 operations post-May 12 would be "unlawful." Enbridge says only a court order will shut it down. Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan has said the pipeline is "a battle that we are fighting on every front, including legal and diplomatic." This clinic dosed 220 people in a day: Last weekend, Ottawa bureau chief Shannon Proudfoot witnessed a local family doctor who set up "Jabapalooza"—an all-day marathon of AstraZeneca shots administered in the city's Glebe neighbourhood. No doses were wasted and everybody went home happy. It was a sign of things to come. Unless you were a medical expert who could clearly see it coming, the pandemic descended last year like a summer deluge: sudden and total, cleaving everything into before and after. But it’s not going to end like that. It’s going to end like it went on that Saturday: one person at a time—maybe ecstatic, possibly just dazed—walking through a doorway into the sunshine with a fresh bandaid on their shoulder. Now that's a timepiece: The feds are on the lookout for three microchip-sized atomic clocks, which Defence Research and Development Canada will use to synchronize a Distributed Underwater Sensor Network. A 2018 report from that agency describes the DUSN as potentially useful in "choke point surveillance" in the Arctic archipelago and assorted harbours. Look over your shoulder: Canadaland has enlisted a "federal employee who spills the tea on the inner workings of the government." The so-called Secret Public Servant, who will write anonymous columns for the site, says their target is "a collective culture of complacency that I’ve seen cost the taxpayer millions of dollars and which has enabled unprofessional behaviour to go unchallenged." Okay, then. Here comes the gossip. Yoga with the boss's wife: File this one under "well meaning but slightly cringeworthy" employer services. The Liberal Party offered a yoga session to stressed-out staffers led by none other than Sophie Grégoire Trudeau. The National Post found some ungrateful aides: "Hard pass," said one. The other view, of course, is that this was simply a nice gesture. That's how Lisa Raitt characterized the stretch sesh, which was indeed attended by relief-seeking staffers. Jim Watson gets the shot: Ottawa's mayor paid a visit to the Nepean Sportsplex Community Clinic for his first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. The mayor spiced up an otherwise mundane photo-op by wearing his favourite Wu-Tang T-shirt. —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 