The PM will need legislative action to follow his symbolism Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Taking a knee. Over the weekend, millions of protesters took to the streets across Canada and the United States to rally against the death of George Floyd and all the systemic problems that have burst to the fore of our national dialogue, including racism, police brutality and the disproportionately lower quality of health care for minorities. Before the astonishing turnout in Philadelphia and other cities Saturday, thousands marched on Friday in Toronto, Winnipeg and Ottawa. The latter of those saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau join with prominent visible-minority Liberal politicians, namely Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen and MP Greg Fergus. During a moment of silence, they all joined protesters in kneeling for eight minutes and 46 seconds—the length of time the police officer's knee remained on Floyd's neck, suffocating him to death. Critics are now rolling their eyes at Trudeau's action, because he did not supplement it with any real commitment to fix the situation. On CTV's Question Period, Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth Bardish Chagger dodged questions about defunding police, but mentioned vague plans around diversity training and making diversity a mandate of high-level officers. While the traditional narrative frames police brutality and racism as American issues, this week alone, numerous incidents have emerged on social media from across Canada to prove otherwise. Perhaps the biggest one has been the death of Chantel Moore, the 26-year-old Indigenous woman shot and killed by police who were called to perform a wellness check last Thursday. But on the heels of Moore's death came another incident. A First Nations chief from Alberta spoke out Saturday after a photo of his bloodied, bruised face was widely shared online. Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation claims an RCMP officer approached him and his family in a casino parking lot in Fort McMurray, alleging there was an issue with an out-of-date tag on their license plate. The incident escalated to the point that a second officer was called, and the pair allegedly beat him up and charged him with resisting arrest. The RCMP initially reviewed footage of the incident from the cops' in-car video system, and determined the officers' actions were justified and did not warrant an investigation. After Adam spoke out, they changed their tune: an independent investigation is now underway. The protests, of course, are dovetailing with the COVID-19 pandemic, leading some Black Canadian health care leaders to call for anti-Black racism to be declared a public health crisis. They're encouraging officials to collect race-based COVID-19 data to prove the point. It's not a Canadian trend, either: in the U.K., Black people were found to be nearly twice as likely to die from COVID-19, and in the U.S., they require hospitalization at rates disproportionate to their population. Toronto's data, for example, can corroborate that people who live in racialized neighbourhoods are disproportionately affected by the virus, but stops short of collecting race-based health care data. Money, please. Several premiers are frustrated with Trudeau after he announced a $14-billion bailout to provinces on Friday morning. In Ontario, Doug Ford told reporters their $23-billion hit requires more than $14 billion that would be divided between 10 provinces. Trudeau also attached strict conditions to the cash injection: governments must spend it on more PPE, childcare, seniors' services, public transit infrasctucture or the assurance that all employees, regardless of their benefits, receive 10 days of sick leave. Quebec Premier François Legault took issue with all of that. "I was very clear that we want part of the $14 billion, but we don’t want it to be conditional to anything," he told reporters. Meanwhile, cities are being hit especially hard, both economically and in terms of their COVID-19 case loads. Combined with property tax deferrals and significantly lowered rates of parking and public transit fares, cities could collectively be facing a $20-billion budget shortfall. That calculation was made by economist Trevor Combe on CBC Radio, who transposed Toronto's expected $1.5 billion losses onto cities nationwide. The longer the pandemic goes on, naturally, the worse the situation will be. Check your hand sanitizer label. On Saturday, Health Canada issued a recall of six hand sanatizers that are made with industrial-grade ethanol. The chemical can lead to dry skin, irritation and cracking. The brands include Eltraderm, Contract Packaging Distributions, Nature's Own, Sanilabs and Walker Emulsions. Check this list for the exact products. Smaller Senate scandal. On Friday, CBC News reported that the Senate quietly passed a motion to provide two senators with pay raises for chairing a committee that met twice this year—once for just nine minutes. Yuen Pau Woo , the leader of the Independent Senators Group (which mostly comprises Trudeau's picks), tabled the motion in March, when it was passed without opposition. Woo is the chair of the Senate selections committee, which establishes membership lists for the Senate's other committees, and is not a "standing committee" or a "special committee," which means, basically, it's less important and takes up less time, which is why he wasn't being paid extra before. Now Woo will get an extra $10,100 a year. (Lest anyone think this is a partisan issue, the deputy chair is a Conservative senator from New Brunswick, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, and will receive an additional $5,200 from this rule change.) Shifting files. Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, a well-known environmentalist, is shifting away from his official cultural duties to play a bigger role in the Liberals' environmental initiatives. Officials tell the Globe and Mail the shift is because COVID-19 has overhauled the government's priorities, and Guilbeault is making direct calls to environmental groups and provincial environmental wings to try and sell them on the Liberals' vision of oil and gas production. The heritage minister was also part of the plan to spend more than a billion dollars cleaning up abandoned oil wells in Alberta. 76 years ago. On June 6, 1944, the Allied forces launched the largest amphibious invasion in history, on the beaches of Normandy. In Maclean's, Irene Martin recalls her uncle's role in the attack and how it scarred him for life: For years, my uncle kept records of platoon members he knew had survived the war and were still alive. Each year, when the new Toronto phone book came out, he would check to see if they were still there. But he never contacted the other survivors. When I first visited him in the nursing home, I asked him if there was anything I could bring him. He thought briefly and then, smiling, requested a phone book. I believe he wanted the security of knowing there were people still alive who had not died at Normandy. People whom he could contact, but never would. All those deaths somehow froze his heart and destroyed his capacity to trust and form other relationships. —Michael Fraiman | 