Modi to Trudeau: India will 'do its best' Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Yesterday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called up Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India who hasn't always seen eye-to-eye with his Canadian counterpart. A pair of "readouts" tell a tale of two leaders. Trudeau's version of events says the PMs talked about India's "significant efforts in promoting vaccine production and supply, which have provided vital support to countries around the world." And they "agreed to work together on access to vaccines." Modi's take was more direct. He "assured the Canadian PM that India would do its best to support Canada's vaccination efforts, just as it had done for many other countries already." India struck a deal with AstraZeneca to produce a billion doses of vaccine—and Health Canada regulators are currently reviewing submissions from Verity Pharmaceuticals and the Serum Institute of India, the manufacturers of those doses that would be exported to Canada. Pulling a Fast one: The Tories shuffled their front bench of so-called shadow ministers (an ominously colourful term for critics). Pierre Poilievre, the thorniest thorn in Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland's side, has a new focus: jobs and industry. The most obvious targets of Poilievre's ire will be Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough and Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne, but we suspect Freeland won't be off the hook. Ed Fast, a five-term MP and former trade minister, will take over Poilievre's old gig. Trudeau wanted to own the news cycle with news of a $14.9-billion public transit funding spree over eight years, a plan endorsed by Edmonton mayor Don Iveson during a technologically challenged Zoom announcement yesterday morning. The PM's big commitment was a "permanent" $3-billion transit fund starting in 2026 and extending through 2029, which is far enough in the future that Canadians might have voted twice between now and then. That left $6 billion for the first five of those eight years, with no specific per-year allocation. A backgrounder only said that money would "accelerate" unnamed "ambitious projects and planning." Dear Prime Minister: Time for you to go back to the office: Scott Gilmore has had enough of the press conferences outside Rideau Cottage and the candid shots inside the PM's home. No world leader is equipped to run the show from home, he writes, as much as the gesture made sense in the pandemic's early days. What should Trudeau do? This, for starters: Set up a crisis room in PMO. Put some monitors on the walls tracking the spread of new variants and vaccination distribution in real time. Staff it 24/7. Right now, vaccination rates are actually going down on weekends—the virus doesn’t work a 40 hour week, and so why are we? Make sure this crisis room is within shouting distance from your office. (Yes, you’re allowed to shout. 20,000 Canadians have died. Thousands more will follow. You can get angry and demand results. In fact, we want you to.) The joke that went to the Supreme Court: A dozen years ago, a comedian named Mike Ward wrote a joke about a disabled boy. Now, Marie-Danielle Smith chronicles the years-long dispute between Ward and that boy, Jérémy Gabriel. The high-profile case tests the rights of artistic expression versus discrimination. The pair have never spoken to each other. Over the years, each has held to his cause, convinced he is on the nobler side of an increasingly weighty struggle for fundamental rights. As their tale approaches perhaps its final chapter—to be written in the coming days by the Supreme Court of Canada—each struggles to imagine how a judge could ever side with the other guy. The parliamentary budget office posted a pair of legislative costing notes yesterday. The number-crunchers calculated the total revenue boost if the feds follow through on a promise to slap sales tax on "foreign-based vendors selling digital products or services" in Canada (think Google and Netflix, among others). The PBO acknowledges that a new tax could cause a change in behaviour, but still pegged the potential haul at $1.3 billion by 2026. The other note tallied the cost of federal compensation to supply-managed dairy, poultry and egg sectors, which faced more international competition thanks to USMCA/CUSMA concessions. The estimated price tag: $786 million (or a little more than half of the five-year tax on foreign tech giants). The Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, a federal regulator that has delayed new regulations that would lower drug prices, published a report on new drugs approved and sold in Canada in 2018 and 2019. One data point jumps out: The median cost of those new drugs in 11 peer countries was 19 per cent lower than Canada. Americans paid roughly three times more than Canadians for the same medicine. Room Rater romance: Anyone who's spent even a few minutes on Twitter in the past year probably noticed the enigmatic Room Rater, a fastidious evaluator of Zoom backgrounds everywhere—and also a fundraiser for Indigenous communities in the U.S. The account is actually two people—Claude Taylor and Jessie Bahrey—who started dating before the pandemic. The problem: Taylor lives in D.C., while Bahrey lives in Vancouver. They've spent these many months united by their internet mission, but divided by the Canada-U.S. border. Until now. Ottawa approved a travel exemption for Taylor. (An earnest "Thank you, Justin" tweet, perhaps misinterpreted by some as appreciation for a personal favour from the PM, was later deleted.) —Nick Taylor-Vaisey | 