Canada News
The Government of Canada is investing to safely restart the economy, while protecting the health of Canadians
All levels of government are working in close collaboration to keep Canadians safe as we gradually restart our economy. (File Photo: Douglas Sprott/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
All levels of government are working in close collaboration to keep Canadians safe as we gradually restart our economy. Today, the Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Health, provided more details on this funding provided by the federal government to support health priorities and address Canadians’ immediate needs.
The Government of Canada will provide $4.28 billion to further expand testing and contact tracing capacity, and the associated data management and information sharing systems.
This funding will ensure a national capacity to conduct 200,000 tests per day to help manage COVID-19 outbreaks over the coming year. Canada will also provide $7.5 billion towards personal protective equipment.
Part of this funding will be used to help ensure availability of testing components like reagents, swabs, point-of-care kits, and promote innovation in developing new testing components and equipment. It will also help support contact tracing, including by making federal human resources available to provinces and territories, and help modernize data management and infrastructure to accelerate reporting on cases and access to these data by public health officials.
Quotes
“As we see an increase in cases in several parts of the country, our work continues with all levels of government to protect Canadians. These investments will help contain outbreaks of the virus by making more resources available for testing, public health data sharing and contact tracing.”
The Honourable Patty Hajdu
Minister of Health
Quick facts
- This funding is part of the more than $19 billion announced by the Prime Minister on July 16, 2020, as part of the Safe Restart Agreement. To access the funding, each province and territory will need to outline how they will invest these funds.
- New federal investments for the safe restart of our economy are in addition to previous funding provided to provinces and territories and Canadians, including the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which has helped more than 8 million Canadians pay their bills and put food on the table during the pandemic; and the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, which has kept about 3 million Canadians on the payroll.
