Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday said that the country’s lockdown will last many more weeks and also warned people if the economy is reopened too soon, all the sacrifices they are making now might be for nothing as the country could see another peak in coronavirus cases.
During a press conference, PM Trudeau said, “Maybe you’re a volunteer firefighter, or a contractor who can pick up some shifts, or you have a part-time job in a grocery store. Even if you’re still working, or you want to start working again, you probably need help making ends meet”.
His remarks are his strongest yet against loosening economic restrictions too soon.
Canada has more than 27,557 confirmed cases, including 954 deaths.
The prime minister further said, “We need to continue doing what we are doing now for many more weeks”.
About 6 million of the country’s 37 million people have applied for government help since mid-March when businesses were ordered closed and workers told to stay at home as a public health precaution.
“We cannot be in a rush to get things going again because if we move too quickly to loosen all these controls everything we are doing now might have been nothing”, he added.
On April 12, Canadian parliament has passed a massive COVID-19 relief bill, deemed by PM Trudeau as the country’s most significant economic program since the World War II.
Earlier, Trudeau has recalled Parliament for an expanded emergency aid as the country was facing the greatest economic and health challenge since the Second World War due to the deadly virus.
The benefit will provide C$2,000 ($1,417) a month for four months for those eligible.
Trudeau called the aid package of C$107 billion ($75 billion) to help the unemployed, protect jobs of workers in shuttered businesses and loans and liquidity measures for business as the “biggest economic measures in our lifetime to defeat a threat to our health”.
Meanwhile, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases around the world topped 2 million on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins, with more than 128,000 confirmed deaths.