England is gearing up for the next stage of coronavirus restrictions being eased from 12 April. So far, step 1 of the proposed roadmap has been completed: on 8 March, pupils and college students returned to the classroom, and care home residents were allowed to receive one regular, named visitor; then on 29 March, outdoor gatherings of up to six people, or two households, were allowed, outdoor sports continued, and the official “stay at home” advice came to an end.

There is a minimum of five weeks between each stage, with four weeks to collect and assess data and then a week for people and businesses to prepare for the next step.

GUEST: Harriet Hadfield, Journalist for Sky News

On the morning of March 31, roughly 25 Biden administration officials gathered at the White House, double-masked, for a meeting called on short notice by a member of the National Security Council. They were there, they believed, to debate how best to broaden the federal government’s COVID-19 response beyond U.S. borders, and reclaim America’s traditional role as the world’s public health leader.

The challenges they planned to address were daunting. The Trump administration had poisoned relations with the rest of the world, first severing ties with the World Health Organization and then politicizing the pandemic. 

GUEST: Dr. Joel Lexchin, Professor Emeritus with School of Health Policy Management and Faculty of Health at York University, and a former consultant to the Federal Government and World Health Organization

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Groups representing thousands of doctors and nurses are asking the federal Liberals to help Canada's strained health-care system in their upcoming budget, flagging concerns about lack of access to family doctors as well as chronic staff shortages.

The Canadian Medical Association estimates about five million Canadians don't have a primary care physician, or family health-care team, which has spillover effects into other parts of the health-care system.

Among those trickle-down effects is people going to emergency departments, already stretched by the COVID-19 pandemic, for issues a family doctor could manage.

ALSO: Paid sick days vs. federal benefit: Why advocates say both are needed to fight COVID-19

GUEST: Dr. Ann Collins, President of the Canadian Medical Association

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A recent poll finds that a majority of Ontarians feel that the provincial government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly faltered.

A survey conducted by the Angus Reid Institute, a non-partisan public opinion research organization, concludes that Canadians appear to be increasingly disappointed in their provincial leaders in wake of variants of concern rapidly impacting the severity of a third wave.

While at least half of respondents in Manitoba and Saskatchewan said they’re concerned with their premiers response, 65 percent of Ontarians and 75 percent of those polled in Alberta said their leader or their provincial government is poorly handling the pandemic.

GUEST: Andrew McDougall, Professor of Political Science with the University of Toronto

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The Canadian Chamber of Commerce released the results of a poll examining how Canadians feel about how and where they work during the pandemic. Abacus Data completed the polling for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Slightly more than 1 in 2 Canadians (51 per cent) are still going into the workplace most of the time, with another 12 per cent splitting their time between the workplace and working from home. Only 36 per cent are working from home full time.

They asked when they thought their workplace would return to normal, nearly half of Canadians (45 per cent) did not believe that would occur until 2022.

For those Canadians going into the workplace, 4 out of 5 feel safe doing so. Conversely, only 1 in 2 of those working from home most or part of the time feel safe about the prospect of returning to their workplaces. The data suggests the majority of Canadians already going into the workplace most of the time are seeing the right safety precautions to keep them feeling safe.

GUEST:  Mark Agnew, VP of Policy for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce

It's time for Tech Talk with Adam Oldfield!