The Bank of Canada prepared to increase the cash it pumps into the financial system and Finance Minister Bill Morneau stressed the need for fiscal measures to manage the impact of COVID-19 as official Ottawa responded to another market plunge.

The federal government rolled out a $1-billion package on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, to help the country's health-care system and economy cope with the novel coronavirus outbreak as the number of cases in Canada grew, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned that the situation could get worse, and the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau was told weeks into the Liberals' second mandate that Canadians are most worried about affordability in areas where governments have a lot of power over prices — particularly child care.

Canada's central bank was leaning towards cutting its trend-setting interest rate this week before the novel coronavirus pushed it to take a more dramatic step to get ahead of the shock the outbreak will have on the economy, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz says.

A federal push to get more Indigenous-owned businesses to bid on government contracts has been slowed by issues over how the data is collected since before last summer, according to internal government documents.

The federal Liberals could add billions in spending and keep federal finances sustainable over the long run, Parliament's budget watchdog says in a report that begins to set the stage for Finance Minister Bill Morneau's upcoming budget plan.

Canada's poverty rate has fallen to a historic low in one of the sharpest three-year declines on record, the national statistics office says, but millions of Canadians still live below the poverty line.

The mayors of Canada's biggest cities are pressing the federal government for immediate money to address climate change, as well as a promise of predictable transit funding down the tracks.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government is going through a "deliberate process" to airlift nearly 200 Canadians out of the epicentre of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China, while other countries continue to get their citizens home.

Newly released documents show that top government officials believe there is no imminent threat that artificial intelligence and robots will displace large segments of the Canadian workforce.