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COVID consequences: immigration interrupted and who gets Canada's first vaccines

What happens when immigrants cannot come to Canada? What will it take to qualify for a dose of COVID-19 vaccine if/when it is discovered? Finally, can the captains and commanders of Star Trek teach us more about a universal basic income?

And what the United Federation of Planets can teach us about universal basic income

CBC Radio ·
This week the Cost of Living team takes a closer look at immigration trends during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. We also find out what Star Trek can teach us about a universal basic income and we investigate the economics of vaccine distribution. (Michael Charles Cole/CBC, itsmejust/Shutterstock, The Canadian Press)
Cost of Living27:45COVID consequences: immigration interrupted, who gets Canada's first vaccines, and Trekonomics

The coronavirus pandemic has meant the Canadian border is closed to many, if not most travellers, since March 18, 2020. 

The closure means Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada is nowhere close to hitting its 2020 target of 340,000 new permanent residents, and interruption is already having consequences on businesses, real estate and more in communities right across the country.

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Cost of Living host Paul Haavardsrud takes a closer look at the short and long-term economic consequences of our closed borders, and senior producer Falice Chin takes a tour of one community in Calgary, Alta. built around new Canadians to find out how the events of 2020 have affected life there.

Cost of Living10:43Stalled immigration leads to job, real estate and economic losses during pandemic

There's a good chance you're not going to be one of the first people to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

While Canada has signed multiple deals with pharmaceutical companies to purchase millions of doses of a future vaccine, there's no guarantee any will be effective. And we're certainly not going to receive all the doses we need in one shipment. 

So if there won't be enough COVID-19 vaccines for every Canadian right away, who will get the vaccine first?

Producer Richard Raycraft dives into the economics of how a vaccine gets distributed.

Cost of Living9:04Who gets a vaccine for COVID-19 first and how the government makes that decision

If you're having a tough time figuring out how a universal basic income might work and what it might look like in practice... dig out your VCR because old episodes of Star Trek might help.

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Space may be the final frontier but when it comes to economic theory, this classic sci-fi series did a pretty good job of putting utopian ideas into (fictional) practice.

Producer Anis Heydari speaks with Trekonomics author Manu Saadia about what we can learn from all those captains and commanders working hard for the Federation … even though they don't, apparently, get paid on the Starship Enterprise.

Cost of Living5:48The "Trekonomics" of why the crew of the Starship Enterprise doesn't get paid

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