The U.S. Senate passed a giant stimulus package on Saturday aimed at propelling the American people and economy out of the COVID-19 slump into the post-vaccine world.

What’s In The Package?

The stimulus package authorizes $1.9 trillion in spending across all areas of the economy including:

$1.9 trillion is a lot of money, here’s an explainer from a few years ago to wrap your head around it.

What’s Not in The Package?

Why It’s Important: Right now 8.5 million fewer Americans are employed than at this same time last year, current pandemic unemployment benefits expire on March 14th. Additionally the stimulus could cut child poverty in half.

Some Disagree

“This isn’t a pandemic rescue package. It’s a parade of left-wing pet projects that they are ramming through during a pandemic.” -  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

What’s Next: The House of Representatives, where Democrats have a majority, plan to pass the bill on Tuesday, sending it to President Biden for signature. Stimulus checks will start arriving in American mailboxes this month.

Ah, another day, another cybersecurity crisis... Only months after the Russian-backed Solarwinds attack, Microsoft announced that they suspect a Chinese backed hacker group compromised the email servers of over 60,000 organizations.

What happened: Last week, cybersecurity experts identified an exploit in Microsoft's Exchange email software which they say hackers used to gain access to personal data and potentially install malware for future entry.

Microsoft attributes the attack to a group associated with the Chinese government, but a spokesperson from China's foreign ministry vehemently denies the allegation.

What's next: While the exploit has been patched by Microsoft, experts warn that a full detection and clean-up process could take months, especially for high-risk government agencies.

Zoom out: Between the Russian led Solarwinds attack and this most recent exploit, it's clear that the United States and its allies are under cyber-siege. Expect Western governments to respond by making cybersecurity a priority and investing heavily into the space.

Perhaps you've noticed that you haven't been doing much travelling lately. Well, Canada's tourism industry has also noticed, and one year into this pandemic they're feeling the pain.

A report released yesterday describes COVID as being worse for Canadian tourism than 9/11, SARS, and the Great Recession combined.

What they're saying: Destination Canada, a crown corp set up to promote tourism in Canada, says that half a million people in the tourism sector lost their jobs in 2020 and active tourism businesses fell by 9%.

Travel local: The report says that if two-thirds of the money spent on international travel were spent on domestic tourism, the industry could bounce back this year and sustain 150,000 jobs.

Zoom out: Even though Canada's vaccine rollout has been frustrated by various delays, we're still going to get shots ahead of most other people in the world. That means while domestic travel may be safe relatively soon, it could take longer for free international travel to come back online. Canadian tourism is well positioned to benefit from the unspent vacation budgets burning a hole in people's pockets.

+ Discover Ontario in this tourism ad from the 1980s.

You’re not alone. 78% of Ontarians are concerned about the health risks of people entering their homes right now. Pandemic or not, showing your home to potential buyers is just plain disruptive.

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Victoria B.C. 's WeCommerce put its stamp of approval on Signaporean company Stamped.io, acquiring the Shopify app for $110 million USD.

WeExplain: WeCommerce, which went public on the TSX-V in the fall of 2020, is in the business of buying businesses which serve the Shopify ecosystem. The company was founded by Canadian cult business icon Andrew Wilkinson and partner Chris Sparling who are betting on fellow Canadian company Shopify’s continued success.

The Deal: Stamped.io is a subscription service used by Shopify merchants to manage customers reviews and loyalty programs.

Big Picture: WeCommerce has a unique strategy, betting it all on Shopify. We’ll call it a bet on Canada. What’s the next tech ecosystem you’d make a bet on?

* This is paid promotional content