Government action on poverty reduction is losing its place on the political agenda at the exact moment affordability pressures are seriously threatening the well-being of many more Canadians.

The upcoming federal budget is an opportunity to reverse this trend by investing in concrete measures that ensure everyone can afford the basics.

The newly released 2026 report of the National Advisory Council on Poverty, Too Many Left Behind, warns that Canada is not on track to meet its legislated target of cutting poverty in half by 2030. This confirms modelling in the Canadian Centre on Policy Alternatives’ 2026-2027 Alternative Federal Budget, which indicates that Canada will miss the 2030 target by 4.4 percentage points. A roadmap for action exists, but governments must act.

As the tariff war and cost-of-living squeeze affect more people, fighting poverty is as important as ever. You don’t have to be poor to be affected by poverty. When millions of Canadians can’t find or afford housing, food, child care or other necessities, public services are under greater pressure, communities are more precarious, health outcomes decline and families that are one unexpected expense away from trouble are stressed.

Penalize unsafe driving

Re: Pedestrian struck on Portage Avenue (Nov. 3)

Why is the above headline becoming more and more frequent? Could the reasons be distracted driving, careless driving or complete disregard for pedestrians?

It is time for the Winnipeg Police Service to start suspending, penalizing and ticketing drivers who are driving in and out of traffic, driving in the curb lane on bus routes or any route that has a pedestrian crosswalk.

Tuesday was definitely not a good night for the Republican Party.

But it was an especially painful night for U.S. President Donald Trump, who has now lost control of both chambers of Congress. Without sufficient numbers of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, he can no longer dictate the terms for his legislative agenda.

More significantly, the Trump administration will effectively lose congressional control over the “power of the purse.” In a divided U.S. government, it is much harder for the executive branch to secure funding for its various programs, departments and agencies — along with discretionary policy initiatives, tax measures and supplemental wartime requests.

On the positive side, divided government can lead to greater oversight or scrutiny by the legislative branch over the executive — or vice versa. These checks and balances are integral to the U.S. democratic process and can incentivize both branches of government to find compromises.

Transit riders have a love-hate relationship with our “people’s limousine.” For many, it’s their only means of mobility. Others ride because they believe urban life is better when people use public transit rather than choking the roads with single-occupancy cars.

At the same time, one of life’s mid-sized stressors is peering into the distance on a cold, snowy Winnipeg morning to see whether your late bus is yet on the horizon and, when it appears, whether it’s full to capacity and going to roll past. It’s the kind of thing that pushes you back into the car, if you have access to one.

We could make a big dent in this daily anxiety, help pay transit workers fairly and do our part to stave off climate disaster by restoring a tried-and-true funding scheme: the 50-50 model. This shared-cost model, in which the provincial government pays half of transit operating costs over and above service revenues, was brought in when I was a kid waiting to board the bus with my parents in the 1970s.

The Progressive Conservative government of Gary Filmon initially ditched it in 1993. New Democrats reinstalled it in 2007, with then-Lt.-Gov. John Harvard announcing in the 2006 throne speech: “Manitoba is committed to increased provincial funding for transit operating costs in Thompson, Flin Flon, Brandon and Winnipeg, restoring the 50-50 funding partnership that was in place prior to the cutbacks of the 1990s.”

Computer technology has become the dominant force in the modern world. New technology subsuming older technology is the raison d’être of modern capitalism.

Pioneers of this new digital age took advantage of the profound difference between what they were building and what came before, advancing their influence and predominance. Little by little, the advantages ate away at the influence of non-digital technology, until the snake consumed most of modern information technology.

And now it is eating itself.

The beginning of the modern era of computing began with the Graphical User Interface (GUI, pronounced “gooey”). Back in the ’80s this was a new commercial technology exclusive to Apple’s Lisa computer and, later, the MacIntosh.

The times, they aren’t a-changin’

I would like to ask Premier Wab Kinew a very simple question: Why in the world would you want to leave the clocks on permanent daylight time rather than continue changing them twice a year, as Manitobans have been accustomed to doing for decades?

Manitoba is in the geographical middle of Canada. Our time zone should reflect our location and our relationship with the rest of Western Canada.

I simply cannot understand the reasoning behind keeping Manitoba on permanent daylight time. Changing our clocks twice a year has been part of our lives since 1963. Why fix something that has worked for generations?