Analysis

The little-known dangers we live with

Peter Denton 5 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 30, 2025

We have spent 80 years under the shadow of the atomic bomb. The first atomic weapons obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, at the close of the Second World War.

As with the Holocaust, the generation of atomic witnesses is almost all gone, and the perpetrators have already left the stage. Unlike the Holocaust, however, those atomic victims lack the public memorials and current reminders of a horror that should never be allowed to happen again.

Unfortunately, “Never Again” is hardly the motto of militaries around the world. Ever since 1945, we have lived under the shadow of the same horror being repeated on a larger, even a global, scale.

The Doomsday Clock, kept by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, continues to creep closer to midnight. At its start in 1947, we were seven minutes away from global catastrophe; now, as of Jan. 28, 2025, we are 89 seconds away, one second closer than the year before.

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Time for re-election, or for a re-evaluation?

Dave Taylor 5 minute read Preview

Time for re-election, or for a re-evaluation?

Dave Taylor 5 minute read Tuesday, Jul. 29, 2025

His worship, Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham, has committed to seeking another term in office. One of his top priorities is the completion of the upgrade for the North End Water Pollution Control Centre (NEWPCC), which is crucial if Winnipeg wants to increase housing stock.

The plant is 88 years old and has reached capacity, so there is a sense of urgency. Getting this monkey off of city hall’s back will entail the benevolence of the province and federal government who ironically have charged the city for last February’s gigantic sewage spill at the Abinojii bridge. Concurrently, all three levels of government are also in court fighting a $4.8-billion lawsuit by 11 First Nation communities over its role in the pollution of Lake Winnipeg.

Winnipeg’s sewer infrastructure is an absolute mess and, if elected, the mayor will be spending his next term stickhandling around lawsuits, environmental arraignments and the implementation of a woefully inadequate sewer master plan.

During his first term, he was obliged to raise taxes substantially to accommodate infrastructure that had been neglected for decades. His campaign promise of a 3.5 per cent increase soon became 5.95 per cent, and in addition, increases in garbage and sewer rates were levied.

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Tuesday, Jul. 29, 2025

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES

Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham plans to run for re-election to finish a series of major projects.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES
                                Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham plans to run for re-election to finish a series of major projects.

New legislation missing crucial understanding of treatment

Dr. Jim Simm 7 minute read Yesterday at 2:02 AM CDT

As the former provincial chief psychiatrist of Manitoba, and having specialized in the assessment and treatment of both psychosis and addiction to alcohol, opioids and methamphetamine for over 25 years, it was with great interest that I learned about the Manitoba government’s recent proposal to advance Bill 48, the Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act.

I have concerns that this proposed law shows a lack of understanding of the options presently available for the detainment and assessment of citizens intoxicated on substances other than alcohol, and the important differences between alcohol intoxication and methamphetamine or opioid intoxication.

Firstly, Housing, Homeless and Addictions Minister Bernadette Smith states legislation now allows for a 24-hour involuntary holds for people intoxicated by alcohol, but for those intoxicated by other substances, the choice is to either criminalize them or take them to a hospital where they are often waiting “… 10 hours plus with police.”

Both of these statements are either false or represent worst-case scenarios.

Ottawa, the provinces and the big stick

David McLaughlin 6 minute read Preview

Ottawa, the provinces and the big stick

David McLaughlin 6 minute read Yesterday at 2:02 AM CDT

Fare thee well, Team Canada, we hardly knew ye.

U.S. President Donald Trump may not have given up on his cherished dream of Canada as the 51st united state. But economic anxiety from tariff angst is turning Canada back into its previous disunited state. We have come to a parting of the ways among premiers. The common good is giving way to common politics. The only flags being waved these days are provincial banners.

Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, wants a tougher public stance against the U.S. Alberta’s Danielle Smith does not. Manitoba’s Wab Kinew wants tariffs on Chinese EVs lifted in exchange for no tariffs on Western canola, even if this hurts Ontario’s auto sector. B.C.’s David Eby is demanding the same federal support on softwood lumber duties that Ontario’s auto workers are getting. And so on.

There’s an explanatory phrase for this: political economy. Canada is not one single economy, but a host of diverse regional economies with concentrated industrial sectors, wealth and jobs. Oil and gas in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Automobiles in Ontario. Steel and aluminum in Quebec and Ontario. Lumber in B.C. Fish and seafood in Atlantic Canada. It is this diversity that made developing a unified climate policy impossible. It is now doing the same on trade policy.

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Yesterday at 2:02 AM CDT

Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press files

Prime Minister Mark Carney has a difficult balancing act ahead, as provinces and premiers go their own ways.

Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press files
                                Prime Minister Mark Carney has a difficult balancing act ahead, as provinces and premiers go their own ways.

On DNA and thorny questions of genealogy

Mac Horsburgh 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 17, 2025

Charles introduced himself to me via an email. He said he was assisting his 80-year-old cousin, John, who has a DNA match with one of my relatives and therefore believes he is “closely connected” to my family.

Charles further explained that he and John were trying to determine whether the connection was at my grandfather or my great-grandfather’s generational line. Essentially, he wanted to know if I, as the oldest surviving member of the Horsburgh family, was willing to help by “doing” a DNA kit.

To say that I was shocked to discover that I might have a hitherto unknown 80-year-old relative would be an understatement. I was also shocked to receive a request to consider participating in a DNA process that I knew little or nothing about.

But as always, information is power. The business of personal genetic-testing kits is booming, and as such, it is incumbent upon consumers to learn about the risks associated with this business.

Net-zero plan lacks measurable action

Shaun Loney 5 minute read Preview

Net-zero plan lacks measurable action

Shaun Loney 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 17, 2025

“I really wish I could be more positive.” That’s been my answer to the dozens of people who have reached out to me to ask what I thought about the Manitoba NDP government’s recent “Path to Net Zero” promises.

It’s a nice sentiment — to make an announcement about something that is to be achieved 24 years from now. But in order to make it meaningful, decisive action needs to be taken now.

It’s actually not that complicated: we need to reduce fossil fuel consumption and in Manitoba, that means gasoline and natural gas (a better name would be fossil gas as it’s anything but natural). Let’s start with natural gas in our buildings.

There are currently over 300,000 natural gas customers in Manitoba, the vast majority of these are using it for heating. To reach the target of net zero, we need to stop hooking up new buildings to natural gas and convert existing customers to heat pumps, biomass or other options at a rate of 12,500 per year. That’s about double the number of single-family homes in my St. Boniface neighbourhood, or about twice as many homes in all of Steinbach.

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Friday, Oct. 17, 2025

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESs fileS

If the Manitoba government was serious about Net Zero, it wouldn’t look at requests for money from the City of Winnipeg to widen Kenaston Boulevard.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESs fileS
                                If the Manitoba government was serious about Net Zero, it wouldn’t look at requests for money from the City of Winnipeg to widen Kenaston Boulevard.

What happened to Latin America?

Gwynne Dyer 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 17, 2025

Javier Milei, the Elon Musk wannabe who became president of Argentina two years ago, chainsaw in hand, is in deep trouble with the voters and the midterm elections are due this month. He has the same political agenda as U.S. President Donald Trump, give or take a folly or two, so he asked his populist big brother for help and Trump delivered.

Milei faces US$20 billion of foreign debt repayments next year and there was no money in the kitty, so Trump bailed Argentina out with a US$20-billion currency swap, followed by reports about an administration attempt to have private sector banks and wealth funds offer up another US$20 billion. But Argentines still seemed quite cross at Milei’s huge cuts in jobs and public services and they needed a bigger incentive to vote for him.

Sitting in the White House with Milei last Tuesday, Trump told the Argentine people “You know, our approvals are somewhat subject to who wins the election. If (Milei) loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.” Or as the real mafia used to put it: “Nice little country you’ve got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Shamefully, Milei did not reject that blatant intervention in his country’s elections. When Trump treated Brazil in a similar way, demanding that convicted ex-president Jair Bolsonaro not go to jail for his attempted coup and threatening to impose a 50 per cent tariff on all the country’s exports to the U.S., the Brazilians told him to go ahead and be damned.

Why is Trump so opposed to advancing human rights?

Peter McKenna 5 minute read Preview

Why is Trump so opposed to advancing human rights?

Peter McKenna 5 minute read Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025

With the National Guard deployed in certain U.S. cities, ICE agents on the prowl for potential deportees and a seemingly lengthy “enemies list,” U.S. President Donald Trump is clearly no champion of human rights.

How do we account for why Trump couldn’t care less about human rights considerations? Secondly, what does his blatant dismissal of human rights mean for the rest of the world?

When he has been asked about the thorny issue of human rights, Trump has responded in his typical way of viewing everything through a transactional lens. Advocacy for international human rights, Trump maintains, is often counterproductive and tends to be more harmful than beneficial to U.S. interests.

In addition, the U.S. president has been quick to call out hypocrisy and to criticize the holier-than-thou world leaders who wax eloquently about their embrace of a human rights agenda. He has a point. Just because someone talks a good game about human rights protections does not always translate into meaningful action on the human rights front.

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Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025

Sarah l. voison / The Washington post Files

U.S. President Donald Trump

Sarah l. voison / The Washington post Files
                                U.S. President Donald Trump

Why arts leadership matters more than ever

Stephen Borys 6 minute read Preview

Why arts leadership matters more than ever

Stephen Borys 6 minute read Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025

When I began this column, Paul Samyn, this paper’s editor, suggested a few themes I might explore — one of them being the significant turnover among Winnipeg’s arts and culture leaders in the last year. It struck me then, as it does now, that this story was less about departures than about the evolving nature of leadership itself.

Over the past year and a half, a dozen or more of our city’s cultural leaders — directors, CEOs and senior managers — have stepped away from their posts. They include figures from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manitoba Opera, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg Arts Council, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Manitoba Children’s Museum, Centre culturel franco-manitobain, Oseredok, the University of Manitoba’s School of Art Gallery and the Royal Aviation Museum, among others.

Some retired, others moved on to new opportunities, and some are pausing to catch their breath. Each story is distinct, yet together they form a portrait of a city in transition — a moment when the cultural landscape is shifting and renewing itself. It’s a time to reflect and ask what this means for the future of arts leadership here and across the country.

Leading an arts organization has never been easy, but it has rarely been harder than it is today. These institutions sit at the intersection of art, community and economics, and their leaders must balance creative ambition with financial reality, advocacy with diplomacy and tradition with change.

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Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025

Stephen Borys photo

The Winnipeg arts scene, and a changing of the guard. Turnover in the arts world is less about departure and more about the evolving nature of leadership, Stephen Borys writes.

Stephen Borys photo
                                The Winnipeg arts scene, and a changing of the guard. Turnover in the arts world is less about departure and more about the evolving nature of leadership, Stephen Borys writes.

Planning for the future’s wildfires

Editorial 4 minute read Preview

Planning for the future’s wildfires

Editorial 4 minute read Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025

It’s been a terrible year for wildfires in Manitoba, and a betting person would say future years are unlikely to be any better, unless we start planning how to change our fire response now.

“We just came out of the worst wildfire season in living memory,” Environment and Climate Change Minister Mike Moyes said as he spoke at a news conference last week announcing that the province would take a new approach to fighting wildland fires.

“We recognize that local communities often will have insights in how to respond or how to prevent things. As we review (the wildfire response), we’re going to be looking to make those connections with local leaders and communities so we can get it right, heaven forbid, if that ever happens again.”

The 2025 wildfire season began in early May in the midst of a heat wave. It’s seen 432 fires consume more than 2.1 million hectares of land in this province. Seventy of those fires are still not out.

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Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS

Wildfire conditions around Flin Flon on June 12.

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS
                                Wildfire conditions around Flin Flon on June 12.

Autumn is a season of remembering

Pam Frampton 5 minute read Preview

Autumn is a season of remembering

Pam Frampton 5 minute read Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025

I am walking by a river on a perfect day.

The water is gurgling its contentment at being warmed by the October sun. It glistens like diamonds where it is touched by the dappled light coming through the trees.

Many of the sugar maples are still heavily laden with keys — the seedpods not quite ready to leave the security of the mother tree for their solo flights. I have read that samaras — those pods shaped like winged creatures — can be borne by the wind for many metres before landing on the ground and becoming embedded in the soil to strike out on their own.

Most of the trees are still supple and green, but here and there are swatches of crimson, yellow, orange, burgundy, deep purple.

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Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025

Pam Frampton photo

A maple shows its true colours on a glorious autumn day.

Pam Frampton photo
                                A maple shows its true colours on a glorious autumn day.

The coming crash

Gwynne Dyer 4 minute read Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025

“The thing that comforts me,” said Jeff Boudier at Hugging Face, the leading open platform for AI builders, “is that the internet was built on the ashes of the over-investment into the telecom infrastructure of yesterday,” during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. The coming AI crash “is going to enable lots of great new products and experiences including ones we’re not thinking about today.”

Boudier’s optimism is charming, but note that he assumes this will all happen some years after the current AI-driven boom in global and especially American markets has crashed and burned, taking some of the “magnificent seven” tech companies (Meta, Tesla, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia) down with it.

Meanwhile ordinary folk will have to live through the post-crash years one day at a time, and they may find it quite difficult.

Boudier’s promise, credible or not, is that the half-trillion dollars now being hurled at AI infrastructure — data centres, graphics processing units, land purchases, construction — will at least leave behind hardware that will serve the next AI boom in the 2030s.

Radical moderation: The revolution nobody asked for, but we all need

Martin Wayngarten 5 minute read Preview

Radical moderation: The revolution nobody asked for, but we all need

Martin Wayngarten 5 minute read Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

The quote above is often attributed to Bertrand Russell, even though he never wrote those exact words. Yet it captures the sentiment of his 1933 essay The Triumph of Stupidity, in which he warned against fascism’s rise and the peculiar danger of people brimming with false confidence.

That warning feels even sharper today. Scroll through social media, listen to political talk shows, or wander into almost any online debate, and you will see the same pattern; fools and fanatics confidently declaring they have all the answers, while people who think deeply hedge and agonize over the complexity of it all.

Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger famously studied this very paradox. Their work, published in 1999, explained why those with the least knowledge often display the most certainty — a phenomenon now known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. And it all began, oddly enough, with a man named McArthur Wheeler and a bottle of lemon juice.

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Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025

FACEBOOK

McArthur Wheeler was certain smearing lemon juice on his face would render him invisible to security cameras when he robbed two Pittsburgh banks in 1995.

FACEBOOK
                                McArthur Wheeler was certain smearing lemon juice on his face would render him invisible to security cameras when he robbed two Pittsburgh banks in 1995.

A cynical debate over babies’ citizenship

Deveryn Ross 4 minute read Preview

A cynical debate over babies’ citizenship

Deveryn Ross 4 minute read Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025

Is it a serious issue, or merely a politically motivated “solution” to a problem that doesn’t really exist?

Given the partisan rhetoric from both sides of the argument regarding the question of “birthright citizenship,” it’s hard for ordinary Canadians to tell.

Last week, Conservative MP and immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner attempted to amend legislation tabled by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government (Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act), which would create a path to citizenship for individuals born outside of Canada to Canadian parents who were also born outside of Canada — the so-called “Lost Canadians.”

Rempel Garner’s proposed amendment, which was defeated by the Liberal and Bloc Quebecois MPs on the House of Commons immigration committee, would have imposed barriers to so-called “birthright citizenship” by mandating that automatic citizenship would be limited to babies who have at least one parent who is either a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of the country.

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Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025

The Canadian Press files

Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner is calling for restrictions on birthright citizenship.

The Canadian Press files
                                Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner is calling for restrictions on birthright citizenship.

It’s time to stop people from falling through the gaps

Charlene Hamel Hampton 5 minute read Preview

It’s time to stop people from falling through the gaps

Charlene Hamel Hampton 5 minute read Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025

I am not here to lay blame or point fingers.

We live in the reality that governments change hands and one administration’s priorities might not be that of the next.

We also live in the reality that some change, big systemic change, takes time and might not come to fruition in one term. Or two.

What happens then? Well, in the world of advocacy for human rights, we cannot give up but often we must start over. Educate once again. Offer insight and solutions. And be prepared to rinse and repeat.

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Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025

Submitted

Amelia Hampton

Submitted
                                Amelia Hampton

Politics and pride: an oft-interesting mix

David McLaughlin 5 minute read Preview

Politics and pride: an oft-interesting mix

David McLaughlin 5 minute read Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

It was “pride week” in Canada last week. No, not the one you think. That is genuine and spirited meant to lift people up. This other pride week was political; it let people down. It came courtesy of Prime Minister Mark Carney, trucker convoy leader Tamara Lich, and former Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson.

Pride-swallowing was the order of the day for Carney during his Oval Office meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday. He laid it on thick. Buttering up the Buttercup-in-Chief, the prime minister lauded any Trump accomplishment he could think of to plant a positive vibe with this notoriously narcissistic man. He called him “transformative” and even sported a red tie in a “make like MAGA” sartorial gesture. It worked. Trump returned the gesture calling Carney “a world-class leader.”

For swallowing his own pride to try and get the president to rescind tariffs on Canada and get a renewed free trade deal with the United States, Carney was mocked by the opposition and media. “Elbows up” became “bending the knee.”

Nonsense. Carney was doing what he needed to do. Forge a closer, congenial relationship with the one and only person who matters in getting a deal good for Canada. Ego-stroking is a feature, not a bug, when it comes to diplomacy. Especially for Donald Trump. Carney’s pride swallowing was strategic and political not weak or personal. Not so long ago, Justin Trudeau was being equally pilloried for having no personal relationship with Trump. Now, it’s the opposite. The reality is that Carney sacrificed some personal pride and political currency for a greater good. If it works, none of the ‘ick’ anyone felt watching the PM’s very public Oval Office ovation for Trump will matter. If it doesn’t, then more than Canada’s pride will be hurt.

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Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025

The Associated Press

Prime Minister Mark Carney (left) and U.S. President Donald Trump meet in the Oval Office of the White House on Oct. 8.

The Associated Press
                                Prime Minister Mark Carney (left) and U.S. President Donald Trump meet in the Oval Office of the White House on Oct. 8.

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