Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew may have good intentions in proposing restrictions on social media use in schools, but a blanket ban on platforms like YouTube risks doing more harm than good.

In the rush to address concerns about screen time, online addiction, and student distraction, we may be overlooking an important reality: digital tools, when used responsibly, have become an essential part of modern teaching and learning.

As an educator, I spend countless hours preparing materials for my classes.

Effective teaching is not simply standing at the front of a room and talking while students passively absorb information. It involves designing lessons that engage students with different abilities, interests, and learning styles.

It’s Ocean Week Canada, and a fitting moment to recognize Manitoba as a coastal province.

Churchill, known globally for its polar bears and beluga whales, sits at the heart of one of Canada’s most important marine ecosystems. Yet as governments invest heavily to expand the Port of Churchill into a year-round shipping gateway, the wildlife that define this region could face irreversible harm.

Western Hudson Bay is one of Canada’s most sensitive marine ecosystems. Its waters provide for tens of thousands of beluga whales, sustain the planet’s most iconic polar bear population and offer critical habitat for migratory birds travelling between continents. These waters are deeply connected to Indigenous cultures and central to Churchill’s tourism economy.

In 2018, the federal government announced plans to explore the creation of a National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA) in Western Hudson Bay. The next step, launching a feasibility study, has the support of the Town of Churchill and more than 12,000 Canadians who wrote letters backing the initiative. Despite that enthusiasm, the required feasibility study has still not begun.

Fifty years ago this June, Manitoba Hydro destroyed one of the province’s finest lakes, its fourth-largest, when it began operating a newly constructed control structure at Missi Falls, the outlet where Southern Indian Lake flows into the lower Churchill River.

This raised the water level of the lake, creating a reservoir and diverting the flow southward via the Rat and Burntwood River systems to increase power output at its hydroelectric generating stations along the Nelson River.

More than 3,500 km of shorelines on the lake alone were permanently inundated, and along with its adjacent waterways, an area of 840 square kilometres was flooded. The entire Indigenous community of South Indian Lake had to be moved to higher ground to avoid the flooding, and the island community of Nelson House was irreparably harmed.

The Churchill River diversion project had a disastrous effect on the natural environment and the Indigenous people whose subsistence and way of life depended on the lake.

I am replying to the op-ed Protected areas and thriving lodges can co-exist (May 30).

The author, Corey Myers, paints a rosy picture of the scenario in his Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, the Thaidene Nëné IPCA. We certainly share many of his hopes. However, he ignores several critical facts, including one in his own area. I’ll also add that a local First Nation purchased his lodge and now employs him.

The operators in the Seal River love and respect this area. My operation is centred around local Indigenous benefits and employment and has been the biggest tourism employer of local Indigenous people since we opened in 1998. We have a much bigger operation than Mr. Myers, put through more guests and host trips in fishing, eco and hunting.

All the operators have asked for is a seat at the negotiation table and fair and proper representation in any governing board.

Learning disabilities are invisible, lifelong and widely misunderstood.

They are neurological conditions that affect how we process information and engage with the world around us. Dyslexia affects reading, dysgraphia impacts writing and dyscalculia affects math. Others struggle with executive functioning, affecting memory, attention, planning and organization.

Because they are not easily seen, learning disabilities can be overlooked or misinterpreted.

Many children with learning disabilities learn to cope. They work harder, stay up later, and find ways to get by. Some mask their difficulties so effectively that they appear to be OK until their efforts take more than they can give and can no longer be sustained. Those children are often left to struggle before they are understood, and support only arrives after the impact has taken hold.

Let me paint a picture for you — that of a child with learning and behavioural challenges, struggling to be fully included at school. A caregiver seeking advocacy to access diapers for a child with physical challenges. A child needing early intervention, but diagnostic wait times making access to support unfeasible.

These are just a few real experiences faced far too often by far too many families in Manitoba.

Disability is not only a medical condition, but a social one as well. A disability may be present from birth or be the result of an accident or illness; some are visible (e.g., a physical limitation), others may be hidden from view (e.g., a learning disability). While no standard definition of disability exists in Canada, legal processes have affirmed that any disability — no matter the cause or however visible — may have a profound impact on a young person’s life.

Children living with disabilities have fundamental human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. By ratifying these two treaties, Canada — and by extension, Manitoba — is legally committed to fulfilling the rights of all Canadians living with disabilities.

A consensus has emerged, at least in western media, that we are on the brink of a real war with the gloves off, maybe even a “world war.”

The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will overrun the rest of Europe as soon as he is finished with Ukraine. Donald Trump will invade Cuba even before he has finished with Iran. Israel will annex southern Lebanon, having driven out its population. China will invade Taiwan. Then someone will go nuclear, and we are off to the (final) races. Or so they say.

The first question to ask is: “Why would they?”

There’s no major economic or strategic advantage to be gained by conquering Ukraine. Russia is an oil state, and it certainly doesn’t need more land. Putin’s real motive in trying to conquer Ukraine is clearly to seal his status (in his own head, at least) as Russia’s greatest ever patriot. It is his legacy project.