Politicians and religion: a bad mix

Just about the most honest thing you can say about the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is that its members seem to like some parts of Christianity — they just don’t know very much about what it is meant to be.

And maybe that’s at the core of the latest battle between the Trump administration and Pope Leo.

Trump says the Pope is “weak on crime” — well, yes. Pope Leo is long on mercy, short on ordering personal vengeance. That’s … his job.

Trump doesn’t seem to understand the difference between politic roles and religious ones — just like he didn’t understand that sharing a meme on social media that highlighted Trump himself as a Jesus-like figure, tending to the sick, might cause an uproar.

Non-apology means comments will continue to sting

It seems pretty clear, based on the way events have unfolded over the past couple of weeks, that Manitoba Progressive Conservative Leader Obby Khan messed up.

That’s not uncommon in the rough-and-tumble realm of provincial politics; elected representatives are no less inclined to make mistakes than the ordinary folks whose votes allow them to serve in the legislature.

What’s of greater concern is how the leader of the official Opposition has chosen to handle the apparent misstep, opting for a response that is guaranteed to compound its damage rather than contain it.

On March 17, during a particularly combative legislative session — and that’s saying something, given the appalling lack of civility that has become the norm in the Broadway chamber — Khan was accused of directing an offensive remark toward Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.

Pierre Poilievre’s latest bad day

Monday was a bad day for Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre.

As expected, the Tories went zero for three in Monday’s federal byelections, meaning that the federal Liberals, through a combination of byelection wins and floor-crossings, have managed to turn their minority government into a clear majority.

Zero for three is bad enough, but for the Conservatives, the numbers are actually worse than that.

Byelections are traditionally a great time to register discontent with a sitting government: you can give the current administration a sharp little wake-up call, without necessarily toppling the government as a whole. It’s the perfect time for a protest vote to leave a mark, without causing fatal injury.

A war without goals or successes

The collapse of weekend peace talks between the United States and Iran is less a surprise than a grim confirmation of what many feared from the outset: that this war was launched without a clear, attainable objective.

And it now risks drifting toward an even more dangerous stalemate.

After 21 hours of negotiations in Islamabad, both sides emerged pointing fingers, their positions largely unchanged after 40 days of fighting that cost thousands of lives, shook global markets, destabilized an already volatile region and inflicted significant damage on Iran.

The failure to secure even a modest agreement — with a fragile two-week ceasefire set to expire April 22 — raises a more fundamental question: what, exactly, was the point of this war?

A horror movie, starring you and your money

Many of the best horror movies depend on the fear of the unknown.

That strange shape, moving quickly through the trees outside the house. You catch a glimpse, but can’t quite…

Or the subtle changes that the main character finds when they get home — things that aren’t where they put them down. That they know have been moved — drawers left slightly ajar, curtains open when they left them closed, a hatchet that they use for making kindling mysterious gone from the splitting block…

All of it, building a sense of foreboding.

Ground squirrels and city sports fields

Winnipeg has a problem and there doesn’t seem to be a universally acceptable solution.

Granted, that could refer to quite a bit. In this case we refer here to the problem of ground squirrels, the risk they pose on the city’s athletic fields, and what to do about them. As it stands, the ground squirrel population is in for a miserable future: the city began using rodenticides to control the population on Tuesday, using Rozol RTU field rodent bait and RoCon concentrate rodenticide at parks throughout the city.

The reason for the control effort is straightforward. Ground squirrels are burrowing animals, and the holes they dig in the city’s athletic field are a safety hazard for those who use the spaces. The city also said Tuesday it was forced to close fields in recent years because of damage caused by the squirrels.

The Winnipeg Humane Society, Animal Justice (an animal law group) and a University of Manitoba biologist are appealing the city’s provincial permit to carry out the program. They argue the rodenticides being used are unnecessarily cruel to the squirrels — Rozol in particular will result in a slow and agonizing death for ground squirrels exposed to it, argues U of M professor emeritus of biological sciences James Hare.

The Trump administration and the pope

Among all of the odd and peculiar actions of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration — its starts and stops, its lurches forwards and backwards, its threats of annexations and tariffs and retribution — this has to rank as one of the strangest.

After Pope Leo XIV gave a State of the World speech in January, one that clearly but indirectly chastised the United States, the Trump administration reportedly told the Catholic Church that it had better fall in line.

The pope’s address said, “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” and “war is back in vogue, and a zeal for war is spreading.”

It should be said that the pope’s analysis is clearly correct, and that, while the United States wasn’t named, the Trump administration’s actions mirror the concerns the pope was raising.

Finding hope in space, if not on Earth

As was the case half a century ago when a manned spacecraft first travelled past the moon and then negotiated a precise orbital U-turn en route to a splashdown return to Earth, it’s hard to be anything but awestruck by what is occurring far beyond our planet’s atmosphere this week.

After lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center on April 1, the Artemis II mission — NASA’s long-awaited rekindling of humankind’s space-exploration ambitions — carried a four-person crew of astronauts 406,771 kilometres from Earth, the farthest anyone has travelled into space. The previous mark was 400,171 km, achieved by Apollo 13 in 1970.

(The mission’s name is, as before, inspired by mythology, with Artemis being the ancient Greek goddess of the moon and twin sister to Apollo, the namesake of the earlier NASA program that first landed humans on the lunar surface.)

During Monday’s lunar fly-by, which included 40 minutes of radio silence as the Orion space capsule carved its sweeping arc around the far side of the moon, the spacecraft got as close as 6,550 km from the surface, allowing crew members to capture stunning images of the lunar landscape, as well as pictures of a full solar eclipse and a breathtaking “Earth rise” as their home planet came back into view.

Editorial

Broad-based tax cuts not the answer

There is a familiar political reflex in times of economic strain: cut taxes and promise relief. It sounds simple, immediate and, on the surface, compassionate.

But when governments are already mired in structural deficits — as both Manitoba and Ottawa are — across-the-board tax cuts are not prudent policy. They are expensive distractions that risk making a bad fiscal situation worse, while doing little to help those who need it most.

Manitoba’s decision to expand its provincial sales tax exemption on groceries — including items that stretch the definition of “necessities,” such as junk food — is a case in point. So, too, is federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s call to suspend federal fuel taxes for the rest of 2026 in response to rising gas prices.

Both measures are rooted in the same flawed logic: that broad tax relief is the best way to ease affordability pressures. It is not.

Trying to read the budgetary tea leaves

It’s not even a month past the tabling of Manitoba’s 2026-27 budget and there’s already been some good news — and some bad news.

On the good news front, the Morningstar Dominion Bond Rating Service, one of the world’s largest credit rating agencies, felt that the spending and revenue plan tabled by the NDP government last month put the province “within reach” of being balanced.

The budget featured a massive reduction in the overall deficit, going from a projected $1.6 billion for the end of the last fiscal year to roughly $500 million. Those intentions were enough to convince Morningstar DBRS that Premier Wab Kinew’s pledge to balance the budget by the end of his first term — which would come in the 2027-28 fiscal year — was achievable.

That’s a fair assessment of the budget, as long as GDP growth projections come to fruition. And that’s where we get to the bad news.

A legal reckoning for social media firms

It has been referred to as a bellwether case, a landmark decision and a profound “enough is enough” moment.

It remains to be seen, however, whether last week’s jury verdict in a case involving a 20-year-old California woman’s claim that social media addiction during her childhood led to mental health distress will have far-reaching implications for the creators, purveyors and users of social-media platforms.

But what’s clear in the aftermath of the decision — which held Meta (which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp) and YouTube (owned by Google) liable for intentionally building addictive platforms that harmed the woman’s mental health during childhood and adolescence — is that the ground is shifting in the relationship between social-media giants and their untold millions of users.

The woman (identified in court records as “K.G.M.”) sued the companies on the basis they had created products as addictive as cigarettes or digital casinos. She began using social media at age six, and the suit argued elements of social- media platforms such as algorithmic recommendations and infinite scrolling pushed her into a cycle of compulsive and detrimental behaviour that resulted in anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and thoughts of self-harm.

Guilt, innocence and the role of courts

There is a foundational principle in criminal law — that everyone is innocent until they’re found guilty in a court of law.

It’s worth keeping in mind after Russ Wyatt, the city councillor representing Transcona, was charged with sexual assault and administering a noxious substance.

Wyatt was charged. He has not been convicted.

In the eyes of the law, he is innocent.

Health care delayed, health care denied

Manitobans have grown accustomed to hearing about long wait times in emergency rooms, delayed diagnostic tests and months-long backlogs for surgery. They are often framed as inconveniences — frustrating, yes, but often manageable.

The province’s latest critical-incident report should put an end to that illusion.

Delays in care are not merely an inconvenience. They can be fatal.

Between April 1 and Sept. 30, 2025, 16 deaths and 43 major injuries in Manitoba’s health-care system were deemed critical incidents requiring investigation. Among those deaths were five patients who experienced delays in accessing care, delays in treatment or delays in the system’s response to their deteriorating condition.

Prison overcrowding has no simple fix

Rarely, if ever, does government respond so quickly to a demand for more money.

On March 20, the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union said that overcrowding in provincial jails was causing mayhem and putting their members at risk. “When you put more people in and have less programming, less opportunities for recreation … the temperature rises within the facility,” union president Kyle Ross said.

It didn’t take long for government to respond. On the same day, Justice Minister Matt Wiebe gladly confirmed the NDP government was going to increase the budget for corrections by $14 million.

In case you were wondering, government does not normally provide same-day funding for outside demands or grievances. So, what prompted this expeditious pledge?