PAPER CHASE: Grant helps Bergen write new novel

Like Selinger before him, Pallister digs a hole the party may not escape

Premier Brian Pallister has officially entered "the Selinger zone."

Students of recent Manitoba political history will remember, in 2014 and 2015, there was an active campaign within the NDP to force premier Greg Selinger to step down. Selinger ultimately retained his leadership, but he and his party were never the same.

That was abundantly clear in December 2015, with a provincial election just a few months away, when a poll done by Probe Research and the Free Press showed the Pallister-led Tories with 43 per cent support, followed by Rana Bokhari's Liberals at 29 per cent, and Selinger's NDP at a lowly 22 per cent.

Not surprisingly, the NDP was decimated in the April 2016 election, going from 37 seats to just 14. The PCs won one of the largest majorities in the province's history.

For Harris, memories of mother guide bid for vice-president

NEW YORK - Speaking from the Senate floor for the first time, Kamala Harris expressed gratitude for a woman on whose shoulders she said she stood. In her autobiography, Harris interspersed the well-worn details of her resume with an extended ode to the one she calls “the reason for everything.” And taking the stage to announce her presidential candidacy , she framed it as a race grounded in the compassion and values of the person she credits for her fighting spirit.

Though more than a decade has passed since Shyamala Gopalan died, she remains a force in her daughter’s life as she takes a historic spot on the Democratic ticket besides former Vice-President Joe Biden. Those who know the California senator expect her campaign for the vice presidency to bring repeated mentions of the woman she calls her single greatest influence.

“She’s always told the same story,” said friend Mimi Silbert. “Kamala had one important role model, and it was her mother.”

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City MP, nurses want safety standards for increasingly violent health facilities

While there have been hundreds of violent incidents reported at two Winnipeg hospitals over two years, there haven’t been provincial or national safety standards established for health-care facilities, something one local union and a Winnipeg MP are pushing for.

From October 2016 to October 2018, there were 444 violent incidents reported at the Health Sciences Centre and 175 such cases at Grace Hospital, according to freedom of information results obtained by the Free Press.

The statistics encompass incidents of verbal abuse and threats of violence, plus instances of physical aggression. Some incidents stem from deliberate acts, while others involve patients with dementia or those disoriented from a medical condition, who may have no control over their actions.

A Winnipeg MP who spent years working as an emergency room physician is trying to draw attention to health-care violence nationally, tabling a petition Friday that asks Ottawa to tackle an issue in which he has first-hand experience.

Stefanson shifts gears in effort to leave Pallister behind

One year after Brian Pallister suddenly resigned as Manitoba premier, his successor is striking a different tone ahead of an election the PCs could call sooner than its scheduled October 2023 date.

Does Canada need an abortion-rights law?

OTTAWA - After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision Friday — the ruling that had, for decades, guaranteed a woman's right to get an abortion across the United States — Liberal politicians north of the border were were quick to suggest that Canadians shouldn't take their freedoms for granted.

"No country in the world, including Canada, is immune to what’s going on in the United States," said Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, as other ministers and MPs chimed in with similar warnings.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeated time and again that every woman has the right to an abortion in Canada, promising Friday to defend those rights.

But in a country that has no legal framework governing abortion, what does that actually mean — and why are abortion-rights advocates urging Trudeau to avoid enshrining that right into law, once and for all?