Exchange Sessions featuring Olivia Lunny

E-learning hub finds home at Brandon University

Brandon University has absorbed all the public resources created by a defunct online education hub that promoted free textbooks and coordinated remote learning courses.

After 35 years of facilitating collaboration between local post-secondary institutions, Campus Manitoba was shut down at the end of June.

“Brandon University now serves as the records custodian, but all of the open educational resources are still available (to the public),” Advanced Education Minister Renée Cable said.

Campus Manitoba, a consortium of post-secondary institutes, supported the creation of more than 20 digital resources as part of the Open Education Manitoba PressbooksEDU Network. It is estimated to have saved students upwards of $6 million.

Rural Canada sees uneven population change: census

Kelly Rae, the administrator of Arran, Sask., says the denizens of dwindling rural communities like her own are clinging to a vanishing way of life in Canada.

Between 2011 and 2021, the village west of the Manitoba border saw its population slashed in half to just 20 people,Statistics Canada reported on Wednesday, as it released the first tranche of data from last year's census.

The share of Canadians living in rural areas has declined for the ninth census in a row, the agency said, dropping from 18.7 per cent in 2016 to 17.8 per cent in 2021.

However, the count showed that Canada's rural population grew faster than any other G7 country, ticking up 0.4 per cent over the five-year period to 6.6 million people in May 2021.

'Ignorance no defence,' Pallister says after paying Costa Rica luxury tax, penalty

Premier Brian Pallister has been penalized for taxes owing on his vacation home in Costa Rica.

Pallister said he failed to update the evaluation of his property as required by Costa Rica law, which meant he didn’t pay a national tax on luxury homes.

"The valuations were supposed to have been, in hindsight, done every three years and you’re responsible for doing them,” Pallister told The Canadian Press Friday.

"At the outset, we were never advised that we owed anything on this, and actually were told we were not in this (luxury) category, so we had no reason to believe... that we would owe anything.”

Physician watchdog under fire for ‘outrageous’ policy

The Manitoba physician watchdog’s policy of deferring its own investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct while a police probe is ongoing is “outrageous” and is further evidence an independent review is needed into the regulatory body, critics say.

Soaring fuel prices, pandemic make market untenable for TappCar

Rising gas prices and market instability have created a bumpy ride for ride-hailing services. TappCar, which five years ago became the first company to offer ride-hailing services in Winnipeg, has headed for the exit ramp.

The company’s local branch shuttered Sunday, CEO Noel Bernier confirmed to the Free Press.

“Between the pandemic effects, the unknown type of recovery we’re going to have from the pandemic, and then, of course, the energy prices… all of it just made it untenable to market or manage a… discount ride-share,” Bernier said.

The Edmonton-based platform launched in Winnipeg in 2018. Bernier was among a local group to acquire TappCar’s Winnipeg branch late last year.

Slaying 19-year-old ‘caring soul’ during drug binge worth 11 years, judge rules

Jordan Belyk may have been in the grip of a drug-induced psychosis when he stabbed 19-year-old stranger Brittany Bung to death, but he knew full well his drug binge could have tragic consequences, a judge said Tuesday before sentencing him to 11 years in prison.

“There is no question this offence was shocking in its violence,” said Queen’s Bench Justice Joan McKelvey. “A significant sentence is appropriate in order to have denunciatory and deterrent effects on those who voluntarily intoxicate themselves with mind-altering drugs.

“Mr. Belyk was aware of the effect such drugs had on his life and indeed recognizes that he may continue to struggle with substance abuse once he returns to the community,” McKelvey said.

McKelvey credited Belyk for time served since the Oct. 3, 2017 killing, reducing his remaining sentence to just under six years.