Ex-Gander mayor disappointed in lack of U.S.-Canada co-operation during pandemic

Most incumbents regain their seats… but not all

When it comes to civic elections, voters like incumbents — but that doesn’t mean they are always invincible.

Building generational equity

Ayobimpe Omisore is a Winnipeg single mother of four who knows all too well about working just to make the rent.

A little more than a year ago, she was struggling to pay $2,400 a month for a two-bedroom unit in St. Norbert.

She picked up extra shifts whenever she could as a health-care aide to keep up with the costs.

“I was lamenting about it at work one day, and a colleague said, ‘If you’re paying this much on rent, I think you can afford a mortgage,’” says Omisore, who came to Canada four years ago from Nigeria where she worked as a logistics manager.

Processing potential long way from reality

There are times in life when you want to be wrong — like when you walk into the doctor’s office believing your ailment will be the death of you.

It’s the same sort of feeling I get wading through the pile of newly released reports extolling the unrealized “potential” for more value-added processing in Canadian agriculture. There’s this little voice inside my head saying: “I’m from Manitoba. Show me.”

There are jaw-dropping numbers bandied about in various reports from Food and Beverage Canada, the Canadian Chambers of Commerce/PwC and the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. For example, more processing could add $75 billion on top of the $188 billion the sector already generates, create hundreds of thousands more jobs and a bigger domestic market for farmers. The list goes on.

Not to discount the solid analysis behind these efforts. Overall, it all sounds great, although notably missing is any mention of the growing concerns over ultra-processed foods and how that might affect future market growth.

Alberta: More federalist than you thought

Avert your eyes if you don’t like hard-core. This is a hard-core column about the hard-core Alberta separatists who hijacked a party, corrupted a process and failed in their fevered fervour to break up Canada.

First, be of good cheer. Canada won Monday night’s referendum in Alberta. Decisively. Three-quarters of the votes cast were for Option 1: “Alberta should remain a province of Canada.” Only one in four Alberta voters opted for a referendum on separation.

Alberta won, too. That strong vote against separation means the province can look ahead, confident the independence fever dream is boxed. A true win-win and a sad rarity in politics these days.

Be warned, though. Those hard-core separatists are hard dogs to keep on the porch, as the expression goes. They are already agitating to be taken more seriously than the votes warrant. They intend to flex whatever muscle memory remains to depose Premier Danielle Smith from her leadership of the United Conservative Party. Dis-united Conservative Party, anyone?

From rotting and unsightly, to streamlined and maintenance-free

The homeowners had enough — after years of ongoing repairs, the days of the extended beams protruding from the perimeter of the flat-roof garage were numbered.

The question was, how best to tackle this outdated and cumbersome attribute? Although the introduction of full and partial rooflines was discussed at great length, any approach that required altering the existing roofline seemed far too complicated and somewhat cost-prohibitive. A far better and more elegant solution would soon provide a streamlined and eye-pleasing look.

It was true, each of the two dozen or so protruding beams along the entire perimeter of the flat-roof garage exhibited decay and rot to some degree. The process of cutting them off would require a long blade on a reciprocating saw, and fine-tuning of each cut with an oscillating tool.

Once the vertical faces along the upper portion of every wall were flush, the initial step would involve sealing the cuts along the flashing to eliminate the possibility of any moisture creeping in until the process to decoratively sheathe the upper perimeter was completed.