Liam Neeson on thin ice in locally shot thriller

Legislation needed on vacant buildings

There is something deeply backwards about a system that lets a property owner keep a building boarded up indefinitely while neighbours are left to live with the consequences.

In Winnipeg, as long as the owner pays the taxes, follows the city’s vacant-building rules and pays the required fees, there is no hard deadline for the building to be dealt with.

The building can remain a neighbourhood eyesore. It can attract drug use and crime. It can become a fire hazard. And the people living nearby can be left wondering how long they are expected to put up with it.

Yet when Premier Wab Kinew was asked Friday whether his government would change provincial legislation to give Winnipeg the power to impose a time limit on such properties, he declined to answer.

Eliminating short-term sick notes ‘big step forward’: Doctors Manitoba

Manitoba doctors will no longer be required to issue sick notes for short-term employee absences due to illness or injury, starting Thursday.

The new provincial legislation, which officially passed in June, will only allow employers to request the medical documents when an employee has been absent for more than a week or if they’ve called in sick 10 or more times in a calendar year.

Dr. Nichelle Desilets, Doctors Manitoba board chair, said the legislation will free up time for physicians to concentrate on medical appointments and called the new rules among the strongest in Canada.

“What may be a small change in the labour code can be a big step forward on improving access to medical care for all Manitobans and using our health care resources wisely,” she said during a news conference Tuesday.

Manitoba PCs choose Narth as interim leader; ‘deeply hurt’ Khan blasts former caucus colleagues

Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative caucus chose MLA Konrad Narth as interim party leader Tuesday to replace Obby Khan, who quit a day earlier after he said he was stabbed in the back by a small group of caucus members plotting in secret to oust him.

“I am deeply, emotionally hurt by this,” Khan told the Free Press Tuesday afternoon.

He announced late Monday afternoon that he was leaving the Tory caucus and will sit as an independent MLA. He was absent from the first question period in four months Tuesday as the legislature resumed sitting after the summer.

The former Winnipeg Blue Bombers offensive lineman said he prevailed in a confidence vote Friday; 13 caucus members voted for him to remain leader, six voted against and one person was absent.

Hamelin, Poulin named Canada's flag-bearers

Also, a reader expresses support for a husband who keeps in touch with an ex from 30 years ago.

Liam Neeson on thin ice in locally shot thriller

Early in his life, writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh saw the 1953 Henri-George Clouzot thriller The Wages of Fear, and his future career as a filmmaker was sealed. Hensleigh would go on to pen films such as Armageddon, The Rock, Jumanji and Die Hard with a Vengeance, all of which are stamped in the template of ill-assorted adventurers taking on a deadly mission.

The Ice Road, while not a remake of The Wages of Fear, is his most explicit homage. Instead of carrying nitroglycerine to stop a raging oil fire, three semi trailers are assigned the task of transporting three massively heavy cast iron wellheads to far-northern Manitoba, where a diamond mine collapse is threatening to slowly extinguish the lives of the miners trapped inside.

Hensleigh signed on to both write and direct the film, which was shot in Winnipeg and various Manitoba locations in early 2020, with the COVID crisis coming close to shutting down the production in March of that year. It was apparently the last film to remain in production in all of North America as the pandemic swept over the world.

Liam Neeson stars as Mike, a trucker whose fate is tied to his brother Gurty (Marcus Thomas), a veteran whose abilities as a mechanic are hampered by the effects of PTSD. With employment options diminished, Mike and Gurty sign on with Winnipeg truck company owner Goldenrod (Laurence Fishburne), who takes on the challenge when the call goes out for three trucks to transport those wellheads over the unnervingly thinning ice roads of Manitoba’s lakes.

Pallister’s ego behind carbon tax flip-flop

It doesn't make any sense.

Earlier this week, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister stunned onlookers inside and outside the province with a decision to abandon his own $25-per-tonne carbon tax — the core lever in a complex, provincewide plan to curb carbon emissions.

The premier told reporters Wednesday he was throwing out nearly two years of work on a homegrown climate change plan because Ottawa did not "respect" Manitoba's desire to hold carbon taxes at about half the level demanded by the federal government.

It was not clear what Pallister meant by respect; the two levels of government disagree about the level at which carbon taxes should be set. Up until this week, the two levels of government disagreed over policy and methodology.