Leave it to Chance

An opportunity to re-imagine downtown

The pandemic has been devastating for downtown Winnipeg. An abundance of “For Lease” signs in storefront windows has provided an intuitive glimpse, but a new report titled “State of Downtown: The impact of the pandemic to date” has quantified the profound challenges facing the economic, social and cultural heart of our city.

With the exodus of students and office workers, storefront businesses downtown have lost an average of $2 million per week in gross revenue since the pandemic began. This has led to more than 2,000 people losing their jobs and almost 50 storefront businesses permanently closing. The conference, hotel, hospitality, and arts and culture industries saw devastating declines, and more than 1.5 million square feet of office space are now vacant.

The pandemic has also exacerbated long-standing challenges of poverty and homelessness, with social agencies struggling to meet the needs of downtown’s vulnerable population.

The report paints a dire image, but we have been here before. Twenty years ago, downtown Winnipeg was in a similar situation. Population was at an all-time low as people moved to the suburbs, retail shops relocated from Portage Avenue to distant shopping malls, and office space was in decline. In the face of this challenge, government and private industry came together to rebuild downtown.

Kittie Wong

Kittie Wong wears three different hats for the Winnipeg Free Press editorial department: page designer, picture editor and web editor.

Explaining Canada’s superior employment rate

Donald Trump regularly makes outrageous claims. Fentanyl was pouring across the northern border from Canada and had to be stopped. Canada is nasty to deal with and has the highest tariffs in the world. Canada needs the U.S. but the U.S. doesn’t need Canada. Canadians want to become the 51st state. And so on.

In the latest trade dispute, after Mark Carney walked away from negotiations, Trump made a new claim that Canada’s unemployment rate was 10 per cent and climbing rapidly. Insofar as the unemployment rate is closely monitored, reported monthly, and given similar attention to the rates of inflation and economic growth, the comment was likely intended to signal Canada’s weakness. It fits Trump’s narrative that Canada needs the U.S. for its livelihood and protection and would be better off more directly under U.S. influence as a 51st state, or perhaps a protectorate like the Philippines or Panama in the past.

Fact checkers quickly reported that Canada’s unemployment rate is really 6.4 per cent for July, not 10 per cent, has fallen from 6.9 per cent in April, and is at its lowest rate since May 2024. Some astute observers pointed out that Canada’s method for the calculation of the unemployment rate leads to a higher rate than the U.S. by about one per cent. Under the American methodology, then, our unemployment rate would be 5.4 per cent, not that far off the U.S. July rate of 4.1 per cent.

Detection of unemployment is less straightforward that might appear, as it is sandwiched between the labour force statuses of employment and inactivity at a particular point in time. The internationally established standard for determination of unemployment is the notion of searching for work — you are unemployed if you do not have paid employment and you are looking for work without success. Surveys have been developed to categorize respondents as employed, unemployed or inactive, including the labour force survey (LFS) in Canada and the current population survey (CPS) in the U.S.

Veterinarian petitions Ottawa to consider four-legged patients in legal cannabis regime

An Ontario veterinarian has launched a formal petition asking the government to include animals and the physicians who care for them in Canada's cannabis regulations.

"What we're hearing repeatedly from Health Canada... is that the entire framework surrounding cannabis legalization was focused on human consumption," said Sarah Silcox, who practices palliative and hospice care for companion animals in Ajax, Ont., and serves as president of the Canadian Association of Veterinary Cannabinoid Medicine.

"And so they hadn't even considered animals being involved in this, or veterinarians being involved in the medical side of things. And what that's left us with is this catch-22, because now it's perfectly legal for a Canadian adult to go out and purchase cannabis, and to give it to their animal, and yet veterinarians have no legal pathway to authorize its use... Therefore we're really limited in terms of the education and support that we can give our clients to ensure that they're doing that safely."

The online petition on the House of Commons e-petitions website was launched May 27, and already has more than 500 signatures — enough to require the government to table an official response in Parliament.

Running a clothing company keeps mom of five girls in stitches

Andrée-Anne Généreux, mother of identical, four-year-old triplets, has grown used to being peppered with questions whenever passersby spot her and the girls ambling through their River Heights neighbourhood.

Do triplets run in the family, they openly wonder? How long was her pregnancy? Was she big?

Not that she’s aware, though both of her in-laws do have twin siblings; 34 weeks and three days, “but hey, who’s counting?”; and, “Are you freaking kidding me? I was huge,” she responds with a laugh, each and every time.

More and more, however, comments directed her way are along the lines of, “Where did the girls get those gorgeous dresses?” or “That jumper! You have to tell me who makes it.”

Endorsements build up mayoral candidates’ profiles

With just over a week until election day, high-profile endorsements are rolling in for Winnipeg’s top mayoral candidates in what political observers say is another way to sway undecided voters.