Focus on revitalization, not revenge, with mate

Appiah hopes to crush winter athlete stereotype

One in five Canadians live with disabilities — a number likely to grow as the pandemic presses on. Advocates share how leaders should plan ahead.

Public health orders require simplicity, logic

It was splitting hairs. Or, more precisely, splitting droplets.

Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitoba's chief public health officer, took time out of his daily COVID-19 briefing on Monday to once again remind Manitobans that larger viral droplets, and not smaller aerosolized emissions, pose the greatest risk of transmission.

Roussin's clarification appears to have been prompted by new research published late last month in The Lancet, and a decision by the World Health Organization last week to tweak its guidelines based on the growing body of evidence showing airborne transmission of COVID-19 is a much larger threat than previously thought.

The re-think has been building for months now, ever since it became clear the sheer numbers of confirmed COVID-19 infections could not be explained solely by close-contact inhalation of larger viral droplets. Much smaller, aerosolized emissions — which travel farther from an infected person and hang in the air much longer than droplets — had to be playing a role.

Where is Mark Carney going with Senate changes?

A decade after Justin Trudeau dropped Liberal Senators from the party’s national parliamentary caucus and introduced a new appointment process based on non-partisan criteria, his successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney, has recently reintroduced partisanship as a possible basis for appointment to the 205-member Senate.

Commentators were quick to offer immediate, mostly negative assessments of the Carney move. My view is that before rushing to judgment, we need to know more about what Carney has planned for the future partisan makeup of the Senate and its independence from government control.

In law, the Governor General appoints senators, but in practise they are selected by the prime minister.

Historically, appointment was mostly based on past or anticipated future service to the governing party. Trudeau broke with this tradition by making non-partisanship a criteria for appointment. He also created independent advisory committees to identify potential nominees.

Thomas Ponder

Clearing the deck and filling the seats

The winds of change are always blowing at Winnipeg’s city hall, but with a civic election looming this fall, the gusts through the council chamber at 510 Main St. seem particularly strong.

With slightly less than three months until voters head to the polls, no less than five incumbent councillors have declared they will not stand for re-election. Combine that with the possibility that one or more other members of the 15-member body could lose their bids for re-election, and what becomes apparent is that the makeup of Winnipeg’s municipal decision-making assembly will have changed dramatically when the new council is sworn in.

The five veteran councillors who have opted not to seek another term are Sherri Rollins (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry), Markus Chambers (St. Norbert–Seine River), John Orlikow (River Heights-Fort Garry), Janice Lukes (Waverley West) and Brian Mayes (St. Vital).

All the departing councillors are experienced representatives, with Rollins and Chambers having served two terms, Lukes having been on council for a dozen years, and Mayes and Orlikow having served 15 and 17 years respectively. Had any or all of them chosen to run again, they would almost certainly have been re-elected, as incumbency remains a most formidable force in municipal politics.