Ease proposal pressure with some honesty

Protests spur Ukraine military reshuffle

Even nations fighting for their survival can’t escape politics.

“The president should not choose sides during a war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters earlier this month after sacking his defence minister to quell a growing rift between him and the country’s military chief. “But if the parties cannot solve the issue, then I have to solve it.”

Many Ukrainians felt their leader picked the wrong side.

Protesters poured into Ukraine’s streets for days beginning July 16 to condemn the dismissal of 35-year-old Mykhailo Fedorov. The tech savvy iconoclast is fiercely popular. He’s also considered the architect of Kyiv’s robot-first military strategy that has tilted the war in Ukraine’s favour.

Players brace for moves as NHL trade deadline approaches

Thomas Vanek remembers waking up in Edmonton, Alberta, and turning on the TV in his hotel room to find out where he was heading.

It was March 5, 2014, the NHL's trade deadline day, and Vanek's bags were packed. He knew he had played his final game a few days earlier for the New York Islanders after rejecting the team's bid to sign the pending free agent to a contract extension.

It wasn't until the deadline passed when Vanek's phone started ringing. It wasn't his agent, the Islanders or some other team's general manager.

"I got a message from a reporter saying, 'The Montreal media wants to talk to you," said Vanek, recalling how he found out he'd been traded to the Canadiens. "That was probably the hardest one because it was my first trade deadline deal."

Critics pan Tories’ French education funding boost

TORY ministers touted new funding for French education at a mid-day news conference Tuesday — an event political opponents are calling a smoke screen for scathing criticism about second-language resources in a provincial report that was released hours after the event.

Shortly after noon, Advanced Education Minister Jon Reyes and Rochelle Squires, minister responsible for francophone affairs, announced the Manitoba government would be earmarking additional funds for education programs at the University of Saint-Boniface.

The duo, alongside university president Sophie Bouffard, indicated the province will start picking up a $350,000 annual tab — a sum that has been covered by temporary federal grants since 2017— to ensure USB can continue to graduate as many as 70 French teachers every year.

“(Its) bachelor of education program is the only program in Manitoba designed entirely to prepare students to teach in the public school system’s français and French Immersion programs,” Reyes told reporters, during a bilingual news conference.

Prince Philip took a keen interest in Canada, but stayed above politics, former GGs and PM say

Prince Philip showed leadership by “not taking centre stage, but by ensuring that the Queen and the monarchy were front row and centre,” said former Gov. General David Johnston.

Hospital outbreaks raise front-line fears

Two hospital outbreaks in Winnipeg and record COVID-19 hospitalizations have given rise to worry front-line resources will be stretched to their breaking point.

Manitoba's COVID-19 hospitalization number hit a new high Friday at 51 patients, with eight of those in intensive care. Winnipeg is dealing with 39 of those cases (six in ICU), and outbreaks have been declared at Victoria General and St. Boniface hospitals.

"As we know, hospitalization rates typically lag behind overall case numbers, but now we’re starting to see rising numbers there as well, which will put more strain on the health-care system," Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said Friday.

Officials reported 163 new COVID-19 cases (128 of them in the Winnipeg district) on Friday, raising the provincial total to 1,855 active cases (1,518 in Winnipeg).

Health minister’s task-force announcement relies on distraction, misdirection while crisis grows more urgent by the minute

Don’t look now, but Health Minister Audrey Gordon is going to try to pull a rabbit out of her hat.

On Wednesday, Gordon kept her promise to make a major announcement about surgical and diagnostic backlogs but failed profoundly and repeatedly during that announcement to provide anything that even remotely looked like an urgent response.

Gordon launched a task force of health-care professionals to advise government on “innovative solutions” to the chronic backlog of important medical procedures. However, in terms of specific and immediate action on what has become a health-care emergency, there was almost nothing.

No specific pledges to provide additional financial resources to remove the cap on certain procedures. No specifics on whether Manitobans will be compensated if they choose to pursue surgical procedures in other jurisdictions. And perhaps most importantly, no deadline for returning the wait lists to pre-pandemic levels.