Clarify fact and fiction for fibbing daughter

‘We’re just all thankful to have some baseball’

Driving more than 2,000 kilometres in less than a day might seem like the equivalent of getting a root canal to many. But it's a journey Winnipeg Goldeyes manager Rick Forney was happy to make this week, one that started from his residence in Maryland and ended in his most unusual temporary baseball home of Fargo, N.D.

Unable to play games at Shaw Park this summer owing to COVID-19 restrictions banning large gatherings for sporting events until at least September, the Fish will instead fly in enemy territory. An abbreviated spring training gets underway Thursday followed by an abbreviated 60-game American Association baseball season starting July 3.

Forney's 24th season with the Goldeyes, including the past 15 as skipper, is going to be unlike any other.

"It's not ideal, but it's not a reason to not work. If the Goldeyes are going to operate in any fashion, then I want to be a part of it," Forney said by telephone as he passed the midway point of his solo trek just outside Chicago.

Conflict confusion of interest to Manitobans

Was Paul Beauregard guilty of a conflict of interest?

That is the question left hanging in the air following a remarkable week of disclosures, allegations and counter-allegations.

The Manitoba NDP claims Beauregard, former secretary to the Treasury Board, had improperly interceded in the awarding of a contract to his former employer, Bell MTS.

The party and MLA Adrien Sala devoted a considerable amount of time in 2020 pursuing such allegations against Beauregard who, in turn, filed a complaint against the official Opposition under the legislature's Respectful Workplace Policy.

The ‘Buy Canadian’ trade war challenge

“Buy Canadian,” they tell us, as trade tensions escalate between Canada and the United States. “Elbows up,” the pithy slogan advises again and again, in response to the latest daily affront from increasingly unbalanced U.S. President Donald Trump.

And there’s no question Canadians from coast to coast to coast have bought into the patriotic mindset that politicians, from Prime Minister Mark Carney right on down to elected officials at the municipal level, have implored us to adopt.

“We were attacked,” is how Carney described the Aug. 21 unraveling of trade talks, after U.S. negotiators reportedly inserted last-minute demands the Canadian side viewed as both unreasonable and unacceptable. “You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”

The breakdown led to the immediate imposition by Trump of steep new tariffs on $29 billion worth of Canadian goods headed to south-of-the-border markets. A targeted, dollar-for-dollar Canadian tariff response will take effect after the Labour Day weekend. In the meantime, Canadians are more motivated than ever to stand firm against Trump’s tyrannical tactics.

Tories, NDP ask for new probe of Morneau, WE

OTTAWA - Opposition parties are asking the federal ethics watchdog to widen his probe of Bill Morneau regarding the WE organization as the finance minister continues to face calls for his resignation.

Conservatives and New Democrats have written to ethics commissioner Mario Dion to look into trips Morneau took three years ago, part of which were paid for by the WE organization.

Morneau said Wednesday he had just repaid WE Charity more than $41,000 for expenses the group covered for trips his family took to Kenya and Ecuador in 2017 to see some of its humanitarian work.

WE said the Morneau family trips were meant to be complimentary, part of a practice of showing donors WE's work to encourage them to give more.

Watershed moment in the fight against misinformation

Alex Jones, arguably the world’s best known purveyor of toxic conspiracy theories, is in court this week facing a defamation lawsuit related to the vicious and inhumane lies he spread about the families who lost children in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The case could mark a turning point in the war against misinformation.