Focus on here and now with neighbourly fling

Province announces free daycare for low-income families

Eligible parents will have their child-care fees waived come Sept. 13.

The province announced Wednesday child care would be free for about 4,100 children from 3,000 families as part of a budget commitment to eliminate the $2-per-day fee for low-income families.

“This announcement that we’re making here today is going to be hugely, hugely impactful for the families that rely on this important, important service of child care,” Education and Early Childhood Learning Minister Tracy Schmidt said at a news conference at Panda Bear Day Care.

She said the program would save families between $520 and $2,600 per child per year.

Disturbing rise of the cult of hard-line anti-vaxxers

The serious long-term threat from this anti-vax cult is its ability to spread disinformation to their followers via social media and other outlets.

From footnote to martyr: execution altered Scott’s place in history

When Thomas Scott was marched outside the walls of Upper Fort Garry and executed by firing squad, it forever changed how history would treat Louis Riel and the Red River Resistance. The killing of Scott, whether a misguided error by Riel or an unavoidable step to prevent further bloodshed, would turn out to be one of the most pivotal events of the resistance.

Only a month after the Irish-born Canadian was condemned to death in March 1870, Riel opponents in Ontario used Scott’s execution to whip up anti-Métis sentiment in an effort to sabotage negotiations between Ottawa and the Red River Settlement. It nearly worked. Two of three Red River delegates sent to Ottawa to negotiate the terms of Manitoba’s entry into confederation were arrested on arrival (but later released) for Scott’s death. At the same time, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald was under increasing political pressure to send military troops to quell the resistance in Red River, rather than engage in peaceful negotiations.

Scott’s death didn’t just complicate matters for the Red River delegates. It undermined their efforts to bargain with Ottawa.

Scott was tried and convicted by a “military council” on March 3 for rebelling against the provisional government and attacking a Métis guard at Upper Fort Garry, where he and other political prisoners were held. The trial wasn’t conducted under normal court rules, even by 1870 Red River standards. Scott had no defence counsel and wasn’t present for much of the proceedings, which were conducted in French (a language he didn’t understand). Riel, one of the chief witnesses in the case, had to act as translator. The military council was not unanimous in its decision to sentence Scott to death. Some felt the penalty was too harsh.

Who will win? Most voters haven’t decided yet

Just over a month before Winnipeg voters choose their next mayor, the most striking number in the latest polling isn’t Scott Gillingham’s lead.

It’s the 51 per cent of voters who still haven’t decided who they’re going to vote for.

That is an enormous chunk of the electorate to have sitting on the sidelines this late in a municipal campaign. And while it may make the current standings look more uncertain than they otherwise would, it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise.

Winnipeg municipal elections have not been models of voter engagement in recent years. Turnout has been falling — from 50 per cent in 2014 to 42 per cent in 2018 and just 37.5 per cent in 2022.

Politicians who harp on Klein’s history with Nygard do so at their own peril

It was probably the easiest prediction to make in Winnipeg politics this week: the moment Kevin Klein officially entered the mayoral race, someone would bring up Peter Nygard.

Sure enough, they did.

And it was led by Klein’s chief political opponent in this race, Mayor Scott Gillingham, who called Klein a “fixer” for the convicted sex offender.

None of this is particularly surprising.