‘We let it slip away’

MONTREAL — The locker room is always eerily quiet after a playoff loss.

You’ll see players sitting in their stalls in disbelief, some with tears building up in their eyes.

But on Saturday night at Percival Molson Stadium, you could tell it stung a little more than usual for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Nobody outside the organization expected them to beat the Montreal Alouettes. But for a brief moment, it looked like they were going to pull off one of the most improbable upsets in franchise history and punch their ticket to the Grey Cup.

Growing Western alienation fuels conspiracy theories

OTTAWA — An Alberta man’s angry outburst toward Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland could be something that becomes more commonplace as growing Western alienation fuels conspiracy theories.

Independent Scotland — rich or poor?

IN THE debate over whether Scotland should be independent, each side has for years lobbed economic grenades at the other. The pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) broke into mainstream politics in the 1970s with the slogan, "It's Scotland's Oil." Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister and SNP leader, calls it "larceny" that revenues from oil and gas production, most of which comes from Scottish waters, have stuffed London's coffers for 40 years. George Osborne, Britain's chancellor, retorts that Scotland would be the poorer for secession.

So would an independent Scotland be an impoverished backwater or a land flowing with oil and money? A precise answer is impossible, since Whitehall does not count all of Britain's revenue and spending streams by geography. But a close reading of the figures suggests an answer, which is less dramatic than either staunch nationalists or unionists might hope.

Scotland's accounts of revenue and expenditure, based on Treasury data, show that it is not a ward of the state, grossly subsidized from Westminster. In fact, it performs better than all regions outside the southeast of England and has done particularly well in the past decade. In 2010-11, Scotland's GDP was $225 billion including a geographical share of North Sea oil and gas, around 10 per cent of Britain's, with 8.4 per cent of the population.

Uninformed health minister’s empty promises no help to Manitobans

Wait times for elective heart surgery in Manitoba have ballooned. They are now quadruple what they were when hospitals began cancelling surgeries last year during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s unclear when that backlog will be reduced. Cardiac surgery has not been identified as a priority by the province’s diagnostic and surgical wait-time task force. When asked several times over the past week when targets would be established to reduce wait times for all surgeries — many of which have grown dramatically during the pandemic to free up staff and space for COVID-19 patients — no one from government, including Health Minister Audrey Gordon, has provided a straight answer.

That’s a tough pill to swallow for any Manitoban on a surgical or diagnostic waiting list. It’s particularly horrific for anyone with a serious heart condition.

Cardiac surgeries are categorized into three levels of urgency. Level 1: critically ill patients who require surgery within one to 14 days. Level 2: patients with a significant heart problem who need surgery within 15-42 days. And Level 3: stable cardiac patients who need bypass surgery within 43-180 days.

Premier sold transparency, but he’s delivering truculence

It is a well-known fact in certain political circles that Premier Brian Pallister loves going to movies. And when possible, he likes to go alone.

A voracious consumer of the cinema, Pallister has a long tradition of attending movies by himself. Not exclusively, but certainly more than the average movie buff. It's a fascinating bit of personal detail about a man who is otherwise a very private individual.

Here's the thing: I have some pretty solid intel about the theatre the premier visits most regularly on his solo movie nights, but I'm not going to include it in this column because I believe that would be an invasion of his privacy. The fact Pallister attends movies on his own is a great bit of personal trivia; where he attends movies is really nobody's business but his.

Although politicians live very public lives, there are things about them the rest of us simply don't need to know. Over the years, I have come into possession of troves of very sensitive, very personal information about very public people: failed marriages, family illnesses, tragic deaths, substance-abuse problems and all manner of generally bad behaviour. In most instances, I have been very comfortable with a decision to leave these details out of my columns.