New space cleared for prayer at city’s airport

A Winnipeg builder said he’s had to beef up security around his developments after one of his projects sustained significant damage Wednesday in suspected arson cases.

“This is so bad for me,” said Rupinder Brar. “This is so sad.”

Firefighters were sent to the construction site at 297 Regal Ave., shortly before 4 a.m. Heavy smoke and flames were coming from the two homes on the site and threatened to jump to nearby buildings.

Winnipeg Police Service Const. Claude Chancy said police are investigating the blaze, as well as two fires in St. Boniface that were five days apart.

Manitoba Hydro is pressing ahead with its proposed $3-billion gas-turbine project in Brandon as though approval was a foregone conclusion. Six weeks of Public Utilities Board hearings exposed serious doubts about the need for three turbines, their escalating cost and whether more affordable alternatives have been adequately examined. Yet before the PUB has delivered its recommendations and the government has authorized the investment, Hydro applied for an environmental license on Oct. 8.

Starting the environmental review early may save time but proceeding before the premier and his cabinet have made a decision risks reducing regulatory scrutiny and political approval to mere formalities. Has the government already given Hydro the green light?

Few dispute that Manitoba will need more capacity as demand grows. Daymark Energy Advisors, the PUB’s independent consultant, concluded that Hydro had established a need for additional capacity by 2030. However, Daymark questioned the size of the projected shortfall, Hydro’s load forecasts and its turbine cost assumptions. Hydro itself acknowledged that its planning costs were based on 2024 information, and that surging North American demand for gas turbines has since put significant upward pressure on prices. Then there’s the impact of Trump’s trade war. These are not minor details, but updated costs have not been obtained.

The bigger problem is how Hydro has framed the alternatives. Interim CEO Hal Turner recently argued that wind and battery storage alone cannot reliably carry Manitoba through prolonged extreme cold. Fair enough. However, critics are not proposing wind and batteries alone.

When Canada’s health ministers left Winnipeg on Oct. 16, they took with them a promise to keep talking. The federal health minister did not commit to long-term funding. She offered one-year extensions for programs that were about to run out, and asked officials to begin work on “the next 10 years.”

The provinces, in the words of Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara, wanted to avoid “fiscal cliffs” and needed “predictable, stable, sustainable funding.”

Both sides have a point. And both are talking almost entirely about money — how much, for how long, under what formula.

Missing from the conversation is the question that decides whether any of it works — once the money flows, who must answer for what it does, or does not, achieve? We have been here before. In 2002, a Senate committee chaired by Michael Kirby warned that new federal money “must be used to buy change, not merely to support the system as it is presently structured.” It proposed an independent national health care commissioner, reporting every year to the public on how the system and the health of Canadians were faring.