Civil Liberties group seeks amnesty for recreational tickets issued during COVID

Pandemic point man didn’t resign, exactly

The rumours of Paul Beauregard's demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

Email inboxes and phone lines were burning-hot Thursday morning with the news that Treasury Board Secretary Beauregard — arguably the most powerful bureaucrat in the Manitoba government and the point man for the province's pandemic response — had resigned his post while the province is still very much in the grips of a public-health crisis.

Beauregard is a controversial figure who been caught up in a scrap with the Opposition NDP over allegations he was improperly involved in the awarding of a contract to Bell MTS, his former employer. The political battle prompted Beauregard to file an unprecedented harassment and bullying complaint against an NDP MLA.

But even with all of Beauregard's baggage and the myriad problems with Manitoba's pandemic response, changing leadership mid-crisis would be a horrible blow to a government already suffering from a deficit in public confidence.

Multi-year budget to force councillors, bureaucrats to focus on the big picture

City hall is putting the final touches on the 2019 preliminary budget -- but the real tough job will start after that.

The city is committed to developing a four-year budget beginning with 2020, and having it in place by the end of this year.

It's a process that is filled with uncertainties, trying to balance four successive annual budgets at the same time, using assumptions on revenues and expenses that can change without notice: a provincial government that has frozen funding to city hall at 2016 levels and is reluctant to disclose annual funding commitments or share in unexpected revenues; erratic fuel prices; a possible change in government in Ottawa, which could bring new spending priorities. And in the middle of that four-year span, another civic election where new members of council may have other priorities than those laid out by the current crop of office holders.

Municipal governments across Manitoba are required to approve their annual operating and capital budgets by the end of March each year. But the criticism of decision-making at city hall has been that all the decisions are made on a year-to-year basis, keeping voters happy with an eye on the next election.

‘Women were shortchanged.’ Why bobsledding’s idea of equality doesn’t add up

When female bobsledders pushed for an Olympic four-woman event, they got a solo discipline instead: monobob. Now they’ll race for the same number of medals as men, but with fewer sledders. Not the progress they were looking for.

The politics of place

From the Introduction to Authorized Heritage: Place, Memory, and Historic Sites in Prairie Canada, by Robert Coutts, published by University of Manitoba Press

Landscape as culture. It is a concept that at first glance seems peculiar.

Upon reflection, however, we realize that our Western view of landscape is the result of shared values and shared culture, a culture assembled from a rich accumulation of myths, folklores, events, and memories. Such landscapes of memory are cultural memories, and we all experience place and memory in different ways.

One of my own encounters came from historical interest rather than personal familiarity. It was in August of 1983 that I found myself with a small group of people in a boat heading to Hudson Bay. We were travelling on the Hayes River in northern Manitoba, bound for York Factory, the once great trading post and entrepôt of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Leaving from the junction of the Fox and Hayes rivers about 120 kilometres southwest of Hudson Bay, we travelled the river in the warm summer sunshine as the topography of the lowlands became flatter, the riverbank grew steeper, and the fir trees appeared smaller and stunted, bent low by the winter winds off the bay.

Railways report more accidents with dangerous goods

OTTAWA — The number of rail accidents involving dangerous goods more than doubled in Canada in 2018.

There were 25 accidents involving dangerous goods in 2018, involving one death, according to Transport Canada data published Monday.

There were 11 accidents recorded a year prior, and five in 2016.

These accidents involve dangerous goods — flammable or corrosive substances — that either exploded or leaked.