P.E.I. affordable housing project gets $7.9 million from federal government

B.C. declares state of emergency over wildfires

VANCOUVER - British Columbia's public safety minister has declared a provincial state of emergency over the growing wildfire threat to prepare for potential mass evacuations and help secure accommodation that might be needed by evacuees.

Mike Farnworth said he made the decision based on information from officials that weather conditions will lead to more severe fire behaviour and the potential for more evacuations.

"In a briefing last night, I received word that we'll be facing a few days of very difficult weather in the Interior," Farnworth said in a statement.

The state of emergency goes into effect on Wednesday and gives government agencies, the fire commissioner and the RCMP the authority to take whatever action they deem is necessary to fight the wildfires and protect people and communities.

Say What?! Sports guys travel to new destination

Say What?! is an email conversation between sports editor Steve Lyons and sports columnist Paul Wiecek. Look for us regularly but intermittently on the Free Press website.

Steve Lyons: Heya. How you doing? How’s 2020 treating you so far?

Few things to get us started:

Walkout creates chaos at St. James Smitty’s

Gordon Sharpe wanted to eat a meal at the St. James Smitty’s Wednesday, but he got a helping of bad news instead.

He saw several workers walk out of the restaurant, at 1017 St. James St.

“(The waiter) came back about 10 minutes later and stood over the table, looking a little distraught and said, ‘I’m quitting right now and so is everybody else,’” Sharpe said. “He said, ‘This is my last time serving you,’ and he was quite choked up.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, adding that the managers scrambled to serve patrons.

The new normal in Canadian politics

“Nothing happening, all at once.”

Welcome to the new normal of Canadian politics, where normality is the new normal. Routine and stable are in; disruptive and excessive are out. Exhibits A and B are the Alberta referendum and the British Columbia election. Voters opted for stability over volatility.

The opposite of being normal is being different from the norm. In politics that means different from where we’ve been and what we’ve come to expect. Two competing trends have dominated our politics for the past decade and a half — progressivism and populism. Think Justin Trudeau and liberal, progressive identity politics in Canada, and Donald Trump and conservative, populist MAGA politics in America. We are now experiencing a swing away from both those trends.

Representing this “new normal” are Prime Minister Mark Carney, for one, and newly elected British Columbia premier, Lorne Doerksen, for another. Both are considered normal because they talk and act like adults in a childish political world. Their political flair is to not have any political flair. They stand out for not standing out.

Taxi and ride-hailing services receive 58 complaints since March

The City of Winnipeg has fielded 58 formal complaints about vehicle-for-hire operations since taking over industry oversight from the province in March.

According to freedom of information request results, the city mostly received complaints about taxi operations, and the two largest companies – Duffy’s Taxi and Unicity Taxi – were the main culprits.

From March 1, 2018 to July 13, 2018, the Winnipeg Parking Authority received 20 complaints about Duffy’s, mostly to do with driver road habits (five complaints), driver conduct (three), service refusal (three) or poor service (three), among other issues.

During the same period, Unicity had 19 complaints, five of them related to poor service and three about driver conduct, plus other misdeeds.