“The politics are (that) something needs to get built in Western Canada. I think Manitoba will show itself as a path to getting natural resources to tidewater in Canada” — Premier Wab Kinew, June 2025

As the war continues in the Middle East, most Canadians should appreciate the urgent need for new pipelines. Albertans are understandably frustrated after a decade of policies that have blocked oil and gas access to world markets. Even Kinew was somewhat reluctant to support an east-west pipeline. As an outside observer, I can empathize.

U.S. President Donald Trump recently signed an agreement to use some of the old Keystone pipeline in Canada and build a new pipeline to a hub in Wyoming. This would increase Canada’s crude exports by 20 per cent.

While it may appear to be good news, Alberta would continue selling its oil to the U.S. at discount prices. Moreover, Trump or his successor could in future terminate this agreement.

May is Asian Heritage Month in Canada. In Manitoba, it is a time to honour the many Asian communities who have shaped this province through culture, labour, leadership, family, food, faith, art, advocacy and public service. Celebration matters. But so do the stories that give celebration its sweetness.

Asian Canadian history is made of many threads.

We remember Chinese labourers who helped build the Canadian Pacific Railway while later facing the Chinese Head Tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act.

We remember the South Asian passengers of the Komagata Maru, denied entry by immigration rules designed to exclude them.

The overall shrinking of public space and degradation of the policy environment on use of public space is contributing to people experiencing homelessness being less safe — and contributing to interest in ideas like designated encampments. Unfortunately, this direction fails to centre the interests of people living unhoused. Further, we forget too easily that any consideration of land use on Treaty 1 land needs to start with historic claims and ancestral rights.

Among people experiencing homelessness, Indigenous people are overrepresented. Many people are living unsheltered on their own ancestral territories. Having endured intergenerational theft that started with land (transferred to settlers whose descendants now enjoy generational wealth), and continued with limits on movement, ability to make money, access to education and more, they are now actively surviving homelessness. Yet, the limits on their person continue.

Recent years have seen the closure and limits on use of public space throughout the downtown and broader city. These include Portage Place mall, the Millennium Library and Winnipeg Transit, and previously through the closure of downtown single-room occupancy hotels and their barrooms.

For some time, the city has been telegraphing an intention to limit access to outdoor public space according to housing status. At every opportunity, those cautioning against this move have raised the problem of limiting those with ancestral rights, and further limiting free movement of citizens on public land. The latter has been decided through B.C. legal process, and suggests the City of Winnipeg’s exposure to risk as it moves forward.

I have been following with interest the media’s reporting of the ban in Manitoba’s Legislative Assembly on the use of the words racist, bigot, homophobe, misogynist and transphobe to call out hateful speech. The stated goal of the ban is “to improve House decorum.”

I’ve appreciated the fulsome coverage of this issue in the Free Press through the publishing of editorials, op-eds and letters to the editor. I was in particular struck by Premier Wab Kinew’s comments during his May 7 monthly interview with Marcy Markusa on CBC Radio.

Kinew’s strong opposition to the ban raises a critical question: How do we keep democratic civil society alive while silencing the calling out of discriminatory language and behaviour? Of course we can’t. By confusing decorum with silence we run the risk of contributing to a “head in the sand” mindset; to what American journalist and activist Barbara Ehrenreich referred to as a “Smile or Die” culture.

But then a followup question emerges: How do we effectively voice our legitimate dissent in ways that move us towards correcting discriminatory practices? A “no holds barred” approach to voicing our opposition may not be the answer. It’s all too easy to slip into shaming people by lobbing ad hominem/ad feminam attacks across partisan lines.

The oft-quoted saying, “it takes a village to raise a child,” resembles an African proverb. In the Yoruba language, the saying goes “two eyes birth a child, but 200 eyes raise it.”

Over the past several decades, that saying has come to mean something entirely different from what villagers meant, in Africa and in the small town where I grew up. The saying meant two, equally important things. It meant the community has a stake in ensuring that children are properly cared for, but the saying also meant that children must be taught and understand their obligations to the community at large.

The 200 eyes raising the child in the village did not look away when the parents or a child failed to observe community standards. When a child disrespected someone in the community, they were corrected. The village had a clear code of conduct that governed what was expected behaviour. These mores, or societal expectations, were understood and enforced by both parents and community members.

Everyone needs to understand their society’s written and unwritten rules. It is our obligation to teach our children the expectations we have of each other.

Canadian labs and startups are overflowing with brilliant agtech ideas. So why do so many promising tools stall at the farm gate instead of moving from a successful trial to broad use on the farm?

If our country is serious about harnessing its potential to be a global food superpower, this gap between innovation and adoption deserves far more attention.

Agriculture isn’t an afterthought in Canada’s economy. It is one of the few sectors where better tools can improve efficiency, decision-making and competitiveness within a relatively short window.

Canada’s agtech ecosystem is among the world’s best. Yet innovation support is often too focused on getting startups off the ground, rather than helping proven technologies through this critical growth phase and into the market.

Like most Manitobans I live in the city. I live in a home built about a century ago, in a well-treed neighbourhood. A 27-year-old gas furnace heats my home — one that needs replacing soon. I’d love to quit burning gas and electrify.

The options aren’t great. Electric heat costs more than double what gas does. Air source heat pumps work much of the winter, but fail during our worst cold snaps, leaving us dependent on expensive electric heat or gas backup — plus a noisy outdoor unit that ruins the patio.

If I had more land, like those with larger rural properties, I could bury horizontal coils in the ground for a fraction of the cost of drilling. But on my small city lot the only option is drilling 400- to 500-foot boreholes in the front yard. Expensive, even with Efficiency Manitoba incentives.

So: keep burning gas, or put up with a noisy compressor and still need a backup heat source. Those are my choices. But they don’t have to be.

Dismissing climate science, setting Canada apart from most nations and planting us firmly in the United States’ camp, the Carney government is betting the farm on a “nuclear renaissance.”

There have been numerous indications this was coming. But Energy Minister Tim Hodgson’s April 29 statement to the Canadian Nuclear Association, following immediately on the launch of the “Canada Strong Fund” left no doubt that our investment banker prime minister is determined to pursue his nuclear energy superpower dreams.

As the UN Climate Envoy, Mark Carney famously said there is “no path to net zero without nuclear.” This has been a mantra of successive Liberal governments even as Canada’s last nuclear build was in the 1980s, and nuclear’s share of global electricity production has been steadily declining. It’s also been the rallying cry of nuclear advocates spending big to persuade anxious populations experiencing floods, droughts and wildfires that nuclear power will solve our climate disaster in the making. That claim is false.

Eight years ago, the Liberals rolled out their “SMR roadmap,” predicting the first (slightly) smaller new reactors would be operational in 2026. It isn’t happening. A new report by M.V. Ramana and Susan O’Donnell — Assessing Small Modular Nuclear Reactors in Canada — details the $4.5 billion spent by Canadian governments on SMRs with zero kilowatts of electricity generated to date. Most of that money went to the potential first SMR in Canada, the BWRX 300, an American design by GE Hitachi that uses enriched uranium fuel, not available in Canada.

Skilled tradespeople have always played a leading role in shaping Canada.

They’ve built, modified and maintained infrastructure that houses us, keeps us safe and makes it possible for us to have an advanced and diverse economy for generations.

Yet, somehow, we’ve failed to communicate this to young people at the family dinner table, in primary, middle and secondary school classrooms, at virtually any point of influence when discussing post-secondary education options.

This neglect around the optics of skilled trades has created a gap in public knowledge about what they entail. Skilled tradespeople have evolved their roles and capabilities in lockstep with the complexity of the world in which they work.