Infinite and resonant

Canada vows dollar-for-dollar tariff retaliation, suspends trade talks with U.S.

OTTAWA - A last-ditch effort to reach a new trade deal before a midnight tariff deadline failed Friday, as Prime Minister Mark Carney suspended talks with the United States and summoned his negotiators back to Ottawa.

The decision meant new 50 per cent tariffs on billions of dollars in Canadian exports to the U.S. took effect at 12:01 a.m., and Carney vowed Canada would retaliate with equal measures of its own.

"In recent weeks, we made important progress toward improving Canada's position as having the best deal in the world with the U.S.," Carney said in a statement just before Trump's tariff deadline.

"However, that progress has not been enough to meet our objectives for Canadians."

Swede leads Manitoba Open, Winnipegger sits 33rd

From Lars-Erik Sjoberg to Thomas Steen to Viggo Bjorck, there’s no shortage of Swedish athletes who have quickly become fan favourites here in Winnipeg.

Daniel Svard is hoping to add his name to the growing list.

Although he wields a golf club and not a hockey stick, the 23-year-old from Stockholm is opening plenty of eyes this week at Elmhurst. He carries a two-shot lead into Sunday’s final round of the Manitoba Open, looking to close out his first professional victory in his just his fourth career tournament.

Svard fired a six-under 66 on Saturday to move to 14-under through 54 holes of the PGA Tour Americas event.

Provincial teacher watchdog releases names, details in three disciplinary matters

An Interlake teacher with a history of “intimidating” outbursts has been ordered to participate in counselling and study anger-management strategies after he made a child cry.

Five Things: PM Carney explains why Canada left the U.S. negotiating table

OTTAWA - Canada is preparing to hit the U.S. with dollar-for-dollar tariffs in response to new 50 per cent duties on $28 billion worth of Canadian products that took effect when talks between the two nations collapsed as negotiations neared the finish line. 

Prime Minister Mark Carney was quiet publicly during the final days of negotiations, but now has now explained his rationale for telling the Canadian negotiating team, led by Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and chief negotiator Janice Charette, to leave the table.

Restrictions on further trade deals

"The U.S. Introduced at the last hours, in the last hours, efforts to restrict our ability to have other trade deals. You heard me say a moment ago, what we've accomplished in the past year, 20 new deals, economic and security partnerships, the prospect of doubling our market access because we believe in free trade. We're the partner of choice in many respects for countries around the world and the Americans wanted to restrict that. They had language that what they wanted to restrict that, unacceptable," Carney said during a press conference on Parliament Hill.

The trolls inside the Conservative tent

The Conservative Party of Canada has a troll problem. And it’s coming from inside the tent.

Once, trolls existed only in imagination. They were figures of mythical proportion, big and small. They lived solitary lives under bridges, in caves, or forests. They were considered dim-witted and mean. Best avoided.

Today, they are real, unavoidable, and ubiquitous on social media. They are anything but solitary. There are tribes of them out there and tribal is how they think and post. As for dim-witted and mean, others can opine but they are uniformly mean and dismissive.

Mean to anyone who disagrees with their views. Dismissive of any view but their own. They distribute questionable, at best, facts and opinions grounded in hostility towards anything or anyone deemed disagreeable or heretical to their world view.

ER wait times have hit all-time highs in Winnipeg and are impacting nearly all aspects of hospital operations

On most days at Health Sciences Centre’s adult emergency department, all 58 treatment beds are filled with sick patients. Another dozen or so brought in by ambulance line the hallways on stretchers, with only one nurse to look after them.

Out in the waiting room, about 30 or 40 people — sometimes more — are slouched in chairs in pain or discomfort, waiting hours to see a doctor. Most have been assessed by a triage nurse, but many will have to wait 10 to 20 hours to be examined by a physician because there’s no room for them in the treatment area.

Some patients leave because they can no longer tolerate the excruciating wait, only to return days later, sicker than they were before.

Welcome to the emergency department at Manitoba’s largest hospital, where some of the highest-acuity patients seek medical care but now face delays that were unimaginable a few years ago.