NASA’s stuck astronaut steps out on a spacewalk after 7 months in orbit

Adding emergency doctors, nurses and support staff is great, but it won’t break the wait-time logjam

It was the kind of announcement that should have brought universal applause.

Instead, on Tuesday, when Premier Wab Kinew recently announced his government had recruited more than 4,700 net new health-care professionals and support workers, the proclamation was met with quite a few rolling eyes.

Unions representing health-care staff reacted more with disdain than gratitude. The Manitoba Nurses Union continued its inexplicable war of attrition with the Kinew government, with president Darlene Jackson openly questioning the veracity of the premier’s math.

Why all the grumpiness? Jason Linklater, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, probably said it best. “The metric that matters is whether Manitobans wait less time for care tomorrow than they did yesterday,” he said.

Letters, Aug. 19

Nellie McClung was a trailblazer as both a suffragette and an elected official. As an advocate of eugenics, she supported the forced sterilization of women.

City rescinds Balmoral Street property owner’s order to clean up encampment

A West Broadway landlord is off the hook for clearing a large riverbank encampment after the City of Winnipeg rescinded an order threatening to stick him with the cleanup bill.

Marvin Sharp, CEO of Astroid Management Ltd., which operates the Pen-Eve Apartments at 35 Balmoral St., said he received a call from the city Tuesday letting him know the order has been cancelled.

In a statement from the city, an official said the order was shelved due to an existing and active easement on the property.

“We have been communicating with the property owner throughout this process and they have been informed of this development,” a spokesperson said.

Pair of banks abandoning Brandon’s downtown

Two of Canada’s major banks are set to relocate from their longstanding downtown Brandon locations in October.

Working together in a trade war

In the Second World War, a grand coalition, held together politically by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, succeeded in defeating Nazi Germany, after many bumps in the road. The rich history of this period reinforces the truism that coalitions — bringing together parties of divergent strength and interests to face together a common challenge — are fraught with many points of potential fracture.

Canada was not only a partner in the great international war effort but also fashioned a national coalition — presided over by Prime Minister Mackenzie King — necessitated by the federalist nature of our government. It worked after a fashion — conscription notwithstanding — and we emerged as a trusted friend and ally of our southern neighbour.

Oh, how times have changed. We are again faced with an existential threat; not to be compared to a world war, but serious enough given it’s posed not by a distant foe on another continent, but by the most powerful country in the world, with whom we share 8,800 kilometres of heretofore undefended border.

The unprovoked attack on Canada has been economic; tariffs, threats of tariffs, scrapped trade agreements and so forth — measures that have already had significant impact and promise to escalate. How does a country of 10 quasi-independent provinces with a national government constitutionally pre-eminent in international relations respond?