Fears are widespread about data centre impacts on Canada’s water, environment: poll

Policy change gives Manitoba renters a break from proposed hikes

Aidan Wilson said he was reduced to tears after getting a call from Premier Wab Kinew’s office.

He’d just learned tenants of a West Broadway apartment, including himself, would no longer pay a hundreds-of-dollars monthly rent increase as of Nov. 1.

“It’s been a lot to deal with, it’s a lot to push for, and it’s a lot to speak up. All of these emotions just kind of came flooding out,” Wilson said Tuesday at a news conference alongside Kinew.

The premier announced that renters will not have to pay the increases until the provincial Residential Tenancies Branch hears landlords’ arguments and issues its decisions.

Empty desks: Advocates talk chronic school absenteeism

Concerned that school and government leaders are downplaying the state of student absenteeism, community organizers are strategizing to create urgency around who’s regularly missing class — and why — in Winnipeg.

The inaugural Youth at Risk in Winnipeg Symposium, held over the weekend at the Canadian Mennonite University, drew roughly 100 people to discuss barriers to attendance and brainstorm ways to remove them.

Nearly 20 years after he began calling attention to the issue, first as a volunteer with the Point Douglas Residents Committee, Sel Burrows gave an impassioned speech about the lack of political will to take meaningful action to help students from “dysfunctional homes.”

“I’ve dealt with nine cabinet ministers, Conservative and NDP, and five deputy ministers, and the issue has not gotten any better,” Burrows told teachers, reseachers and community support workers gathered Saturday on CMU’s Shaftesbury campus.

Winnipeg soldiers help search and rescue efforts in Wainwright

Eleven military search and rescue technicians from Winnipeg were deployed to Wainwright, Alta., following the fire that killed four soldiers and injured 39 others during a live-fire training exercise Saturday.

It was the largest mobilization of SAR techs, elite primary-care paramedics in the Royal Canadian Air Force, in recent memory, a military spokesperson told the Free Press.

Every SAR tech available from 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron, located at 17 Wing Winnipeg — even those off duty — were sent to CFB Wainwright.

The technicians, who are trained to jump from aircraft into extreme environments, parachuted onto the scene from a CC-130H Hercules airplane to provide care for those injured in the fast-moving grass fire that had engulfed a training area.

MPI gambles with low rate request

It sounds a bit like a gamble from a player in an industry that is almost pathologically averse to gambling.

Manitoba Public Insurance is currently going through the Public Utilities Board process to set car insurance rates for 2027-28, and it’s asking the PUB to approve a 2.38 rate hike.

As a provincially-run insurance business, MPI is already a bit of an outlier, because, through its government masters, it’s answerable to the Manitoba public in a way that private insurers aren’t.

Private insurers spend a fortune calculating risk, offsetting that risk with reinsurance to spread it out across the insurance spectrum, and always finding a way to ensure there’s a profit margin built in.

Province looks to keep nearly $1M from traffic stop

The RCMP constable could see that Alireza Haghgoo was nervous. The 22-year-old, seated as a passenger in a rental Nissan SUV the Mountie pulled over for speeding outside Brandon in late July, was breathing heavily and tapping his foot constantly.