Corey Hart takes audience on hit-filled trip back in time

We’re giving, they’re taking — where’s the win?

In the give-and-take of negotiations so far, Canada seems to be doing all the giving, while the United States does all the taking.

In the last few days, the Canadian government said it was backing away from a five per cent levy to be paid by American streaming services such as Amazon and Netflix after, earlier, dropping the three per cent digital services tax. Then, there was what now appears to be succumbing to American President Donald Trump over the Gordie Howe International Bridge, where Canada agreed to let the U.S. share the net revenues from the bridge, even though Canada paid for the entire construction.

Now, Prime Minister Mark Carney is signalling he won’t use energy exports to the United States as a bargaining chip in the current talks on the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement, saying he didn’t “see the value” of using Canada’s energy exports to the U.S. as a trade bargaining chip.

“Canadians are reliable,” Carney said Wednesday in Red Deer, Alta. “One of the biggest commodities, arguably the best, is trust. People trust us, and so, when you’re a supplier of a key commodity, key service, you’ve got to think really hard about not supplying.”

Kreviazuk, in her own voice

Chantal Kreviazuk is in the midst of a very busy year.

In May, the Winnipeg-born singer-songwriter released her 11th studio album, In My Own Voice — a project that reclaims and reimagines a selection of hit songs she’s written for some of the world’s biggest artists.

The 12-track album features Kreviazuk performing ethereal covers of Pitbull’s Feel This Moment, Drake’s Over My Dead Body and Gwen Stefani’s Rich Girl, among others.

But she didn’t stop there.

Hydro scrambling to restore power to remaining 4,500 customers after storm; some outages will continue into Saturday

Power outages could stretch into a third day for some Manitobans — mainly in and around Winnipeg — while crews continued to repair widespread damage caused by powerful thunderstorms.

About 4,500 Manitoba Hydro customers were still without electricity at 2:30 p.m. Friday, after more than 30,000 lost power while powerful winds brought down trees and power lines Wednesday night and early Thursday.

The Crown corporation said it is aiming to have all outages with greater numbers of customers restored by Friday night, but some customers may remain without power into Saturday.

“The challenge is just the sheer scale of this thing — hundreds of different outages spread across a large part of the city,” Hydro spokesman Peter Chura said. “Just getting to all of them in a timely fashion is very difficult.”

Prepare to be … blutterbunged?

Are you not blutterbunged?

If Russell Crowe’s second-century gladiator character had uttered a 19th century equivalent of “Are you not entertained?” that fit the mood of today’s 21st century, that would be it.

Definitions first. Blutterbunged is an obscure regional dialect word from England that means everything from astonished to confounded to bemused or shocked into speechlessness. Its composition suggests something both more and less, namely blustering bloviation (that’s the more part) and empty words (that’s the empty part). These days we would more naturally punctuate our reaction to an event or statement with a profanity. But you get the drift.

Unearthed by lexicologist Susie Dent, it speaks volumes about our times that it fits now. That we need to reach back hundreds of years to find the right word to adequately capture a contemporary civic reaction to what the hell is going on in politics and the world today.

Chinese newcomers protest over delays in security screening clearance

Dozens of Chinese newcomers rallied outside Winnipeg’s federal immigration office Friday to protest what they describe as untenable delays to Canada’s security screening process.

The rally against Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada comes after a surge in immigration security screening requests created backlogs for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Protesters said the resulting delays have left them in limbo as they try to obtain permanent residency.

“We just want transparency,” said Pakying Chau, 26, who travelled from Hong Kong to Winnipeg in 2018 to study agribusiness.

Rollins becomes fifth councillor to bow out of fall election

Sherri Rollins says she’s withdrawing her bid to keep her city hall seat after eight years, citing her concerns about the “gradual erosion of the role played by council” and the struggle to work co-operatively with the mayor’s office.