Denial’s real-life scholar is a born leader

Manitoba students able to opt out of classes with sensitive lessons on sex, drug use

Manitoba’s premier pledges to continue allowing parents to pull their kids from health class if content — be it related to human sexuality, substance use or otherwise — clashes with personal beliefs.

Wab Kinew said Tuesday the government’s overhaul of phys-ed and health curriculum in Manitoba schools won’t impact the ability for parents to opt-out of a lesson and deliver material as they see fit.

“As a parent, you are your child’s first and most important teacher and that will always be the case,” Kinew said, surrounded by hundreds of teenagers on the football field outside Kelvin High School during an announcement Tuesday.

More than 100 schools are taking part in a voluntary pilot project this fall. It’s the first systematic review of this curriculum in decades. The changes to kindergarten-to-Grade 12 courses will be mandated to all schools in September 2028.

Disgraced former law dean arrested, facing extradition to Canada

Jonathan Black-Branch, the disgraced former dean of law at the University of Manitoba, has been arrested in Europe and is awaiting extradition to Canada on fraud charges, Winnipeg police say.

Black-Branch, who failed to defend himself in a lawsuit filed by the U of M and his disbarment proceedings, was ordered in May 2025 to repay more than $682,000 in misspent expense funds.

Winnipeg police confirmed his arrest and pending extradition Wednesday morning. “The extradition process is ongoing,” police said.

Black-Branch left the university in 2020 amid allegations he had misspent public dollars and schemed to evade oversight while running Robson Hall from 2016 to 2020.

Denial’s real-life scholar is a born leader

NEW YORK — The historian Deborah Lipstadt was walking through the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan on a recent afternoon when she came across a magnificent vista of the Hudson River outside one window.

Lipstadt, 69, a Holocaust scholar who teaches at Atlanta’s Emory University, had just finished looking through an exhibit on the murdered American innocent Leo Frank — “they pulled him right out and lynched him” — but is suddenly taken with the view.

“It’s so beautiful. Look at the water,” she said. Then, motioning to some of the difficult exhibits behind her and the neighbourhood of the 9/11 attacks in which the museum sits, added: “Right near all this. It’s poignant. Really poignant.”

In a film season that has seen the unlikely hero take forms as varied as Nat Turner and Sully Sullenbeger — and in an election period filled with charged discussions about tolerance and hate speech — Lipstadt offers a view of justice from another angle.

Manitoba budget reveals province underspent on crucial departments related to justice, public safety

While concerns about homelessness and public safety continue to make headlines in Manitoba, the two government departments mainly responsible for addressing them came in under budget last year.

The 2025-26 public accounts, released Monday, show Housing, Addictions and Homelessness underspent its budget of $869 million by $18 million. Manitoba Justice underspent its budget of $994 million by $34 million.

The 247-page public accounts report attributes the underspending in justice mainly to “reduced impacts of contingency liabilities,” such as a court ruling or legal settlement.

The report did not explain how and why Housing, Addictions and Homelessness underspent its budget last year as the province addresses those critical issues.

Health Canada suspends plasma collection at Grifols Taylor Avenue clinic

Health Canada has suspended all plasma collection at Grifols’ Taylor Avenue facility while the private company continues to face scrutiny after two people died following donations at its Winnipeg clinics.

The suspension began Wednesday, although Grifols paused plasma collection in Canada on Aug. 14, two days after the federal department gave the Taylor Avenue site a non-compliant rating.

“Health Canada issued the suspension because Grifols had not effectively implemented some corrective and preventive actions and, overall, it failed to demonstrate that the Taylor Avenue site has implemented an effective quality management system,” the department said in a statement.

The penalty was first proposed Aug. 13. The site’s operating licence was partially suspended, Grifols said in a statement.

Relief, reproach from law school staff after disgraced ex-dean’s arrest in France

The overseas arrest of a disgraced former law dean who defrauded the University of Manitoba out of more than $600,000 is being met both with relief and renewed frustration in the local legal community.