No concert ticket? No problem — Swifties can still gather at ‘Taylgate’ in Toronto

When Canada’s health ministers left Winnipeg on Oct. 16, they took with them a promise to keep talking. The federal health minister did not commit to long-term funding. She offered one-year extensions for programs that were about to run out, and asked officials to begin work on “the next 10 years.”

The provinces, in the words of Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara, wanted to avoid “fiscal cliffs” and needed “predictable, stable, sustainable funding.”

Both sides have a point. And both are talking almost entirely about money — how much, for how long, under what formula.

Missing from the conversation is the question that decides whether any of it works — once the money flows, who must answer for what it does, or does not, achieve? We have been here before. In 2002, a Senate committee chaired by Michael Kirby warned that new federal money “must be used to buy change, not merely to support the system as it is presently structured.” It proposed an independent national health care commissioner, reporting every year to the public on how the system and the health of Canadians were faring.

Manitoba Hydro has cancelled a planned River Heights neighbourhood outage after a miscommunication led to area businesses fearing unexpected closure.

Hydro had planned to shut down power along Lanark and Renfrew streets between Corydon Avenue and John Brebeuf Place on Friday.

Overhead electrical maintenance work can only be done with the power off, during the day, for safety reasons, Hydro spokesman Peter Chura said. It chose Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. because St. John Brebeuf School had an in-service day.

However, the affected area houses a strip of businesses including a Royal Bank of Canada, eateries, shops, services such as physiotherapy and a medical centre.