Aging gracefully

PCs cleared of election violation for ‘intimacy coach’ invoice

Manitoba’s elections commissioner has cleared the Progressive Conservatives of wrongdoing after a $3,800 expense for a car rental appeared on an invoice from a company offering “intimacy coach” services.

The findings from the commissioner bring an end to a complaint raised by the NDP in October 2024, when it was alleged the PCs violated the Election Financing Act by forging financial documents related to the previous year’s election campaign.

“I am satisfied that the expense was indeed for a car rental, as the invoice described,” Bill Bowles wrote in a letter addressed to both parties Wednesday.

Concerns over the invoice to Lucid Vitality were first raised by a former PC staffer, whose internal emails with party officials were published in the Winnipeg Sun.

No more trashing paper coffee cups

Mahalia Lepage and Joshua Bassman know their way around a recycling bin.

They try to take reusable cups when they go to their local coffee shop, and even volunteered with Folk Fest’s “enviro crew” last weekend. A large part of that job, they said, was informing guests about which items were recyclable.

The one item that stood out was paper coffee cups.

They weren’t considered recyclable until Wednesday — when Winnipeg recycling organizations announced paper cups can be thrown into blue bins around the province, effective immediately.

The next Duff’s Ditch must be medical

A runaway rail trolley hurtles towards five people tied to the tracks. You stand at the switch lever. If you pull the lever, the trolley veers onto a sidetrack, where one person is tied down. Do nothing and five die. Pull the lever and one dies by your hand.

A health minister needs no introduction to the weight of that choice. Every budget season, governments confront this dilemma with one cruel modification — the lever switches between today and tomorrow. Down the near track sits this year’s emergency, a crowded emergency department, a surgical backlog, a crisis demanding a decision by Friday. Down the far track, in the distance, over the horizon, waits a geriatric demographic that has not arrived yet. Each year’s budget cannot simultaneously rescue both.

Philosophers treat the trolley scenario as a thought experiment. A health minister calls it Tuesday.

The actual choice is crueller, because both tracks hold real people. The stroke patient in today’s hallway deserves rescue, as do the patients down the line. Two scholars, Guido Calabresi and Philip Bobbitt, analyzed such allocations as tragic choices — scarcity forces a society to preserve one value by sacrificing another. Their darker observation concerned method. Societies rarely make these choices in the open. The lever keeps directing traffic away from the immediate noise, toward the far track.

Dauphin hospital could be closed 9-12 months

BRANDON — A 78-year-old woman who has stage 4 lung cancer says she’s “frustrated and scared” knowing the hospital in Dauphin may not reopen for up to a year and that would require her to travel for treatment.

“I know it’s affected a lot of people, probably worse than me, but in my personal case, it couldn’t happen at a worse time,” said Janice Nybo, who lives on a farm a few kilometres south of Dauphin.

“I’ve been using that hospital quite a bit in the last three months.”

Severe flooding in the basement of the Dauphin Regional Health Centre, owing to a massive amount of rainfall in late June, caused a power outage and damage to its HVAC system. The building was evacuated on Canada Day. Fifty-four patients were sent to nearby health centres, including 24 patients who were transferred to the Brandon hospital.

Fringe reviews #1: Choose your fighter, then your venue

Absolutely not a cult, Afeni, #Black Eye, Chekov Shorts, Fakespeare, The Ghost of a Flea, A Sexy Pigeon Show, The Shelter, Things That Go Bump, Viento.

‘Change coming’ as U of W ponders long-term plan to revitalize campus

The University of Winnipeg wants to revitalize its downtown properties, including its original campus that dates back to the late 1800s.

The institution, which wants to develop a 15-year plan for its central buildings and the public spaces that surround them, is in the process of hiring a consulting firm to study its presence downtown, in the inner city and West End.

“Sparling Hall sits in the middle of campus as a derelict building,” said Peter Miller, president of the U of W faculty association, referring to the structure built as an addition to Wesley Hall in the 1910s. “It hasn’t been accessible the entire time I’ve been here, so at least 10 years.”

U of W recently approved a $180.7-million budget for next year that includes a two per cent increase in operating expenses. Senior administration is raising tuition — four per cent for domestic students and 6.5 per cent for their international peers — and phasing out low-rate course fees to stay out of the red.