Australian opposition promises deeper emission reductions

BRANDON — A CT-scanner is expected to be operational in Dauphin next week after the city’s hospital closed in early July.

The unit, which is being set up on the grounds of the Dauphin Regional Health Centre, will be in use as of Sept. 23, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said Wednesday.

“We were originally told it was going to take many months to have CT up and running … We said that timeline was unacceptable,” Asagwara said.

Dauphin’s emergency department reopened on Sept. 7. The facility was forced to close on July 1 due to significant flooding in its basement that damaged mechanical and electrical systems throughout the building.

Technology respecting electricity generation, storage and grid management is rapidly advancing and displacing gas-fired peaker plants. New battery storage systems are more efficient and less costly, smooth grid flow and are non-polluting. Texas, California and Australia are replacing gas turbine peaker plants with more effective storage batteries.

Solar and wind energy generation combined with battery storage at both the grid and home/business level is the most efficient way to meet peak demand. Building expensive, outdated, polluting American gas turbines, as Manitoba Hydro is proposing, is not in Manitoba’s interest.

Premier Wab Kinew noted that a final decision to build a new turbine power plant in Brandon has not been made. I hope he’s correct, for if Manitoba Hydro already made the decision and entered binding financial obligations with GE Vernova, the PUB’s role was superfluous.

In 2025/26 Nova Scotia Power installed 3 x 50 MW Lithium-ion grid batteries with the storage capacity of over 600 MWh. Installed by Kitchener/Waterloo based Canadian Solar’s subsidiary e-Storage who have operations around the world, they accomplished this in less than two years from the approval date in June 2024. Two were operational within 18 months, the third in 24. The cost was $237 million. At Nova Scotia’s cost per MW, a 750 MW battery peaker facility would cost Hydro $1.185 billion, just 40 per cent of the proposed $3 billion gas peaker plant.

It’s done here, too

The GLITTER program in Portland was held up last week as a glowing example of progressive, community-minded litter removal that Winnipeg and its downtown agencies should aspire to replicate.

Well, the grass may seem greener, and the encampments a little cleaner, but ask around and you may learn that Winnipeg already has community-led programs doing this work and doing it well.

I can’t fault anyone for raising the merits of a made-in-Portland program for the sake of discussion. After all, it is a timeless Winnipeg pastime to ask why our city lags behind others on any number of trends, programs, or amenities. But the suggestion that “some version” of GLITTER should be considered here falls short when it fails to acknowledge the parallel efforts already delivering results here.