Alberta health authority CEO on leave of absence, interim replacement named

Kinew won’t budge on opposition to criminalizing residential school denialism

Premier Wab Kinew stood by his opposition to the proposed criminalization of residential school denialism Wednesday, after some First Nations leaders criticized his earlier comments and asked him to reconsider.

Kinew said he doesn’t think Canada should make residential school denialism a crime, nor does he think it’s feasible to do, and he’d prefer to see it combated with education.

“When somebody has a question or wants to make a statement from a place of ignorance, the response isn’t to try to criminalize,” he told reporters.

“The response should be to try to heal whatever is going on with them that would cause them to say something hurtful, to try and educate whatever they lack in terms of knowledge about the true history of our country, and ultimately to find a way for us to all live together.”

Alberta health authority CEO on leave of absence, interim replacement named

EDMONTON - Alberta's transforming provincial health authority is in for another shakeup as it says its chief executive officer is on a leave of absence. 

Alberta Health Services says it can't provide details on Andre Tremblay's departure, but says the government has appointed a senior official within the agency as a temporary replacement.

It says Erin O'Neill will also serve as the temporary board chair and her years of experience in government and AHS management will help the agency deliver on its new mandate of hospital service provider.

Tremblay is a former deputy minster of health, and was appointed CEO in January after his predecessor was abruptly fired.

Man pleads guilty to manslaughter for chasing, stabbing man downtown

An intellectually disabled man who drunkenly chased down a man he had been arguing with and fatally stabbed him in broad daylight admitted to manslaughter on Wednesday.

Matthew Gerald Tomack Pelletier, now 38, chased Ricky Dwayne Mancheese, 49, down Kennedy Street before stabbing him six times in front of his wife on the sidewalk between Sargent and Cumberland avenues, at about 11:50 a.m. on June 11, 2024.

Pelletier, who police arrested the next day, was charged with second-degree murder, but instead pleaded guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter in front of Court of King’s Bench Justice Joan McKelvey on Wednesday.

“This type of incident on Winnipeg streets is all too common and must be strongly deterred,” said McKelvey.

Mayoral candidates share faves, test knowledge in Free Press culture quiz

It’s been said that politics is downwind of culture. However true that is, where politicians stand on hot-button cultural debates such as artificial intelligence, whether they prefer sports over arts and what local restaurants they patronize can offer a window into their sensibilities and outlooks.

The Free Press invited the four leading mayoral candidates among decided voters — according to a recent Abacus poll — to take part in a cultural quiz. (Kevin Klein, who was polling second, did not respond.) While most of the questions are lighthearted, they speak to some of the personalities behind the heated rivalries over budgets, buses, business taxation and beyond.

What was the last book you finished?

● Scott Gillingham: I’m almost done Winnipeg author Paul Vincent Jacuzzi’s book Blind Eyes. It’s a Dalton Drake novel.

MPI still lacking brain injury expert

Manitoba Public Insurance has failed to hire an independent brain injury expert to probe how personal injury claims are handled, nearly two years after it was recommended.

Play ponders realities of interfaith marriages

Jordi Mand isn’t scared to talk about circumcision — she doesn’t bristle at the mention of a bris.

But the playwright born Jordan Mandlowitz understands that the importance of the rite of passage — a foundational covenant between God and the Jewish people — isn’t so cut and dry to the uninitiated.

And in interfaith marriages such as her own, the concept of brit mila isn’t as easily welcomed as lighting the Friday night candles to greet Shabbat.

“It was something that I knew growing up, that if you were Jewish, and if you were a boy, then you were circumcised,” says Mand, who was raised in a tight-knit Jewish community in Richmond Hill, Ont.