B.C. scraps plan for overdose prevention site in downtown Vancouver

NDP defends involvement of U.S. company in Hydro project

A U.S. company that donated to Donald Trump’s 2025 presidential inauguration could build Manitoba Hydro’s proposed $3-billion natural gas turbines, which has drawn criticism from an environmental group amid the NDP government’s pushback to tariffs.

Westwood standoff ends with two arrested

An hours-long standoff in Westwood came to an end Thursday with Winnipeg police arresting two men and seizing a gun.

Winnipeg Police Service officers were called to Byrd Avenue shortly before 9:30 a.m. after a man was seen walking with what appeared to be a firearm, said police spokesman Const. Claude Chancy.

Officers identified a home connected to the investigation, he said.

Two men were arrested but Chancy could not yet say what they will be charged with. It’s not clear whether either of the men arrested was the male spotted with a gun.

QDoc patients in tight spot over billing dispute

Manitobans have been pulled into a dispute between QDoc — a Winnipeg-based virtual health-care platform — and the NDP government over fees billed to the province for patient care.

An Aug. 24 email from QDoc to its users prompted concern or calls for clarity from Manitobans who use the 24-7 platform to see a physician or nurse practitioner through encrypted video calls.

“When I first read it, like many others, I assumed they were going to be nixing the service altogether because that’s the way it was presented,” Tyndall resident Stephanie Pituley said.

“Upon further research, obviously that’s not the case, but I am still concerned to be honest. How many people did that research, I don’t know.”

Steinem’s life a lesson in audacity, generosity, courage

I wish I could tell you the first time I heard the word “feminist,” it was from Gloria Steinem, but it was definitely from a Spice Girl.

Props, though, to the Spice Girls for actually using the F word. So many people these days are afraid of it — afraid of using it, afraid of identifying with it, afraid of claiming it for themselves.

Gloria Steinem wasn’t, and she made it so we wouldn’t be either.

The trailblazing American journalist and feminist activist died this week. She was 92. She was a lion, a woman who fought for rights and freedoms that many subsequent generations take for granted — and which, in the last decade especially, have been increasingly threatened.

Frequency of private plasma donations called into question

Two weeks after the death of a second plasma donor in Winnipeg at a privately run collection site, provincial and territorial health officials compiled a list of urgent questions for Health Canada.

A health department official in Nova Scotia, which leads the Provincial Territorial Blood Liaison Committee, wrote in mid-February to the federal regulator that their members had expressed “a great deal of curiosity tempered with concern” and forwarded two dozen questions, according to documents obtained by the Free Press.

Under a section titled “MANITOBA ESTABLISHMENT INCIDENTS,” the provinces wanted to know: “What requirements are in place to ensure Grifols is ensuring collections frequency (does) not exceed the limit under the Health Canada licence?” and “Is Health Canada able to identify whether Grifols Canada has a donor system across establishments? (e.g., can identify when a donor last donated and where, similar to their operations in the United States).”

“Does the situation of two high-severity incidents in one Province or at establishments run by a relatively new entity to Canada, within a short period of time, initiate any additional protocols?”

NDP minister needs lesson in political civility

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine’s decision to intercede in Winnipeg’s mayoral election may be surprising to some political observers. To others, however, it is entirely on brand.

On Tuesday, Fontaine posted a video on social media in which she expressed concern that former city councillor and Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Kevin Klein was entering the race to challenge incumbent Mayor Scott Gillingham.

The caption on the video was blunt: “I mean, really, who chooses to work for Count Dracula?”

“Kevin Klein once worked for Peter Nygard. Peter Nygard is Canada’s equivalent to (American sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein — had his own little island, did unspeakable, disgusting things to women and girls … anyways, I just thought that Winnipeggers would want to know that Kevin Klein, at one point, worked for Peter Nygard,” she says in the video.