New bill a key step in addressing news crisis

IT’S supposed to address a crisis, but the name of the legislation may just put you to sleep – Act Respecting Online Communications Platforms that Make News Content Available to Persons in Canada.

In fact, many of us in the news business have pretty much nodded off waiting for the bill to be introduced in the House of Commons this week that would require digital platforms such as Google and Facebook to negotiate payments for content with news publishers.

News Media Canada, which represents daily and community newspapers across the country, started lobbying in early 2016 to get the federal government to force digital companies to support journalism. Six years later, we finally seem to be getting somewhere on what Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez described recently as “a crisis in the Canadian news system.”

Crisis, indeed. News Media Canada representatives were met with blank stares when we first started using that word with federal politicians and officials six years ago. Even though a steady stream of newspapers had been closing for years and remaining newsrooms dwindled as staffing was cut, there was little awareness that public-interest journalism was in trouble in Canada, or that the government could play a role in helping it survive.

Free Press temporarily alters print delivery time

Dear readers:

The most recent COVID-19 variant has struck workforces across the province, and the Winnipeg Free Press is also feeling its effects.

In order to cope with an increase in absences by staff and newspaper carriers, we are making a few adjustments that could delay delivery of your morning printed edition.

The Free Press normally completes deliveries by 7 a.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. Saturdays, but we have moved the deadlines temporarily for the city of Winnipeg to 9 a.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. Saturdays.

In the misinformation age, the truth needs champions

“FALSEHOOD flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”

If you think that quote comes from someone studying the spread of misinformation through social media, think again.

Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, wrote those words in 1710, more than 300 years ago.

The quote has been rephrased and repeated many times in many ways. It is often misquoted and attributed to someone else. One version — “a lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots” — is often wrongly attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill.

Reduced speeds won’t expand travel time

I drive a car that spends almost all its time on the streets of Winnipeg. Thanks to the vehicle’s trip computer, I know my average speed — 31 kilometres per hour.

So, the current debate over lowering speed limits on some city streets comes as a bit of a surprise. There is some opposition as the City of Winnipeg begins a yearlong experiment with reducing the speed limit to 30 km/h from 50 km/h on sections of four local streets. Do opponents of the move realize how fast they really travel?

The simple fact is that lowering speed limits to 30 km/h on many residential streets is not going to change how quickly you get around town — and it will save lives in the process.

It is well known that the actual speed vehicles travel in an urban area is governed by such factors as traffic volumes, the road system, accidents and construction — and not so much by posted speed limits.

Predictions of newspapers’ demise were premature

For seven years I have been the chair of a board of a national association in an industry that is supposed to be dying.

You might imagine that would be a gloomy task. But, quite the contrary, I’m happy to report that Canadian newspapers are still very much alive and very much involved in developing sustainable models to deliver news and information in the future.

News Media Canada represents and provides services to daily and community newspapers, and other news outlets, across the country. Its board represents the range of news organizations from big ones such as the Toronto Star to tiny ones like the Gabriola Sounder, a community paper published on Gabriola Island in British Columbia. I stepped down as chair of the board this week, after taking the post in 2014.

A few years earlier, some bright thinkers on the future of media had come up with something called the newspaper extinction timeline. According to it, the Winnipeg Free Press should not be here today.

Facebook has one-sided relationship with news media

WOULD Facebook block you from sharing news stories on its platforms in Canada?

The idea seems far-fetched, but it’s coming closer to reality in Australia, where the social-media giant made headlines this week with its response to the government’s efforts to make digital platforms pay for news content.

Facebook warned that if a proposed law requiring payment for news goes into effect, it will “reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram.”

The Australian government did not blink. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the government would continue with the legislation and did not respond to “coercion or heavy-handed threats.”

Rock a metaphor for new form of togetherness

On a recent sunny Manitoba morning, I opened my front door to discover a large purple rock on the deck.

The rock was covered with initials and had “204” on the front. Underneath was a note from my friend Carol. “Consider yourself stoned,” it began, explaining that I was supposed to walk the rock one mile and deliver it to another member of the gym we both belong to.

A social media search discovered that Carol got the rock from Jim who got it from Chris, etc. — a chain of people from our gym, CrossFit 204, sharing a 20-kg stone, scrawling their initials on it and passing it along. I haven’t seen any of them since March. The rock connected us again.

A gym member started the chain a few weeks ago, and the rock has been showing up on lawns and front steps ever since.

Manitobans are hitting the pandemic ‘wall’

The toughest stretch of a marathon does not come in the final kilometres.

Instead, runners hit “the wall” around the 30-km mark of the 42.2-km race. Fatigue overtakes effort. Negative thoughts overwhelm you. Continuing takes all you’ve got.

A lot of Manitobans are hitting the wall. We’re grumpy, fed up with our physically distanced, socially isolated lives. We’re tempted to do something crazy, such as gathering in a group of more than 10 people.

Some stores are reopening, we can get a haircut and maybe even shiver on a patio in the unseasonably cold May air. But socializing in person is still discouraged, and there’s a lineup at the grocery store. We’re restless.

Sports with little fanfare

A lot of us who are casual sports observers are asking a pretty simple question: How can you play big-league sports without fans? In other words, without us?

Pretty much every major sports league — hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer, golf, you name it — is considering plans to resume play with athletes, officials and TV crews, but no fans. There won’t be any hometown crowds, just performers in bubble communities.

In a recent virtual episode of Saturday Night Live, Tom Hanks was telling jokes in his kitchen. The pauses after each punchline seemed to last forever. Maybe the jokes were funny; maybe they weren’t. Who could tell without a live audience to laugh?

So you have to wonder how exciting it will be if there is no one to cheer when Patrik Laine blasts the puck over a goalie’s shoulder. It may feel more like a televised practice for those viewing at home.

Array

The Duck Pond at Assiniboine Park does not quite have the expanse of Burlington Bay, on the western tip of Lake Ontario.

But it was an adequate stand-in recently when I completed the “Around the Bay” 30-kilometre race, North America’s oldest road race that takes place annually in Hamilton, but was postponed this year. The crowds of enthusiastic supporters were a bit thin — non-existent, actually. But that’s the reality of virtual racing.

This weekend is traditionally the start of the outdoor racing season for Winnipeg’s sizable community of runners. It kicks off with a five-kilometre race at Assiniboine Park, the first in the Patrick Riddell running series.

But not this year. COVID-19 has destroyed the entire season. The list of cancelled or postponed events on the Manitoba Runners Association website grows every week.

PM’s promise to news media just empty words

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lied to the country.

That’s not an easy thing to write about the most visible authority figure tasked with trying to inform and keep the nation calm during a worldwide pandemic.

But he did. “Right now it’s more important than ever that Canadians have access to the latest news and information,” Trudeau said during his daily news conference on Wednesday.

“To ensure that journalists can continue to do this vital work, our government is announcing new measures to support them.”

Newseum’s future endangered

One summer day in Washington, D.C., a few years ago, I found myself staring at front page news — on the death of Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, on Feb. 18, 1546.

It was the title page of a German newsbook, complete with a woodcut portrait of Luther, carefully preserved and displayed at the Newseum, which to this day remains my favourite museum in the world.

Newsbooks began appearing in Europe in the 1500s and led to the creation of regular newspapers. They were the first news media, putting current information into the hands of the masses by way of the relatively new technology of the printing press.

The Newseum has devoted itself to displaying and animating the history of news media, from the 1500s to today, from the serious to the silly, and attracts close to a million visitors a year.

Home Children deserve our recognition

The compensation offer has arrived a bit late — 96 years too late, to be exact.

The United Kingdom has offered payments worth about $34,000 to surviving British Home Children to compensate for its flawed policy of sending destitute children abroad as farm labourers and servants in the 1800s and 1900s.

My grandfather was one of them. He died in 1923.

Too bad Art Wilding missed out on the money — he could have used it. As an adult, he worked as a fireman on passenger trains in southern Ontario. He died at age 39 of tuberculosis at the Toronto Free Hospital for the Consumptive Poor. He left a widow and six children. The youngest, my mother, was one month old.

Trump and media feed off each other

U.S. President Donald Trump loves CNN. He most certainly does not want the New York Times to fail. And the Washington Post is doing fine by him.

You might think differently if you watched the news conference that Trump gave the day after the U.S. midterm elections. Trump tangled with CNN reporter Jim Acosta; later that day, Acosta’s press pass to the White House was revoked, making it impossible for him to gain access to the place he works.

Press secretary Sarah Sanders released a video clip that appeared to show Acosta delivering a karate chop with his left hand to the arm of a female aide as she tried to take a microphone from him. The clip had been altered. Run at proper speed, the video shows the arm of the aide brushed up against Acosta’s left arm as she reached across to try to take away the microphone. Acosta immediately said: “Pardon me, ma’am.”

It’s the latest skirmish in what Trump has turned into an ongoing war against traditional news media. His words are as nasty and harsh as ever heard from a U.S. president — the press is the true enemy of the people and journalists are liars, awful people who spread fake news.

Brochure reflects Europe’s unease with Russia

In late May, every Swedish household received a booklet outlining what might happen and what they should do if their country is attacked.

Labelled “If Crisis or War Comes,” it asked the country’s entire population to consider, “What would you do if your everyday life was turned upside down?”

It had information on how electricity and telecommunications could be lost; how supply lines might be disrupted so people would lose access to food, running water and fuel; and where to go to seek shelter. It had a lengthy checklist of household items to keep on hand, including blueberry soup, candles and a battery-powered radio.

It also reminded everyone that any of them between the ages of 16 and 70 can be called up by the government to assist in various ways in the event of war, or the threat of war.

Local news receives minnow’s share of funding in federal budget

Oh, to be a whale.

The federal budget released this week was pretty clear on what the Liberal government thinks about them: “Whales are vital to healthy marine ecosystems,” the budget documents stated, outlining $167.4 million in funding over the next five years “to better protect, preserve and recover endangered whale species in Canada.”

I had hoped that the budget might say something like: “Newspapers are vital to healthy local news ecosystems,” and to read that there was funding “to better protect, preserve and recover endangered reporters in Canada.”

But it was not to be.

Banning plastic bags would have minimal impact in Manitoba

Efforts to ban the use of plastic bags are a great example of environmental theatre. They are highly visible steps that make some people — especially politicians — feel good about themselves, but they are more show than reality when it comes to helping the environment.

Don’t get me wrong, we all should try to use fewer plastic bags — refuse them for small purchases, take cloth bags to the grocery store, recycle any plastic bags we don’t use, etc. But we should understand these steps are a lot wiser than outright bans.

As Manitoba considers an outright ban on plastic bags, think about a typical trip to the grocery store on a Saturday morning, after a ban is in place.

A shopper hops in a gas-guzzling SUV to drive to the store. On the way, the SUV idles in a Tim Hortons line for 10 minutes so the shopper can get coffee in a disposable cup with a plastic lid.

Feds don’t understand local media

Hockey news, fashion tips, TV and movie listings, retirement strategies, updates on Céline Dion — all of this information now constitutes local media — at least according to federal Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly.

This week marked a black spot in the history of Canadian newspapers with the closure of three dozen papers, taking out of circulation three million copies of printed newspapers each week and eliminating more than 300 jobs.

Joly’s response in Ottawa was a refrain that she has been using more and more lately, saying the federal government is already helping news providers. “We value the importance of journalism and that’s why we invest up to $75 million per year in local media,” she said.

This is true only if you use a definition of “local media” unlike any other ever attempted.

A lifelong boy is grieving his mother

Doug’s not here this week, owing to the sad fact that his mother passed away.

Doug’s most endearing — and infuriating — characteristics stem from the fact that he has never really grown up and remains childlike in many ways. Well, this little boy has lost his mom.

Evelyn Speirs was 87 when she passed away in Victoria. She was a mom in the style of such 1950s TV moms as June Cleaver — baking cookies, always upbeat and smiling as she looked after her family and their friends — and their friends and their friends.

She created a warm, welcoming household overflowing with food that was a magnet for other kids when Doug, his brother and sister were growing up in Tuxedo, where the family lived after moving from Vancouver in the 1970s.

Feds ignoring news industry issues

The federal Liberal government has ignored its own members of Parliament — again.

Anyone following the furor over proposed changes to small business taxes won’t be surprised by this.

But it was disappointing nonetheless to see how Liberal cabinet ministers responded this week to a report done on local news by the House of Commons committee on Canadian Heritage.

MPs on the committee spent 15 months studying what is happening in the rapidly changing news-media landscape. They met 44 times and heard from 131 witnesses. Liberals and New Democrats issued a majority report in June that said steps must be taken to help news media navigate this tumultuous period.

Heritage minister offers little support for newspapers

It is disappointing to hear a federal cabinet minister say that your industry is “no longer viable.”

It is even more disappointing when you know that this is not true.

For the past several months, a broad coalition of publishers has been making the argument, publicly and privately, that news gathering is in serious trouble in Canada and needs federal government support to stabilize and help transition in the digital age.

I have often spoken in favour of this idea, and it has made me the target of many critics. They will take comfort in the words of Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly, who outlined the Liberal government’s plans for cultural policy on Thursday.

Helping ‘pillar of our democracy’ remain standing a worthy investment

It’s time to save news.

You may well ask: What on earth is he talking about? Isn’t there an endless supply of information flooding us daily, hitting us every time we look at a phone, turn on a computer, get lost in the 1,000-channel TV universe or, as many still do, pick up a newspaper?

This is true, but increasingly it is like being in a lifeboat on an ocean – water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

You can read Donald Trump’s latest tweet, or see what one of your Facebook friends did at the gym.

Important to discuss ways to improve news

There is one thing you can count on journalists to do when they are in trouble — circle the wagons and start firing inwards. As two people who spent most of our lives in news media, we know.

The Shattered Mirror, a comprehensive analysis of the weakened state of the news media in Canada and its consequences, has taken a few shots since being released last month by the Public Policy Forum. It has been called “high-minded” and “profoundly wrong” — and that was by the same writer. It has been criticized as opening the door to government influence over the news by three journalists who worked at a newsmagazine with government funding. Others have said fake news isn’t a Canadian problem.

All this discussion is for the good. But for those of us concerned that a faltering news industry can’t properly fulfil its democratic duties, the Internet has become polluted with politically motivated misinformation and too much of the wealth is going to the distributors and too little to those who invest in employing reporters and upholding standards, it’s time to get serious. For the better part of a decade, news organizations have worked to mask their decline by reducing payrolls and writing fewer stories. But this is a strategy with limited running room. Every day, more journalistic lights dim or go out altogether. It brings to mind the Toby Keith song: “I ain’t as good as I once was. But I’m as good once as I ever was.” Unfortunately, journalism can’t be good just once in a while if it is to reliably inform citizens. It needs to be ready every day to rise to the challenge.

It’s not just that the situation for news organizations is growing worse; their downward trajectory is gathering speed. Meanwhile, digital-only alternatives, while injecting a gaggle of new voices into the national conversation, have failed to develop the business models necessary to support significant numbers of journalists. And by this, we don’t mean just people who provide commentary; we mean professionals who work the courthouses, city halls, school boards and legislatures and who follow the issues that arise from them. In other words, the institutions and debates of our democracy. The vast majority of news still originates with traditional media companies.

It’s time to tax Google and Facebook

Think about $17.2 million.

That’s how much FP Newspapers, publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press and a relatively small player in the Canadian newspaper industry, generates in taxes annually for federal, provincial and local governments.

If you want to think about the economic impact of the disruption of traditional news media, think about that $17.2 million, which goes to pay for schools, paving roads, financing health care and defending Canadian borders. Now ask how much Google and Facebook pay in taxes in Manitoba, where FP operates daily and community papers. Hint: you don’t need a lot of zeroes.

So you might be surprised to learn representatives of these two firms were recently complaining before a House of Commons committee about a proposal that would see a tax imposed on digital advertising in foreign-based media.

Little good news from journalism report

Manitobans know when the snow comes and your car is sliding around corners, you switch to winter tires. You don’t stare at the summer tires and think about how you could design a different system to push the vehicle forward. In short, you don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

It’s a lesson the Public Policy Forum could have learned in its report on the news media, The Shattered Mirror, which was released Thursday.

The report provides lots of detail on how much ad revenues have declined for traditional news media — newspapers, TV and radio — and lots of detail on how this has led to staffing cuts in newsrooms and curtailed the amount of civic-function journalism being done in Canada.

It asks: “Do the media, and particularly the civic function of journalism — the coverage of public institutions, public affairs and community — need a lifeline?”

Freeland’s overlooked Prairie roots

It is rarely noted in the news that Canada’s new minister of foreign affairs has Prairie roots.

The news items following Chrystia Freeland’s appointment this week have been filled with her considerable accomplishments, from being a Harvard graduate and a Rhodes Scholar to having a career in Moscow, London and New York as an influential journalist and writer of such books as Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, which landed on the New York Times bestseller list.

But there was scant mention of Peace River, Alta. Freeland frequently mentioned her birthplace, and the family farm there, during the two years I worked a few feet away from her in Toronto in the early 2000s.

It’s a part of her background as important as her deep knowledge of the United States and Russia as she undertakes the job as Canada’s top diplomat, representing our country to the world.

CBC’s new tune on ads

Advertising does not detract from the CBC’s mandate and there is no good public policy reason to eliminate advertising from its television services.

At this point you’d be forgiven for thinking that this column is about to pick apart the CBC’s request to the federal government this week for a massive increase in funding — $318 million more to be exact — so it can broadcast all its services free of ads

“We recommend removing advertising from CBC/Radio-Canada,” the public broadcaster said in a news release. “This would allow the broadcaster to focus squarely on the cultural impact of our mandate. It would also free up advertising revenue to help private media companies transition to a digital environment.”

Okay. Now stop and think about this fact: the first paragraph did not come from me; it came from a news release issued by the CBC in 2011.

Helping newspapers isn’t expensive

In the current hand-wringing over the future of newspapers, a lot of commentators are simply throwing up their hands.

They acknowledge the crucial role of local journalism in keeping communities healthy, then come to no real useful conclusions about how to preserve what newspapers do in the hundreds of communities they serve across Canada.

A recent paper released by the Public Policy Forum on how to preserve serious journalism in Canada suggested, among other bizarre conclusions, part of the solution could lie in educating Canadians better on matters such as digital literacy and privacy protection. Don’t ask me to explain these ideas. I can’t.

What I can do is set out some very simple changes that could help out newspapers such as the Winnipeg Free Press — not handouts, not public subsidies, but public policy changes that would support journalism in Canada.

Postmedia cuts show the need to examine local news funding

The newspaper-industry news was not great this week, with Postmedia combining newsrooms in cities where it has two papers, laying off scores of journalists, including Margo Goodhand who was editor of the Edmonton Journal, but better known here as the former editor of the Free Press.

Most of the news stories took an angle that went something like this: Beleaguered newspapers hit again.

But I would argue the headlines should have read: Local news coverage hit again.

The real crisis arising out of the massive media disruption of the past decade is communities are losing the journalists who tell people what’s really going on where they live.

Canada’s first gen-Xer PM

Justin Trudeau represents a generational change in leadership in Canada — at 43, he is the first member of generation X to become prime minister.

Canadians appear to have embraced this, and it seems unlikely that we will see another baby boomer as prime minister.

In fact, it is likely that Stephen Harper will stand as the only representative of his generation ever elected leader of the country. Kim Campbell, born in 1947, was also a boomer, but she served for just four months and was defeated in her only general election.

The high-minded generation of peace and love that trusted no one over 30 and was out to change the world produced a single long-term prime minister, and he was a conservative who sought to reduce the role of government, be tough on drugs and punish criminals more harshly.

Good journalism has a price

The Winnipeg Free Press is about to start asking readers of our digital content to pay for it -- and they are justifiably asking why they should do so.

We try to answer that question every day with unique, well-researched, concise content that tells you what is really going on, as opposed to the flood of information and misinformation flowing all around us every day in the new-age world of infinite media.

Example No. 1 is the work done this week by our reporters to debunk a story widely reported in other media on a Facebook page that seemingly showed its racist views on aboriginals were "liked" by thousands, supposedly proof positive of deeply entrenched racism in Winnipeg.

There were interviews with aboriginal educators, community activists, university professors and others on the development, with appropriate disgust expressed by on-air radio folks.

Why pay for the Free Press? Because good journalism doesn’t come cheap

The Winnipeg Free Press is about to start asking readers of our digital content to pay for it and readers are justifiably asking why they should do so.

We try to answer that question every day with unique, well-researched, concise content that tells you what is really going on – as opposed to the flood of information and misinformation flowing all around us every day in the new-age world of infinite media.

Example No. 1 is the work done this week by our reporters to debunk a story widely reported in other media on a Facebook page that seemingly showed its racist views on natives and was "liked" by thousands, supposedly proof positive of deeply entrenched racism in Winnipeg.

There were interviews with native educators, community activists, university professors and others on the development, with appropriate disgust expressed by on-air radio folks.

Maple Leaf making tracks in Sweden

If you are alarmed by the yellow and blue symbols that seem everywhere since the arrival of IKEA in Winnipeg, you can take comfort in the fact that a similar invasion is  happening on the other side of the ocean.

The maple leaf seems everywhere in Sweden, the land that gave birth to self-assembly furniture -- on boots, hats and pretty much any article of clothing you can imagine.

My daughter now proudly wears a pair of winter boots with a red maple leaf stamped on the side of the sole, purchased on our recent trip to Sweden. It's a model known as "Brandon," though the store clerk had no idea the name refers to a city in western Manitoba.

My older daughter, who attends university in Sweden, was browsing in a local shop this week and found a throw pillow designed to look like a letter sent by "Canada Air Mail" from Winnipeg, dated 1930.

The spam flood continues, despite new law

Great news! Today I learned I have won the INTERNATIONAL SPECIAL RAFFLE and am entitled to a payout of 17 million euros ... so long as I provide some personal details.

I also received a rare business opportunity to help a nice Egyptian gentleman free up $12.5 million that he put in a European securities firm while serving as chief security officer to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

And a United Nations organization has informed me that $10 million has been released from the Federal Republic of Nigeria and will be deposited to my VISA card ... so long as I provide some personal details.

Much as these offers are tempting, I have a strong suspicion that they are scams, filling my email inbox with unwanted spam.

Born in Alice Munro country

My birthplace seems an unlikely spot for a Nobel Prize winner in literature to call home.

I was born in Clinton, Ont., and grew up on a nearby farm, a short distance from where Alice Munro wrote many of the stories that have earned her the world's most prestigious prize for literature, which was formally awarded today in Stockholm, without Munro in attendance.

Munro moved to Clinton with her husband in the 1970s, about the time when parent groups pressured the local school board into removing Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, a classic work of Canadian literature, from the official curricula in the county's high schools.

It's a community of about 3,000 people, pretty much the same population it has had since the Second World War, nestled in the rolling farmland of Huron County. My 90-year-old mother is in a care home there. My niece got married there last summer in the United Church.

Welcome debate over political ads in newspapers

| It appears we’ve caused a bit of a stir today by selling advertising to the Liberal Party on the front of the Brandon Sun.

A full 4-page section purchased by the Liberals is wrapped around the Sun’s Friday edition in advance of the federal byelection in Brandon-Souris on Monday. The first thing readers see is Justin Trudeau’s smiling face.

I’ve seen the word “controversial” used in a number of tweets and blogs about the advertising. Some are a bit more graphic.

Funny thing happened on way to future

While neighbours in Alberta and Saskatchewan enjoyed the wealth of King Oil, Manitobans sat back and waited patiently for their own days of energy prosperity.

It would take time, a slow shift to a green-conscious economy and big investment in infrastructure, but sure enough, the province's clean, low-cost electricity, generated safely and reliably by northern power dams, would be the oil of the 21st century to meet the never-ending demands of American consumers.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the future.

The North American energy equation has changed so rapidly Manitobans are now taking a hard look at what was once a given -- continued massive expansion of hydroelectric generating capacity.

Whither the ‘conservative’ party in Manitoba?

Is Manitoba about to get a new political party? The answer is a definite maybe. Or maybe not. It depends.

There is clearly frustration in some parts with a provincial political climate that has led to four elections in a row with almost identical results -- NDP majorities with 32 to 37 seats in the legislature, facing Progressive Conservative oppositions with 24 to 19 seats.

There have even been some informal discussions about whether a Manitoba Party could be formed along the lines of the Saskatchewan Party that Brad Wall led to power over the New Democrats.

A group has registered the Manitoba Party name and a website called manitobaforward.ca and has even issued a printed pamphlet outlining 10 principles of the party.

Tickets talk, signs don’t

One day in Toronto, city workers arrived on the lane near my house -- a rutted, narrow, curved path, heavily used by school children -- to take measurements so it could be smoothed and widened, eliminating the dirt shoulders.

I found the supervisor and questioned the logic of the plan, pointing out that cars already drove too fast down the lane, and they would speed up on a new lane, posing an even greater threat to children who would have to use the same cement surface as the vehicles.

"Well," he said brightly, "we'll just post a sign that says the speed limit is 30 kilometres an hour."

I pointed past him and asked: "You mean like the sign behind your head that says the speed limit is 15 kilometres an hour?"

Why that plane is here

When you're a child and you see a massive airplane suspended on three posts, you ask questions.

Like: "Why is that plane here?"

The answers led a young farm boy to learn what war is, to discover Canada had played a pretty big role in something called the Second World War and to understand that war wasn't just something impersonal that happened far away -- it had touched the lives of relatives, neighbours and many, many other people around the Ontario town of Goderich, where I grew up.

No one around me talked about the war. So the Lancaster bomber that sat on cement pillars at Goderich Airport was a trigger for my learning.

Airbus investigative reporting was heroic indeed

The Truth Shows Up

A Reporter's Fifteen-Year Odyssey Tracking Down the Truth about Mulroney, Schreiber and the Airbus Scandal

By Harvey Cashore

Key Porter, 536 pages, $35

Judge’s ban sets precedent

A Winnipeg judge has made legal history by banning a newspaper reporter from her courtroom.

At this point you're probably saying: "Boy, that reporter must have done something terrible. What did he do? Threaten a witness? Smuggle a video camera into court? Yell at the judge during proceedings?"

The answer is none of the above.

Queen's Bench Justice Marianne Rivoalen, at the request of Manitoba Child and Family Services, banned Mike McIntyre because in a story he identified a psychologist who testified in the high-profile child welfare case involving parents who passed along their white supremacist views to their children.