Your forecast
A mix of sun and cloud, becoming cloudy this morning. Wind becoming northwest 30 km/h gusting to 50 this morning. High 5 C.
What’s happening today
It’s budget day, and NDP Finance Minister Adrien Sala will present Premier Wab Kinew’s spending and taxation priorities for the fiscal year this afternoon.
The NDP government’s first budget will include funding to revive the emergency department and Mature Women’s Centre at Victoria General Hospital, both of which were shuttered by the Tories in 2017. Promises to reopen both were among a litany of health-care pledges the NDP made during last summer’s provincial election campaign. Carol Sanders has the story.
Victoria General Hospital (Brook Jones / Free Press files)
Meanwhile, Dan Lett has a look at the finance minister’s previous career as a musician who performed at the Winnipeg Folk Festival and whose work can be heard on Spotify. “Sala will get a chance to demonstrate not only his propensity for hurtin’ songs, but the personal and political skills he has employed to become, in a very short time, one of the opinion leaders in Premier Wab Kinew’s government,” Lett writes. Read more here.
American singer-songwriter Noah Kahan brings his We’ll Be Here Forever Tour to Winnipeg, performing at Canada Life Centre. Tickets are $264-$337 at Ticketmaster.
Noah Kahann (Amy Harris / Invision)
Today’s must-read
The University of Winnipeg has pushed back exams again, cancelled sporting events and ordered a mass password reset as the institution continues to cope with the fallout of a cyberattack more than a week ago.
University students, staff and faculty were directed to reset their passwords to help technicians regain access to critical internal systems just weeks before exams, pushed back to April 18, are set to begin.
“It’s in your hands folks, we need your help to get these password resets as quickly as possible,” said Kim Benoit, chief information officer for the university during a Monday afternoon Zoom town hall hosted by the U of W. Nicole Buffie has the story.
The University of Winnipeg (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press files)
On the bright side
In Taiwan, over the last six years, with just one formal employee and a team of volunteers, a group dedicated to battling fake news and false narratives is seeing success. The Fake News Cleaner has hosted more than 500 events, connecting with college students, elementary-school children — and the seniors that, some say, are the most vulnerable to such efforts.
Its people are filling up lecture halls and becoming a key voice in an effort as pressing here as anywhere: scrubbing Taiwan of disinformation and the problems it causes, one case at a time. The Associated Press reports.
Moon Chen, a volunteer of Fake News Cleaner, guides students through the LINE app to identify fake news during a class in Kaohsiung City, southern Taiwan. (Chiang Ying-ying / The Associated Press files)
On this date
On April 2, 1936: The Winnipeg Free Press reported Britain accepted many counter-proposals for safeguarding the peace of western Europe made by German leader Adolf Hitler. In Ottawa, the federal government set about devising a new basis for federal-provincial financial relations. Manitoba agreed in principle with a loan council by which Ottawa would give financial assistance to the provinces. Read the rest of this day’s paper here. Search our archives for more here.
Today’s front page
Get the full story: Read today’s e-edition of the Free Press.
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