Your forecast
Mainly cloudy with a 30 per cent chance of showers late this morning. Widespread smoke with wind from the south at 20 km/h becoming northwest 40 gusting to 60 early this afternoon then increasing to 60 gusting to 80. Expected high is 22 C, UV index 5 or moderate..
What’s happening today
The federal government is responding to a recent report that says Canada’s housing supply isn’t keeping up with the rapid rate of population growth. Academics, commercial banks and policy thinkers have all been warning the federal government that the pace of population growth, facilitated by immigration, is making the housing crisis worse.
But the Liberals are doubling down on their commitment to bring more people into the country, arguing that Canada needs high immigration to support the economy and build the homes it desperately needs. The Canadian Press reports.
New homes are constructed in Ottawa on Monday. (Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press files)
Today’s must-read
Two overseas consulting firms were given untendered contracts valued at nearly $1 million each to support the provincial government’s mission to recruit 300 health-care workers from the Philippines, four of whom have arrived in Manitoba. The approximately 10-day trip to Manila, Cebu and Iloilo taken by government and health officials in late February, meantime, cost taxpayers more than $460,000, with the total expense to settle the internationally-trained nurses and health-care aides still being tallied.
“We’re in a critical nursing shortage, and we welcome the fact that we do have 200-odd nurses coming from the Philippines, but at the end of the day what does it cost us to recruit this small number of nurses?” Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said. Danielle Da Silva has the story.
Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union (Mike Thiessen / Winnipeg Free Press files)
On the bright side
A schooner set sail Tuesday from the south coast of England to train and inspire a new generation of naturalists by retracing the voyage taken by a young Charles Darwin nearly 200 years ago that led to his theory of evolution.
The Dutch ship Oosterschelde was cheered as it left Plymouth on a two-year mission to work with future scientists who will study species discovered by Darwin and develop projects to save them. The Associated Press reports.
Charles Darwin in 1875 (The Canadian Press files)
On this date
On Aug. 16, 1944: The Winnipeg Free Press reported a powerfully reinforced Allied advance pushed eight miles further into southern France along a 40-mile front between Cannes and Toulon. Canadian infantry stormed into the outskirts of Falaise, aiming to prevent Commander of the German Army in the West Gunther Von Kluge from pulling his battered German 7th Army through the Normandy gap. In Poland, the Soviet Union’s Red Army appeared to make an all-out drive for Warsaw against stiff German resistance in the Praga district. 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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