Processing potential long way from reality

There are times in life when you want to be wrong — like when you walk into the doctor’s office believing your ailment will be the death of you.

It’s the same sort of feeling I get wading through the pile of newly released reports extolling the unrealized “potential” for more value-added processing in Canadian agriculture. There’s this little voice inside my head saying: “I’m from Manitoba. Show me.”

There are jaw-dropping numbers bandied about in various reports from Food and Beverage Canada, the Canadian Chambers of Commerce/PwC and the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. For example, more processing could add $75 billion on top of the $188 billion the sector already generates, create hundreds of thousands more jobs and a bigger domestic market for farmers. The list goes on.

Not to discount the solid analysis behind these efforts. Overall, it all sounds great, although notably missing is any mention of the growing concerns over ultra-processed foods and how that might affect future market growth.

Addressing poverty best way to reduce crime, majority of city residents say in survey

A majority of Winnipeggers believe tackling poverty is the best way to reduce crime, according to a new poll that also suggests support for addressing the root causes of crime has slipped over the past four years.

The survey, conducted by Abacus Data for the Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, found 56 per cent of residents favour increased spending on poverty reduction, compared with 22 per cent who believe spending more on police is the best solution.

Support for poverty reduction has fallen six percentage points since 2022, while the proportion favouring increased police spending has edged up three points.

“It’s encouraging… because I thought it would be much lower,” Kate Kehler, executive director of the council, said Friday at a safety and well-being seminar at St. John’s High School.

Manitoba to focus on children — and adults — in revamped autism plan

The Manitoba government has announced a U-turn that will ensure its autism strategy covers children and adults alike in response to community backlash.

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine announced Friday that recent amendments to Bill 232 — which would have bolstered disability-related support only for anyone aged 17 and under — will be reversed.

“I want families to know that we listened to every word that they said,” she said at a news conference inside her third-floor office at the Manitoba legislature.

The Autism Strategy Act will require the government to create a policy to improve the screening and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and support research.

Ottawa must parlay sports gambling boom into addiction supports

I watch a lot of sports on television, mostly hockey, baseball and football. And it’s getting harder to watch a game without being bombarded with gambling advertisements.

The betting industry hasn’t just bought commercial time. It has woven itself into the broadcasts, becoming part of the game itself.

Gambling logos plaster the boards around hockey rinks, appear on players’ jerseys and helmets, and pop up during commercial breaks. Broadcasters talk about betting odds, promote wagers and remind viewers how they can put money on the action unfolding in front of them.

It doesn’t affect me personally. I don’t gamble. But I think it’s ruining sports broadcasts. What was once about enjoying a game has increasingly become an opportunity to sell viewers another way to lose their money.

First Crumbl cookie shop opens in Winnipeg

The early birds got their cookies.

Klaudia and Jayson Ballantyne were the first in line for the grand opening of Winnipeg’s first Crumbl location at 1570 Regent Ave. West, arriving at 2 a.m. Friday — six hours before the cookie chain was set to open.

The brother and sister brought their lawn chairs and blankets and hunkered down.

Roughly 90 minutes later, by their count, the next customers arrived.

Millions in cheese revenue lost as protest torpedoes Italy’s buffalo mozzarella output

ROME (AP) — A truckers' protest in southern Italy has halted the production of the famed buffalo mozzarella, causing an estimated loss of 3 million euros in just 24 hours as the milk cannot reach dairies in the Naples region and the finished cheese cannot reach customers, an official said.

The weeklong strike by truck drivers over the high cost of diesel driven up by the Iran war has also blocked deliveries of other basic goods to supermarkets and left gas pumps empty in much of southern Italy. The government approved new tax breaks for truckers Thursday, but it was too early to tell whether they were enough to end the protest.

The disruption is particularly damaging to buffalo mozzarella because the production of the protected cheese depends on a tightly timed supply chain.

Buffaloes have to be milked regardless of whether dairies are operating, while production rules require that their milk be turned into mozzarella within 60 hours. Buffalo mozzarella is softer, creamier and richer than cow’s-milk mozzarella.

Addressing homelessness and toxic drug use

Winnipeg is facing a housing and toxic drug crisis that is not going away. Every day, we see the consequences — people living without safe homes, encampments in neighbourhoods and public spaces, increasingly toxic drugs, overdoses and emergency services stretched to their limits.

‘Make eye contact’: police urge extra caution amid spate of vehicle-pedestrian collisions

Winnipeg police are urging motorists and pedestrians to exercise extra caution at intersections following a rash of collisions across the city, including one that claimed the life of a man.

“Having the right of way does not make you safe,” Insp. Helen Peters of the Winnipeg Police Service’s traffic division said during a news conference Monday morning.

“This isn’t just about who’s at fault. This is about keeping each other safe and doing everything we can as drivers, motor vehicles or pedestrians to help each other out and navigate our roads.”

Police said a man in his 80s was struck by a vehicle that failed to stop at a stop sign while turning right onto eastbound Roblin Boulevard from Hunterspoint Road on Sept. 29.

Quebec’s strategic maple syrup reserve running dry amid high demand

MONTRÉAL - The head of Quebec's maple syrup producers' association says the province's strategic syrup reserve has run dry amid high demand for the product.

Québec Maple Syrup Producers President Luc Goulet says government support will be needed to ensure the industry doesn't miss out on opportunities to grow the sector.

Maple syrup yields depend on weather conditions.

As a result, the producers' association has established a strategic reserve to ensure prices and supply remain relatively stable.

Salvation Army calls on Winnipeggers to donate merchandise as sales soar

The Salvation Army is taking donated merchandise from other regions to stock its Winnipeg thrift stores as increasing sales outpace local donations.

Retail activity at the charity’s eight Winnipeg locations grew more than 10 per cent year over year during several months, from January through April, and again in June.

Although local donations remain strong, they haven’t kept pace with demand, prompting the organization to supplement inventory with merchandise from elsewhere.

Ted Troughton, managing director of the Salvation Army’s thrift store operations, said rising living costs are bringing in new customers.

Red Cross volunteer honoured for years of service

Melanie Young was taken aback when she was awarded the Order of the Red Cross after 14 years of service.

“I appreciate it but it’s still a surprise. I feel like I don’t deserve it. There’s so many volunteers and so many teams everywhere involved in what we do. So many others that deserve it,” says the Canadian Red Cross volunteer.

The Pas resident was given the organization’s highest honour for supporting Manitobans during some of their most difficult moments at a private ceremony this month.

Young was the only recipient of the award in the province this year and is one of 483 Canadians to have received the honour since its creation in 1984.

Oseredok's centrepiece mosaic is a testament to Ukrainian heritage

With impressionism, things can look messy when you’re eyeing the brush strokes up close. Stand back, voila, the piece comes into focus.

But with photomosaics, an image made up of hundreds of smaller photos, it’s the opposite. The closer you stand, the more images you see.

In the era of AI art, it’s all too easy to fire off a kitschy digital photomosaic. The internet is littered with mindless renderings showing, say, an image of the Statue of Liberty made up of a thousand Big Macs.

It’s another and rare thing to build a photomosaic by hand, with a genuine artist’s grasp of the form’s strange double life. This is what, for the past eight years or so, a collaborative team — in particular Edmonton-based creator and curator Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, sculptor Royden Mills, Theodora Harasymiw and a group of volunteers — did for Ukrainian Voice: A Legacy Mosaic, one of four new exhibitions at the Oseredok: Ukrainian Cultural and Education Centre.

Advocates planting the seed of a tree protection law in Winnipeg’s election

WINNIPEG - The giants that Diane Poulin used to live among are all dead, but she's hoping to protect the ones still left in Winnipeg.

“I had five mature elm trees right in front of my house that leaned over the street and formed a beautiful canopy, and they're all gone now,” she says.

In her backyard was the biggest of the bunch.

"He was like the grandfather of the neighbourhood … his canopy filled our backyard, and he’s gone."

Behind the push to make smoking and vaping illegal for a generation of Canadians

OTTAWA - It's illegal for kids under 18 to buy tobacco products in Canada and there's a movement afoot to make sure today's youth are never allowed to light up a cigarette — even after they come of age.

A law that will take effect in the United Kingdom in January will prohibit anyone born after 2008 from ever legally buying cigarettes.

In Canada, lobbyists are pushing the federal government to go even further by banning smoking and vaping products for the next generation entirely.

Sarah Sleet, CEO of Asthma + Lung U.K., said there has been broad public support for the move in Britain but it took decades of lobbying and advocacy.

Célébrer ‘la base de notre communauté’

Excursion exceptionnelle, conférences et défi financier, voici ce qui attend la Société historique de Saint-Boniface (SHSB) pour ses 125 ans. Fondée le 4 septembre 1902 par l’archevêque Adélard Langevin, cette institution garde entre ses murs les archives du patrimoine franco-manitobain et métis de l’Ouest canadien.

Un trésor précieux mis à disposition de la communauté. Ce rôle de passeur de mémoire, la nouvelle présidente, en poste depuis juin 2026, Michelle Smith le revendique : “Pour moi, la Société historique ça dit qui nous sommes, c’est comme la base de notre communauté. Ça vient confirmer qu’on existe, que nous avons une place ici.”

”Ces institutions fondées par Monseigneur Langevin, comme La Liberté, font partie des bases qui ont supporté la société francophone dans un contexte minoritaire pendant des décennies, rappelle Émilie Pigeon, directrice générale. C’est merveilleux qu’on ait réussi non seulement à préserver ces institutions pour plus de 125 ans, mais à les faire croître au point tel que la SHSB est désormais un incontournable pour tout ce qui a trait aux questions du passé collectif du Manitoba francophone.” Une mission réussie qui vaut bien une célébration d’anniversaire pour la saison 2027, qui se veut “plus mouvementée” que la saison 2026.

Une programmation exceptionnelle

Diesel bill adds to cost-price squeeze on farm

Blessed with a week of good weather, most Manitoba farmers are now in the home stretch of harvest and beginning to assess whether their crop will earn enough to cover the cost of growing it.

Commodity market prices have surged well above the numbers used to prepare production budgets earlier this year, with the price of top-quality milling wheat up 27 per cent over a year ago. Canola and soybeans are up 36 per cent and oats by 14 per cent.

That’s a significant boost for the crops harvested in good shape before rainy weather shut down operations for a couple of weeks during the critical harvesting window. However, upwards of half of the province’s crop overall was affected by the bad weather, resulting in yet-to-be calculated yield and quality losses.

Then there’s the cost side of the balance sheet.

If every child matters, why no public inquiry?

Our children are our future. They need our attention now.

Increasingly cited financial term, ‘nut,’ is worth knowing, says best-selling author

It’s nuts. That might be some folks’ reaction if they knew their “nut” in the financial sense of the word.

If that stirs visions of squirrels fighting over acorns, you are not far off.

Nut is increasingly used in popular culture, especially in the United States as the struggle increases for millions of consumers with each passing day.

A couple of high-profile TV examples are South Park and Your Friends & Neighbors, where the nut is discussed in the context of what someone’s spend rate is based on their lifestyle.

A kitchen is transformed with beautiful tiles and new countertops

Remote job sites are a challenge. Not only is distance a consideration when venturing out to gather information for a price quote, but the commute has to be factored into the project’s overall costs. As a result, many of my repeat remote clients indulge my idea to propose several projects at once, in an effort to maximize my time while putting all those kilometres on my work truck.

Although the jaunt from Winnipeg to Gimli is not that demanding, from where I live the travel time is close to two hours each way, making for long work days. So, the homeowners knew to throw everything at me once I had scheduled an initial visit. On the agenda was a main bathroom facelift as well as the addition of a frosted glass door to the office, which just had a doorless entryway from the hallway.

Nearing the end of our chat, the homeowner mentioned almost in passing how she’d love to also have a backsplash in the kitchen. Previously, the wall area above the back edge of the arborite countertops to the bottom of the upper cabinets had always been painted.

After assessing the kitchen, I would have felt remiss in not mentioning that the backsplash might not yield the desired result if they were intent on keeping the arborite counters. It wasn’t an attempt at an upsell — I truly felt that tiling the backsplash above the back edge of the old countertops was not the way to go. After a bit more discussion, I suggested that if they truly wanted a facelift, the cost-effective approach would be to retain the existing cabinetry, while upgrading the countertops to quartz, along with a new undermount sink and faucet. A newly tiled backsplash after those upgrades would be the icing on the cake. The homeowners quickly jumped on board and requested a quote for the kitchen facelift, along with the bathroom reno and the new glass door for the office.

Nurses call for national strategy on seniors’ health care

Canada’s nurses are calling for a national strategy that ensures seniors have access to care while reducing the impact on the public health system.

“Nurses and health-care workers are stretched too thinly, and Canada’s population is aging,” Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) president Linda Silas said in a news release Friday after meeting with provincial and territorial health ministers in Winnipeg.

“It’s time to act.”

The federation called for a national human resources plan to help address staffing challenges, pointing to a Canadian Institute for Health Information report showing more than three million overtime hours clocked by long-term care workers over a one-year period — the equivalent of 1,500 full-time providers.

Bank of Canada set for pair of important data drops ahead of ‘live’ rate decision

OTTAWA - The Bank of Canada will get a raft of fresh data to start next week as it weighs what could be a pivotal interest rate decision at the end of the month.

Statistics Canada is set to release its September inflation data on Monday, giving the central bank a look at how energy price pressures are influencing other parts of the consumer basket.

A Reuters poll of economists expects the annual rate of inflation rose to 3.2 per cent in September, up from three per cent in August, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.

RBC assistant chief economist Nathan Janzen said he expects inflation held steady at three per cent last month. Persistently high gasoline prices tied to the ongoing war in Iran will remain the biggest fuel for inflation, he said.