Proposed social-media ban for Manitoba children gets likes, thumbs-down

Mia Danyluk had a YouTube channel before she reached double digits. She was 11 years old when she signed up for Snapchat. In Grade 9, she joined Instagram.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was on social media that she learned about Manitoba’s plan to ban children and youth from accessing these platforms.

The irony was not lost on her — a 16-year-old who was raised in Winnipeg and on the borderless online world.

“We’re seeing younger and younger kids grow up with an iPad instead of toys in their hands. If we’re exposing kids to screens, we need to teach them online safety,” the high schooler said.

Kinew threatens billion-dollar fines for tech giants ignoring social-media ban for youths

Manitoba may impose billion-dollar fines on tech companies that violate a proposed ban on social media and AI chatbots for youths under the age 16.

Funding to boost early childhood educators’ pay helps some, not others, longtime workers in field lament

Although the federal and provincial governments are boosting early childhood educator wages by more than $14 million this year, some who’ve been working in the field a long time are feeling somewhat overlooked.

Youth social media ban likely to begin in schools, provincial education minister says

The first phase of a provincial social media ban for youth will likely start with Manitoba schools, which already restrict cellphone use, Education Minister Tracy Schmidt said Monday.

Manitoba education minister says social media ban could start in schools

WINNIPEG - Manitoba could turn to classrooms as the first place to ban children from using social media and artificial intelligence chatbots, and one young advocate is urging the province to work with those it's aiming to protect.

Tracy Schmidt, the province's education minister, says Manitobans can expect to see the ban's first phase rolled out in schools, likening it to when the government first banned cellphones in classrooms in 2024.

"This is very early days. A step like this is going to certainly take legislative and regulatory processes," Schmidt said at an unrelated event Monday.

"But I know that something we're talking about right away is how we can roll this out in schools as soon as possible."

Child advocates call for online harms bill covering AI chatbots, gaming

OTTAWA -

Ottawa can't afford to wait any longer to introduce new online harms legislation that covers AI chatbots and video games, children’s advocates and about a dozen kids told a press conference on Parliament Hill Monday.

They urged the government to move quickly to introduce its promised online harms bill.

"This is a David and Goliath battle — kids and parents up against a multi-billion dollar tech industry that is profiting off of harming our children," Sara Austin, founder and CEO of Children First Canada, told reporters.

Advocates praise move to ban social media use among youths

Child advocates are praising the Manitoba government for announcing its intention to ban the use of social media and artificial intelligence chatbots for youths.

Premier Wab Kinew told a crowd at a party event Saturday night the NDP government will move to restrict children from using social media accounts and artificial intelligence chatbots. The proposal is intended to protect kids from technology platforms that he says hurt their development.

Details on the plan are scant, like the age limit he is considering or how a ban would be enforced. He did not speak to reporters after his speech and was not available for comment Sunday.

Kinew’s director of communications, Amy Tuckett-McGimpsey, said the premier will likely speak more about the idea in the coming days.

‘Desperation’ drives women to private menopause care

Some women are paying private clinics up to four times the amount the public health system pays doctors for menopause primary-care visits patients can get free.

One Winnipeg woman said “desperation” drove her to make an appointment with a private clinic that charges $385 for an initial assessment by a nurse practitioner.

Erika, who did not want her last name published, said for the past year she’s suffered worsening menopause-like symptoms, including night sweats, brain fog and heavy menstrual periods. The single mother who works two jobs and turns 40 this summer said her family doctor and another primary-care physician she went to both told her she’s too young for menopause.

Neither, evidently, assessed her for perimenopause, the transition leading to menopause. During that time — which can begin when a woman is in her 30s and last for several years — hormone levels fluctuate and produce, in many cases, the symptoms Erika described.

Motherless Day embraces those grieving parental loss

There’s a collage in Katrina Zborowsky’s bedroom that is greater than the sum of its parts. The collection of fragments is tangible evidence that Zborowsky, 32, has successfully navigated yet another Mother’s Day after the loss of her mother Doris, 57, in a cycling accident in September 2020.

Wordless puppet show explores father-daughter ties

Having a parent who travels for work is a challenge for any child, but whenever Shizuka Kai’s father left on a voyage to capture elusive footage of white wolves and kodiaks, there was an element of danger that didn’t exist for other children.

“I would say I kind of grew up with my dad telling us that he actually might not come home,” says Kai, a Vancouver-based puppet maker and theatre artist. “A moment I vaguely remember as a kid was when he sat us down and explained the life-insurance process because (he) might actually get attacked and eaten by a bear, and that’s the reality of this project (he was) doing.”

That reality is put through a puppeteer’s lens in Otosan, the closing production of the 2025-2026 season at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

Based on Kai’s experiences growing up as the child of a dogged wildlife videographer, combined with memories from a joint trip to Alaska in Kai’s early 20s, Otosan — on to May 17 — is told in a wordless tabletop puppet show featuring lifelike renderings of father, daughter, grizzly bear and snowy owl.

Brainstorming session proposes solutions to alarming rate of student absenteeism

Dante Taylor spent much of his early high school career ditching class — a routine occurrence outside of football season — to hang out at trap houses in Winnipeg.

“For so long, I just didn’t care,” the 16-year-old told an auditorium packed with 200 people, many of them principals and superintendents, at a summit on student absenteeism.

“It wasn’t something that seemed to be important to me because it didn’t seem to be important to anybody that I was around.”

Dante said his perspective changed recently, after meeting with a guidance counsellor, doing extensive self-reflection and enrolling in a physics course that he finds equally fascinating and challenging.

Shortage of housing for Indigenous seniors in city raising concerns ahead of northern flood, fire evacuations

A small group of women elders is expressing concerns about a lack of urban housing for Indigenous seniors, warning the crisis will only worsen as flood and wildfire evacuations uproot more from their communities.

Nurse practitioners fill void as menopause clinic to open in 2027

Some Manitoba women are paying close to $400 to access medically necessary menopause treatment from nurse practitioners who aren’t funded by the province.

“It’s a needed service that has plenty of gaps to access,” said Ashley Carruthers, chief executive officer of the Nurse Practitioners Association of Manitoba.

Premier Wab Kinew acknowledged the need at a news conference Monday to announce a $5.2-million plan to revive the menopause clinic by fall of 2027.

For now, many women must wait for access to treatment or pay a nurse practitioner.

Most fashion mannequins are about a size 2. The Met Gala exhibit is making room for diverse bodies

NEW YORK (AP) — On a sultry summer day in Brooklyn last year, artist and couture designer Michaela Stark found herself in a studio surrounded by 175 cameras, for a photo shoot unlike any she’d done before.

Clad only in her signature corsetry that binds the flesh, Stark stood in the midst of a circle as the cameras captured all angles of her body, simultaneously — part of an intricate process known as photogrammetry. The goal: to scan her body and build a mannequin — three, actually — for display in one of the world’s top museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And at the Met Gala, no less.

“It was definitely a bit nerve-wracking,” recalls Stark of the “intimate and vulnerable” experience. But, she quips, “something about being naked on a 40-degree (Celsius) day in a corset that isn’t hiding anything kind of takes the awkwardness away from the situation, actually.”

The mannequins, and others based on real-life models like Stark, will be featured in “Costume Art,” the upcoming spring exhibit at the museum’s Costume Institute that's launched by the starry May 4 gala. It’s part of an effort to add an element of body positivity to a show that examines the dressed body in art over the centuries, says curator Andrew Bolton.

Supervised drug consumption site will be grounded in culture, compassion: facility’s leader

Winnipeg’s first supervised consumption site is being designed as a culturally grounded health space where people struggling with addiction will be met with familiarity, dignity and support from the moment they enter.

Meet neffy: Health Canada approves epinephrine nasal spray for anaphylaxis

TORONTO - Health Canada has approved the first needle-free epinephrine treatment for severe allergic reactions: a nasal spray called neffy.

ALK Canada, which purchased the rights to distribute the drug, says the two-milligram treatment could be on the market as soon as this summer.

The drug was approved for adults and pediatric patients who weigh at least 30 kilograms, which is roughly 66 pounds. A one-milligram dose has been approved in the United States for kids between 15 and 30 kilograms, but not in Canada.

As it stands, epinephrine auto-injectors — a single-use pre-filled device known by the brand name EpiPen — are the only emergency treatment option available for allergic reactions.

A small but growing movement wants you to put down your phone. But first read this

NEW YORK (AP) — More than a dozen millennials gathered in a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn and placed their phones in a metal colander before two hours of reading, drawing and conversation — anything but staring at screens.

A similar scene played out a few miles away, in an early 20th-century cardboard box factory turned high-end office space. Nearly 20 people in their 30s stared at their cellphones for a few minutes. Then they set them down and looked at their bared palms for a while. Then those of their neighbors.

The exercise was meant to drive home the importance of paying attention to real life, not the gleaming little screens that have taken over our world.

A ‘revolution’ against devices

Holocaust survivors, family members mark solemn day by remembering not to forget

Rob Berkowits carries a black and white photo in his wallet — of his father, Alex, and fellow prisoners in a Nazi Germany concentration camp — as a constant reminder the challenges in his life are small.

Province boosts CFS funding by $29M

The Manitoba government has earmarked an additional $29.2 million to bolster supports for children, youth and families in the child welfare system, but critics say it isn’t enough.

‘Desperately missed’ victims honoured as B.C. marks 10 years of toxic drug emergency

VICTORIA -

Paula Beardy said her grandson Sheldon Beardy was a good kid.

He would have turned 28 on Monday. But his mother died last year, and after attending her memorial service in August, Sheldon also died of a drug overdose.

Paula Beardy said Sheldon used to stay with her a lot and she misses his happy smile.

‘Just staggering’: city’s homelessness crisis worsening, new data reveals

Winnipeg’s homelessness crisis is accelerating, not easing, as new data released Monday shows more people are falling into homelessness than are finding a way out.

NDP pushing for ban on AI surveillance pricing as Lewis makes Parliament Hill debut

OTTAWA - The NDP is expected to introduce a motion on Wednesday calling on the government to ban a practice known as surveillance pricing that New Democrats say is unfair to consumers.

The text of the motion describes the practice as companies using a customer's personal data, like search history or how long they stay on a web page, to increase prices both in store and online.

NDP Leader Avi Lewis said Monday examples of this can include a parent with a sick baby being charged a higher price for a thermometer or medicine based on internet search history.

"This means that two different people could pay two different prices for the exact same product in the same store or on the same website on the day. It's unfair, it's a ripoff, and it's downright creepy. And it's time to put a stop to it," Lewis said.