Manitoba urges court to throw out First Nation’s moose-hunt lawsuit

The Manitoba government is arguing a northern First Nation’s lawsuit over moose hunting on its traditional territory should be tossed out of court.

Misipawistik Cree Nation filed its statement of claim in the Court of King’s Bench in September, arguing licensed moose hunting on its traditional lands northwest of Lake Winnipeg infringes on the community’s treaty rights to hunt moose for food amid dwindling populations of the big game animal.

But in a recently filed statement of defence, the province argues it has upheld its duties.

“Manitoba denies that there have been any unjustified infringements of Treaty No. 5, that it has failed to act honourably toward the plaintiff, or that any court intervention or other remedy is required,” reads the government court filing.

Schools’ internet use spikes as students, teachers pull for Canadian — and local — athletes

Manitoba schools broke a record as students and staff tuned in to cheer on athletes — and in some cases, alumni — at the Winter Olympics.

The organization that connects the province’s 37 public school divisions to the internet saw historic spikes in activity this week.

Bandwith usage more than doubled what’s typical on a weekday for the Manitoba Education, Research and Learning Information Networks when Canadian hockey teams competed in the medal rounds in Milan Cortina.

MERLIN revealed usage spiked to 71.25 gigabits per second during the gold-medal game for women’s hockey, which Canada lost 2-1 to the U.S. in overtime, on Thursday.

Galápagos park releases 158 juvenile hybrid tortoises on Floreana to restore the ecosystem

FLOREANA ISLAND, Ecuador (AP) — Nearly 150 years after the last giant tortoises were removed from Floreana Island in Ecuador’s Galápagos archipelago, the species made a comeback Friday, when dozens of juvenile hybrids were released to begin restoring the island’s depleted ecosystem.

The 158 newcomers, aged 8 to 13, have begun exploring the habitat they are destined to reshape over the coming years. Their release was perfectly timed with the arrival of the season’s first winter rains.

“They are large enough to be released and can defend themselves against introduced animals such as rats and cats,” said Fredy Villalba, director of the Galápagos National Park breeding center on Santa Cruz Island, noting that the best specimens with the strongest lineage were selected specifically for Floreana.

These released juvenile specimens, out of a total of 700 planned for Floreana, will be introduced gradually. According to Christian Sevilla, director of ecosystems of the Galapagos National Park, they carry between 40% and 80% of the genetic makeup of the Chelonoidis niger —a species that has been extinct for 150 years.

Data centres and infrastructure: an expensive pairing

Governments around the world — India being the latest — have been falling over themselves trying to lure power-hungry, water-thirsty data centre operations to build in their backyards.

Homelessness a humanitarian crisis, Rattray says

Jennifer Rattray says few challenges facing Winnipeg are as urgent as the homeless crisis.

“Collectively as a society, as a province, as a city, we need to do better,” the new executive director of End Homelessness Winnipeg told the Free Press.

She says a humanitarian crisis has unfolded on city streets.

“It’s awful,” she says. “We need to do something, and we need to do more than what we’re currently doing.”

Food inflation spiked 7.3% in January. Here’s what’s driving the increase

OTTAWA - Statistics Canada reported an easing in the headline inflation rate Tuesday but a jump in the pace of food inflation amid tax changes and lingering pressures at the grocery store continue to put the squeeze on consumers.

StatCan said Tuesday that the annual rate of inflation edged down to 2.3 per cent in January. Economists had expected inflation to hold steady at 2.4 per cent.

The agency said gas prices were 16.7 per cent lower year-over-year in January, largely thanks to the end of the consumer carbon price in April. Shelter inflation — long a pain for households in Canada — also fell to its lowest level in nearly five years as rent pressures abate.

Those declines helped offset food inflation, which accelerated to 7.3 per cent annually in January from 6.2 per cent a month earlier.

Food inflation expected to jump in January amid tax changes: economists

OTTAWA - Economists expect tax changes from a year ago will result in a year-over-year surge in food prices when Statistics Canada reports January inflation figures later this week.

StatCan will publish its January consumer price index report on Tuesday, a day later than originally scheduled.

The agency recently adopted a Monday publishing schedule for the consumer price index but shifted the January release to account for a regional holiday in eight provinces.

A Reuters poll of economists expects the annual rate of inflation held steady at 2.4 per cent in January, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.

School nutrition program prompts student trash talk

One student’s trash has become another student’s research sample at Robertson School.

Ottawa to relaunch EV rebates program in 2 weeks with new auto strategy

OTTAWA - The federal government announced a suite of new electric vehicle policies Thursday, including the reintroduction of the popular rebate program and the elimination of the EV sales mandate in favour of stricter emissions standards for the auto sector.

The move is the latest rollback of climate policies enacted by former prime minister Justin Trudeau. The government of Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled the consumer carbon price and halted the implementation of an emissions cap on the oil and gas sector.

Speaking at an auto parts manufacturer in Woodbridge, Ont., Carney said Thursday Ottawa pitched the new plan as a transformation of Canada's auto sector, which has been battered for months by U.S. tariffs.

"We have everything we need to take the lead in the vehicles of tomorrow, and we're positioning Canadian workers and businesses to seize that opportunity," he said.

Manitoba has most measles cases in Canada — and it’s likely much worse, doctors say

Manitoba has the country’s highest number of reported measles infections in 2026 — a year after the province’s outbreak began — while a surge brings stronger messaging from the government.

Dr. Davinder Singh, who is Manitoba’s public health lead on measles, said the province is seeing its highest monthly totals since May.

“Unfortunately, we’re seeing an increase in the number of detected or reported cases. We also know the number of cases that are diagnosed are only a relatively small fraction of the true number of cases out in the community,” he said Wednesday.

“We can estimate that there may be about 10 times as many infections as we have that get reported to us or that get detected.”

Without key GPS data, transit plan lacked direction

For the first six months after Winnipeg Transit’s $20.4-million network overhaul, city officials had little information to assess how well the new system was working.

The city’s data had been plagued by a faulty GPS tracking system that left major gaps in the first four months of ridership and performance numbers, which prevented Winnipeg transit from making significant adjustments to the network.

Flaws in the vision meant to rekindle the city’s relationship with transit have been widely reported — ridership is down, service hours are shorter and passengers are so underwhelmed, some users, in rare cases, have reportedly bought cars for the first time. Instead of encouraging more Winnipeggers onto the bus, the system appears to be driving users away.

The Free Press/Narwhal set out to understand when and why ridership was lagging. While the independent analysis showed declines on weeknights and weekends are far steeper than previously reported, transit officials warned the city’s publicly available figures are unreliable.

How does climate change affect the likelihood of extreme rain? Federal department aims to publish rapid results

Federal scientists will start to publish rapid results looking at how much more likely major rainstorms have become due to climate change.

Environment and Climate Change Canada says it's expanding its rapid attribution system, so far used to analyze extreme temperatures, to also include extreme precipitation.

"This area of research supports important decision-making that helps Canadian communities prepare for and adapt for the changing frequency and severity of extreme weather events," said Madalina Surcel, a climate extreme specialist with the department.

Officials say they have already run the tool on 42 extreme precipitation events across Canada since June. They say the vast majority of those events were up to two times more likely to happen because of climate change, and three were up to 10 times more likely.

$54.7M sale of Frida Kahlo self-portrait breaks auction record for female artists

A haunting 1940 self-portrait by famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold Thursday for $54.7 million and became the top-selling work by any female artist at an auction.

The painting of Kahlo asleep in a bed — titled “El sueño (La cama)” or in English, “The Dream (The Bed)” — surpassed the record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1," which sold for $44.4 million in 2014.

The sale at Sotheby's in New York also topped Kahlo's own auction record for a work by a Latin American artist. The 1949 painting “Diego and I,” depicting the artist and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, went for $34.9 million in 2021. Her paintings are reported to have sold privately for even more.

The self-portrait is among the few Kahlo pieces that have remained in private hands outside Mexico, where her body of work has been declared an artistic monument. Her works in both public and private collections within the country cannot be sold abroad or destroyed.

Humane society launches holiday hamper drive amid spike in pet food bank demand

Rachelle St. Cyr has had to scrape together change or go without basic necessities if it means her three cats are happy and healthy.

The 49-year-old self-described animal lover has had her two senior cats, named Boots and Mittens, for more than 16 years. The newest addition, seven-month-old Max, was an outdoor stray she couldn’t bring herself to leave behind.

But as the cost of living has skyrocketed so, too, has the cost of pet food and litter, and St. Cyr has visited the Winnipeg Humane Society’s pet food bank to fill the gaps.

“My cats eat better than I do,” she said Wednesday. “My cats sometimes eat more than I can afford to feed myself.”

Harvest Manitoba expands weekend snack program in province

Thousands more children will get nutritious snacks to eat on weekends thanks to Harvest Manitoba.

Influencers have more reach on 5 major platforms than news media, politicians: report

OTTAWA - More than two-thirds of younger Canadians engage with political content from influencers — and influencers have significantly more reach on five major social media platforms than news media outlets or politicians, a new study indicates.

A significant portion of the political content Canadians see on the major platforms "comes directly from influencers," says the report from the McGill University and University of Toronto-led Media Ecosystem Observatory.

The report focused on posts from individuals and institutions on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Bluesky. It did not look at or compare reach on websites, other online platforms or traditional platforms.

The researchers say they identified 1,097 influencers and collected 4.1 million of their posts from January 2024 to July 2025 on five social media platforms. Over that time period, politicians were responsible for 1.1 million posts while media outlets accounted for 2.8 million.

The ‘fix’ is a fantasy as dysfunctional health-care system fails Manitobans on multiple fronts

If you’ve been stuck in a Winnipeg emergency room wondering why you’re waiting longer than ever to see a doctor, you’re not imagining it.

New numbers are in, and they paint a grim picture of a health-care system still in crisis.

According to the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s 2024-25 annual report released this week, emergency room and urgent care wait times have jumped 36 per cent over the past three years.

The 90th percentile wait time — meaning nine out of 10 patients are seen faster and one in 10 waits longer — has ballooned from 7.6 hours in 2022-23 to 10.3 hours in 2024-25.

Prolonged drought stunts the renowned wild blueberry crop in the Maritimes

HALIFAX - This summer’s prolonged drought across Atlantic Canada has had a costly impact on wild blueberry growers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Donald Arseneault, general manager of the NB Blueberries industry group, says that as this year’s harvest was wrapping up, the total yield was believed to be 70 per cent less than the previous three-year average.

“This year has been tremendously dry and we haven't really seen this in a long time,” Arseneault said, adding that this year’s crop amounted to about 20 million pounds, down from the annual average of 68 million pounds.

The industry, which ships its product around the world, was also hurt by delays caused by the provincial government’s decision to temporarily shut down the harvest as it tried to deal with a growing number of wildfires that flared up amid tinder-dry conditions.

Winnipeg firefighters can’t keep doing more with less

Fifty years ago, Winnipeg had fewer people, fewer challenges, and more firefighters. Today, our city has grown by roughly 53 per cent, but the Winnipeg Fire Department (WFD) has fewer frontline firefighters on duty than it did in 1975. This is not just a historical footnote. It is a red flag.

Only moratorium can save moose population: MWF

The Manitoba Wildlife Federation is calling for a moose-hunt moratorium in two parts of the province after aerial surveys showed “significantly declining” numbers of the animal.

“The populations may never bounce back,” the federation’s Chris Heald said Tuesday.

The advocacy group representing sport hunters and anglers issued a news release calling for the complete closure of the fall moose hunt in Duck Mountain and Porcupine Forest. It follows Manitoba Conservation’s 2023 aerial survey results, which indicate “significantly declining moose populations” in the game-hunting areas in western Manitoba.

It wouldn’t be the first time for a moose conservation closure there. In 2011, licensed and Indigenous hunters supported a full closure of the moose hunt after a 2010 survey the showed moose population had fallen in both areas to 2,471 animals.

Robot umpires are coming to MLB. Here’s how they work

NEW YORK (AP) — Robot umpires are coming to the big leagues in 2026 after Major League Baseball’s 11-man competition committee on Tuesday approved use of the Automated Ball/Strike System.

ABS will be introduced in the form of a challenge system in which the human umpire makes each call, which can be appealed to the computer. Robot umpires have been tested in the minor leagues since 2019, with recent testing done at Triple-A since 2022, MLB spring training this year and at this summer's All-Star Game in Atlanta.

Here's what to know about MLB's robot umps.

How does the Automated Ball-Strike System work?