The number of impoverished children is growing

Canada is, unfortunately, beginning to look like the land of poor prospects for its children.

The country saw an increase in child poverty for the third straight year in 2023 — the most recent available public data — according to an annual child poverty report card recently released by Campaign 2000, a non-partisan coalition dedicated to ending child poverty in Canada.

It doesn’t matter which measuring stick you use: according to the official Market Basket Measure, child poverty has more than doubled since 2020, to 10.7 per cent — or 802,000 children. Meanwhile, the Census Family Low Income Measure, After Tax — which Campaign 2000 uses and claims is a better indicator — put the number at 18.3 per cent, or 1.4 million children.

According to 2023 data, Manitoba was the second-highest in child poverty rates based on the CFLIM-AT measure, at 26.9 per cent (Saskatchewan had the highest, at 27.1 per cent). Winnipeg was sixth-highest among large urban centres for the same year, at a rate of 22 per cent.

Eight of 10 people using bus to get downtown unhappy after system overhaul, BIZ survey reveals

“The level of dissatisfaction — that is dire,” said Coun. Sherri Rollins. “Winnipeggers are… voting with their feet. They’re not taking transit anymore. We’re losing revenue.”

Housing affordability challenges remain despite recent improvements: CMHC

A new analysis from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. shows housing affordability challenges have eased in recent years but still remain at historic highs, and have even spread to other major cities.

The national housing agency says affordability issues are no longer limited to Canada's largest cities and have spread to other areas such as Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax. One of the key factors, CMHC said, was the impact of labour mobility brought on by remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has persisted even as the job market has changed.

"Affordability started recovering slightly since 2023, when it reached historical lows. For home ownership, we observed improved affordability, while for renters we saw stabilization over the last two years," said Mathieu Laberge, CMHC chief economist and senior vice-president of housing insights, in a news release Wednesday.

"Even with these improvements, we cannot overlook how much housing affordability has eroded in recent years, especially in Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax, clearly demonstrating that Canada's housing affordability crisis is no longer limited to Toronto and Vancouver."

Councillor calls for permanent bike lanes on Wellington stretch

The chair of Winnipeg’s public works committee wants the city to scrap plans for temporary bike lanes on part of Wellington Crescent and immediately proceed with a permanent protected route.

Coun. Janice Lukes wants permanent lanes to be installed in 2027 if her proposal is approved, although some proponents worry there will be more delays if plans change for a road they consider unsafe.

“I know this is frustrating and it’s challenging, but we’ve got the money — move it up and let’s just do it right the first time,” Lukes told reporters.

The city on Wednesday published a staff report and design for temporary lanes on a one-kilometre section between Academy Road and Stradbrook Avenue, after getting public input on a proposed $436,000 pilot project.

Big rent hikes — a made-in-Manitoba problem

Premier Wab Kinew began 2026 by capping the price of milk in a bid to make life more affordable for Manitobans.

Now, Manitobans feeling the pinch of stagnant wages and inflation won’t have to swallow cost increases with their morning bowl of cereal. This spring, the premier has an opportunity to address one of the single largest monthly household expenses paid by Manitobans: rent.

Few provinces regulate milk prices, but most Canadian jurisdictions regulate rents. In Manitoba, rent increases are allowed once a year and capped based on changes in the consumer price index. This annual rent guideline is a fair process that accounts for increased costs while protecting tenants from rent gouging.

Despite these rules, each year thousands of tenants continue to face huge rent hikes — some well over 100 per cent.

It’s the first tax season since the CRA revamped its services. Here’s what to expect

The Canada Revenue Agency says taxpayers should have an easier time this tax season, a year after it faced criticism for long wait times and, in some cases, bad advice from representatives.

Making the most of Winnipeg’s biggest opportunity

The critical moral test for any community is the world it leaves for its children.

Without a doubt, Winnipeggers want all their city’s young people to have successful lives. Here are things we know make success possible: graduating from high school and avoiding disasters like addiction to drugs, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and becoming involved with the criminal justice system.

Most citizens understand this. And if they were told there are proven ways to make it much more likely for our wishes for Winnipeg’s young people to come true, they would probably say “Hey, let’s do more of that!”

But mostly, we don’t.

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.

Province to power up smart thermostat program, rebates

Manitobans may get cash for turning down the thermostat during peak energy-use periods next winter.

Report sheds light on critical incidents in Manitoba health care

The failure to recognize and intervene when a patient’s health has deteriorated continues to be a leading cause of death and injury in Manitoba’s health-care system.

Eight people died and 24 others suffered major medical consequences between Jan. 1 and March 31 of 2025, says the province’s latest critical incident report. That’s a slight decline in the number of critical incidents compared to the final quarter of 2024, when Manitoba logged 28 major incidents and eight deaths.

The provincial nurses union said the chronic staffing shortage is a factor.

“One critical incident a year is too many, but I am just seeing more and more incidents that have to do with issues that are preventable, which tells me loud and clear that we do not have enough nurses to monitor and oversee our patients,” Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson 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.

Canadians seeking ways to save on groceries as food costs remain top concern: survey

A survey of Canadians' perceptions around food affordability and purchasing behaviours suggests that consumers have changed how they shop, cook and eat in response to rising prices.

The latest edition of the Canadian Food Sentiment Index, released by Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab in partnership with online data platform Caddle, said food remains the dominant household financial concern for Canadians.

More than four-in-five survey respondents indicated it's their top expense pressure. While that was down from 84.1 per cent of respondents a year ago, it still far outpaces other day-to-day expense concerns, such as utilities, household items and supplies, housing, transportation and entertainment.

Half of the nearly 3,000 respondents to the survey conducted last month said food costs increased "significantly" over the past year, while just over one-third indicated their food expenses were up "slightly" and close to 12 per cent said they stayed the same.

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.”

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.

The road not taken: lowest number of Manitobans in three decades cross border at Pembina in July, August

Many Manitobans appeared to skip U.S. road trips over the summer as the number of southbound travellers hit at least a 30-year low — excluding COVID-19 pandemic years — at a major border crossing south of Winnipeg.

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.

Increase in number of doctors is only a start

Manitoba posted a record increase of new physicians this past year, a development that deserves recognition.