Manitoba tourism reached new heights in 2025

Despite a devastating wildfire season, tourism in Manitoba hit record highs in 2025.

Older Canadians less confident in their retirement finances: BlackRock survey

A new survey from BlackRock finds that Canadians who are closer to retirement age appear to be less confident about their plans compared with younger people.

“Canadians have made meaningful progress building retirement savings, but saving is only part of the equation,” said Nick Nefouse, global head of retirement solutions at BlackRock, in a news release Tuesday.

"As people move through different stages of life, they face different retirement challenges, from balancing competing priorities early in their careers to making decisions about income, spending and risk later on."

The survey finds that 70 per cent of generation Z respondents indicated they are on track for their retirement, compared with only 51 per cent of gen X respondents, "showing signs that confidence is shifting as retirement gets closer."

Business leaders want capital gains deferral to keep money in Canadian firms

TORONTO - Canadian business leaders are calling on the federal government to reform tax policies in hopes of bolstering investments in domestic firms.

More than 150 investors and executives signed a letter sent to Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne on Tuesday, asking him to consider two policies they claim will bolster entrepreneurship in Canada.

The first encourages the country to adopt a program akin to the U.S. qualified small business stock incentive, which allows capital gains from qualified small business stocks to be excluded from federal tax.

The second proposes allowing more entrepreneurs and investors to defer paying some capital gains taxes when proceeds from some domestic business transactions are reinvested in another homegrown venture.

Budding food scrap pickup services across the US want your coffee grounds and eggshells

DETROIT (AP) — Every Monday, Ricky Blanding drives his Ford Ranger pickup truck around Detroit along a carefully planned route.

Blanding hops in and out of the truck, grabbing buckets of food scraps from porches and restaurants, piling those scraps into bins in the truck bed and driving them to a composting site.

Blanding is the CEO of Scrap Soils, one of the many budding food waste collection services across the country helping to divert food from landfills and make composting more accessible. It's especially important for those who can't compost at home, who live in cities without municipal curbside pickup or who can't get to a drop-off location.

Composting leftover coffee grounds, eggshells, carrot tops and more reduces the amount of food that goes into dumps where it produces the potent greenhouse gas methane. It also ultimately helps create healthy soil for gardeners and urban farmers.

Lemonade stand brings in hundreds for West Broadway Youth Outreach

Like most 12-year-olds, there’s nothing Ruby Barkley enjoys more than a tall glass of lemonade. So when she decided to set up a lemonade stand, Ruby’s Sips + Sweets, in her neighbourhood last month, her mom was only too happy to say yes.

Especially since Ruby had decided she was going to donate proceeds of the sales to West Broadway Youth Outreach (WBYO), a non-profit organization providing recreational and life-skills programming for children aged four and up.

Ruby had set up lemonade stands in the past and was accustomed to serving up glasses from a pitchers of drink she’d already pre-made, but this time round she chose to do something different.

“We got a muddler press and I hand-pressed the lemons and then added flavours. It’s a whole process. It’s hand squeezed right before your eyes and anybody can watch it. I loved doing it,” she says.

The election of our discontent: City at a crumbling crossroads, grumbling residents say in poll

There’s an undercurrent of unhappiness running through the Winnipeg electorate as the municipal election day approaches.

One-half of Winnipeggers believe the city is heading in the wrong direction, according to a new Abacus Data poll, with nearly one-third unsure if Winnipeg is regressing or progressing.

Only 21 per cent of residents believe the city is on the right track, the Free Press-commissioned poll found.

That discontentment extends to how the city spends its tax dollars, with four in 10 Winnipeggers believing they receive poor value for what they pay in property taxes.

Slugs gone, bugs gone, strawberries thriving as invasive lizards boom in B.C.

Tracy Menzies had been at war with slugs in her backyard garden as they've always managed to beat her to the harvest, but not this year.

The strawberries in her garden this season turned out to be "absolutely beautiful."

It turns out the slugs are facing a formidable foe — the invasive European wall lizard, which experts say are spreading fast and eating everything in their path, from insects and spiders to slugs.

Menzies, who lives near the Gorge Waterway in Saanich, said she started noticing the lizards in her yard in growing numbers a few months ago, darting through her garden and scurrying under foot.

Broadening prediction-market gambling a bad idea

Let’s make a prediction: sooner or later, when Canadian governments find a way to take their own cut of the action, prediction-contract gambling on everything from sports to entertainment to political decisions is going to come to Canada.

And that’s a horrible, dangerous, pernicious idea.

Unless you have particular access to information — either inside information or strategic information based on skills or education — you’re not likely to make money at it. In fact, structurally, you’re likely to lose. In prediction markets, you basically pay an amount, plus fees from the company involved, to bet on whether something will or will not happen within a certain time frame. The amount you pay for your contract depends on how other people are also betting.

As Wealthsimple describes it, “You buy whichever side you think is right. Prices move with demand, so if the market leans towards one outcome, the more that side costs. If a lot of people are backing the TSX to finish above 38,000, yes gets more expensive and no gets cheaper.”

Wet weather heats up feed grain availability

Other than those in another rain cloud, it’s hard to find the silver linings attached to this year’s soggy harvest.

A showery September continued to cause delays and more deterioration in both quality and yield. Plus, the costs of mitigating post-harvest losses to spoilage are rising as the delays push further into fall. It takes more heat and time to artificially dry down grain as temperatures cool.

Crops harvested in August before the weather turned warm and damp came off with good quality and average yields. But farmers in some areas, such as southwest Manitoba, had only started when the rains came. Now they are plagued with standing water and sprouting swaths of grain that might not even make feed quality.

Suffice to say crop insurance adjusters are going to be busy this fall.

Cops handcuffed by bail issues, lack of mental-health options, WPS chief tells residents in crime-ridden North End neighbourhood

Weak bail reform and a lack of mental-health resources and addictions treatment beds are making it more difficult to tackle crime in inner-city neighbourhoods such as William Whyte, where there has been a significant increase in criminal behaviour compared to last year, the city’s top police officer says.

Winnipeg Police Services Chief Gene Bowers made the remarks Thursday night at an event hosted by the William Whyte Neighbourhood Association, where about two dozen residents gathered to share their concerns about crime in the North End community.

“Fentanyl and meth, that’s caused a strain on all our front lines and and all these agencies that are trying to help people,” Bowers told the room of people at Inner City Youth Alive on Aberdeen Avenue Thursday night.

“What really is the problem is there’s no treatment. That’s the gap, because (police and agencies) are all churning the same people through, and we’re all seeing them. We’re all frustrated that there’s no help.”

Gordon Bell rings in a century

Mischka Valencia had gotten used to the hum of heavy machinery at Gordon Bell High School.

“Ever since I’ve been here, it’s all been under construction,” the Grade 12 student said, standing on the sidelines of the brightly painted revamped outdoor basketball court. “I had no idea this was a court.”

The Filipina teenager landed in Winnipeg several months after the inner-city campus had transformed into a construction site.

It was the fall of 2023 and Mischka’s priorities were fitting in, befriending classmates and learning a third language via first-period French.

Here’s why experts say now is an ideal time to protect yourself from flu

It’s October and time for flu shots.

Medical experts urge getting a flu vaccination soon, before influenza starts spreading widely — and to get up to date on protection against other fall respiratory viruses, too. Updated COVID-19 shots are available now, plus shots for people especially vulnerable to another winter risk called RSV.

While these infections make many people feel miserable for a few days before they recover, every year flu alone causes hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations in the U.S. and kills tens of thousands.

Vaccination isn’t “a guarantee that we’re going to prevent illness. But just like the seat belt in your car, it decreases risk” of the worst outcomes, said Dr. Ryan Stanton of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Critical mineral development: Grid Metals promotes southeast Manitoba cesium deposit

An exploration company says it’s found the second-largest cesium deposit to be developed in the Western world — and it’s looking to mine in southeastern Manitoba.

Cesium is used in the defence sector, solar panels, internet and phone networks and GPS satellites, among other things. Canadian and United States governments have both deemed it a critical mineral.

It’s rare: just six cesium deposits have been found globally, according to the company behind the Manitoba site.

Grid Metals, a Toronto-based firm, spent October 2025 through March drilling holes in land 130 kilometres east of Winnipeg, at its Falcon West property.

Winnipeg’s challenge: preparing for weather extremes

A new United Nations report warns the world will exceed the 1.5 C Paris limit by 2030.

Trade tensions spur fresh wave of interest in community-supported farms, fisheries

It started with one fisher who wanted to be paid a fair price for his catch.

Now Skipper Otto — Canada’s largest community-supported fishery — is connecting roughly 70 independent fish harvesters directly to Canadian consumers, a number that has grown as trade tensions with the United States send demand for local food soaring.

"We have our commitments before we even untie from the docks," said Skipper Otto chief executive Sonia Strobel, whose father-in-law Otto Strobel was the inspiration for the seafood business she co-founded with her husband, Shaun.

"Our members can pick and choose whatever seafood they want throughout the year from their pre-paid credit," she said in an interview from Vancouver. "It's a model that supports local small-scale fisheries and we're seeing more and more interest as Canadians think hard about food security and supporting local."

Hero fought to remember children lost at residential school

The story of the gravesites of students who attended the Brandon Indian Residential School underneath the Turtle Crossing Campground is truly a Manitoba tragedy.

In a smart-device world, some families keep phone jacked into the wall

When the phone rings in Kristin Shiach and Jordan Sobkowicz’s Riverview home, their three daughters race to see who can be the first to answer.

“It depends who is closest,” says 13-year-old Emily. “If I’m sitting in my room, I can get to it quickest.”

“That’s because it’s always in your room,” Anna, 10, replies. “You never put it back!”

“Usually, when the phone rings,” explains Sobkowicz, “someone yells really loudly —”

Perfecting profitability

More jaded of investors may roll their eyes at another book offering up a formula for the “perfect portfolio.”

Veteran portfolio manager Peter Lazaroff, based in St. Louis, and host of the Long Term Investor podcast understands the scepticism around his recently published book The Perfect Portfolio: a Proven Guide to Smart Investing for Long-Term Success.

Yet the chief investment officer at Plancorp Wealth Management, which has about US$10.2 billion in assets under management, has a caveat to the notion of the perfect portfolio.

“The perfect portfolio on paper is probably a lot different than the perfect portfolio for you in real life because what’s ‘perfect’ is a formula you can stick with for decades on end.”

Gillingham outlines big plan for Seine River in a second term as mayor

Scott Gillingham promises to turn the Seine River into a permanent recreation and nature attraction, if re-elected as mayor.

At a riverside campaign announcement Friday, Gillingham said a long-term plan would be to create Rivière-Seine Historic Municipal Riverway encompassing the entire Winnipeg section of the Seine, building on past volunteer efforts to clean up the river and make it a paddle-friendly attraction.

The Seine, which winds through St. Boniface and St. Vital, originates in the Sandilands Provincial Forest, passes through southeastern Manitoba, crosses the Red River Floodway and joins the Red River in St. Boniface just north of The Forks.

“What we want to do, really, is to establish the permanence of this river and allow its beauty and the opportunity to enjoy it, to be something that we don’t just leave to volunteers alone, but come together and focus on establishing it as, really, a place that gets focused attention and investment,” said Gillingham.

Restaurants ‘under pressure’

Happy hour outings are on Jackie Piggott’s calendar — but even those are fewer.

She and her husband might visit a restaurant once a month. It’s a change over the past year: earlier, they might go twice, thrice or weekly.

“It’s something that we’ve talked about, my husband and myself, just because the pricing is so expensive,” Piggott said, stopping during a grocery run in St. Vital. “It’s also better for our health.”

She’s in the majority: a new Restaurants Canada report found 80 per cent of Canadians are eating out less frequently because of higher living costs, up from 75 per cent in 2025.

Positive anticipation is growing about major housing developments underway in Winnipeg’s downtown

If traffic is light and the wind is down, Somia Sadiq is able to hear the roar of Winnipeg Jets fans twice: first through her window, then on TV.

From her apartment view high above downtown, she can look out at Graham Avenue’s painted pedestrian landscape, see construction cranes and hear the heavy equipment at work as massive housing projects take shape at The Forks, at what used to be Portage Place shopping centre and at the former Hudson’s Bay building.

Sadiq has lived at 300 Main for 2 1/2 years, a few steps from the city’s famous, windy and reopened-to-pedestrians Portage Avenue intersection. At 42 storeys, it’s the tallest building in Winnipeg.

She is among 18,000 downtown residents who will soon be joined by thousands of others attracted to the city’s core by the new wave of major construction projects.