Antisemitism on the rise, becoming normalized, B’nai Brith warns

Canada is in the throes of a national antisemitism crisis, says B’nai Brith Canada.

The organization’s annual audit of antisemitic incidents reports 6,800 in 2025, 6,248 of which involved online hate.

That is a 9.3 per cent increase over 2024, when the total was 6,219, and it represents the highest total since 1995, said B’nai Brith, the country’s oldest human rights organization dedicated to eradicating racism, antisemitism and hatred.

The biggest spike in antisemitism occurred in 2023, when the number of incidents rose from 2,769 in 2022 to 5,791 following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Lots of accolades, little details in Kinew’s proposed social media ban

Premier Wab Kinew made national news headlines on the weekend when he promised to institute a ban on social media use by youth. Although Ottawa and several other provinces have promised similar efforts, the industrious Manitoba premier beat them to the punch and the accolades.

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."

Liberals formalize majority, pass motion to restructure committees

OTTAWA - The federal government moved quickly to make use of its new majority powers on Monday, hours after three Liberals who won recent byelections took their seats in the House of Commons.

The Liberals passed a motion late Monday night to restructure committees to give them a majority of seats on committees. The Liberals held less than half the spots on each committee following the 2025 election, where they earned a minority government.

Earlier in the day, they also passed a motion to limit debate on the motion to make the changes, with opposition MPs accusing the Liberals of a power grab.

Committees study legislation and other government business and have the power to call witnesses and require the production of documents.

Prime Minister Mark Carney announces Canada’s 1st sovereign wealth fund

OTTAWA -

Prime Minister Mark Carney announced the country's first national sovereign wealth fund on Monday, pitching it as a way for Canadians to invest in nation-building projects.

Carney said the Canada Strong Fund will invest in major Canadian industrial projects in areas such as energy, infrastructure, mining, agriculture and technology.

The prime minister said the federal government will put up funds starting at $25 billion to invest alongside private investors. He said individual Canadians can also put money into the fund and suggested it would be similar to purchasing a government bond, where the initial investment is protected.

Young activists fight for kids’ voting rights in trustee elections

It doesn’t sit right with a pair of St. Boniface students that they don’t get a say in who’s elected to the nine-seat governing board in the Louis Riel School Division.

A petition to lower the age of voter eligibility in trustee elections has been circulating during recess at École Henri-Bergeron in recent months.

Grade 5 students Libby and Helen are behind the campaign.

“It’s really, really unfair that adults get to make ginormous decisions about our learning and we don’t even get to vote for (them),” Libby, 10, told the Free Press.

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.

Court rules against Manitoba First Nation in barge battle with Crown corporation

A Manitoba judge has dismissed a request from Poplar River First Nation asking a federal Crown corporation be ordered to continue operating a barge on Lake Winnipeg, ruling the Court of King’s Bench does not have jurisdiction in the matter.

The federal government has been looking to divest itself of the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corp., which held a monopoly on fish marketing and sales in the country upon its creation in 1969. It has since lost economic power as provinces, including Manitoba, have opted out.

A government-appointed advisory council, established in 2018, recommended several years ago that regional fishing groups and processors, or an Indigenous economic development corporation, take the reins as a private, user-owned operation.

Poplar River is concerned the divestment will end the community’s use of the MV Poplar River barge, owned by the Crown corporation. The remote First Nation on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg relies on the barge to drive its economy through fishing.

‘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.

Schools honouring my father will help make Canada a more inclusive place

This fall, SCI – now École Selkirk Junior High – will be renamed École Murray Sinclair Middle School in honour of my father’s accomplishments. I can only imagine how many people Dad has told in the spirit world.

Winnipeg to host three-day World Indigenous Business Forum in late October, delegates can expect ‘Manitoba experience’

After playing host to the World Indigenous Business Forum around the world, founder Rosa Walker is bringing the annual conference to her home city for the first time.

Winnipeg will host this year’s event Oct. 26-28. The conference will bring together Indigenous entrepreneurs, leaders, innovators and allies from across the globe to share knowledge, build relationships and explore opportunities for economic growth and collaboration.

Since launching the conference in 2010 in New York City, Walker has held the event in places such as Namibia, Guatemala and New Zealand. This year marks the third time a Canadian city has hosted.

Indigenous Leadership Development Institute, Inc., Walker’s non-profit company, is hosting the conference in collaboration with Winnipeg Economic Development & Tourism.

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.

Decorated footy veterans Scott, Gale spearheading push for NSL club

Three months into her official — and final — retirement, Winnipeg’s own Desiree Scott has a new mission: bringing a Northern Super League team to Winnipeg.

“To continue to grow the game, especially for women and girls, and create those opportunities to inspire them to stick with sports and put Winnipeg on the map,” Scott said in an exclusive interview with the Free Press. “Remind people that we are here, we are the heart of Canada, and we deserve similar opportunities that other provinces are getting.”

The Northern Super League kicks off its second season Friday. The first Canadian women’s pro soccer league marked its inaugural season with off-the-charts success, drawing over 275,000 fans and generating nearly $30 million in league-wide revenue despite its small six-team size. And the league is looking to expand for the first time in 2027.

But while the league itself turns two years old, Scott enlisted veteran footy coach Rob Gale two years prior about the idea of bringing the league to the Keystone province.

‘We finished the foundation’: Northern Soccer League looks to build on first season

For those at the forefront of Canada's first women's professional soccer league, the goalposts are shifting heading into the second season.

Season one was all about launching the Northern Super League, said Diana Matheson, the league's founder and chief growth officer.

Now, on the cusp of season two, the focus shifts from making history to creating a legacy.

“From our perspective at the league and all the clubs, it just feels really, really stable," Matheson said.

Meta slashes 8,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, as Microsoft offers buyouts

Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce, the company said Thursday as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires.

The company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled.

Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees.

The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7% of its U.S. workforce, according to two people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

City failed to read the room before ditching Sals

If ever there were a moment to rethink how governments award contracts, this would be it.

Manitoba crypto companies say provincial plans would put them out of business

WINNIPEG - Manitoba's plan to charge cryptocurrency operations higher electricity rates and curtail power at peak times will drive businesses under, officials with two companies told a legislature committee.

"If this goes through, our business goes bankrupt and a lot of families will be impacted," Guildo Theriault, co-founder and chief executive officer of Gator Mining, told a committee hearing Wednesday night.

The government has introduced two bills in the legislature that are aimed at controlling the growing demand on Crown-owned Manitoba Hydro's electrical grid.

One bill would charge cryptocurrency operations and data centres up to 100 per cent higher rates for electricity. The other would allow Manitoba Hydro to temporarily reduce power to cryptocurrency operators at peak times in order to ensure stability of the grid.

Syrup season in swing

Louise May has been tapping the trees at the St. Norbert Arts Centre for 37 years, extracting the nectar that becomes maple syrup.

May began making syrup as a way to connect with the trees and continue in the footsteps of the Trappist monks who originally planted the maple trees more than a century ago.

Recently, the endeavour has taken a more spiritual turn as May began collaborating with kookum Christine Cyr and sharing the syrup for a strawberry heart medicine used during Sundance ceremonies, which include a four-day fast.

“This is a really powerful medicine,” says Cyr. “It physically and spiritually helps people to get through” the ceremony when it is typically taken on the third day of the fast. At the beginning of the season, community members drummed, sang, and offered tobacco to each tree as May put the taps in.

Report on state of rural Manitoba’s economy ‘exciting work’

Declining municipal populations and workforce-bound immigrants are highlighted in a first-of-its-kind report detailing Manitoba’s rural communities.

High fuel prices driving up shipping costs for northern grocers

Whether it's Florida oranges, Colombian coffee or even homegrown items from another province, food has often travelled a long way before it reaches grocery stores in Canada.

The supply chain gets even longer for communities in the Far North.

Typically, groceries are loaded onto a truck and taken to a launch point in cities like Ottawa or Winnipeg. They're then flown, or shipped by sea, to finally reach the shelves of remote northern grocery stores.

It's an expensive journey. By the time groceries reach northern communities, the added transport costs mean items are priced significantly higher than what most Canadians pay at the grocery store — and even more for fresh and perishable produce.

After facing the death of its dominant newspaper, Pittsburgh’s media has a surprising turnaround

PITTSBURGH (AP) — In the space of a couple of weeks this spring, Pittsburgh media has lived through a near-death experience and a resurrection.

Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week announced the newspaper's sale to a nonprofit foundation that said it was committed to keeping it open. A news outlet that predates the U.S. Constitution was due to close on May 3, which would have made the Steel City the nation's largest community without a city-based paper.

Weeks earlier, the alternative Pittsburgh City Paper, whose staff learned on New Year's Day that it was closing after 34 years, roared back to life under new ownership.

They were rare positive developments for a local news industry that has seen its share of the opposite over the past two decades — newsrooms shuttered or thinned out, journalists thrown out of work, consumers drifting away. No one is pretending that a true turnaround will be easy in Pittsburgh. One thing that may help is that the city faced a news abyss and was forced to prepare for it.