World Refugee Day marked with celebration, reflection

The strength, courage and resilience of Manitoba refugees who have fled conflicts around the world were recognized as World Refugee Day was celebrated Thursday at Central Park downtown.

Newcomers of all backgrounds shared their stories and showcased their cultures.

Parwana Fasihi told her story to a crowd of people, detailing how her family fled Afghanistan with some clothes when the Taliban retook control of the country in 2021.

“It was a day that all the dreams, all the hope and all the plans I had for my future changed in one moment,” said Fasihi afterwards in an interview.

Opposition forms to First Nation’s bid for wind farm

A group of residents in southwestern Manitoba is concerned a proposed wind farm could impact their way of life.

RM of Lorne resident Bill Harrison said the Swan Lake First Nation proposal to build 30 to 35 wind turbines would disturb day-to-day life and have adverse environmental and economical impacts.

“Agriculture is a major consideration in Manitoba, it’s a major provider of food. The wind towers, they take up two to three acres a piece just to install. And then the service roads and the actual spot where the towers are planted is more too,” Harrison said Thursday.

The RM of Lorne, located 145 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg, has a wind farm in the St. Leon area that was built in 2006 and expanded in 2011. The 200 square kilometre wind farm has 73 turbines that generate the energy needs of more than 40,000 homes, according to the province.

Flooded-out Interlake farmers call for government action on neglected watershed drainage system

Guiding his side-by-side vehicle over a narrow trail separating hundreds of acres of flooded fields in this rural Manitoba municipality Thursday, local farmer Brian Boonstra said there is little hope of saving his crops.

Poll finds NDP much more popular than when elected

Support for Premier Wab Kinew and the New Democratic Party remains steady, while Obby Khan and the Progressive Conservative official Opposition are heading into the summer on a bit of a backslide, new polling results show.

Probe Research’s latest omnibus poll for June shows overall support for the NDP remains steady at 55 per cent, while the Tories have slipped to 32 per cent support — starting the legislature’s summer break in a slightly weaker position than when the last session began in March.

The results reflect the ongoing honeymoon for the New Democrats, who took power in October 2023 with 45 per cent support and have surged in popularity over more than two years. The Tories, meanwhile, entered the election cycle with 42 per cent support and have lost ground every step of the way since.

“We keep watching these numbers, wondering when the (NDP) bubble might burst — because it has to burst at some point, that’s politics — but it just doesn’t seem to happen. They seem to be just riding this incredible wave of political capital,” Probe Research partner Mary Agnes Welch said Wednesday.

Cellphones silenced at LRSD board meetings to keep trustees ‘engaged’

LOUIS Riel School Division trustees are subject to new rules, which are not unlike the ones for 17,000 students in their division in southeast Winnipeg, that dictate when they can use their personal devices.

The board of trustees approved multiple updates to its code of conduct this month. Among them is the explicit requirement every member must use divisional laptops at their public meetings.

“We look at our iPhones, laptops, emails and text messages — that’s life nowadays, but trustees don’t only need to be present in the physical sense. We need to be engaged,” longtime trustee Chris Sigurdson told a recent meeting, speaking in French.

Sigurdson raised the topic on June 2, one week after the nine-seat board received a letter from a resident expressing concerns about tech-related distractions in the boardroom at 50 Monterey Rd.

Smith tells First Nations chiefs to ‘check themselves’ over treason accusation

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said Wednesday that a group of Indigenous chiefs need to "check themselves," after they accused her of potential treasonous activity for calling a separation vote.

The Assembly of Treaty Chiefs, representing First Nations across Alberta, unanimously voted this week to ask RCMP to look into whether the province's fall referendum amounts to criminal treason by Smith and her United Conservative Party.

The chiefs, in a news release, said organizing the vote is an intentional treaty violation and that Smith's government is ignoring serious risks to Canada's sovereignty.

They said that when their treaties were signed, the RCMP — then the North West Mounted Police — committed to ensuring the safety of First Nations, while the Crown promised goodwill in exchange for sharing the land.

Conservative MP’s bill on intimate partner violence becomes law

OTTAWA - Canada will take a harder stance on intimate partner violence after a Conservative MP’s private member’s bill became law Wednesday.

The Criminal Code will soon be updated to allow the killer of an intimate partner to be charged with first-degree murder regardless of whether the act was premeditated.

Bill C-225, which received royal assent in Parliament on Wednesday, will make first-degree murder applicable to killings that happen as part of a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct.

Frank Caputo, Conservative MP for Kamloops-Thomson-Nicola, put forward the private member's bill.

Carney’s support for controversial sand mine sparks criticism

Prime Minister Mark Carney has thrown his support behind the controversial Sio Silica sand mine in southeast Manitoba before its second, scaled-down proposal has been licensed.

At the G7 leaders summit Wednesday, Carney trumpeted the memorandum of understanding signed by Manitoba’s Sio Silica and solar technology manufacturer RCT Solutions in Germany to extract sand from a large area east of Winnipeg and turn it into solar panels.

In a news readout, Carney said he met with Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the summit in France and that both welcomed “new investment partnerships” between the two nations, including two in Manitoba to “support a high-purity silica project, to extract 99.9 per cent-plus pure silica sand, highly valued for manufacturing solar panels and semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, and defence-related technologies.”

It said the second partnership involves Sio Silica, RCT Solutions and the Southern Chiefs Organization to build a fully integrated solar manufacturing hub in Manitoba.

Safety board report says doomed Titan submersible operated with no federal oversight

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada says a submersible that imploded on its way to the Titanic wreck was operating in Canada without any oversight, and it is asking federal authorities to look closer at uncertified vessels.

Committee majority recommends against MAID for mental illness, four senators object

OTTAWA - A parliamentary committee is calling on the federal government to indefinitely exclude people with mental illness from becoming eligible for medical assistance in dying, after a process that some of the committee's members decried as flawed and biased.

Conservative and Liberal members of Parliament on the committee co-signed that single recommendation in a report Wednesday that included a number of dissenting opinions.

People with a mental illness as their sole underlying condition are set to become eligible to apply for medical assistance in dying, or MAID, next March.

The committee of MPs and senators was tasked with studying whether the country is ready for that to happen.

Climate change demands action, not hope

Hoping against hope may have suddenly, quietly, become the world’s new strategy for addressing climate change.

An ancient biblical concept, hope against hope describes our ability to believe everything is going to be alright despite abundant evidence to the contrary. It’s relevant now because, after two decades of aggressive progress in reducing carbon emissions, we’ve started to retreat.

There has been progress in the energy generation sector, where zero-emission options such as hydro, wind and solar have been increasing at an aggressive rate. However, coal and oil still account for roughly two-thirds of all electricity generation in the world, even as severe weather causes trillions of dollars in damage and lost economic activity around the world.

Manitoba offers a good example of how climate change has been de-emphasized against a backdrop of severe weather. Destructive wildfires and floods have become annual events in Manitoba, but not convinced the NDP government to become more aggressive on carbon emissions.

Potash ‘test shipment’ planned for Churchill

The owner of Manitoba’s sole potash mine plans to send its first shipment to Europe via the Port of Churchill this fall.

Upwards of 200 tonnes of potash will travel to the Port of Antwerp-Bruges in Belgium, said Daymon Guillas, president of the Potash Agri Development Corporation of Manitoba (PADCOM).

From there, it’ll be taken to a client in France.

“This is a test shipment,” said Guillas, who declined to give the customer’s name.

CMHR rejects Jewish organization’s allegations of foreign interference in exhibit about Palestinians

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has said B’nai Brith’s allegations of foreign interference in connection with an upcoming exhibit are unfounded, after the Jewish organization asked the museum to investigate a meeting about the exhibit between its leaders and a Palestinian ambassador in 2024.

On Tuesday, the National Post published an email from 2024 between Ramsey Zeid, the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba president and museum officials, including vice-president of exhibitions, Matthew Cutler and CEO Isha Khan.

The correspondence appears to show plans for a meeting between museum team members and Mona Abuamara, Palestine’s ambassador to Canada, while she was at the museum in December 2024, including discussions about the exhibit, titled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present.

B’Nai Brith has previously raised concerns about the exhibit, saying the museum failed to properly consult with members of the Jewish community in its development and said the meeting has amplified those concerns.

Mayor’s cabinet signs off on proposed 110-acre neighbourhood on Dugald Road

A major development proposes to create nearly 3,000 homes, ample commercial space and a possible school at a mostly vacant industrial park.

The Waters Urban Village project would transform 110 acres (44.5 hectares) of employment and industrial land at 1390 and 1470 Dugald Road in the St. Boniface Industrial Park by creating 2,946 residential units, a commercial town centre, a central park and six business park buildings, pending final city council approval.

The largest high-rise residential buildings would be close to key Winnipeg Transit routes.

The substantial addition of infill homes and businesses fits well with the city’s goals to make use of existing infrastructure, said a proponent of the project.

‘Fundamentally broken’ support system failing Manitobans with disabilities, scathing report concludes

Manitoba’s disability support system is “fundamentally broken” and routinely fails people as they transition into adulthood, according to a damning new report that calls for a sweeping overhaul of provincial services.

Justice minister says he will review MAID committee testimony before making decision

OTTAWA - Justice Minister Sean Fraser says he will take time over the summer to review the work of a committee tasked with determining whether Canada is ready to allow people with mental illness access to medically assisted dying.

Committee co-chair Marcus Powlowski said last week the report would be presented to Parliament on Wednesday to ensure it's in the government's hands before the House of Commons takes its summer break.

Fraser said Tuesday he will consider more than the committee's conclusions and recommendations.

"Importantly to me, I'm also going to be reviewing the witness testimony upon which those recommendations were based," he said.

MPs urge action to undercut ‘manosphere’ by tackling anti-women ideology

OTTAWA - MPs are calling on the government to tackle the rise of antifeminist ideology by funding programs that undercut the "manosphere" of online influencers who blame women for men's problems.

The House of Commons status of women committee tabled a report Tuesday warning "antifeminist ideologies are becoming increasingly prominent in Canada and internationally."

The committee says boys and young men who are isolated or struggling to find their place in society are being presented with extreme content online that glorifies dominating and dehumanizing women and amplifies gender-based violence.

At a news conference on Parliament Hill, Conservative MP Dominique Vien, the committee's chair, told reporters witnesses who spoke to the committee struggled to identify a single reason for the rise in antifeminism.

Minister says ‘lost Canadians’ must prove link to Canada in each generation

OTTAWA - Immigration Minister Lena Diab says having a Canadian ancestor does not guarantee someone is eligible for Canadian citizenship.

Diab was pushed in question period Tuesday by Conservative immigration critic Michelle Rempel Garner to state how many people got proof of citizenship under the new citizenship-by-descent law using inaccurate documents.

An unknown number of people who received citizenship certificates under the new law received letters from the federal government over the weekend demanding that they surrender them. A statement from the Immigration Department says "a limited number" of people received these letters.

A spokesperson from Diab's office later said "a few dozen" surrender letters have been issued.

Ottawa’s new surveillance pricing rules not likely to take effect before 2028

OTTAWA - The federal government wants to be "super careful" as it tackles surveillance pricing, Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said after tabling the government's new privacy bill.

Under the plan outlined by Solomon, those rules on surveillance pricing are unlikely to be in place before 2028.

"It's very easy to say just ban using personal information to give personal pricing, because we have to be super careful that we don't want to penalize people who are members of a rewards program," Solomon said Monday in an interview with The Canadian Press.

The government introduced the bill Monday — its third attempt to update decades-old privacy laws covering the private sector.

Liberal government tables new First Nations drinking water legislation

New legislation tabled by the government on Tuesday will create a legislative framework to protect drinking water in First Nations communities, Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty said.

Man’s suicide raises concerns about sentencing of Indigenous offenders

The suicide of a young Indigenous man is raising questions about the province’s efforts at reconciliation in the justice system.

Ethan Wildcat was arrested in 2021 at age 19 following a gun incident at a Winnipeg home that resulted in no injuries. The first-time offender pleaded guilty in court and received a three-year prison sentence.

A formal Gladue report was not prepared for the sentencing.

“Our system isn’t working the way it’s supposed to,” said criminal defence lawyer and MLA Mark Wasyliw, noting Indigenous Manitobans make up 18 per cent of the general population and 82 per cent of those incarcerated.