Alberta’s Smith to put immigration, Constitution questions on fall referendum

EDMONTON - Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's government is putting nine questions to a provincewide referendum on Oct. 19, including proposals to restrict social services from some immigrants.

One question asks Albertans if non-permanent residents should be charged a "reasonable" fee to access health and education systems.

Another asks for approval to cut off newcomers from social services if they don't fall under "Alberta approved immigration status." The question doesn't define what that status means.

Other questions delve into the Constitution, asking whether Alberta should open negotiations with the rest of Canada to abolish the Senate and to give provinces the power to appoint superior court judges.

New homes, businesses and parks anchor plan for revitalized Point Douglas

An ambitious, decades-long plan to revitalize Point Douglas proposes a balanced mix of new homes, businesses and light industrial sites with the aim of creating a safe, inclusive and complete neighbourhood.

Some residents, business owners and local councillors expressed hope and optimism Wednesday after the city published details of the proposed secondary plan for one of Winnipeg’s oldest areas.

“Unfortunately, Point Douglas has been known as an area that just gets dumped on, and it’s really disheartening to hear that from the community in that they’re so desperate for some revitalization and some TLC,” said Point Douglas Coun. Vivian Santos, whose ward includes South Point Douglas, which borders downtown Winnipeg.

“I really hope that in the next decade or so we’re going to see some really good plans and revitalization, and people really wanting to invest and work, live and play here.”

Canada should work to recruit bilingual health workers, Senate report says

OTTAWA - Many Canadians face barriers to accessing health care in their own language and the federal government should prioritize fast-tracking immigration and credential recognition for bilingual and francophone health-care workers, a new Senate report says.

The Senate committee on official languages recently wrapped up an 18-month study of language barriers in the health system.

It heard from witnesses from across the country — including anglophones in Quebec and francophones in the rest of Canada who said that they have trouble accessing care in their own language.

"There is an acute shortage of health care professionals all across Canada, which has been intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and the growing influx of newcomers," the report said, adding that attracting more health professionals to Canada and more training and foreign credential recognition are all needed.

Cuban drivers face monthslong wait for gasoline in a government app designed to reduce lines

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) — Drivers in Cuba are facing the prospects of waiting several months to refuel their cars, as fuel shortages caused by a U.S. oil siege intensify.

To avoid chaos outside gas stations, Cuba’s government last week made it obligatory for drivers to use an app known as Ticket to get refueling appointments.

But drivers in Havana told The Associated Press on Monday that the app is only awarding them appointments several weeks or months from now.

“I have (appointment) number seven thousand and something,” said Jorge Reyes, a 65-year-old who downloaded the app on Monday.

A look at Ramadan and how Muslims observe the holy month

CAIRO (AP) — Observant Muslims the world over will soon be united in a ritual of daily fasting from dawn to sunset as the Islamic holy month of Ramadan starts. For Muslims, it’s a time for increased worship, religious reflection and charity. Socially, it often brings families and friends together in festive gatherings around meals to break their fast.

Ramadan is followed by the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

First day of Ramadan expected around Feb. 18-19

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar; the month cycles through the seasons.

Modern, historic letters showcase love in dangerous times

Love is in the air at Oseredok.

The Ukrainian cultural and educational centre’s current exhibition, Love Letters: A Timeless Experience, bears witness to the fraught and emotional journeys of past and present Ukrainian-Canadian couples through historical love letters, digital declarations and personal artifacts as they navigated courtship, separation and reunion.

Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the exhibition draws on a combination of archival material, including the cultural centre’s collection of rare wedding photographs and studio portraits, and visual installations to trace the love lives of Ukrainian-Canadians across the decades.

A letter-writing manual penned in 1913 by linguist and author F. Dojacek forms the backbone of the immersive show.

Who is championing Canada in Alberta?

The most perplexing aspect of the incipient secession movement in Alberta isn’t that there are grassroots voices promoting it, but that there are few establishment voices challenging it. When the division of your country is on the table, why is the knife and fork only in the hands of the separatists?

Most days of the week, we are Team Canada. That’s because most days U.S. President Donald Trump seems to attack us. Unity against the latest orange narcissist threat comes automatically, if fatiguingly. But unity in the face of provincial grievance and a separatist movement is harder to manifest. It generates its own kind of fatigue.

Why?

First of all, we’ve seen this movie before. A half-century of official Quebec separatism, two referendums and numerous Parti Quebecois sovereigntist governments, have left most Canadians jaded as to the prospect of the same dynamic in Alberta.

Canada and France open consulates in Greenland following tensions over US push for control

NUUK, Greenland (AP) — Canada and France opened diplomatic consulates on Friday in the capital of Greenland, showing support for NATO ally Denmark and the Arctic island in the wake of U.S. efforts to secure control of the semiautonomous Danish territory.

Canada's maple-leaf flag went up and dozens of people sang “O Canada” as Foreign Minister Anita Anand officially opened the country's consulate in Nuuk, which is also the largest city of the icy Arctic island.

“The significance of raising this flag today and formally opening the consulate is that we will stand together with the people of Greenland and Denmark on many issues,” she said.

Anand cited deepening ties on defense, security, climate change, economic resilience and Arctic co-operation.

Greenland’s foreign minister hails new Canadian consulate as ‘historic’

NUUK - The Canadian flag was raised and dozens of people joined in a spontaneous version of O Canada on Friday as Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand officially opened the new consulate in Nuuk, Greenland.

"The significance of raising this flag today and formally opening the consulate is that we will stand together with the people of Greenland and Denmark on many issues," Anand said, citing deepening ties on defence, security, climate change, economic resilience and Arctic co-operation.

"The co-operation between Denmark, Greenland and Canada will continue, not just in the short term, not just in the medium term, but in the long term."

Canada announced plans for the new diplomatic mission in December 2024, before U.S. President Donald Trump escalated his threats to annex the Danish territory.

Danielle Smith plays separation carrot-and-stick

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is beginning to look like something of a separation arsonist.

Exhibition digs into colonial ideas, societal pressures and resource use of lawns

Carrie Allison has thought a lot about lawns.

Specifically, the Halifax-based multidisciplinary artist thought about the time, money, resources and energy spent on the endless pursuit of the perfectly manicured, kelly-green squares in front of suburban houses; the colonial ideas about value, virtue, class and wealth lawns uphold; and the pressures exerted by societal expectations and full-on city bylaws to control what is a living thing.

It’s those ideas that inform we tend to care, a touring solo exhibition curated by Franchesca Hebert-Spence. The Winnipeg iteration of the show will be presented across two venues — Urban Shaman and within WAG-Qaumajuq’s permanent collection galleries — in collaboration with Marie-Anne Redhead, assistant curator of Indigenous and contemporary art at WAG-Qaumajuq.

“Lawns and grass are very much associated with that sort of, I would say, propaganda of what we value in society,” says Allison, 39, who is of nêhiýaw/Métis/mixed European descent. “They are used to tell people what they should value and how they should use their time.”

Hampers help spread ‘Ramadan warmth’

In a small building on St. Anne’s Road, packages of dried chickpeas, dates and rose water are stuffed into cardboard boxes.

The boxes are neatly packed along an assembly line with about a dozen items before being handed off to a table of young women who wrap them in clear cellophane adorned with polka dots and seal it with a purple ribbon.

“We want to make it feel a little special and make it look nice and put together. Because we could just give them a basket, but we want to make sure it looks nice,” said volunteer wrapper Sumha Ali.

The group of 16 volunteers hope to pack 175 food hampers in just two hours. After all, there’s no time to waste: Ramadan is only two weeks away and they want to get hampers in the hands of families well before it begins.

Alberta’s Smith owes answers before separation vote: former federal minister Dion

EDMONTON - The man who helped write the rules on separation votes in Canada says if Alberta’s premier is going to take her province down that “worrying” path, she has a duty to spell out to everyone how it will be triggered and what happens afterward.

Stéphane Dion says Danielle Smith must make it clear what she would do if Alberta votes to leave and whether she would also carry out the required negotiations with the federal government.

Dion also says it's up to Smith to determine the clear majority threshold number for a successful referendum, as the federal law doesn't specify.

"She owes that to the people of Alberta and the whole people of Canada," Dion said in an interview Wednesday.

Defiant Minneapolis citizenry delivers aspirational message

There have been many times over the last several years where I’ve felt myself losing hope. War, turmoil, disinformation, rising authoritarianism; so much suffering with no clear road out. It’s a dangerous position. Despair is a killer; hope is an antidote. Yet it can be so hard to find, when the state of the world seems so dark.

If you’re looking for hope right now, turn your gaze south. Because right now, it shines bright in Minneapolis.

What’s happening on the ground in Minneapolis could be one of the most inspiring stories of our generation; an incredible grassroots response to a brutal and unwanted federal occupation, organized and led by ordinary residents. And it lays out a framework from which people in all cities could draw beautiful lessons.

Since December, when a surge of 3,000 heavily armed and armoured Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began in the city, the citizens of Minneapolis have held their streets, united to comfort those affected, and remained undaunted by the frigid -25 C weather which Winnipeggers know well.

Trump continues to target Indigenous peoples

The Assembly of First Nations recently issued an official travel advisory to all its members considering travel to the United States.

Pimicikamak’s $20-M in unpaid Hydro bills pales in comparison to what Hydro owes First Nation, chief says

To underline its anger over unresolved compensation from the 1977 Northern Flood Agreement, the Pimicikamak (Cross Lake) Cree Nation stopped paying its electricity bills from Manitoba Hydro about 10 years ago. Now, the remote First Nation owes more than $20 million in arrears on its residential accounts.

Noem burns bridges with tribes as governor, uses ICE to fan flames for Trump

During most of her time as the Republican governor of South Dakota from 2019 to 2025, Kristi Noem was officially banned by nine Indigenous tribes, prohibiting her from travelling to nearly 12 per cent of the state’s territory.

In particular, Noem drew the ire of the government of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who banned her permanently from visiting their home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The governor, Oglala Sioux leaders alleged, supported anti-protest legislation targeting Native Americans, set up illegal security checkpoints to stop Indigenous peoples from leaving their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic and claimed — with no evidence to back it up — that Mexican drug cartels were joining with a Native American gang called “Ghost Dancers” to commit murders on the reservation.

At the time, Oglala Sioux Tribal president Frank Star Comes Out accused the future secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security of spreading falsehoods and stereotypes about his people while facilitating violence against them in order to gain favour with then-U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump (and, perhaps, her selection as his vice-presidential running mate).

Chirp heard around Manitoba: RM sells building for $1 to cricket farm entrepreneur

One dollar doesn’t stretch very far these days, but apparently it’s enough to buy a business in Benito.

Alberta group gets green light to collect signatures for separation referendum

EDMONTON - Alberta's election agency has fired the starter's pistol on the race to collect enough names for a referendum on the province quitting Canada.

Elections Alberta announced Friday that Mitch Sylvestre and the Alberta Prosperity Project have from Saturday until May 2 to collect just under 178,000 signatures to qualify.

"Citizen initiative petition signature sheets have been issued," Elections Alberta said in a statement Friday.

"The proponent may now proceed with collecting signatures."

Filipino-style fried-chicken biz off to a sizzling start

Before we begin, John Tadeo wants to make it abundantly clear that Popoy’s, the tag he and his girlfriend Patricia Santiago settled on for their Filipino-style fried-chicken biz, isn’t a play on an international fried-chicken chain that bears the name of a certain, spinach-loving sailor-man.

When Tadeo was a youngster growing up in the Philippines, his paternal grandmother never called him anything but Popoy, a derivative of Popo, which is Tagalog for little boy or child. His parents continue to address him by that term of affection to this day, so last winter, when he and Santiago were tossing around potential names for their fledgling enterprise, they agreed Popoy’s Golden Chicken had a better ring to it than John’s or Patricia’s.

“I guess if somebody associated with Popeyes (Louisiana Kitchen) ever tells us we can’t call ourselves (Popoy’s), we’d probably just change it to Poy’s,” Tadeo says, standing next to Santiago in the commercial kitchen at Riverview Community Centre, where they accept pickup orders on a regular basis, usually every other weekend.

“But since Popoy is my name, I’m not sure what argument they’d have.”

Corb Lund must re-apply to launch anti-coal petition drive in Alberta

LETHBRIDGE - Amendments to Alberta's legislation on citizen-initiated referendums mean Corb Lund's recently approved application for a petition drive to stop new coal mining on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains is cancelled and the singer has to re-apply.

Elections Alberta had posted the official OK on its website Monday for Lund to soon start collecting signatures for his petition.

But the agency says in a Friday news release that amendments to electoral legislation that took effect this week mean petition applications made before Thursday, for which an initiative petition has not been issued, are "deemed to have never been made."

The release says it applies to Lund's No New Coal Mining in Alberta’s Rockies application because even though it was approved, a petition was not issued.

Métis federation sues Ottawa, Manitoba over Sixties Scoop

The Manitoba Métis Federation is suing the federal and Manitoba governments for damages caused to the Red River Métis as a whole when an unknown number of children were placed with non-Indigenous families during the Sixties Scoop.

Investing for ourselves, and those downstream

We have invested large sums of money in infrastructure before.

You don’t often hear Winnipeggers complaining about the results: soft, clean drinking water thanks to the Shoal Lake aqueduct and flood protection thanks to the Red River Floodway.

A new city report outlines the importance of upgrading Winnipeg’s North End sewage treatment plant, which is responsible for treating 70 per cent of the city’s wastewater and all sewage sludge. The report focuses on the upgrades’ potential benefits to the city, including increased capacity to build new homes and businesses, and related economic growth.

It briefly mentions that upgrades to the plant are necessary in order to meet environmental regulations designed to protect waterways from the discharge of harmful materials that compromise the health of the Red River and Lake Winnipeg.