Canada’s university funding system is broken

For decades, Canadian universities have delivered a world-class education at a remarkably accessible cost. Nationally, Manitoba has among the lowest tuition fees in the country. However, like many universities across Canada, the University of Manitoba is facing a new reality that can no longer be ignored.

When it comes to fixing health care, province must follow doctors’ orders

To get an honest assessment of Manitoba’s health-care system, it’s best to skip the government news releases and listen to the doctors.

Increased taxation requires thorough justification

This year, the City of Winnipeg sent me two “love letters.” The first arrived in May, informing me that it (the city) was “delivering affordability,” with the lowest municipal property tax rates in Canada, the lowest municipal fees on new housing, and the lowest garbage and recycling fees in Canada.

Parent group urges funds to help spot reading disabilities sooner

It may be too late for their children, but parents are appealing to school boards to fund teacher training to spot struggling readers sooner.

Caregiver Advocates for Literacy Equity is launching a new campaign this week, against the backdrop of I Love to Read Month.

The coalition represents dozens of families, many of whom have children with dyslexia. It is planning a series of presentations for trustees across Manitoba.

“The damage has been done to my son, sadly — we’re trying to propel things forward for him — but I just want to make a change for other kids,” said Allison Guercio, a mother of two in Winnipeg.

Ukrainians push for permanent residency in Canada as war with Russia grinds on

OTTAWA - Roksolana Kryshtanovych never planned on moving to Canada before Russia's war, but the invasion made it impossible for her to go home to Ukraine.

In the years since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, she said, Canada has become her new home. But without a path to permanent residency, she and thousands of other Ukrainians here face an uncertain future as the war drags on.

Immigration Minister Lena Diab has acknowledged many of these visa holders are no longer here temporarily — but the government has no concrete solution yet to their plight.

Now, her government is under new pressure to open a permanent residency pathway for the nearly 300,000 Ukrainians like Kryshtanovych who came to Canada through the emergency visa program.

Danielle Smith plays separation carrot-and-stick

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

Creating a city where kids can safely walk, bike to school

If there’s one thing that all Winnipeggers can agree on, other than potholes, it’s the chaos of getting kids to and from school. The frustration extends to households without children who live a short distance to local schools and must deal with traffic jams twice a day.

Coun. Markus Chambers brought the fury of his ward residents into the public eye in early January when he made the first moves on a “stop-drop-go” motion to limit parking to one minute in designated school zones.

How did we get here? Local news outlets asked on their social media for stories from Winnipeggers about their school travel experiences. Comments flowed in about childhoods spent walking and biking to school with friends, and how that has been replaced with door-to-door drives. Meanwhile, MPI reported in October that 36 kids were hit by drivers in the last year. So what changed in the last few decades?

First, there are far more vehicles on our roads, and those vehicles are much bigger and heavier than cars of the past.

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.”

An American skier is fighting to open up the last Winter Olympic sport off limits to women

MILAN, Italy (AP) — Annika Malacinski remembers the moment the door to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics was slammed shut.

On a flight from Munich to Denver, she bought airplane Wi-Fi to join a conference call with the International Olympic Committee, certain that Nordic combined competition would at last be opened up to female athletes.

“Then the decision came: ‘no.’ No explanation, no discussion. Just ‘no,’ and then they moved on to the next topic,” she told The Associated Press from her training base in Norway. “I cried for eight hours straight on that flight. When I arrived in Denver, my eyes were swollen shut. It felt like my world had crashed.”

That was in June, 2022. And despite an ongoing campaign led by Malacinski, an athlete from Colorado now aged 24, her sport remains the last to exclude women – even as Milan Cortina is showcasing the highest level of female participation in Winter Games history at 47%.