RRC Polytech program cuts take bite out of hospitality, tourism sector

Manitoba’s tourism industry is bracing for the disappearance of hospitality training programs — once-popular courses among international students.

Citing budgetary challenges related to a shift in federal immigration policy, Red River College Polytechnic is scrapping 11 programs and scaling back three others in 2026-27. Its hospitality business management diploma is one of seven permanent casualties.

The announcement, while unsurprising, is but the latest blow to a sector trying to “build back the workforce” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Michael Juce, president of the Manitoba Hotel Association.

“Are people going to go outside of Manitoba for training? And if they leave, are they going to come back?” Juce said, adding that rural hotels in particular are already grappling with staffing shortages.

Empower youth by giving them tools to stay safe online

Do you support banning kids from social media? Do you also post photos of your kids on your Facebook or Instagram?

Whenever the topic of banning social media for kids comes up, as it did again this week when Premier Wab Kinew announced that Manitoba will ban youth from using social media and AI chatbots, we run into a wee bit of cognitive dissonance among the adults.

Many of today’s young people had social media presences long before they were old enough to consent to them — not as users, but as content posted by their parents. Instagram is nearly 16 years old; the iPhone nearly 20. A lot of kids have had digital footprints since the sonogram. Their whole lives are online.

So, as young people who are already on social media transition into social media users themselves, we should, as a society, empower them to make informed decisions about how, where and if they want to show up online, not ban them from platforms they use to connect with their peers, express their creativity and learn about the world. Platforms they’ve grown up around and, in many cases, on.

Seeding clock ticks loudly on Prairie fields

If the forecast holds, Manitoba fields will be crawling with equipment this week, as the race to seed this year’s crop begins.

An early-May start to seeding is right on track by historical standards, but still feels late this year, partly because it’s been so cold. Seeding dates have been edging earlier over time, especially for crops such as wheat, as farmers discover they can get away with super-early seeding under the right circumstances.

Due to the compressed growing season characteristic to this part of the world, it’s well-documented the later the crop is seeded, the lower it yields. However, seed too early and there’s a risk that a late-spring frost will force farmers to reseed some fields.

For most, it’s a gamble worth taking.

Despite discrimination, Winnipeg proved to be good fit for Jews fleeing Holocaust

Freda Shiel was 10 years old when the train from Halifax pulled into Winnipeg in 1948. Other families on the platform were met by relatives. Freda and her parents stood there alone. “It was a heartbreaking moment,” she recalled 40 years later, when the Winnipeg Second Generation Group came to record what she remembered.

In the years after May 8, 1945, the end of the Second World War in Europe, hundreds of thousands of survivors and refugees had to find somewhere to go. Some of them, through routes that were rarely straightforward, ended up here. By the late 1950s, roughly 1,000 Holocaust survivors had settled in Winnipeg — more than five per cent of the city’s Jewish population. Forty-eight testimonies including Freda’s, recorded in 1988 and 1989 and now held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, are still relatively unknown. What they say about this city is more precise, and more complicated, than either a story of welcome or of failure.

Winnipeg did not simply receive these newcomers. It admitted them on terms they would spend decades reshaping. Philip Weiss arrived the same year as Freda. He had survived the ghettos and labour camps of occupied Poland and finally the Nazi concentration camp Mauthausen, where American troops liberated him on May 5, 1945 — a date he carried for the rest of his life. He landed in Halifax on Feb. 11, 1948, his birthday, and took the train west. After years in cattle cars, he marvelled at the white tablecloths and silver cutlery in the dining car, at cherry pie and banana splits that seemed almost unreal on the Canadian Prairies.

Like Weiss, most survivors came through schemes like the Tailor Project, a joint initiative of the Canadian Jewish Congress, garment manufacturers and the federal government that offered entry on the condition that they work in the needle trades.

Memorable panoramas and paths await in Rosedale

Margie and I ventured into Manitoba’s compelling but little-known municipality of Rosedale. We’re back on speaking terms.

Provincial Road 265 north of Neepawa gradually rises over eight kilometres up to Riding Mountain. Our destination: Rosedale Farm. Before a final incline, this road tricks you into believing you’re not climbing high above Manitoba’s prairies. As I’ve heard, don’t trust gentle slopes — they’re always up to something.

Although some land remains cultivated to fund the Whitemud Watershed District that maintains this landscape, a government-funded project bought hillside farms here in the 1960s to stop massive erosion. Folks planted about 200,000 trees — for purely sedimental reasons.

Almost five kilometres of two mowed, circular paths now usher visitors through a wonderland of caragana, roses and ferns under tamarack, red, jack and even ponderosa pines. Ahh, forest fragrance. Margie exclaimed, “Smell that!” I romanticized, “Is that a candle? Shampoo? Your deodorant?”

Local garden centres rev up even as cold temperatures delay outdoor planting season

Colin Rémillard is obsessed with the weather.

When he and his family opened Winnipeg gardener’s staple Jardins St-Léon Gardens for the 2026 season on Wednesday, it came after weeks of chilly weather. But with staff itching to go — and customers waiting — they decided to open the doors after a “mad dash” to bring in produce and tag every product in the store one day earlier.

“Everything seemed to roll fairly well. We’re in good shape. It’s going to be a colder spring, that’s just reality,” Rémillard said from the garden centre Friday.

“We’ve had really nice springs for the past one or two years. We always remember only one year in the past, so we think this is unusual, but it is pretty normal to have this amount of cold.”

One small step forward — and a challenge to take another

We live in a Manitoba where every tax-paying citizen, whether they supported searching the landfill or not, is responsible in one way or another in treating Indigenous women as human beings.

Expert accused of ‘speculating without evidence’ at inquest into teen’s death

The lawyer for Winnipeg police told an inquest Friday that a use-of-force expert who weighed in on the fatal shooting of teenager Eishia Hudson, by calling the officer’s actions unjust, had made errors of his own.

Kimberly Carswell suggested during her cross-examination of Peter Rampat that he relied too heavily on video evidence of the incident and discounted witness statements in his report into the death of the 16-year-old from Berens River First Nation.

Hudson was shot dead after leading police on a high-speed pursuit that ended with her crashing a stolen Jeep on Lagimodiere Boulevard during the evening rush hour on April 8, 2020.

Rampat’s report determined Const. Kyle Pradinuk was not justified when he fired two bullets at Hudson, who began to reverse the Jeep as officers swarmed the vehicle.

Alberta oil pipeline is ‘more likely than not’ Carney says

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Mark Carney says a new oil pipeline out of Alberta is "more likely than not."

In his first sit-down interview with The Canadian Press since becoming prime minister more than a year ago, Carney said Friday that given the increased global demand for secure new sources of energy due to the war in Iran, and Canada's need to diversify to Asian markets, a new pipeline is "more probable than possible."

"It's all part of a bigger package. We're making progress on that bigger package," Carney said, referring to the memorandum of understanding his government signed with Alberta late last year.

"Part of our job is to figure out ways to make that work, to make it work that's combined with reducing the emissions associated with oil.

Feds to hike max fine for airlines abusing passenger protection regulations to $1M

OTTAWA - The federal government plans to quadruple to $1 million the maximum fine for airlines that repeatedly violate passengers' rights.

Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said fining airlines is a last resort but the current system isn't working.

The Canadian Transportation Agency, which handles passenger complaints, is facing a backlog of more than 97,000 cases.

"The system is broken. Decisions by the Canadian Transportation Agency can take years. This is not acceptable. Canadians deserve better," MacKinnon said Friday at a press conference in Ottawa.