There are institutions which are influential and held in high regard. But sometimes, even those organizations miss the mark.

Recently, I had expressed concern about the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and the importance of providing historical context for its upcoming Nakba exhibit. I want to reflect on a similar concern that I have, following a recent visit to Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) to view its exhibition, The Land Remembers, Palestine: Courage, Resilience, Resistance.

Palestinian stories matter. There should be space made within exhibitions such as this, for people to share stories of loss, of home, of family history, and of culture. We learn best when we learn about each other and from one another.

And that is how this exhibit began, with Palestinian voices and displays of fabric, embroidery, and cultural expressions. These elements offered insight into a people’s lived experiences, history, and heritage.

Teachers and administrators have always been quick to jump on the latest bandwagon because they think that makes them good educators.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t because they often adopt strategies that are quickly proven to be wrong or worse proven to be detrimental to their students. If anyone dares to point out the lack of evidence for the use of the latest gimmick — ChatGPT in the classroom — they are discredited and told that they are not open to new ideas.

I am always skeptical of people like Sinead Bovell who came to speak to educators at the invitation of the Manitoba government at an “AI in education” summit. Her directive was to provide her predications about the future of technology in education. I did not attend this conference but based on what Maggie Macintosh reported in her Free Press article (Future students will be wired differently, thanks to AI, Jan. 16) Bovell told educators that they have to prepare for a future that will include technology in the classroom. The classrooms of today already have more than enough technology in them, so it appears what she was in fact promoting was the use of ChatGPT and other similar AI programs.

Bovell stated that no one knows what the future will look like and in that she is correct.

The thousands of Manitobans struggling to pay their rent and put food on the table are looking for relief in Manitoba’s upcoming spring budget. The wealthy are benefiting from the status quo; political leadership is needed to stop rising poverty and act on the gap between the rich and the rest of us. The Manitoba government must rise to the occasion and deliver strong policy responses to provide help and relief. Inaction will only let the income gap widen further.

Closing the gap between the rich and the rest of us is not only a moral and ethical imperative; it is also key to improving overall health, reducing crime, supporting labour force participation, and community well-being. Wealth concentration undermines democracy by enabling those with means to influence government in ways that benefit themselves to the disadvantage of the majority.

Recent Canadian data show income inequality at record levels, with the wealthiest households benefiting most. According to Statistics Canada, over the past year, those living in the lowest quarter have 0.5 per cent less disposable income. Those with the highest have 4.3 per cent more.

In the last budget, the Manitoba government took a promising step by clawing back the basic personal amount tax credit for those earning more than $200,000 a year. This is an important first step and should include more upper-class Manitobans.

“Breathe deeply, calm down, and don’t go running to stock up on food and matches,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Ukrainians one month before the Russian tanks rolled across the border on Feb. 24, 2022. The American and British intelligence services knew the Russians were going to invade and told him so, but neither he nor his generals believed it.

Most of the European NATO members didn’t believe it either. That was partly because they still remembered the lies that the CIA and MI6 told them 20 years before to trick them into invading Iraq, but mainly because they couldn’t believe the Russians were that stupid.

Looking back much later, one European intelligence official explained that “We didn’t believe it would happen, because we thought the idea that (the Russians) would be able to walk into Kyiv and just install a puppet government was completely insane.” After a pause, he added defensively: “As it turned out, it was indeed completely insane.”

That was my mistake too. Right down to few days before the invasion I went on insisting that the intelligence must be wrong, because Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be that stupid. But he was. He had been surrounded and insulated by people desperate not to displease him for so long that he had no personal contact with external reality.

Recently, I ran across a social media post with 100,000 followers which stated that “the media is the communist arm of the government.”

At first blush, it is easy to write off an outlandish comment like this as a function of a neurodegenerative illness or a psychological disorder.

Certainly, as a middle-of-the-road regular contributor to articles on the Think Tank page, I have never thought of myself as a communist. Truth be told, the Free Press neither offers me direction about what I write, nor do they pay me for my op-ed pieces. A post like this also does a grave disservice to the many dedicated journalists who ply their trade according to strict ethical guidelines.

At the same time, however, I realize that there are people who don’t read the Free Press because they believe that the mainstream media (MSM) have been co-opted and corrupted by government subsidies.

Festival du Voyageur, which wrapped up its 57th annual run this past weekend, is hard to pin down.

It is Western Canada’s largest winter festival and francophone event. It celebrates Indigenous history and culture. It used to hold staged gunfights or “skirmishes” and a casino.

It can be easy to forget that Festival du Voyageur is at its core a celebration of Canada’s fur trade history. Without the fur trade, there would be no Canada as we know it. Among other things, it was the engine of French settlement in North America and gave birth to the Metis Nation. At the same time, the fur trade had profound and lasting negative impacts on Indigenous communities and devastated local populations of beavers and other animals. Any event that commemorates a history as deeply contentious as that of the fur trade — especially one that draws tens of thousands of people each year — must do so responsibly.

Festival du Voyageur agrees.

Manitoba was built through hard work, collaboration, and community. Every hospital, school, road, and bridge reflects the dedication of our construction industry. Today, the sector employs more than 57,000 Manitobans, contributes $4.2 billion annually to the provincial economy, and supports businesses in every region. We are proud of the role we play in building Manitoba’s future.

We are speaking out about the Manitoba Jobs Agreement (MJA) not to oppose the government’s goals, but to ensure public policy delivers real value, respects worker choice, and protects taxpayers. The practical consequences of the MJA are clear: fewer bidders, reduced competition, increased administrative burden, and higher project costs. When competition narrows, prices rise. When compliance complexity grows, risk premiums follow. All of this lands on a provincial budget already facing structural deficits.

The MJA imposes a specific labour relations structure on provincially funded projects exceeding $50 million. Successful bidders must hire union card-holding workers first if their own workforce is insufficient. Union membership becomes the deciding factor — not skill, experience, or performance. If the goal is to ensure Manitobans work on these projects, there is a simple solution: require contractors to certify that their workforce consists of Manitoba residents. A union card should not determine who is entitled to work on taxpayer-funded infrastructure. The agreement also introduces entirely new costs. All employers must pay 85 cents per hour worked to the Manitoba Building Trades Council; an unprecedented charge in Manitoba construction. On a typical school project, this payment alone can exceed $250,000, with no measurable benefit to taxpayers.

Open-shop contractors face additional costs, including compulsory union dues, numerous union fund contributions, and payments to third parties. Taken together, these requirements will add millions of dollars to publicly funded projects. It’s money that could otherwise be invested directly in classrooms, hospitals, and infrastructure.

Fidel Castro and his communist band of brothers have had a good long run in power (66 years), but they have run out of road.

Most of the relatively small Cuban middle class fled to the United States after the 1959 revolution, but the new regime certainly had mass popular support for at least the next quarter-century. Then it began to erode, but only quite slowly at first.

The Castro brothers and their allies always faced huge economic problems because of the U.S. trade embargo, but things got much harder after the old Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, eliminating about 85 per cent of Cuba’s foreign trade.

The ensuing “Special Period in Time of Peace” spanned the 1990s and brought great hardship to ordinary people — rationing, blackouts, even severe food shortages — but the economy stabilized (at a permanently lower level of prosperity) by 2000.

A Winnipeg couple has been charged and sentenced for heinous acts of animal cruelty that took place in a Lord Roberts-area apartment in 2024.

Irene Lima and Chad Kabecz were sentenced earlier this month to 12 years in prison for torturing and killing small animals including kittens, hamsters and a frog, in so-called “crush” videos and photos posted online.

Reaction to the case has been as expected.

Animal-lovers countrywide and beyond have expressed anger, disgust and horror over the abuse, and mixed emotions about the sentencing. Taking to social media, many demand the couple be held longer behind bars, while others call for street justice.