There has always been an unspoken agreement between FIFA and soccer/football/fútbol fans when it comes to the World Cup: FIFA tacitly acknowledged the cost of travelling to a host country to follow a team, as well as the travel between host cities to follow said team, and ticket prices to games were held in check.

When I went to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, I paid about $2,500 for the flights to Johannesburg, but the tickets were priced reasonably, so I was able to attend three matches, including a round of 16 match between Mexico and Argentina, truly an unforgettable experience.

The ticket to that memorable match was the most expensive one I paid for: $400. Adjusted for inflation, it would now be $610.

That pilgrimage to the 2010 World Cup was decades in the making, as my parents are from Chile. They were kids when the World Cup was held in that country in 1962. My Dad told me many stories about that World Cup.

Hockey is Canada’s favourite sport. Any wonder then that our political parties have decided it’s time to take AI “slop shots” at their opponent’s net?

The Conservative Party of Canada was first and strongest out of the dressing room. The other week, it released a fully AI-generated video ad about food banks and hungry people lining up with empty shopping carts. Like much political advertising, this falls in the category of being accurate without being true.

Food Banks Canada statistics say there were 2.1 million monthly visits to food banks in the country in March 2025. Food bank usage rates have doubled, they say, since 2019. So, the issue exists but the talking “Canadians” in the ad do not. They are AI-generated avatars, not real people.

Welcome to the new frontier of campaign advertising. It is real even if the content it produces is not. If you’ve ever watched American TV during an election year — or just the drama series West Wing — you saw a version of this after every ad spoken by a candidate: “I approve this message.”

Climate science has been warning for several decades of the effects to be expected as the global temperature increase approaches two degrees.

Just last month, over 800 limnologists, or freshwater scientists, from North America and East Africa descended upon the RBC Convention Centre for a meeting of the greatest minds on the Great Lakes.

When Canada legalized medical assistance in dying in June 2016, the public debate focused largely on one situation: people facing the end of life and suffering intolerably.

For many Canadians, that remains their understanding of the law today.

But Canada’s MAID framework has evolved significantly since then. In 2021, Parliament expanded the law through Bill C-7, creating two pathways for assisted death. The first pathway applies to people whose natural death is imminent and expected soon (reasonably foreseeable).

The second — known as “Track 2” — allows separate access to MAID for individuals with disabilities who are not dying.

Receiving a diagnosis is the first of many hard steps in the lifetimes of young people who live with disabilities and their families.

What comes next for many families in Manitoba who have a child with a disability is often a harsh reality, plagued by uncertainty, further delays, difficult decisions, gaps in service, and difficulties accessing even the most basic support for their children.

Manitoba’s children’s disability services system has skilled, knowledgable, and supportive service providers. However, resources are scarce and case workers are stretched too thin. As a result, children with disabilities and their families are left with nowhere to turn for support and resources.

The Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth (MACY) released Bridging the Gap: Achieving Substantive Equality for Children with Disabilities in Manitoba in 2021. The report outlined nine clear recommendations to improve access to services. Almost all those recommendations remain unfulfilled.

The regulations and requirements to implement these protections could potentially be damaging to everyone.

The fact that the victims are immigrants rather than Catholics this time is misleading. They are just convenient targets for Protestant anxiety about change.