Can a political leader change his stripes?

It is fair to ask at this point what it will take for Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to learn his lesson.

Epstein chips away at Trump’s world

Did Jeffrey Epstein really think he could receive or extort a pardon from U.S. President Donald Trump? Recently released correspondence from the late sexual predator seems to suggest he thought he had a shot.

Epstein’s desperate attempts to enlist or threaten Trump to escape prosecution for a broad array of sexual crimes in 2019 were exposed this month after a congressional committee released 20,000 pages of emails and other correspondence between the disgraced financier and his allies.

The emails and other notes strongly suggest he had dirt on Trump of sufficient gravity that the president might have to help him escape prosecution. Also fuelling Epstein’s hopes was the president’s history of granting pardons, which showed virtually no type of criminal or crime was off-limits.

Trump has pardoned murderers, sex offenders and fraudsters who bilked people out of hundreds of millions of dollars and summarily wiped the criminal records of anyone involved in the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Police behaviour calls convictions into doubt

The standard is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and it’s critical to our justice system. It is the key measure by which someone is convicted of a crime.

Human rights and learning to read

It’s a human rights issue, plain and simple.

A report released late last month by the Manitoba Human Rights Commission makes clear the province is failing young students and their families by not providing adequate assessment and supports related to basic reading skills.

And reading, the report declares, is as fundamental as education gets.

“Reading is the foundation of learning and a fundamental skill that shapes every aspect of life,” the document’s executive summary states. “Students who cannot read well are more likely to face challenges in school, work and everyday life. When students cannot access reading instruction, it affects their confidence, mental health and long-term opportunities.”

Federal budget makes some health spending vanish

The federal government’s decision not to renew a multi-year health-care agreement with the provinces amounts to a quiet — but very real — funding cut.

Dubbed “Working Together to Improve Healthcare for Canadians,” the agreement was launched in 2023. It provided provinces with targeted funding — on top of the regular Canada Health Transfer — to hire more frontline staff, reduce wait times and modernize health care technology.

For Manitoba, that translated into almost $150 million a year in additional federal funding.

But nowhere in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first federal budget did the Liberal government indicate the program will be renewed.

Changed names, the law and sex offenders

The NDP government of Manitoba cannot say why it passed — but did not enact — a 2024 law preventing citizens convicted of child sexual offences from legally changing their names. All we know is that government is now scrambling to put this law into effect after its shortcoming was fully revealed to the public.

Other encampment options possible

Authorities in Winnipeg will soon launch their latest response to homeless encampments, though sadly actual solutions to the problem remain elusive.

Beginning in mid-November, the city will roll out its new policy for dealing with the encampments, in an effort to prevent them from being established and presenting risks near sensitive sites and public spaces. The system outlines three different levels of encampment response, each calling for a different degree of involvement from police, fire-paramedics and support workers. Some responses call only for outreach, rather than removal of encampments.

The new policy is sure to bring relief to Winnipeggers who have been alarmed by the emergence of homeless encampments in public spaces, near schools, or other at other locations where they may present unwanted risks to residents in the area.

What it does not do, however, is get the city any closer to a long-term solution to its homelessness crisis. The number of homeless people in Winnipeg nearly doubled last year — End Homelessness Winnipeg’s annual street census reported that about 2,469 people are homeless in the city. The Manitoba government has implemented a strategy to get people into housing, but the process has been slow and the results to date underwhelming. About 100 people had been successfully placed in housing as of the end of October, but that still leaves more than 2,000 people living rough.

The perils of dealing with a serial liar

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Or more to the point, the elephant in the White House.

Many Canadian eyes on America’s top court

When oral arguments were presented Wednesday morning to the Supreme Court of the United States, Canada was just one of many interested parties listening intently to what was said.

Focus on the verdict, not political posturing

This may not be popular — after all, politicians from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew to Ontario Premier Doug Ford have gone full-bore to wind up the public on this issue.

Keeping forward momentum to slow drug deaths

For the first time in five years, there is a glimmer of hope in Manitoba’s drug overdose crisis.

Increased costs and fees — end the dance

There are few people who dispute the need for a $3-billion upgrade to Winnipeg’s North End Sewage Treatment Plant. How and when it should be fully funded, however, has been a source of great uncertainty.

Ford’s anti-tariff ad leaves bruise

Say what you will about Ontario Premier Doug Ford — he knows how to get under a fellow populist’s skin.

Ford succeeded in irritating U.S. President Donald Trump with his decision to run a TV ad critical of Trump’s tariff scheme, utilizing old footage of former president Ronald Reagan to make the point that the late president — still greatly admired among many Americans — would not have approved of Trump’s methods.

Reaction to the ad among Trump and his supporters was swift and furious. MAGA acolytes denounced it, claiming it skewed Reagan’s words, while Trump claimed the ad was AI-generated (it was not). He immediately threatened to impose an extra 10 per cent in tariffs on Canada, “over and above” what he has previously laid out.

The clips of Reagan, pulled from a 1987 speech, are authentic, although a case can be made they did not include the full context of Reagan’s words regarding the U.S.’s trading relationship with Japan — the subject of the comments — at the time of the speech.

Measles-free Canada? Not any more

It is an ignominious moment in modern Canadian history. This country — our country, by all accounts one of the most advanced, enlightened and compassionate nations on Earth — is poised to lose its status as a measles-free nation.

B.C. puts the brakes on power exploiters

Generating power and delivering it through a grid is an expensive process, and the way it all happens involves spreading the costs, and the benefits, across the entire rate base. You don’t pay for the entirety of a Keeyask hydro project: you pay your share, relative to the amount of electricity you use, spread out over years.