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Letter to the editor — MLAs should try choosing function over dysfunction
3 minute read PreviewLetter to the editor — MLAs should try choosing function over dysfunction
3 minute read 8:50 PM CDTThe concerns raised about the tone and conduct in Manitoba’s legislature are not only valid, they’re long overdue.
Question period is meant to be the central mechanism of accountability in our democracy. It should be where government is pressed for answers, where ministers demonstrate competence and where Manitobans can see serious issues debated with clarity and purpose. Instead, far too often, it has devolved into rehearsed talking points, deflections and cheap shots that generate more heat than light.
But this didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t always this way — even under NDP governments. There was a time when ministers took questions more seriously, when answers, even if imperfect, attempted to address the issue at hand, and when debate, while partisan, did not regularly cross into open hostility.
Today, the legislature has turned into a toxic environment where very little of substance actually gets accomplished during question period. When the focus shifts from answering questions to scoring political points and hurling personal insults, accountability suffers. When ministers treat scrutiny as an inconvenience rather than a responsibility, Manitobans are left without the clarity they deserve.
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Federal Liberals must follow Manitoba’s lead
4 minute read PreviewFederal Liberals must follow Manitoba’s lead
4 minute read 8:48 PM CDTIt is always easy to criticize elected officials when they make bad decisions and ignore good advice. It should be just as easy to give them credit when they make good decisions based on that advice.
Eleven days ago, we discussed steps currently being taken by various governments to ban social media use by children. We noted that delegates to the recent Liberal Party national convention in Montreal had passed a non-binding resolution to support such a ban. We reviewed some of the overwhelming medical and scientific evidence of the harm that social media is doing to children, including here in Canada. Finally, we also pointed out that the idea of banning social media use by children appears to have a broad base of support across the country, including among the opposition Conservatives and New Democrats.
Based on all of those facts, we called upon the federal government to emulate the example set by Australia, which has already banned the use of social media by children, by implementing similar measures here in Canada.
The Carney government has not yet indicated whether it plans to act on the issue, but Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has. On Saturday night, he announced that his government will soon be taking steps to ban children from using social media accounts and artificial intelligence chatbots. He justified the need for doing so by saying “These tools have been designed by … people who understand our psychology, who understand our biology … They have designed these tools and optimized them to hack our children’s reward system in their brain.”
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Is latest attempt on Trump’s life a lifeline or a sign of weakness?
By James K. Rowe 5 minute read PreviewIs latest attempt on Trump’s life a lifeline or a sign of weakness?
By James K. Rowe 5 minute read 8:46 PM CDTUnited States President Donald Trump has apparently dodged yet another bullet.
If history is any indication, the latest alleged attempt on his life at the White House Correspondents Dinner couldn’t have happened at a better time given his sagging popularity. But amid widespread skepticism and the Trump team’s efforts to promote the construction of a White House ballroom in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, it’s far from clear whether this incident will benefit the president.
Assassination attempts often make elected politicians more popular. In 1981, Ronald Reagan was shot in the same Washington Hilton Hotel that was the site of the latest Trump assassination attempt. Reagan’s approval ratings jumped after he survived the attack.
Why does political violence help bolster approval ratings?
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How Canadian households can recession‑proof their finances
By Chetan Dave 6 minute read PreviewHow Canadian households can recession‑proof their finances
By Chetan Dave 6 minute read Yesterday at 10:11 PM CDTCanada’s economic policy uncertainty index has climbed back to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, a sign that a more volatile period may be taking hold. Income inequality hit a record high last year, and youth unemployment reached 14.6 per cent in September 2025, its highest point since 2010, excluding the pandemic.
Most Canadians have had relatively little experience with major economic downturns. Since the early 1990s, Canada has largely been spared the boom-and-bust cycles common in the United States. The country avoided the worst of the 2008 global financial crisis, and until COVID-19, had not experienced a major economic shock in a generation.
In that long stretch of time, Canadians have grown accustomed to relative stability, which makes the current moment feel especially disorienting. We are, as the saying goes, living in “interesting times,” and that is rarely good news for prices, employment prospects, government budgets, business investment or productivity.
Many Canadian households are carrying a fair amount of debt while facing inflation and rapid changes in job markets. What is a typical Canadian household to do? As an economist, I have some practical advice to offer.
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An interesting idea, but more information needed
4 minute read PreviewAn interesting idea, but more information needed
4 minute read Yesterday at 10:07 PM CDTPrime Minister Mark Carney announced yesterday that his government plans to create a sovereign wealth fund, which will be named the Canada Strong Fund. He characterizes the proposed fund as both a “national savings and investment account” and “the peoples’ fund.”
A “backgrounder” document released immediately after the PM’s announcement says the objective of the fund is “to give all Canadians a direct stake in the Build Canada agenda.” It explains that the fund will invest in strategic Canadian projects and companies alongside other investors, with the objective of achieving commercial returns to build Canada’s wealth. “From infrastructure to advanced manufacturing to energy and mining,” the document says, “the fund will have a mandate to deliver market-rate returns for Canadians across the economy.”
The new fund will operate independently from government via a new Crown corporation, which will be guided by a CEO and an independent board of qualified directors. The government claims that such a level of independence and professional management ensures the fund can make long-term, economically sound investment decisions. It argues that the planned management structure is widely regarded as the “global best practice” because it strengthens transparency, credibility and long-term performance through consistent, expert management.
The government plans to contribute $25 billion in seed capital to the fund over the next three years, and says it will grow over time from both the returns that it generates and through other assets that government may allocate to it. It also says that it intends to offer Canadians the opportunity to invest in the fund through “a new, retail investment product” that will be available to all Canadians, and will be easy to purchase, hold and sell. Those factors, it says, will enable Canadians to “share in the upside, while their initial invested capital will be protected.”
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New laws that enforce treatment and confinement are dangerous
By Jean-Laurent Domingue, Axel Ounis and Emmanuelle Bernheim 5 minute read PreviewNew laws that enforce treatment and confinement are dangerous
By Jean-Laurent Domingue, Axel Ounis and Emmanuelle Bernheim 5 minute read Sunday, Apr. 26, 2026The Supreme Court of Canada has described the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment as “fundamental to a person’s dignity and autonomy, (including) in the context of treatment for mental illness.”
Nonetheless, legislative and policy shift in multiple provinces in the past year threaten this principle — with little meaningful political resistance. It is important to closely examine the conditions and public narratives that have made this renewed use of psychiatric coercion possible.
LEGISLATIVE AND POLICY SHIFT
In 2025, in an explicit repudiation of harm-reduction principles, Alberta passed legislation enabling the forced treatment of people with addiction disorders on the basis that they are “likely to cause harm.”
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Trust and AI in Manitoba’s public sector
By Paul G. Thomas 6 minute read PreviewTrust and AI in Manitoba’s public sector
By Paul G. Thomas 6 minute read Sunday, Apr. 26, 2026The Kinew government has embraced new technology as the basis for innovation and enhanced productivity in the economy, including the modernization of government operations. It established a new department for innovation and new technology, created a “blue-ribbon” advisory task force on the use of technology to support the economy, and launched public consultations on how AI systems could be used to promote the rights and opportunities of citizens.
This is part of the background to the Public Sector Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Act (Bill 51) which is about to be sent to a committee of the legislature for detailed study. The bill represents a cautious first step to set some guardrails on the design, application and outcomes of AI in the public sector broadly defined.
Some brief, incomplete comments on AI and its potential impacts set the stage for the analysis of Bill 51.
AI is global in its reach, is evolving rapidly and is largely under the control of a small number of major technology companies. This means regulation of the private-sector use of AI must come mainly at the national level, with the provincial government potentially supplementing those rules.
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Canadian politics in throes of furious fever
3 minute read PreviewCanadian politics in throes of furious fever
3 minute read Sunday, Apr. 26, 2026It’s getting pretty ugly out there for an elected official.
Charges pressed this week against a 72-year-old man for allegedly sending St. Johns MLA Nahanni Fontaine threatening, racist letters last summer have brought to light the reality that elected officials — particularly women and members of racialized groups — are facing growing vitriol.
The accused has been charged with criminal harassment and uttering threats, and has been released on an undertaking.
Fontaine, unfortunately, has faced this kind of cruelty before. She told the Free Press that threatening or other unacceptable messages have been sent her way in an “ongoing” fashion, ramping up after the COVID-19 pandemic.
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A civic sermon: teaching our children well
By John R. Wiens 6 minute read PreviewA civic sermon: teaching our children well
By John R. Wiens 6 minute read Sunday, Apr. 26, 2026Globally and domestically, the world we adults have created is in a mess right now and we don’t like it! Absurd and unjustified wars rage, extreme and divisive partisan politics prevail, violent and toxic religiosity abound, and human empathy and decency wane. For me, however, the surest sign that we can’t stand today’s human world is our antipathy toward the education of our children.
Around the world and closer to home we are simply denying our children an education. What they are experiencing and learning is not how, through adult instruction and example, to become better people and in the process improving on the human condition.
Instead, they are learning that children are expendable, and there’s little hope of things getting better. They are learning that politics and governments are exploitative, untrustworthy and selfish, that rich and powerful people can deny them an education. Some are learning that war is inevitable, a constant presence in their lives, and has no regard for them, their parents, siblings and friends. War means hunger, injury, illness, displacement, hatred and the destruction of their schools.
Many are learning that religion is meant to be a powerful weapon to hurt and exclude people not like them, their leaders or their families. Still others quickly learn that they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, and people like them can be expected to suffer the consequences throughout their lives. In short, they are learning that, for them, the world is not a safe and hospitable place.
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