Analysis
Lemay Forest saga continues
5 minute read 2:00 AM CDTI have to say there are days when I read about the behaviour of Winnipeg’s land developers and wonder at their sheer audacity. First came the Parker Lands debacle where a development company, Gem Equities owned by Andrew Marquess, mowed down an entire forest in advance of city development approval then turned around and sued the city for unreasonable delays in the approval process.
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Balance Manitoba’s books
4 minute read Updated: 6:10 AM CDTIn Manitoba, 22 cents of every dollar sent to the government by taxpayers is used to pay interest charges on provincial debt.
In total, interest charges will cost taxpayers $2.2 billion this year. That’s $2.2 billion that can’t be used for targeted government spending priorities or tax relief. Plus, the currently projected $1.6-billion deficit will only add fuel to the interest charge fire if the government doesn’t get spending under control.
That’s a big problem for a government that has made a lot of new commitments on spending. The NDP platform during the last election highlighted more than $500 million in new spending for each of the next four years. That doesn’t even count the additional $710 million in spending recently announced for the rest of this year.
To deal with the deficit, the government needs to take a hard look at the expenditure column. Last year, the government spent more than $9.2 billion paying government employees. That’s equivalent to about 87 per cent of what the government collects in taxes. On average, government employees make about 5.5 per cent more per year than everyone else. Reducing government compensation costs by 5.5 per cent would save taxpayers about $507 million.
The danger and hope of Good Friday
4 minute read 2:01 AM CDTWe are approaching Good Friday — a day that has been historically dangerous for Jewish people. Over the course of history, Christians have been inflamed by misguided sermons that blame Jews for the death of Jesus.
Non-white Britain
4 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDTNobody planned it, hardly anybody realized it was happening, and suddenly there it was: done. In the space of less than two years, the entire senior leadership of Great Britain has become non-white.
I’m choosing my words carefully here, because the country as a whole is called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It contains four nations, and one of them, Northern Ireland, still has a white person running the government. She is a Catholic woman, which is a double first, but Michelle O’Neill is indisputably white.
However, on the island of Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland), it has been a clean sweep.
Humza Yousaf, a Muslim born in Scotland of Punjabi descent, succeeded Nicola Sturgeon as the leader of the Scottish National Party just a year ago. Since the SNP is the governing party in Scotland, that automatically made him first minister too. (‘First minister’ is the title of heads of government in the ‘devolved’ nations.)
Making better picks for the doctors we need
4 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDTThis year, the Canadian Institute for Health Care published the results of an international survey indicating that, in 2023, Canada was in last place of 10 high-income countries in access to a primary health care provider.
Currently, only 86 per cent of Canadian adults have this access. Alarmingly, this is down from 93 per cent in 2016.
Currently, four million Canadians have no family physician. Poorer Canadians who suffer from the greatest burden of illness have even lower access.
As a recently retired family doctor of 43 years, it is with this knowledge that I read with dismay a March 21 CTV News article reporting that, once again, more than 250 family practice residency positions in Canada remained unfilled after the first round of Canadian Residency Matching Service matching. In Manitoba this year, 10 family medicine positions remain unfilled.
Russia eyeing Africa’s resources
4 minute read Preview Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDTTaking new directions instead of taking children
4 minute read Preview Tuesday, Mar. 26, 2024No treat for the sheep
4 minute read Tuesday, Mar. 26, 2024It’s that time of year again, when Manitoba animal lovers tense up and dig in for our annual argument with farm folks about what constitutes needless animal suffering.
The conference you didn’t hear about
5 minute read Tuesday, Mar. 26, 2024The most important global meeting you’ve never heard of concluded on March 1 in Nairobi. It was the sixth United Nations Environment Assembly, or UNEA 6, organized through the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Over a two-week period, there were preparatory meetings (including a Youth Environment Assembly), punctuated in the middle over the weekend by the Global Major Groups and Stakeholders Forum, leading into the five days of UNEA 6.
In 2012, UNEP was given oversight over all the UN environmental initiatives, some of which (like the COPs on climate change) seem to have a life of their own. A dozen years later, that oversight and coordination is starting to bear fruit — but too few people seem to find out what happens at UNEA.
For one thing, there is just not enough drama to break into the headlines. This was the largest gathering yet, with something like 7,000 people registered for some part of the process. UNEA itself is structured like the General Assembly, with each member state having two seats (and one vote). What makes it interesting is the active role played by civil society organizations (CSOs) — as observers, without a vote, but able to offer interventions on the floor of the plenary and in many of the committees.
What exams do and don’t do
5 minute read Monday, Mar. 25, 2024The persistent question — to have provincial exams or not — has been brought back into the spotlight by the provincial government changing its mind from banning them to reinstating them shortly afterward.
No need to sacrifice life’s pleasures
4 minute read Preview Monday, Mar. 25, 2024Do away with mining gaslighting
3 minute read Saturday, Mar. 23, 2024Cherry-picking environmental issues and denigrating Manitoba’s environment framework may provide good fodder at the door for environmental fundraising campaigns, but in terms of public policy, it is nothing more than gaslighting. The lobbyist for the Wilderness Committee, quoted in the Free Press article ”Concerns raised over mining exploration in caribou habitat,” (March 13) puts science and professionalism on the back burner.
Manitoba has one of the most rigorous and thorough processes for protecting our environment. So when lobbyists attack mineral exploration using misleading statements, they also attack the fabric of science and professionalism.
Mineral exploration permits in parks, like exploration work planned for Grass River Provincial Park, are only issued after professional biologists at the wildlife branch evaluate the potential effects on wildlife and ensure the project is compatible with the goals of the park.
In this case, the permit requires the diamond drill rig — a unit the size of an ice fishing shack — to be slung by helicopter to the site.
Two wrongs, no rights
4 minute read Preview Saturday, Mar. 23, 2024Wab Kinew and pragmatism
5 minute read Saturday, Mar. 23, 2024Last October, a Globe and Mail article introduced Wab Kinew, Manitoba’s newly elected premier, to a national audience with the prediction that under his leadership the NDP government would be guided in its actions by “Prairie pragmatism.” We all know that Manitoba is the start of the Prairies going west. What pragmatism means is far less clear.
After a varied career as a musician, author, broadcaster and university administrator, Kinew only entered party politics in 2016. His evolution as a political leader is still unfolding and the future trajectory of the NDP government largely remains to be seen.
As a non-partisan commentator who has never met Kinew, I am interested to see how over time his government balances realism and idealism, ideological principles and political pragmatism, and inspirational rhetoric and practical actions.
Pragmatism is a varied, contested philosophical tradition, as well as a popular, vague label used in media.
Best to focus on the fragments of hope and beauty
5 minute read Preview Saturday, Mar. 23, 2024City budget puts brakes on poverty reduction
4 minute read Friday, Mar. 22, 2024All levels of government must contribute to ending poverty, and municipalities are no exception. The need is urgent. More than one in 12 Winnipeg residents experience poverty, including more than one in six Indigenous people.
Municipalities have limited resources for addressing poverty compared to other levels of government, but Winnipeg has adopted a strategy and action plan outlining what it can do. It needs to commit financial resources to execute it.
Winnipeg’s 2024-27 budget passed with virtually no new resources for the city’s poverty reduction strategy. This move is inconsistent with council’s Strategic Priorities Action Plan 2023-26, which guides council priorities and investments. Action 3.3 of the plan is to “accelerate implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy.” While the budget “elevates” the strategy to the CAO’s office, it allocates no new resources to accelerate implementation.
Winnipeg released its first-ever poverty reduction strategy in November 2021 “within existing resources.” With no new money, the majority of actions in the first implementation plan (2021-23) were exploratory and introductory in nature. Major highlights focused only on managing the symptoms of poverty.
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