News roundup, 9 July 2026

- Flooding as a result of recent storms has resulted in the evacuation of the Dauphin Regional Health Centre. The city got 115 millimetres of rain in a two day period, and the hospital's basement was flooded, knocking out power to the facility and causing substantial damage. Patients were sent to other hospitals across the province, the largest share being sent to Brandon. It may be months before full service is restored. Also in Dauphin, a huge commercial greenhouse was flooded, destroying vast amounts of crops. While the Parkland region, which includes Dauphin has gotten the worst of it, more than 50 municipalities across the province have declared local states of emergency due to recent storms.

- The federal government is cutting funding to a weather radar research group, even as the incidence of tornadoes is increasing in this country. More than a little short sighted, I'd have to say.

- Jesse Wheatland is accused of setting numerous fires across Winnipeg, including at the constituency offices of ministers Bernadette Smith and Nahanni Fontaine as well as several downtown businesses and an addictions treatment centre. He was reportedly in possession of a list of potential targets when he was arrested; these included the office of Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara and the CBC. Another list found following searches mentioned a proposed location for a supervised consumption site; he is also accused of having attempted to start a fire there as well. He had previously posted concerns about that site on a community Facebook group; other targets appear to have been former employers.

- The Rural Municipality of East St. Paul is refusing to publicize the names of registered candidates in this fall's municipal election until the deadline to register has passed in September. The policy has been in place since 2022; the practice is anomalous and the province has urged the municipality to be more transparent, but there is no legislation to actually prohibit such secrecy. The motivation for the policy has not been made public; none of the council members would address the matter with the CBC. I suspect it may have something to do with councillors and/or the mayor hoping to get in by acclamation and not wanting it to be known that they're running unopposed until it's too late to do anything about it. Certainly some community activists fear that this could be a consequence of the policy.

- Graham Platner, the winner of the Democratic primary for the Maine Senate seat that's up for grabs this fall, is withdrawing from the race following sexual assault allegations. Platner had been seen as a progressive compared to the establishment candidate Janet Mills who he'd defeated in the primary. The party must now select a new candidate by the 27th of July in order to contest the seat, which is critical in gaining control of the Senate.

- Mark Zuckerberg, whose company just laid off thousands of people to replace them with AI, admits that it isn't working as well as he had hoped. In his words, the "trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected". Other companies are facing similar issues; Ford has had to rehire many engineers and technicians. The company's VP of vehicle hardware engineering, Charles Poon, is trying to spin this as bad timing, saying that the experienced workers left before they could transfer their knowledge to the AIs. This comes as Ford had more recalls than any other US automaker so far this year. I have to assume all this folly is driven by investors.

News roundup, 2 July 2026

- Russia, despite being one of the world's largest oil producers, is experiencing fuel supply issues as a result of the latest wave of Ukrainian strikes on refineries. The Putin regime has outlawed the export of gasoline and jet fuel and is considering importing these products from elsewhere. The impact on public opinion in Russia may be significant, but the extent to which this will matter is unclear. Even many critics of the regime remain in favour of the war, they just don't think Putin is doing a good enough job fighting it. Russia has, of course, retaliated on a large scale for the latest intrusions, killing 18 people and causing widespread damage in Kyiv.

- Still on the subject of great powers getting in over their heads, the US attack on Iran has led many of America's allies to question whether it's such a great idea to host bases that might become targets of counterattacks. This could significantly impact their ability to "project power".

- A tornado struck in the Rural Municipality of Rossburn in western Manitoba on Sunday night, destroying a house. The next day, another tornado struck in the affluent suburban Winnipeg neighbourhood of Whyte Ridge on Monday evening, also destroying one house and damaging several others. Torrential rain also caused some flooding in Brandon and Dauphin; the latter city has declared a state of emergency, as has the town of Swan River. No injuries have been reported, however.

- Brian Mayes, who has represented St. Vital on Winnipeg's city council since 2011, has announced that he is not running again this fall. He leaves behind a mixed legacy; he was progressive in some ways, and definitely very responsive to his constituents' wants, but that latter point is also part of what was wrong with him; whenever there was a tension between the desires of his NIMBY constituents and the needs of the city as a whole (e.g. on infill housing), the NIMBYs tended to win out.

- Establishment Democrats are less than pleased with the recent success of leftwingers in Democratic primaries. Letitia James, the attorney general of New York State, went so far as to claim that some of the candidates endorsed by NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani "do not understand the politics of New York City"; if that were true, though, you wouldn't expect them to have been as successful as they in fact have. Meanwhile Democratic House member Greg Meeks said that "if you’re a socialist, you’re not a Democrat". Ironically, people like James and Meeks are the first to get angry at third party campaigns (not without some cause given how badly locked in the two-party system is in that country), but in their mind such people should only work within the party so long as they don't actually succeed there. The most charitable interpretation of these bleatings is that they're scared that leftwing Democrats might gain a national profile that will scare off swing voters, but that seems like a stretch. More likely they're scared of what will become of AIPAC funds.

News roundup, 3 June 2026

- Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen has finally managed to put together a functional coalition government after drawn-out negotiations since the election in March. Frederiksen's Social Democrats won the largest share of seats in the country's parliament, but this was still their poorest showing in over a century. Besides her party, the coalition will include the leftwing Socialist People’s Party, the centre-left Radikale Venstre (Social Liberals), and the centrist Moderates; this means that the coalition will still be a minority government with a total of 82 seats in the 179 seat parliament and will be dependent on the Green Left and other parties to maintain confidence of the house.

- The war (or, as it's officially known, "special military operation") in Ukraine is apparently starting to sow seeds of doubt among Russia's establishment. Putin, of course, is unwavering, but things are starting to slip out in the country's press such as an article in a pro-Kremlin newspaper which quoted a political commentator saying that "the worst-case scenario is not even defeat, it's an endless special operation" as well as quoting someone else saying that, from a historical perspective, "major geopolitical losses were sometimes more useful than brilliant victories". The article was subsequently removed from the paper's website, though, and I'd say those quoted in the article should keep a safe distance from windows for the foreseeable future.

- The family of a nine year old girl from O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, Manitoba who died after apparently being turned away twice from the hospital in Dauphin without adequate treatment for a broken arm is still looking for answers. According to the family they asked about getting a cast (which would seem to be the most basic thing imaginable) but nothing was done, and the child was sent home with nothng but a note saying she would need to be away from school for two weeks. The death is still under investigation from the province's chief medical examiner, but it sounds like staff at that hospital are going to have a lot of explaining to do.

- A proposed wind farm development in St. Leon, Manitoba is triggering some local residents who worry that it could somehow mess with their "rural way of life". The location would be developed by Swan Lake First Nation in cooperation with Quebec-based Innergex Renewable Energy. It's not clear exactly how it would affect their way of life, other than vague bleatings about "flickering" and sounds from the turbines. The thing is, there is an existing wind farm nearby and the sky hasn't fallen. I'm pretty sure that if you pressed these people about exactly what's wrong with the proposal they'd either come up with some "crabs in a bucket" complaint about the farmers who lease land to the wind farm getting an unfair advantage over their neighbours due to getting a steady income, that green energy is "woke", or, if you got them drunk enough, they'd start ranting about the involvement of the First Nation.

News roundup, 6 June 2024

- UN secretary general Antonio Guterres is urging countries around the world to ban fossil fuel advertising, drawing analogies with the bans on tobacco advertising in many countries.

A report from Canada's National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) on foreign interference in Canadian politics alleges that several MPs, not named in the report, were "semi-witting or witting" participants in said interference. The chance of their identities becoming known does not appear to be high. Andrew Coyne suspects that both Liberal and opposition MPs are involved, pointing out that the Tories waited until it was clear the MPs would not be named before making an empty demand in Parliament for their names to be released.

- The cost of the proposed widening of the residential part of Kenaston Boulevard in Winnipeg has been estimated at $586 million at a minimum. A substantial part of the cost would be in the expropriation of a number of properties. One can't help but wonder if there isn't a better use for that money.

- The controlled entrances at Manitoba's Liquor Marts have, not surprisingly, been extremely effective at curbing thefts. Other retailers, however, are reluctant to follow suit, for fear of losing market share to competitors who don't.

- The superintendent of Mountain View School Division in western Manitoba was fired in a special board meeting on Friday. In response, three long-serving trustees resigned in protest. The chair of the board says this was because the superintendent had proposed a change to his salary and that his contract was expiring in June, however the Manitoba Metis Federation believe that the real reason was that he had permitted Dauphin's Pride Parade to use a school as a starting point; the board chair denies this.

- Siemens Mobility has developed a dual mode electric locomotive, capable of running either on battery power or from overhead wires. This makes the elimination of diesel trains a realistic possibility in many places.

- The popularity of diamonds has declined markedly in recent years. Competition from synthetic diamonds (which, as a bonus, can be counted on not to be "blood diamonds"), as well as shifting consumer preferences and declining marriage rates, are cited as factors.

Basic income... an idea whose time has come?

It's a well kept secret that in the 1970s a joint federal-provincial study was conducted between the Schreyer government in Manitoba and the Trudeau administration in Ottawa on a program called "Mincome". It involved paying a basic income to residents of Dauphin and a like number of people in Winnipeg. The study was aborted when the feds decided to pull the plug on it. The date of the cancellation depends on who you read; according to the Uniter it was killed in 1978 (thus in the dying months of the Trudeau government), while Wikipedia claims it lasted until the following year (perhaps under the Clark government). Either way, the data from the study sat in vaults for decades before Evelyn Forget dusted off the old files and tried to draw some conclusions from the study. What she found was interesting:

Originally designed to test what impact guaranteed income would have on people’s decision to work, Mincome provided Forget with a unique natural experiment to look at the impact of poverty through health and education outcomes.

“Kids [that were part of Mincome] stayed in school longer and people used hospitals less, especially for accidents and injuries and mental health reasons,” said Forget.

What was surprising, she notes, is the strength of the findings. Even though only 30 per cent of the families qualified for support, “many people benefited from Mincome, and not only those who received payments under the scheme,” said Forget.

Participants at Mincome’s sister site in Winnipeg had similar outcomes. Even with guaranteed income, participants still chose to work.

From the previously cited Uniter article (my emphasis). If you think about it, it makes sense, considering the way welfare works right now. After all, if you're on welfare and get a job in a fast food hellhole, you're not going to be making any more money than you were on welfare, so you might as well just stay on the dole in the hope of finding something better. On the other hand, with a basic income, your income from your crappy job is on top of your Mincome payments. So it makes a lot more sense to find a job under a basic income regime than it does with conventional welfare.

Obviously, the elephant in the room is that running something like this on a provincial or national scale would require significantly higher levels of taxation than most Canadians, not to mention Americans, are accustomed to. The folks at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative have looked at the economics of this in more detail, and it's noteworthy that they like the idea in spite of the tax drawbacks. Noteworthy because the WCI folks are pretty mainstream economists, and pretty free-market oriented at that.