News roundup, 24 Dec 2025

 Just a note that I plan on this being the last blog post until the new year. That may change if something happens that seems worthy of interrupting the break, but otherwise I will resume posting in January. For now, though, here's the latest:

- A Perimeter Airlines Dash 8 preparing to take off from Winnipeg on a flight to Thompson via Manto Sipi and Shamattawa was stopped on a taxiway and evacuated on Monday after a flight attendant and ground control reported that the aircraft was on fire. There were no injuries in the evacuation, and the fire was limited to the right main landing gear assembly.

- The executive of Winnipeg's Granite Curling Club is requesting a judicial review of the city's plans to fight the ruling of the Manitoba Municipal Board regarding an affordable housing project planned for an adjacent city-owned parking lot. The city has received advice suggesting that the board's ruling can be ignored; the executive wants this reviewed by the courts. Notably, a substantial minority of the club's members are in favour of the housing project. If I had to guess, the members in support of the development probably live mostly in Wolseley, West Broadway, and Osborne Village and see homelessness every day as they walk or bike through their neighbourhoods, while those in opposition live in the suburbs and thus find homelessness less inconvenient for them than having to take the bus to the curling club.

- The waters around southwestern England are seeing a huge surge in the octopus population. The Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) accounts for most of the surge; this species is not unknown in British waters but has historically been more common in the Mediterranean. Since they prey on other molluscs as well as crustaceans, this may have implications for the shellfish industry if the "bloom" persists. Warmer winters due to climate change are the suspected reason, though maybe they're just the advance party for the Cthulhu as he gets ready to come out of the seabed and ravage the world. We'll have to see.

- The FBI and a New York prosecutor sought to interview the Andrew formerly known as Prince over possible connections to Peter Nygard. It's like all the rich scumbags out their know each other or something.

- A raid on a house in Winnipeg's North Point Douglas neighbourhood last Friday resulted in arrests and the seizure of two crossbows and a grenade as well as more conventional weapons including several firearms, brass knuckles, and a canister of bear spray. Two people are facing multiple charges for the weapons as well as methamphetamine, fentanyl, and lockpicks. Meanwhile in the suburban neighbourhood of Westwood, a cop apparently managed to lose their service weapon with 17 rounds of ammunition in it.

- Far right influencers Andrew Tate and Jake Paul both got soundly beaten in separate boxing matches. It's almost as if hypermasculine macho nonsense isn't enough to actually win a fight.

- A mall Santa in the Edmonton suburb of Sherwood Park was fired after allegedly slapping the hand of a child who tugged at his beard. I could certainly see the temptation, but really, all he needed to say was "No presents for you!"

- A driver in Salmon Arm, BC cut off a vehicle at high speed, flipping the bird while doing so. Unfortunately for him and his passengers, the vehicle turned out to be an unmarked police car, and when they were pulled over the police noticed some unstamped (i.e. black market) cigarettes in their car. Upon further investigation they found cannabis that was also from non-approved sources; they also found 29 grams of cocaine and a wad of cash.

News roundup, 22 May 2025

- US sanctions against the International Criminal Court for daring to issue an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu are severely hampering the organization's work. The court's chief prosecutor has lost access to his email because Microsoft is prohibited from working with them, and his bank accounts in the UK have been frozen (presumably the banks don't want to be shut out of the US market). And Americans working for the court have been warned not to return home to visit family due to the risk of being arrested.

- The IDF fired shots at a diplomatic delegation in the West Bank. The delegation, which included two Canadians, were part of a tour of the city of Jenin. The Carney government has called Israel's move "unacceptable"; for their part the Israelis claim that the tour group "deviated" from the approved route and that the IDF fired warning shots in response.

- Two staffers at the Israeli embassy in Washington were shot to death outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect allegedly shouted pro-Palestinian slogans during and after his arrest.

- Manitoba's conflict of interest commissioner has wrapped up an investigation into former premier Heather Stefanson and two members of her cabinet (Cliff Cullen and Jeff Wharton). The investigation has concluded that the three violated the Conflict of Interest Act when they attempted to rush through an approval of a sand mining operation in Springfield during the "caretaker period" between the election and the actual change of government.

- The City of Winnipeg plans to remove all parking paystations from city streets, saying that the paystations are outdated (they depend on 3G networks which will soon disappear) and that replacement would cost some $3.6 million. In any case, they say that 80% of parking payments are already done using the PayByPhone app. Those who are unable to use this can purchase booklets of prepaid passes at the Winnipeg Parking Authority office; unfortunately for them, that location does not have free parking. In theory this could provide people with more of an incentive to take the bus; in practice it will probably just make them crankier.

- CUPW offered to defer the impending strike for 2 weeks in order to evaluate the latest offer from Canada Post, but the corporation refused to go along with it. I suspect that deep down the union's executives know how poor their bargaining position is and are looking for a way out. As far as what Canada Post hopes to gain by pushing workers to strike soon (or locking them out), I'm not sure; perhaps they hope to wear down their resistance.

- A cottage formerly owned by Peter Nygard went up in flames in Falcon Lake; police consider arson to be a "strong possibility". If so it was a very reckless move given the risks of it spreading; it was also misdirected, since the cottage hasn't been owned by Nygard since 2021.

News roundup, 23 Sept 2024

- French President Emmanuel Macron has appointed a new government from the fragmented parliament elected in a snap election earlier this year. The new government is a coalition between his own Renaissance party and the conservative Republicans; however the two parties combined do not have a majority and they will need the support of other parties to pass legislation - possibly including Marine Le Pen's National Rally.

- The author of a recent article in the Manitoba Law Journal on the question of whether it's OK for a backbench MLA such as Mark Wasyliw to be practicing criminal law at the same time thinks there are real issues with the matter, with potentials for conflict of interest as well as the more basic question of whether it's advisable to be trying to do two fairly demanding jobs at the same time. He is, however, critical of the focus on the connection with Peter Nygard. Meanwhile NDP caucus chair Mike Moyes has stated that Wasyliw was a difficult person to deal with; that he may well have been, but I guess that doesn't resonate with the public the way the Nygard thing does. In any case, the matter does not seem to have impacted Wab Kinew's popularity; he still has the highest approval rating of any premier in the country.

- In Ontario, the Ford government is planning to override municipal powers again, this time to restrict municipalities' ability to build bike lanes. The proposed legislation is called the "Reducing Gridlock and Saving You Time Act". In actual fact, fewer bike lanes likely means more motor vehicles on the road and hence more gridlock, but the suburbanites Ford is trying to court seem incapable of understanding that. Or else they don't care because they're stuck driving anyway thanks to their questionable lifestyle choices, so they want to make sure inner city residents don't have it any better.

- Solar energy continues to surge worldwide, and some are predicting that this could finally be the tipping point that starts to cause a reduction in global carbon emissions. Some environmentalists are concerned about the impact of some solar installations, fearing that this will alter some pristine habitats, but the truth is that no habitat is likely to escape dramatic change in the next few decades, so maybe the best approach is to focus on keeping as many habitats viable as possible, rather than pristine. Meanwhile in Norway, electric cars now outnumber gas-powered ones.

- Speaking of keeping habitats viable, as opposed to pristine, researchers in the US, Mexico, and the Caribbean have had some success in breeding heat-resistant corals. Stuff like this is necessary, though it will probably also make some uncomfortable because it's pretty much an admission that wilderness, as we understand it, is essentially a thing of the past. In a similar vein, I think it would make a lot of sense to replant the burned areas of Jasper National Park, say, with broad-leaved trees that are better suited to a warmer climate (and less prone to severe wildfires), but that might be unpopular since it would greatly change the nature of the park. Like it or not, though, engineered ecosystems are going to have to be a much bigger part of our world in the future.

- A large housing and commercial project planned for the French city of Caen has been scrapped following a study that concluded that the sea level rise that's already locked in from climate change will render the site where it was planned uninhabitable in a matter of decades.

- While Kamala Harris stands a good chance of winning in the fall, the possibility that a state with enough electors to decide the outcome could end up in the Supreme Court is worrisome.

- Bruce Zuchowski, the sheriff of Portage County, Ohio, suggested that residents of his county keep lists of addresses with Democratic election signs. One resident who called the sheriff's office and left a message critical of this says that they started getting calls from blocked numbers, and when they finally answered the caller simply read out their name and address. Not particularly subtle of them, that's for sure.

News roundup, 17 Sept 2024

- The federal NDP managed to squeak out a win in the Elmwood-Transcona byelection. The Liberals weren't so fortunate, losing the longtime stronghold riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun to the Bloc Québécois.

- At the provincial level, the Manitoba NDP is facing a bit of awkwardness after Fort Garry MLA Mark Wasyliw was expelled from the party caucus. The party's caucus chair, Riel MLA Mike Moyes, was quoted as saying that this follows revelations that one of Wasyliw's colleagues in his law practice was involved in the defense of Peter Nygard. Now it's possible that Moyes was misquoted, or misspoke himself, but if not then this is a very strange and rather troubling move - even a monster like Nygard is entitled to legal representation, and this should not be seen as a stain on the lawyer who takes the job, much less their colleagues. That said, as far back as last fall concerns were raised by the party about the amount of time Wasyliw would be able to devote to the job of representing his constituents if he remained active as a defense lawyer, and he got all pissy when denied a cabinet post last fall (even though being a cabinet minister while practicing law would have been even more difficult than being a backbencher).

- Charges have been laid against the owners of Spirit Rising House, the private, for-profit foster home provider that was giving marijuana to the kids in their care.

- Amazon is completely doing away with hybrid work. They say they fear that without such measures their corporate culture could be "diluted"; as usual, they make absolutely no mention of commercial real estate. Notably, the demand for office space in Amazon's home city of Seattle is the lowest among major American cities; I have to assume that Amazon owns a fair bit of that real estate and that this is a measure to protect their investment. To be fair, there could be real issues with a crash in that market; there could be ripple effects in the economy as REITs that specialize in these products collapse, and the decline in property values could potentially starve municipalities of revenue.

News roundup, 12 Sept 2024

 - Jagmeet Singh has indicated that he now opposes the carbon tax as introduced by the Liberals, saying that it puts too much burden on working people. I kinda, sorta get what he's saying, but I think a better approach would be to oppose the GST. If I was in charge, what I'd do is eliminate the GST and raise the carbon tax to make the change revenue neutral; that way there'd be no net increase in the regressiveness of the tax regime, but a strong incentive to shift one's purchases towards more environmentally benign things. Of course politics is the art of the possible, and maybe Singh fears that the existing carbon levy is so tainted by the fact that it was introduced by the Trudeau government that the only way to avoid being associated with the Liberals is to reflexively oppose it.

- The Toronto International Film Festival has cancelled the screening of Russians at War, a documentary by Russian-Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova. The film profiles frontline Russian soldiers, some of whom express doubts about the war, and its official description as submitted to TIFF describes the war as "unjust", but nonetheless some Ukrainian groups denounced the film as "propaganda" (perhaps because it humanizes the Russians too much for their liking).

- The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed new rules that would limit the sizes of vehicles for the consumer market. A good move on both safety and environmental grounds; unfortunately there's a good chance that auto industry lobbyists will kill it.

- A division of Cox Media Group has pitched the idea of having smartphones do what many have suspected for years that they already do - namely listen to ambient conversations and direct advertising to their users based on the content of said conversations. Notably, the pitch mentioned that Apple, Google, and Meta are all clients of CMG; all those companies have denied that they make use of this capability, but meanwhile Ford has filed a patent for something similar that would direct ads towards their cars' users.

- Following the sudden death of Cathy Merrick, the Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, at a public event, the Winnipeg Free Press published a photo of Merrick lying on the ground. The AMC was outraged at the publication of the photo and called for a boycott of the newspaper. The paper is apologizing for their handling of the incident.

- Peter Nygard has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for five sexual assaults committed in his company's Toronto office. Including credit for time served he'll be out in 7 years if he's still alive (a big if, that).

- A few thousand years ago the Sinai Peninsula was a much greener place than it is now. A Dutch engineer has a scheme to make the desert bloom, though some environmentalists fear that there could be serious unintended consequences, assuming that the scheme works at all.

News roundup, 3 May 2024

- The Kinew government is going to be holding an expert-led review of the Pallister government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in manitoba, but apparently no judicial inquiry as originally planned. It might seem odd that they would forgo such an opportunity to make the Tories look bad in public, especially when they had campaigned on doing just that. What's interesting is one of the main reasons some sources have apparently given for downgrading the inquiry. According to Dan Lett, "NDP government sources indicated that while a public inquiry would likely produce some valuable insight into the pandemic response, it would be difficult to control some of the collateral and volatile politics that would no doubt accompany public hearings... In other words, the inquiry would become a rallying point for a political movement that, while it is not growing in numbers, is most certainly growing in toxicity". In still other words, it would trigger the freedumb crowd, and increase their public presence, which could possibly put innocent people in harm's way. Sadly, I believe that this fear is entirely justified; whether this was the correct response, I don't know.

-  In other health-related news, the Manitoba government has increased the number of medical residencies by 17 in order to make a step towards addressing the physician shortage in the province. Every spot has already been filled.

- Jagmeet Singh has announced that the federal NDP will support the Liberals' budget once again. Whether this is a good move on their part depends on whether you're looking at tactics or strategy. In purely tactical terms, it might hurt the party in the next election, by delaying the opportunity to "throw the bums out", but in terms of long term strategy, it's essential for the nascent dental care program to have time to show its merits to the public and thus make it more politically risky for the Tories to kill it when they do take power in another year and a half.

- Yet another MP, Liberal Pam Damoff, has announced she's not running again in her riding of Oakville North-Burlington, citing the misogyny and threats that she has experienced. Can't say I blame her, especially since running for reelection would probably ramp up the awfulness, and at the same time is probably futile given that the Tories are likely to sweep most suburban GTA ridings this time round.

- The federal Tories are calling for Speaker Greg Fergus to resign after Pierre Poilievre, but not Justin Trudeau, was ejected from Parliament on Tuesday, saying that accusing someone of courting rightwing extremists is exactly the same as calling someone a "wacko". Not sure how to adjudicate that, but it's worth pointing out that even Konrad Yakabuski is worried about the fact that Poilievre is courting people like the convoy camp on the NB-NS border. As he points out, the fact that Poilievre is shown on a video shared by his own people exiting a trailer with a Diagalon flag on it is probably not accidental. I generally don't have much time for a neoliberal like Yakabuski, but he's right about this, and I'll take a neoliberal over a fascist any day.

- Another pro-Palestinian protest encampment has appeared, this one at the University of British Columbia. So far, things don't seem to have gotten out of hand, except maybe from the point of view of those who would normally use the athletic field they've taken over.

- Joe Biden is showing openness to relaxing federal laws on marijuana. It's the right thing to do, and probably also a wise move if he wants to get the youth vote.

- Police are investigating after an employee at a Winnipeg grocery store apparently punched a woman who he suspected of shoplifting. The store manager claims that this happened after the employee caught her taking meat on video, but even if this is true this generally isn't how you're supposed to handle such situations.

- Peter Nygard, recently convicted of four counts of sexual assault in Toronto, is suing a Vancouver woman for defamation; the suit was launched a month after he was charged by Winnipeg police with sexually assaulting her while she was here for a modelling job back in the 1990s (not to be confused with other pending charges against him in Montreal and New York). I'll say this much - the man's got chutzpah. But the fact that you can launch a defamation suit against one of your accusers while you're awaiting trial for the crimes they're accusing you of is a rather serious hole in the law.

- DARPA has rolled out a robotic tank. I can't see anything possibly going wrong with that, can you?

News roundup, 18 Jan 2024

- A man in Quebec who had circulated conspiracy theories about the 2023 wildfires having been set by the government in order to "trick" people into believing that climate change is real has pleaded guilty to setting some of the fires himself.

- The Republicans, and especially Donald Trump, are increasingly repellent to young voters. That may not hurt them too much in the short run, since older voters have a higher turnout, but those older voters aren't going to be around forever.

- Another issue for the Republicans - while many of them recognize the utility of advance voting, they're having a hard time getting the MAGA crowd to go along with it, because of Trump's messaging about it making for "crooked elections". At least one of their candidates believes that this contributed to her defeat.

- France has joined the ranks of those opposing South Africa's genocide accusation against Israel, although they are politely asking the Israelis to conduct themselves in a nicer manner, if only for their own sake.

- The "Leahy Law" is a piece of legislation introduced in 1997 which is supposed to prohibit the US State Department and the Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign militaries with problematic human rights records. One country in particular seems to enjoy an unofficial exemption, though. Guess which country.

- There has been an exchange of fire between Iran and Pakistan. Just in case you were worried that the Middle East and South Asia were getting boring...

- High-profile lawyer Brian Greenspan is withdrawing from the Nygard case for "ethical reasons". He says this is the first time in his 50 year career that he has made such an application. 

- Lac du Bonnet MLA Wayne Ewasko has been chosen as interim leader of the Manitoba PCs.

- A Republican member of the Kentucky legislature introduced a bill to amend the state's laws concerning incest. Under the proposed legislation it wouldn't be incest if it's just your cousin, although he's since withdrawn the bill following a backlash.

The Nygård documentary

A few months ago, you may recall this post about Peter Nygård's attempts to block the airing of a CBC documentary about him. And in the last few days, my site meter has gone apeshit with hits, mostly from people searching for info on that doc. So I figured that having mentioned it, I should actually watch it (it's on the CBC website). It's pretty hard hitting, that's for sure. The harassment (both general and sexual) claimed by some former employees is shocking. I can certainly see why he didn't want it to air...

Nygard sues to block media

This guy has long been known for his litigious ways; here he's using his formidable legal arsenal to try to stop investigative journalists:

Winnipeg fashion baron Peter Nygard has turned to the courts in Winnipeg, New York and San Jose in a bid to shut down a CBC investigation of him.

To help him prove his case in Winnipeg, Nygard also wants the courts in California to force Google to reveal the identity of someone who posted an item on an anonymous blog.

Nygard is trying to block the CBC from airing a "negative and critical" story on him that he claims is based on information supplied by two former managers.

The crux of Nygard's challenge was filed last March in Court of Queen's Bench, but it now extends to courts in New York and California as the women's fashion designer and his lawyers try to tighten the noose around the CBC to stop a story from being aired on The Fifth Estate.

The case went largely unnoticed until Monday when the New York Times ran a piece on its website that Nygard had lodged a copyright-infringement complaint against the CBC, stemming from the attendance of reporter David Common and a cameraman at his Manhattan store on its opening Nov. 6. He claims they were trespassing.

In the Dec. 18 complaint, Nygard said he wants the CBC -- who he says did not have permission to be at the event -- to be ordered to return to him the video they recorded and to be prohibited from airing it ever again.

In Manitoba, Nygard's legal challenge is more complex.

He wants the courts to rule that the CBC's The Fifth Estate should be forbidden from airing a story he claims is based on confidential information supplied by two former employees in Winnipeg; ex-director of human resources Patrick Prowse and ex-recruitment and retention manager Dana Neal.

In his statement of claim, Nygard says Prowse and Neal were bound by confidentiality agreements and had no legal right to share information about their work at Nygard with local CBC researcher Timothy Sawa. Nygard also names Fifth Estate executive producer David Studer in the claim.

From the Winnipeg Free Press. One has to wonder how investigative journalists will be able to do their job, if Nygard gets his way. Evidently at least one court shares these concerns.

Edited to add: It finally aired.