News roundup, 16 Sept 2024

- Another person apparently tried to kill Donald Trump yesterday, but was chased off before he could get a shot off at the former president. The suspect has been captured alive; the impact on public opinion remains to be seen. It doesn't speak well for the political culture in that country, in any case.

- Several schools as well as state and municipal offices in Springfield, Ohio were closed on Thursday over a bomb threat. The threat was reportedly related to Trump's rather strange claims about the dietary practices of Haitian immigrants.

- The byelections in Elmwood-Transcona and LaSalle-Emard-Verdun happen today. The latter one has a ballot with no less than 91 candidates thanks to an organization called the Longest Ballot Committee, who say they recruited numerous candidates as a protest measure against the first-past-the-post electoral system. While the system is very much worth protesting, I'm not sure if this is the most effective way to do so. And you can be sure that if the Liberals hold onto that riding, but the results are delayed as a result of the committee's stunt, people will use this to claim that the election was rigged.

- Pierre Poilievre still refuses to go through the necessary procedures to get a security clearance that would allow him to read the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report on foreign interference in Canadian politics, despite the fact that 60% of his own party's supporters would like him to do so. He says this is because he would be unable to publicly discuss details of the report. Of course he can't publicly discuss those things anyway, and some in this Reddit thread suspect ulterior motives.

- Two new candidates have expressed an intent to compete with former Winnipeg Blue Bomber and current Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan for the leadership of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party. Trevor Sprague, a tax consultant and onetime Canadian Alliance candidate, announced last week that he is considering a run, and hotel operator and onetime federal Conservative candidate Wally Daudrich made a similar announcement shortly after.

- A woman in Norfolk County, Ontario was charged with assault after what she says was an inadvertent squirting of her neighbour with a water pistol while playing with her child. Folks on Reddit are insinuating that the neighbour in question has a long history with his neighbours of calling the authorities over trivial and petty matters; in this thread as well as this one it is further alleged that the woman's ex-husband is an OPP officer.

- An eastbound Ford F-150 left the road just inside the Perimeter and annihilated a bus shelter and the person inside it as well as a utility pole and another vehicle before running into a gas station. Three other people were injured.

Springfield rejects group home for mentally challenged adults

New Directions, an agency with a long and respected history in Winnipeg, has been rejected in their bid to open a group home in the RM of Springfield:

New Directions wants to set up a group home for two developmentally and physically challenged men in a 1,580-square-foot bungalow on a six-acre property it purchased on Aspen Glen Road, near the Elmhurst Golf and Country Club.

The property is zoned rural residential and New Directions applied to rezone it to institutional.

Area residents opposed the rezoning and a petition bearing more than 200 names was delivered to the RM at Monday's meeting. Councillors unanimously rejected the rezoning application.

From the Free Press. Lindor Reynolds summarizes the locals' paranoia here:

They were not going to build a warehouse for the criminally insane. They simply wanted to use the house to give a safe, rural setting to two men. It would be well-staffed, with two employees awake at all times to supervise their charges.

Two-hundred-and-eighty-one people signed a petition against the group home.

Some residents claimed they were concerned about traffic problems. Others said they feared for their children. Someone else suggested emergency vehicles wouldn't be able to get through.

One pre-existing bungalow. Two residents. Two staff. That's it.

But under all those concerns, real or imagined, was a deeper fear. Someone spread the rumour that the home was going to be used for sex offenders. Not just sex offenders, mind you, but sex offenders with mental-health problems. Is it at all surprising the community protested the group home?

There was no truth to the rumour but, as is always the case in these sorts of conflicts, that didn't matter. The damage was done. Jennifer Frain, the executive direction of New Directions, says her agency received only one phone call after it contacted residents to tell them about the proposal. The resident was spoken to and, according to Frain, mollified.

Source. The thing is, a lot of folks in rural communities move there from the city because they're terrified of anyone who might be different from them. They are the other, and should not be seen in a decent community of rich white folks. Think about the children! Worse, think about the poor parents having to explain to their kids why such people exist!

Not surprisingly, after this happened the Native Addictions Council of Manitoba withdrew their application to place a treatment centre in Springfield. Given what the yokels did to New Directions, it was a foregone conclusion anyhow.