WildPath

The problem is reallocation/spending differently/finding efficiencies is basically shining the cuts turd. The strategy is to announce reallocation and efficiencies found because of previous government overspending and wastefulness. The reality is that the system is being cut. Even touting overall spending increases does not mean we are keeping up with a growing population or a population with increased needs. Announcements like the one linked below show there are real cuts, even in the middle of the pandemic. It is promoted as efficiencies and cutting the fat off the top. Who has to take the responsibilities from the ones who lost their job? It trickles down to regular health professionals like nurses that have more on their shoulders. The budget looks better because nurses get paid less than senior officials, but nurses are overworked, stressed and leaving the profession. I know nurses working in the field. Covid has made things especially challenging, but savings/efficiencies/reallocations have compounded the damage. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/southern-health-region-cuts-covid-1.5813496 This is the effect, keep in mind these numbers are from periods outside peak Covid infections: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/emergency-nurses-health-sciences-centre-raise-alarm-long-wait-times-1.6158973 https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/medical/more-than-25-of-patients-left-health-sciences-centre-s-er-without-being-seen-in-july-data/ar-AAPi8Nn

The funniest part of this for me is that the anti-vaxxers paid the PC party membership fees to vote in the election and now they are right pissed off and likely feeling a little dumb.

I would have hated for Glover to win, but I could definitely see why her supporters would be upset. Stefanson was clearly the choice of the party, there was an issues of missing ballots and it was a very close result. Anti-vax whackos joined up on mass to have their say in the new premier. Anti-vax superstar Patrick Allard personally went around to collect ballots from his mob of idiots and deliver them because they didn't trust mailing them in. Is this a rerun of a show I've seen before?

I live right by one of their schools. Walk by it frequently and see no Covid precautions, even while there is an active outbreak. Sure, I only see outdoors, kids are still unmasked and bunched together.

Unfortunately, it is not just the bible belt. Winnipeg's own Spring Church has decided to offer religious exemptions to vaccine mandates. My guess is that it is the biggest church in the province (by net worth at least), but I could be totally wrong on this. Even more disgusting is that our health minister is a member of Springs Church and has been caught breaking health rules herself multiple times already. Hate linking to the Sun, but there's no paywall: https://winnipegsun.com/news/news-news/springs-church-offers-religious-exemptions-for-vaccines

Agreed. A large percent of the population would never vote for them. No need to consider that part of the populace when developing policies. They need to cozy up to the fringe, anti-vaxxers (they are the loudest voice) then scare the others that have a chance of voting for them with what the other parties "radical" policies will mean and how it will destroy Manitoba/Canada if they do not win the election. The vaccine/restriction situation has them in a real hard place, at least in comparison to climate/economy/etc. It is a pretty clear line between vaccine mandates and no vaccine mandates, so its hard to give a wink to the anti-vaxxers without seeming completely out of touch with everyone else.

Are you suggesting that the Canadian carbon tax provides additional tax on hydroelectricity? I'd love to see a source for that. Most of the revenues are redistributed to individual. This can be seen as indirectly subsidizing alternative energy since you get your share of revenues back regardless of how carbon-intensive your lifestyle is. Use electric vehicles and renewable energy - you don't pay the levy on carbon-based fuels, but still get to keep the payout. In addition to this, part of the revenues are earmarked directly for subsidizing energy efficiency and reducing carbon output. This is addition to any funding for green energy supplied outside of the system to put a price on carbon. There is already tons of rhetoric about this just being another tax grab on Canadians. I can only imagine how bad it would get if the majority of funds did not end up back in the hands of Canadians directly - more often than not being a net-positive.

This is great, but I'd really like to know how much the case cost us taxpayers. Fighting the feds on climate change and marijuana legislation is ridiculous and costly.

Familiar with that one, what I want to know is what isn't known publicly. I don't know if he was as wacky as he is now, but I'd imagine foreign diplomats would have some stories. Similar to the stories they must have after dealing with Trump.

You'd have to think Bernier knows better and says BS like that to gather more followers and enrage the ones he already has.. The idea that humans are harming the planet is very convenient to ignore. I'd love to hear some stories from his time as our foreign affairs minister.

Nothing about the unmasked PC MLA's here? For those unfamiliar, 3 PC MLA's were caught in pictures at a gala unmasked (posted to one of their own social media accounts😄), one of them our health minister, Audrey Gordon. The same Audrey Gordon that was caught up in the Springs graduation controversy last spring and had the worst denial "I haven't seen any proof that I was there". Her defense this time was that the only removed the mask for the picture. Other pictures, including ones posted by another MLA, show she was unmasked throughout the gala. Unfortunately the anti-vax, anti-restrictions groups have used this from everything to prove Covid isn't real and the leaders know about it to awareness that masks are useless and restrictions are an attempt to control them. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/audrey-gordon-rochelle-squires-apologize-public-health-covid-19-masks-1.6215673

Wrong. The PPC site says so...🙄

Don't forget to add religion in there. And a corrupt, populist world leader.

Yet some people buy into the belief that privatizing will lead to more competition and lower prices for the consumer. They gobble that BS down when our hefty phone bills and comparatively light vehicle insurance bills are clear evidence against this argument.

That sure is the playbook. They've had the audacity to suggest MLCC needs to be sold off because of poor service. I'm no Ernest Hemingway, but I've been to a fair number of MLCC locations and I've always had excellent service. Always trying to find excuses to privatize, crippling institutions by selling off "unnecessary" assets and then doing biased reviews to project a picture that these institutions need to be sold off for the benefit of Manitobans.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. As bad as the proportions look for unvaccinated, it is actually much worse. Unvaccinated are much less likely to get tested. While roughly 70% of positive cases were unvaccinated, I am betting if we took representative samples of the whole province, it might be closer to 90%. This is in a province where the majority of people are vaccinated and the most dense population (Winnipeg) has a much lower infection rate that a certain health region known for great farmer sausage.

To be fair Bell took 123 million in Canada emergency wage subsidy before laying off employees and raising their dividend rate on their stock. Maybe not smart on O'Toole's part, but criticism has definitely been well earned.

What I heard is the idiot guy has another business and he is reopening under the other business name and following health codes, but honouring memberships and such. Basically too proud to publicly change direction and operate with the rules he's opposed. Escalating fines for repeat offenders would be good. How great would it be if the fines could be sent directly to direct competitors that are abiding by health rules?

They did slip in that previous positive Covid test would grant an exemption to some new rules. "For example, if a student in the Southern Health region is symptomatic or identified as a close contact of a known COVID-19 patient, their siblings and parents should also self-isolate until their test results come back, says Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's acting deputy chief provincial public health officer. Those who are fully vaccinated or who have tested positive for COVID-19 within the last six months are exempt from this requirement. " Not a huge deal, but I'm worried it is a sign of things to come. Not a huge fan of incentives for previously having Covid and not being vaccinated. Also could incentivize people from getting vaccinated in the first place.

Regardless of how much plastic put in recycling actually gets recycled, throwing something in the recycling is not really the answer. Sure we feel good about it, but its still using petrochemicals and even if recycled is still using energy to turn into new products. We really need to use less plastic. I believe big oil is fine with recycling as it puts the responsibility on the consumer rather than the industry and they can pat themselves on the back saying they are environmentally responsible and defend their industry while tons of plastic ends up in waterways, our food and our bodies.

One of the biggest choices we have is consuming less. Many needs are actually wants. Many real needs can have a more environmentally friendly solution. To take your example. Despite efforts to ensure the status quo, we still can buy electric cars readily now. Many people who need a vehicle could actually get by with limited vehicle use, do informal car-shares or join Peg City Car Coop (I don't know anyone who has done this, but it seems like a good alternative) Similarly, many of the food choices we make could be significantly less harmful for the environment. Sure, there are big attempts to commercialize this with Beyond Meat, etc. (I haven't really looked into how much better this is) but we can also simply make lentil burgers or something similar instead of crushing some pork chops. Sure, many powerful elements in our society are conspiring to make this seem impossible or very onerous, but there are many ways we can actually vote with our dollars. But going beyond that, we can also try to expose those that are doing environmentally harmful activities, hold governments accountable when they allow/encourage industry to keep up their dirty tricks, and attempt to elect governments who value society over industry.

I believe this is a huge reason behind "stop polluting" initiatives. Industry successfully pushed responsibility onto the public. Obviously consumers can vote with their dollars, but this doesn't happen enough to have a big effect - look at the situation we're in now. Most people are obsessed with buying at the lowest possible price, rather than limiting consumption and voting with dollars. Governments embrace this by offering incentives to big corporations for under the guise of employment benefits. Corporations love this power and "give back" to the community through initiatives that remove their responsibility and place it in the hands of the consumer, often while getting further tax incentives or straight up government grants.

I think that has benefits, in that the voting populace know the plan in place and can adjust their votes based on that. Selecting an appropriate VP can be a big decision. It would a lot better than the nation electing a John McCain and then him stepping down and Donald Trump comes out of nowhere to run the country. I feel that even though we vote for the party, many people vote for the leader and the leader dictates the policies and everyone else in the party is basically on board regardless of their personal beliefs. I recently read an article about how that has changed a lot and pretty much all decisions are based on party lines, often set by the leader. If we truly had MLAs/MPs representing their personal/regional ideologies, then it might make more sense for the party to elect the next leader. To be able to just quit at any time and have only a small segment of the population select the next leader of the party seems pretty undemocratic they way policies are decided now. It is especially poignant now, when our province is so divided (if you consider a small, extremely vocal minority a division) on a key issue going forward.

Agreed that we can't change the system, just lamenting that it sucks, especially at this point in time. The US election isn't quite a fair parallel though, both sides did have a say in who governed the nation. A more apt comparison would be for Americans to elect a non-Trump government and then replace the leader with Trump half way in because that is who the party favours. Perhaps we will see this on the federal level if Trudeau steps down this term, though I expect the majority of voters, even many liberal voters would support that right now. I think going forward, it might make sense to have an election called whenever the leader of a governing party is replaced though. If we want to try to find a win/win perspective, we can embrace wild, Kenney-style Covid management as ensuring the PC lose in 2023 and have a long dry spell after that. We've learned enough about what doesn't work for dealing with Covid that we can't forget embracing the far right side of one party to win a leadership race. I hope I would say the same thing if the tables were turned and the NDP embraced the far left side of the party to win a leadership race while they are currently in power.

Leggett was probably my favourite player for a while. Leaves a real sour taste in my mouth the way he went out and was pretty critical of the team at a time when we were actually doing the right things as an organization. I miss all the trickery we used to do and we usually seemed to have a big edge on special teams back then. In those days we would never be outplayed on special teams and we'd usually have a trick up our sleeves. I'm guessing we don't really take as many risks now because our team is that good that we assume that our offense and defense will take care of business and our special teams just needs to be average to get the W. Not complaining, just interesting how we have evolved as an organization.