Latest news with #ManitobaLegislature
CBC
30-07-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Chief Peguis statue on Manitoba legislative grounds delayed by a year for 2nd time
A planned monument to commemorate Chief Peguis and the first treaty signed in Manitoba has been delayed again. The structure, originally planned for 2024 then pushed back one year, is now expected to be completed in the latter part of 2026. Bill Shead, co-chair of the group planning the memorial, says there have been several legal, administrative and other issues over the past year, and efforts to obtain charitable status from the Canada Revenue Agency are ongoing. He says work on the bronze statue is well underway, but more time is needed for fundraising and construction of the monument's large plinth or foundation. The monument is to be built on the northwest section of the Manitoba legislature grounds. It is to pay tribute to a gathering in 1817, when Chief Peguis and four other chiefs signed the first treaty in what is now Manitoba and helped early Scottish settlers survive the harsh climate. "The monument project has presented the volunteer board of directors of The Friends of the Peguis Selkirk Treaty Inc. with some unexpected challenges which have led to several delays in co-ordinating all the work by various parties involved," Shead wrote in an email. "The statue is expected to be completed late this fall. However, work on the other elements of the monument project — the plinth and landscaping — only will begin in 2026 with hoped-for completion in the later part of 2026." The Manitoba government has committed $500,000 to the project, which Shead said is still budgeted at $1 million. There are no current plans to ask the province for more money, he added. The monument's design was revealed in 2023. It was created by Wayne Stranger, owner of Stranger Bronzeworks art foundry at Peguis First Nation. Aside from the statue, the monument is to feature large stones and inscribed medallions representing the chiefs who signed the 1817 treaty as well as Thomas Douglas, known as Lord Selkirk. The monument would be the first on Manitoba's legislature grounds to honour the contributions of First Nations people. The scenic grounds already feature statues honouring a variety of people, including Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, Queen Elizabeth II and Métis leader Louis Riel.
Toronto Star
25-07-2025
- Politics
- Toronto Star
Manitoba premier in western region again as a provincial byelection looms
The sculpture titled 'The Golden Boy' tops the exterior of the Manitoba Legislature is seen in Winnipeg, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods GAC flag wire: true flag sponsored: false article_type: : sWebsitePrimaryPublication : publications/toronto_star bHasMigratedAvatar : false :
Vox
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Canada: More American than the United States?
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy,, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here. Hundreds of people rally against US tariffs and threats of annexation at the Manitoba Legislature. Lyle Stafford/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images I've always found something charming about Canada Day, the July 1 national celebration, landing just three days before America's Independence Day. The two holidays are ideologically opposed: Canada Day celebrates the country's 1867 confederation under British law, while July Fourth celebrates a violent revolution against the crown. Yet after centuries of peace, with the two countries now sharing the longest undefended border in the world, the timing normally feels less like dueling celebrations than a week-long joint birthday party. So leave it to Donald Trump to reintroduce tension to the holidays. Last Friday, just as Canadians were getting ready for the pre-holiday weekend, Trump declared that the United States is renewing hostilities in the briefly suspended trade war. 'We are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,' he wrote on Truth Social, adding that 'we will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.' On the Right The ideas and trends driving the conservative movement, from senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. And then, in a Sunday interview on Fox News, he renewed the rhetoric that most infuriated Canadians: his claim that Canada should be annexed by the United States. 'Frankly, Canada should be the 51st state. It really should,' he told anchor Maria Bartiromo. 'Because Canada relies entirely on the United States. We don't rely on Canada.' In thinking through all of this, I've found one voice especially clarifying: the Canadian conservative philosopher George Grant. In 1965, Grant published a short book — titled Lament for a Nation — arguing that Canada's increasing integration with the United States was a kind of national suicide. This was, in part, a political matter: By hitching its economy and defense to those of a much larger neighbor, Canada effectively surrendered its ability to set its own political course. But it was also a kind of spiritual death: By embracing free trade and open borders with the United States, Grant argued, Canada was selling its conservative soul to the American ethos of never-ending revolutionary progress. It was, in effect, turning Canada Day into an early July Fourth. Given the Trump threat, Grant's argument feels more vital than it has in decades — prompting a round of intellectual reconsiderations. Recent pieces by Patrick Deneen, a leading American 'postliberal,' and Michael Ignatieff, a leading Canadian liberal intellectual (and Grant's nephew), have highlighted elements of the argument that feel especially relevant in the current moment. Yet Lament for a Nation is also notable for what it failed to foresee. While Grant predicted America's liberalism would swallow Canada, it is, in fact, the most philosophically illiberal administration in modern American history that threatens Canadian sovereignty. And Canadian resistance to Yankee imperialism has rallied under the banner of Liberal Party Prime Minister Mark Carney — a central banker who fully embraces Canada's modern identity as the most tolerant and multicultural country on the planet. A conservative Canadian's Lament Lament for a Nation takes, as its central event, the 1963 defeat of then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. His defeat, per Grant, was the moment that Canada's fate was sealed. Diefenbaker was the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party (now more simply called the Conservative Party). Grant writes about him a bit the way that some on the intellectual right talk about Trump today: as an imperfect but basically necessary bulwark against the depredations of the liberal elite. A 'prairie populist' raised in Saskatchewan, Diefenbaker was culturally and politically distinct from the traditional power elite in cities like Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. These elites, per Grant, believed that Canada benefited from increasing economic and military interconnections with the US, such as eliminating trade barriers and joint participation in the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Diefenbaker, in Grant's telling, took a different approach — one that valued Canadian self-determination over the material benefits of trade and security cooperation. On key issues, most notably the 1962–'63 debate over stationing American nuclear weapons on Canadian soil, Diefenbaker resisted the intellectual and political elite's 'continentalist' approach — instead raising concerns that too much integration with the United States would threaten Canadian nationhood. It is this hesitancy, Grant argues, that brought the wrath of the elite class down on his head, ultimately leading to the Progressive Conservatives' defeat in the 1963 election. With Diefenbaker cleared away, there was no longer any barrier to a policy of economic and political integration with the United States. 'Lamenting for Canada is inevitably associated with the tragedy of Diefenbaker. His inability to govern is linked with the inability of this country to be sovereign,' Grant writes. It's easy to ridicule this sentiment in hindsight. After all, Canada remains standing 60 years after Grant's predictions of doom. Wasn't he just wrong that integration with the US meant national suicide? But to take this line is to misunderstand Grant's argument. His position was not that the integration with the United States would literally lead to Canadian annexation. Rather, it's that Canada would lose the ability to chart its own course, surrendering its effective sovereignty and, more fundamentally, sacrificing what made it culturally distinct from the United States. The United States, per Grant, is the physical avatar of Enlightenment liberalism: a worldview that he described as celebrating the emancipation of the individual from whatever fetters society might put on them. The American ideology of capitalist freedom was a solvent dissolving local cultures and national borders, homogenizing everything into a single mass of modern technological sameness. Canada, by contrast, took its core identity from British conservatism — a sense that politics is not about individual freedom but rather conserving and incrementally improving the traditions and cultural inheritance that define its essence and maintain its good functioning. In Canada, Grant says, this conservatism was 'a kind of suspicion that we in Canada could be less lawless and have a greater sense of propriety than those in the United States.' Partnering with the French speakers in Quebec (Lament for a Nation made scant reference to indigenous Canadians), the new country was in opposition to the American vision of frenetic capitalist change. Yet this conservative identity, Grant feared, was weakly rooted — and vulnerable to American imperial influence in the absence of a political class willing to wield nationalist policies in its defense. He narrated its ideological decline in three steps: First, men everywhere move ineluctably toward membership in the universal and homogenous liberal state. Second, Canadians live next to a society that is the heart of modernity. Third, nearly all Canadians think that modernity is good, so nothing distinguishes Canadians from Americans. When they oblate themselves before 'the American way of life,' they offer themselves on the altar of the reigning Western goddess. Diefenbaker was, per Grant, the last gasp of authentic Canadian conservative resistance to this process. His defeat marked the moment that Canada's spiritual death at American hands became inevitable. Grant in the age of Trump Today, Canada is facing a nakedly imperialist American president who is attempting to weaponize Canadian dependence on American markets into political submission. Grant, the liberal Ignatieff writes, was 'the first to warn us that this was how continental integration would end.' Yet the circumstances are very different from what Grant might have expected. While Grant warned that American ideology was seductive, that Canadians risked voluntarily submitting to a liberalism that would subtly alienate them from themselves, they are today facing a brash American illiberalism led by a right-wing populist most Canadians revile. 'Even in the fury of Lament for a Nation, America was seen as a benign hegemon — at least to us — who respected the fiction of our sovereignty. Today's President disdains his allies and can't stop telling Canada he wishes we didn't exist,' Ignatieff writes. For this reason, the anti-Trump resistance has been led not by Canada's Conservatives but by the Liberal Party. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hold a bilateral meeting during the G7 Leaders' Summit on June 16 in Alberta, Minister Mark Carney's Liberals won Canada's April election on the back of anti-Trump resistance. This was not only because Carney took vocally anti-Trump positions, but because his chief rival — Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre — was a right-wing populist whose political style seemed far too close to Trump's for Canadian comfort. Carney won, in short, because Canadians saw conservatism as too American — and Carney's liberalism a better representation of Canadianness in the current moment. This irony owes itself, in part, to Canada's national reinvention since Grant's original publication. In the past several decades, Canada has engaged in a collective nation-building project to redefine its national identity around ideas of tolerance and multiculturalism. This effort has been extraordinarily successful: Canada has a notably higher percentage of foreign-born residents than the United States, yet faces a far weaker anti-immigrant backlash. Grant would surely see this as vindication of his thesis: Canada has abandoned its traditional identity in favor of a Canadian copy of America's Ellis Island narrative. Yet what Grant didn't foresee is that this kind of liberalism could form an effective resistance against Yankee imperialism. Canadian nationalism today is not just about symbols, like the flag or the crown, but about a sense that Canadians do not want their politics to take on the bitter ugliness of Trumpified American politics. Their attraction to what Grant identified as too-American liberal ideals of freedom and progress forms a key part of the hard ideological core uniting Canadians against American pressure.
CBC
23-06-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Premier to give Manitoba wildfire update Monday
Social Sharing Provincial officials will give an update on the state of Manitoba wildfires early this afternoon. Premier Wab Kinew and Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Lisa Naylor are holding a news conference at 12:45 p.m. CT about wildfires burning across Manitoba. CBC News will livestream the update here. Kristin Hayward, assistant deputy minister of the Conservation Officer Service and the Manitoba Wildfire Service, and Christine Stevens, assistant deputy minister of the Manitoba Emergency Management Organization, will join the minister and premier for the update at the Manitoba Legislature. Manitoba declared a 30-day state of emergency May 28 under the Emergency Measures Act, as out-of-control wildfires threatening communities across the province spurred 22,000 people to leave their homes. Wildfires have burned an estimated 902,000 hectares of the province so far. Evacuees from some rural and remote regions have begun to return to their communities as the situation has improved around some of the fires burning in the province. All evacuees staying in Winnipeg had been moved into hotels as of early last week, after the initial crush of evacuees created a shortage of spaces. Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham told CBC News late last week that two of four arenas and soccer complexes that have been devoted to helping and housing evacuees are in the process of being decommissioned as shelters, since they're no longer needed. Recent rain and firefighting efforts have helped quell concerns in some parts of the province, but not all. Some of the 5,100 Flin Flon residents expecting to be allowed to head home this Wednesday are nervous about seeing the extent of damage to the northern community. A fire in the area was about 370,780 hectares in size as of the provincial fire bulletin released on Friday. Tataskweyak Cree Nation residents were given the green light to return about a week ago, only for chief and council of the northern community to reverse course hours later due to concerning levels of aluminum found in local water sources. Meanwhile, business owners, cottagers and residents in the south of Nopiming Provincial Park in eastern Manitoba got the go-ahead to return midweek last week. The Manitoba Lodges and Outfitters Association is calling on the province to provide owners with financial supports to help them shoulder losses due to a season cut short by the fires. There have been at least 124 fires this spring alone. The average for the past two decades is 118 for the time of year, Kristin Hayward, assistant deputy minister of the Conservation Officer Service and the Manitoba Wildfire Service, said last week. Almost 300 firefighters from out of province — including from Newfoundland and Labrador, Parks Canada and U.S. federal and state agencies — were still in Manitoba as of Friday to help with ongoing efforts.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Outright hostility' between Wab Kinew, Obby Khan unbecoming of their offices: experts
What should have been a relatively dry committee meeting in the Manitoba Legislature last month descended into a series of "low blows" between political leaders, with Premier Wab Kinew calling Opposition leader Obby Khan a "joke," while the Tory leader repeatedly called the premier a bully. The heated exchange at an estimates meeting has been denounced as inappropriate behaviour by political experts who have observed Manitoba politics for decades. They say the episode underscores the acrimony between the governing NDP and the Opposition Progressive Conservatives that derailed legislature business during the recently completed spring sitting. The NDP threatened during the last week of the session to extend the sitting into the summer if the PCs wouldn't fast-track the government's interprovincial trade bill, while the Progressive Conservatives kept MLAs awake through the night on Monday, the last sitting day, when they demanded recorded votes on bills the NDP's majority government would certainly pass. Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, said there appears to be "deep-seated antagonism" between the party leaders. "When we see this banter and hostility — it's actual outright hostility — it's tough on Manitobans to see that," he said. While aggressive, rigorous questioning of government and heckling are routine parts of question period in the legislature, the exchange between Kinew and Khan came at a May 21 estimates meeting, where more substantive exchanges around policy are expected and media attention is minimal. And unlike question period, the Speaker of the House, whose duties include keeping the peace in the chamber, doesn't preside over meetings in the committee rooms. That meant the heckling and personal attacks at the estimates meeting persisted, with only the occasional interruption by the chairperson. While these meetings can be charged — former premier Brian Pallister called Kinew an "asshole" during a 2021 committee meeting, before apologizing that same meeting — the behaviour in this case lasted for several minutes at a time. Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba, said the discussion was "reduced to hurling personal insults at one another and ad hominem arguments based on the character of your political opponent across the aisle in the committee room." "I just found it disappointing." 'Low blows' at committee meeting The estimates meeting began with Khan rattling off statistics that, he argued, demonstrated a slowing economy. "All signs that this premier has officially killed the economic horse," said the PC leader, putting his spin on one of the premier's regular talking points: "the economic horse pulls the social cart." Khan's pointed criticism led Kinew to start heckling and laughing. The Tory leader then turned to one of the cameras in the room, which was broadcasting the meeting on YouTube. "You can probably hear him laughing with his arrogance and his demeanour, where Manitobans are actually serious about the economy. Premier thinks it's a joke. We don't," Khan said. "No, I think the leader of the Official Opposition is a joke," Kinew said. Many of Kinew's heckles were hard to hear on the broadcast, but some were included in the Hansard transcription. "It's unfortunate that the premier wants to use such language, but it's OK," Khan said, according to Hansard. Later, the NDP leader called Khan a "joke" again. "If he wanted to talk about what is a joke, I think the premier just needs to look in the mirror," Khan said. "If we want to talk about records and we want to talk about the past, then we can talk about the premier's criminal record," Khan added, before the chairperson asked for the discussion to return to legislative business. Thomas said the comments from both leaders were "low blows." "If anything, it turns the public off" from politics, he said. "It deepens their cynicism about politicians, weakens their trust and confidence in the governing process, and that's not healthy in a democracy." Later in the May 21 committee meeting, as Kinew kept trying to talk over Khan, the Opposition leader responded by saying he hoped Manitobans watching on YouTube could hear how the premier is "nothing but a bully." "Like when you cried in the scrum," Kinew blurted, likely a reference to 2023, when a tearful Khan described a tense handshake with Kinew. "The premier is trying to, I don't know, emotionally attack me for saying that I've cried in the House," Khan said. "So what? There's nothing wrong with a man having emotions." The verbal clashes continued. Khan dismissed the premier as a "pit bull attack dog" and a "toxic, bullying leader" — demonstrated, he said, by Kinew's previous run-ins with the law. The now 43-year-old has openly admitted to a conviction for impaired driving and for assaulting a cab driver in his early 20s — offences for which he has received pardons. He was given a conditional discharge in 2004 for an assault in Ontario, and was charged with assaulting his partner in 2003. The latter charge was stayed, although his former partner maintains Kinew threw her across the room. At the May 21 meeting, Khan also called Mark Rosner, Kinew's chief of staff, a "nightmare," reframing a comment Kinew once made calling Rosner the "Tories' worst nightmare." Kinew called for a point of order, saying his comments were misrepresented. Later, when the Opposition leader made a comment referring to the premier, Kinew responded by saying, "call me dad," according to the meeting transcription. "Maybe that's what he gets, you know, people around Manitoba to call him — maybe staffers call him 'dad,'" Khan said. Tense exchange in 2023 The feud between Kinew and Khan may have started in 2023 with a handshake at a public event in the legislature. They have different explanations of the encounter. Though it was captured on security video, that hasn't put to rest what happened. Khan, who was then a cabinet minister, alleges Kinew — the opposition leader at the time — swore and shoved him. Kinew denied that, calling it a "tense verbal exchange." | This past April, when Khan became leader of the Progressive Conservatives, Kinew didn't phone to congratulate him. Asked by reporters why he didn't try to speak with Khan, Kinew responded that "no one ever reached out and congratulated me," when he became NDP leader. That excuse, Thomas said, amounts to a "schoolyard approach," with both men figuratively arguing over who hit the other first. "It just shows the lapse in respect and civility across the aisle," Thomas said. Kinew also didn't congratulate Khan in the chamber during their first question period as opposing leaders, although he, as Official Opposition leader, congratulated new premier Heather Stefanson in 2022. When Kinew became NDP leader in 2017, he was congratulated by Pallister. In 2012, then premier Greg Selinger welcomed Pallister during his first question period as Tory leader. The University of Manitoba's Adams said the perceived animosity between Kinew and Khan essentially gives each party's caucus permission to snipe at one another, which doesn't set a good example. "We need our politicians, both on the Opposition benches as well as in the government, to behave with decorum and also not to take the bait," he said. The hostility has reached the point where the NDP is having difficulty launching something as basic as a promised all-party committee on local journalism, Thomas said. Asked about his conduct at the recent estimates meeting, Khan said he could "always try to act better," but argued the premier started it. "Manitobans need to see this side of the premier," Khan said. "They need to be concerned with the language he uses." Khan, however, denied having any ill will toward Kinew. CBC News tried for a week and a half to interview Kinew about this story, but his office declined. This week, CBC News asked his spokesperson, Ryan Stelter, when Kinew would have time for an interview, but was told he wouldn't be made available. Stelter said the premier was in Ottawa to meet with federal ministers when the request was made, and shortly after, a provincewide state of emergency was declared because of wildfires. Kinew has had a few media availabilities, Stelter said. However, they were focused on the emergency. A request for a statement from the premier's office was returned this week, but it didn't answer questions about Kinew's behaviour or the concerns about his and Khan's conduct.
