Biden to attend funeral for former Minnesota House Speaker Hortman, who was killed in shooting
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris will join the mourners Saturday at the funeral for former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who was killed in a pair of attacks that authorities have called an assassination and that also left her husband dead and a state senator and his wife seriously wounded.
Biden also paid his respects Friday as Hortman, her husband, Mark, and their golden retriever, Gilbert, lay in state in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda in St. Paul, a few hours after the man charged with killing them while disguised as a police officer June 14 made a brief court appearance in a suicide prevention suit.
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Winnipeg Free Press
39 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Getting business onside — Carney's next job
Opinion Canada Day marks just over 100 days of Mark, as in Carney. Since being sworn in as prime minister on St. Patrick's Day, our new prime minister has enjoyed no small 'luck of the Irish' after winning an election he wasn't supposed to. Napoleon once said he would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good. So far, Carney has been both lucky and good: lucky to have Donald Trump in the White House, and pretty good at winning elections and being prime minister. He may have been green going into the job as PM and party leader, but Carney is proving no novice in the role. He single-handedly powered his party and government into an unprecedented fourth term in office. Since then, he has embarked upon a rapid-fire series of actions and changes to achieve his goal to 'build the strongest economy in the G7,' with internal trade barriers to come down; major energy and infrastructure projects to be built faster; defence spending to rise higher and sooner than anticipated. The Canadian Press files Prime Minister Mark Carney's next job is to convince Canadian businesses that they have to step up their game. Carney clearly does not lack for ambition. 'We will need to think big and act bigger. We will need to do things previously thought impossible at speeds we haven't seen in generations,' he said in his victory speech. But what if this big ambition isn't matched by business, big or small? What if the public doesn't share his vision that Canada is at a 'hinge moment of history,' as he put it? The prime minister is inheriting a country more risk-averse and complacent than it should be. A country more righteous than realistic about its place in the world — 'the world needs more Canada,' we intone. A country too comfortable in its entitlements and expectations, real or imagined. That risk aversion carries over to the business community. A 2023 survey by the Conference Board of Canada found that when it came to innovation, more than half of Canadian entrepreneurs stopped doing more because they feared failing. That was 10 points higher than for businesses in the U.S. and across 16 other developed countries. Part of this is a weaker industrial and research ecosystem that successfully carries innovation to market, but there's no denying a CEO mindset alongside. That mindset won't be easy to dislodge. It has been fed for more than a quarter-century by easy access to the largest market in the world, our next-door neighbour. It has been nourished of late by low-cost labour and high immigration. And it has been enticed into a rent-seeking, subsidy-demanding, high-consumption, low-value manufacturing economy by companies and governments hooked on handouts. The result: Canadian businesses have become less competitive and more risk-averse when it comes to investing in the innovation, technology and people needed to build more wealth. Consider the results: Canada's economy today is actually smaller than it was in 2019, adjusted for inflation and immigration. We've fallen from the sixth most productive advanced economy in the world in 1970 to the 18th most productive today. Average annual labour productivity growth was less than half of what it was in the U.S. in the 20-year period from 2001 to 2021. We've deindustrialized, with manufacturing contributing less than half of what it did to the economy in 2000. Capital investment spending levels are lower than they were a decade ago. The business innovation rate in 2022 was 36 per cent in Canada, far below the 50 per cent rate in America and the 45 per cent rate for other advanced industrial economies in the world. Unless these trends are changed, the OECD predicts Canada will enjoy the worst performance of advanced member countries over the next four decades, as measured by real GDP per capita. That means lower living standards for Canadians and less economic wealth generated to invest in health care and education. Weekday Mornings A quick glance at the news for the upcoming day. Blaming the government is easy and fashionable. But these are structural problems not easily fixed, owing to years of tepid investment and innovation decisions by business themselves. Government policies may have contributed, but it's the CEOs and the boards of directors, or the entrepreneurs and innovators, who made the calls. 'Sell the beach, not the flight' is the classic travel-industry business model. For too long, our politicians have practiced the political equivalent to voters. Big goals and grand pronouncements were set without telling people the journey might be long and hard. 'Inconvenient truths,' as in climate change, were traded for 'reassuring fibs' so everyone could have 'their nice things.' Applying this same mentality to this time of economic emergency would simply invite more failure. The PM may be moving at the speed of need now with his checklist of initiatives, but 'thinking and acting big' requires an overdue mind-shift by Canada's business leaders, investors and entrepreneurs. Carney needs to confront complacency with candour. He told voters what he planned to do; now he must tell businesses what they need to do. His 'hinge moment' hinges on it. David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.
Winnipeg Free Press
39 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Shortage of encampment fire-response data sparks anger
WHEN smoke billowed up from Mostyn Place Park along the Assiniboine River this week, firefighters raced to the scene. The Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Service confirmed there was a bonfire near the riverbank, but did not say if it was at an encampment. The neighbourhood resident who called 911, however, knows it was. 'It's just a rinse-and-repeat kind of cycle here,' said the resident, who wanted his name withheld for safety reasons. He described the park as 'essentially a sanctioned encampment site,' and said many fires and other incidents have taken place there for years. However, there are no publicly available statistics about how many times firefighters have responded to any encampment. When the Free Press asked how many times the WFPS has responded to calls involving encampments on an annual basis, a spokesperson said the data was 'not available.' 'Capturing this data is challenging due to a number of factors, but most importantly, the outdoor locations often don't have associated addresses,' WFPS public information officer Erin Madden said in an email. 'Often, 911 callers provide the addresses of other nearby buildings/intersections/bridges/etc. to direct crews to the encampment locations.' The resident said he's been repeatedly disappointed when promises to combat the problem, made by the different levels of government, haven't panned out. He wonders how politicians can make policy decisions for the benefit of taxpayers in the absence of fire data specific to camps. 'Until people open their eyes, until people can face the reality that we have a crisis, this is what we're going to be doing, for years and years and years, fighting fires, chasing fires.' Some data on WFPS calls is publicly available and updated consistently, most notably through the city's open data catalogue, which includes call logs list. It gives details about the nature of each incident, the call time and the neighbourhood and ward where it occurred. Nick Kasper, president of the United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg, said even when more detailed data is collected, it isn't updated for years. 'In many, many cases, we see that those documents for the statistics that are readily available are out of date, and, given that our call volume is rising so rapidly, it makes it hard to maintain a current picture of what's going on in our city,' he said. Kasper said union members have reported calls to encampments have risen dramatically. In addition, the nature of the calls has become more dangerous. He said his members come across weapons, explosive material and even booby-traps at encampments. 'The department did change our response profile to those locations… if we were responding to any of those incidents that would have otherwise got a smaller contingent of apparatus, maybe one or two vehicles, we are instead responding with a full complement, up to five apparatus to ensure crew safety,' he said. '(It) decreases the trucks that are available for other emergencies in the area and ultimately impacts our response time.' In 2023, owing to serious safety concerns, the WFPS ended an 18-month program in which a dedicated fire prevention officer handled encampment visits. Kasper said collecting more detailed information about calls to encampments would provide a clear picture about their effect on resources. 'When you're talking about the hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding that's being allocated to the public service, and when you're talking about the trends in emergency responses… we have a responsibility to ensure that we're delivering that in the most cost-effective and efficient manner,' he said. Mynarski Coun. Ross Eadie said he believes some data about calls to downtown encampments was being collected at some point. He said information should be collected about encampments across the city. 'There's got to be some indicator in the data that they keep that means they went to an encampment,' he said. Al Wiebe, an advocate who homeless at some point, works with organizations that check on encampments and has even worked with the WFPS on their training. He was surprised to learn encampment call data wasn't readily available and said it would help community groups help people in need. 'I think all the outreach teams need to have that data… so they can keep closer tabs on these camps, the ones that have fires more often than others,' he said. The information could show the cost of the problem to taxpayers and encourage housing supports, said John Giavedoni, president of the Residents of the Exchange District. 'The lack of this (data) could be political… perhaps with a little bit of work, they could have it, but I don't know, either there's no funding for that little bit of work, or there's no political appetite for it.' Malak AbasReporter Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg's North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak. Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Winnipeg Free Press
39 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Waving Canadian flag on two-way street of trade
Opinion I gave up my Friday night pizza dates with Tom Gore around the same time Donald Trump started his trade war with Canada. It was a forced breakup, but I didn't mind. Tom was my favourite wine until it was pulled from liquor store shelves as part of the federal and provincial governments' response to the imposition of tariffs on U.S. imports from Canada. There's been so much background noise in the aftermath that it's been hard to keep track. All I know is Tom and all his California cohorts are still in exile, and the alternatives I've found are such that I don't miss them. Apparently, I'm not alone. Sales of U.S. wine to Canada are, by some accounts, down 94 per cent, and sales of Canadian alcoholic beverages are up, probably the most noticeable effect of our collective disenchantment with our largest trading partner. An Angus Reid poll released in the early days of this muddled trading mess showed four out of five Canadians were buying more Canadian products in the face of the Trump's tariff tactics. Three out of five said they were actively boycotting products from the U.S. However, these opinions were collected in February, around the same time it was still cool to boo the American anthem at hockey games. Thankfully, we've moved on from that. It's likely Canada's aversion to anything American will also start to dissipate now that Trump's attention has shifted from making Canada the 51st state to other matters. However, an Ipsos poll released this month shows the aversion to buying U.S.-made goods has gone global. Fewer than half of respondents from 29 countries say they are likely to buy something manufactured in the U.S. According to that poll, 63 per cent of Canadians say they are unlikely to buy anything American. Food and beverages top the list of consumer goods where shoppers can vote with their dollars, thumbing their nose at Trump every time they stock up. Considering all this, it comes as no surprise to anyone — except perhaps the U.S. administration — that the U.S. agricultural trade deficit is growing instead of shrinking as was promised when it turned to taxing imports, kicking out immigrant workers critical to its own food supply and detaining tourists to 'make America great again.' Release of the USDA quarterly trade report earlier this month was reportedly delayed and stripped of its usual analysis after the original draft's authors cited tariffs and the 'buy Canadian' movement as reasons for reduced demand for U.S. agricultural goods. The redacted report forecasts a US$49.5 billion trade deficit for fiscal year 2025, an increase of US$500 million. It's living proof it's never a good idea to trash-talk your best customers. However, that's something we Canadians need to keep in mind as we explore how to navigate the tangled trade environment we face for the foreseeable future. It's always a good idea to shop local when you can. Even if it costs a little more, supporting local suppliers and businesses circulates our hard-earned dollars in our communities, creating jobs and contributing to economic growth. Our farmers no doubt appreciate the moral and financial support. Yet one of Canada's defining strengths as a nation is its status as a global supplier of food commodities. More than 50 per cent of what farmers here grow is exported either directly or indirectly. The U.S. is still our largest trading partner. More than half of Canada's agri-food imports originate in the U.S., while 60 per cent of Canada's agri-food exports are U.S.-bound. The food industries in both countries count on that cross-border trade. For that reason, the export-orientated sectors have steadfastly maintained support for rules-based trade and opposition to policy that unduly protects access to domestic markets. Trade must be a two-way street. As Canada Day approaches, waving the flag and putting Canadian foods on the table is a meaningful expression of our national pride. Our collective individual actions do make a difference. But does supporting local equate with boycotting someone else? It's a choice we all need to make. Laura Rance is executive editor, production content lead for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@ Laura RanceColumnist Laura Rance is editorial director at Farm Business Communications. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
