February 2026
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204-947-1807 The debate continues over the World Economic Forum
Warm yourself up with this tasty treat
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The Marriage of Figaro in spotlight
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Downtown revitalization is Two years an all-community project missing: Why Canada but it can be done!
needs a Silver Alert System
Sel Burrows
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ix years ago, I issued a three-part report, “Making Downtown Safer and Friendlier”. The report was based on our Crime Prevention experience in North Point Douglas. At the time, a report modeled on Minneapolis was accepted and financed. Crime is up over 30% in the downtown. Studies show that people don’t go downtown because they feel unsafe. I’m suggesting that my old report be re-examined and updated. The theme of my report was that we can’t hire enough police or social service staff to deal with the enormity of our downtown problem. People living in and working in the downtown must be involved. The community needs to go on the offensive, disrupting criminal behavior. To deal with crime, you must identify the individuals likely to commit serious crimes, who is committing nuisance crimes and who are the drug dealers? How do we know who they are? We ask the people who know, people who live and hang out in the downtown, businesses who deal with them all the time. Give them a hot line to report what they know and value their input. In North Point Douglas we discovered that every-
Downtown Winnipeg. one knew who the drug dealers were, who the people who carried knives or guns were. The same goes for our downtown. Implementing Jane Jacobs concept of “eyes on the street” and our indigenous elders’ concept of banning people who break their communities’ rules provide a whole new positive force to deal with those who commit u 12 ‘Downtown revitalization'
Canada has fallen behind in healthcare – let’s allow Manitoba to lead the way back Andrea Ladouceur
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anada spends more on healthcare than almost any G20 country and has the lowest impact/efficacy. We rank near the top among OECD countries for per-capita healthcare spending, but lag behind peers on access, waiting times, health system efficiency, and outcomes for chronic disease and aging populations. Of the G7 countries, Canada
uses only 20% of the innovative medicines employed by the rest of the G7. These G7 countries have better health cost and better outcomes. One of the keys to their success is access to innovation to improve health outcomes faster
and better. Innovative medicine refers to more than new drugs. It includes precision medicine, advanced diagnostics, biologics, cell and gene therapies, and data-driven treatment pathways that target the right patient at the right time. These innovations are transforming healthcare globally, shifting systems from reactive, episodic treatment to proactive, personalized care. Yet Canada has been slow to adopt and scale these adu 11 ‘Healthcare'
Brenda Moberg (left) with daughter Britt Moberg.
Britt Moberg
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ecember 12, 2025, marked two years since my father, Earl Moberg, went missing in the River East area of Winnipeg. Earl was living with dementia. He has not been found and is now presumed deceased. For my family, time has stood still in many ways. Many readers have followed my father’s story and the advocacy that grew from it. This article is meant to inform the public about where things stand today, why this issue affects far more families than mine, and what still needs to happen. Why this matters Nearly one million people are expected to be living with dementia in Canada by 2030. Research shows that up to 60 percent of people living with dementia will go missing at some point. When someone with Alzheimer’s disease u 5 ‘Silver Alert'