View From the Legislature

The Manitoba Legislature begins a new session November 20th with an opening that will be slightly different than is tradition.

It was just a few years ago that talk show hosts across the country were expressing concern that Remembrance Day observations would become smaller events as less and less World War I and World War II veterans remained to tell the story of those conflicts.

That was the sound NDP Finance Minister Greg Selinger was hearing after his meeting this week with his provincial and federal counterparts where he learned that the tap was being closed on ever increasing amounts of cash from Ottawa.

In the midst of the global financial crisis provincial governments across Canada are rushing to put in place plans to lessen the impact on their residents and the finances of their respective provinces.

One of the things that Manitoba has been known for in the past is that its economy wasn’t prone to significant swings either upward or downward.

Last week Premier Gary Doer and the NDP government voted to take $1 million from taxpayers’ and put it into the bank account of their political party.

This past Sunday night 31 year old Jonathon Muzychka was in an exercise yard at Headingley Correctional Centre where he was serving time for a long history of criminal offences and awaiting trial on second-degree murder charges.