Manitoba can’t afford PC’s ideological tax cut

The Manitoba Conservatives’ proposal to nearly double the basic personal exemption on income tax to $30,000 from $15,780 shows they haven’t learned the lessons from their last time in government: radical tax cuts drive up deficits, weaken public services like health care, and mainly benefit those with higher incomes.

The basic personal amount is the amount of income a resident can earn before paying Manitoba provincial income tax. Because everyone claims it, increasing it gives tax cuts to the richest households too, meaning a lot of public money goes to people who don’t need it instead of being targeted to those who do.

Don’t believe the hype: this tax cut would not “trickle down” to everyone else. Much of the additional income would likely be saved in global investments or spent outside the province. By contrast, money spent through government programs has larger economic multipliers because it creates jobs needed to build infrastructure, supports health care and education, and is spent by local workers who spend their earnings in their communities. Public investment grows the economy from the bottom up.

Every dollar spent on a broad tax cut like this is a dollar not available to reduce poverty, expand licensed childcare, build social housing, or strengthen public education and health care.

Canada, India hit reset button on their relationship

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to India marks the most consequential step in years to rebuild Canada–India relations after the diplomatic rupture in 2023 over allegations linking Indian agents to the killing of a Canadian Sikh activist.

The visit signals a deliberate shift from crisis management to economic statecraft.

In Mumbai, Carney announced that Canada aims to conclude a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with India by the end of this year, with the goal of doubling two-way trade by 2030. The message was pragmatic: the two countries may not always agree, but engagement must continue.

FROM RUPTURE TO RESET

In the sports documentary miniseries The Last Dance, Michael Jordan describes how, as a young rookie, he was confronted with an invitation to take part in illicit activities with teammates, including drugs and gambling.

He “did not go through that door,” realizing “he was in the NBA to get better.” Nowadays that kind of moral compass feels increasingly rare.

The recent gambling and fraud scandal rocking the NBA, for example, illustrates how, when sport leaders compromise on sport values — respect, excellence, safety and fairness — they compromise the value of sport to individuals and society as a whole.

The purpose of sport is individual and community development. The word “compete” is derived from the Latin competere which means to strive (for excellence) together.

How should we move forward?

As I near the conclusion of my current term as chief, I am left to wonder what the future holds for Sioux Valley Dakota Nation.

I was lucky to have been spared the abuses experienced by my peers. I was fortunate to have been raised by both my parents, both residential school survivors, in a farm enterprise that gave me the foundation and work ethic I needed to survive. This experience was something that I thought was typical of my neighbours and fellow band members of Sioux Valley Dakota Nation.

As a newly elected young chief, I naively thought that all I had to do was create jobs, as I subscribed to the belief that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” I immediately encountered community members who were angry and not pleasant to deal with, which I later attributed to intergenerational trauma.

This thankfully was not the case for everyone who have a lived experience in the residential school era or Sixties Scoop. In a discussion with a chief with more experience, we discussed issues we faced as a collective, and he shared his opinion as follows: “You won’t move your community forward without healing your people.”

AI ‘slop’ and the end of the internet

The pace of generative AI development has been swift and astonishing. Just recently, Google un-veiled a new AI tool called Veo 3 which can create ultra-realistic videos. In a demo in a news report, it was able to make a news story complete with video, audio, backgrounds, and a news anchor reading copy, virtually indistinguishable from anything created in a human-based, real news-room. The completed AI-generated video was ready within five minutes.

Although amazing and somewhat alarming, AI has been making media for a while, and it is increasingly difficult for humans to tell the difference between AI and human-generated content. An AI band and its music had been featured on Spotify with a million monthly followers before anyone noticed. A Canadian journalist has finally come clean and admitted that he created the AI band The Velvet Sundown as an experiment. But not before real human followers had gotten sucked into the hoax.

Besides many other issues with generative AI, these two examples bring up serious implications for the future of the internet. First, AI can generate content much faster than humans can. Second, the content that they generate is often indistinguishable from human-made content.

AI “slop” describes mass-produced, quickly made AI generated content that lack oversight or fact checking that is often generic. AI can also put together all kinds of slop by reusing human-generated content that exists on the internet and re-purposing it to create endless regenerated content. YouTube is especially prone to this, with numerous channels dedicated to self-help, philosophy, best-of lists, biographies, advice, yada yada yada, all made to be attractive and clickable to get the views that the YouTube economy is based on. You can recognize a YouTube AI slop channel by looking at its description page; they have usually joined YouTube within a year or so and are able to publish several videos or more a week, sometimes more than one a day, that have a similar style with minimal differentiation.

UN committee rightly calls out Canada’s devaluing of disability

Earlier this year, an expert United Nations committee rebuked Canada for its medical assistance in dying (MAID) regime.

In doing so, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities confirmed a key criticism voiced by Canadians with disabilities in recent years: that the massive expansion of MAID in Canada puts a target on the back of the disability community.

The committee expressed concern that Canada’s approach to MAID emphasizes individual autonomy without offering sufficient safeguards to protect vulnerable populations, especially persons with disability.

The experts called on Canada to reject the “Track 2” designation that makes MAID available to persons whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable.

Take responsibility for poor tax rebate rollout

“We know that some municipalities were more effective at communicating with residents than others, and in some instances, we are seeing individuals who did not register their residence as their principal residence.”

— Manitoba Finance Minister Adrien Sala in May 2025

The Wab Kinew government seems unable to publicly admit that it made a mistake in its rollout of the Homeowners Affordability Tax Credit.

If you read yesterday’s Brandon Sun, you may have noticed that the deadline to register for the Homeowners Affordability Tax Credit for 2025 has been extended to Nov. 15.

The age of American leadership has been completely swept away

The miracle that was Pax Americana is past; the century of American stewardship of the free world is collapsing. The question is, what, if anything, will replace it?

Throughout the 20th century, the United States became the model of what a modern society should be. Its prosperous middle class, commitment to free trade, solid democracy and financial leadership both inspired the world and provided the institutional support for the greatest period of improvement the world had ever seen. America’s post-war leadership helped rebuild nations, liberalize economies and institutionalize global co-operation through multilateral organizations and rules-based systems.

That foundation is now crumbling. After a host of demeaning threats to former allies and the imposition of illegal tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, the voice of reason has vacated the highest levels of American leadership. The betrayal is profound; the loss of trust, complete. Where the U.S. was once viewed as a stabilizing force, it is increasingly seen as unpredictable, even hostile to the very order it helped build.

America’s moral authority rested on three pillars: a resolute adherence to the rule of law, belief in the sanctity of contract (with Americans voluntarily, rather than legally, meeting obligations), and, most importantly, ethical leadership that modelled liberal values through social reforms and systems of justice. These principles earned the respect of the global community and allowed America to lead not just by strength, but by example. All of this has been swept away in the blink of an eye.

Trump’s pharma pricing order could have big effect in Canada

President Donald Trump’s May 12 executive order that U.S. drug prices must not exceed the lowest price in other nations doesn’t mention Canada explicitly, but could cause significant damage to our public health-care system and ripple around the globe.

The move could massively increase prices in Canada (and other reference nations) and create a significant incentive for pharmaceutical companies to delay launching new medicines in lower-priced markets.

U.S. market size means that policy changes south of the border to regulate prices directly through the use of reference pricing, or indirectly benchmarking prices to Canada through importation, could have significant effects on the availability and price of pharmaceuticals in Canada. To preserve high prices in the United States, pharmaceutical companies might also choose to delay launching new medicines in Canada and other markets.

Research modelling the effect of U.S. prices for patented medicines if they are equal to or less than Canada’s shows prices in Canada increasing by an average of 216 percent and in some cases, more than 10-fold. By contrast, the United States would receive a discount of about 7.54 percent.