Discover Narcity
Get the latest and greatest stories every day in your inbox.
Advocates planting the seed of a tree protection law in Winnipeg's election
Advocates call for bylaw to save Winnipeg's trees
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ian Bickis
The giants that Diane Poulin used to live among are all dead, but she's hoping to protect the ones still left in Winnipeg.
“I had five mature elm trees right in front of my house that leaned over the street and formed a beautiful canopy, and they're all gone now,” she says.
In her backyard was the biggest of the bunch.
"He was like the grandfather of the neighbourhood … his canopy filled our backyard, and he’s gone."
The city’s trees are under threat from disease, pests and climate change, but there's limits on how much can be done to push back against these forces of nature.
So, Poulin and other advocates at Trees Please Winnipeg are also pushing to hold back another threat — property owners.
The group wants Winnipeg to put a bylaw in place to control the cutting of trees on private property, since there's currently little stopping owners from cutting down as many trees, however big, as they please.
Advocates like Poulin say protecting the urban canopy is crucial because of the many benefits trees bring to all residents, such as providing shade in heat waves, cleaning the air, controlling rainwater and beautifying the city.
With more than 80 per cent of the city’s trees on private property, there needs to be a way to preserve those trees, too, she says.
To ramp up pressure, Trees Winnipeg has pushed candidates in the municipal election to sign a pledge that includes a commitment to enact a bylaw that would control the removal of all tress more than 15 centimetres in diameter.
Many cities across Canada already have some form of private tree bylaw, which generally still allow cutting trees for development or when they're unhealthy, but not when someone just doesn't want to rake leaves anymore.
Surrey, B.C., passed protections in 2006, while cities such as Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto have since joined in. Edmonton has one in the works.
"We're really falling behind on that front," Poulin says.
About 75 per cent of candidates have signed on to the pledge, she says, though there are some notable gaps, including incumbent mayor Scott Gillingham.
At a recent campaign stop, he said he was proud of his record on trees, which saw the city boost funding and its replacement rate for trees. But he would only commit to council talking about a bylaw protecting trees on private property, not passing one.
"We have to take a look at what it is and what the nuances are, what the requirements would be, what the terms of any bylaw would be," he said.
The mayor and council have been made aware of how passionate many Winnipeggers are about trees. When city leaders tried to fill a financial gap this summer by cutting the forestry budget, there was enough of an outcry they backed down.
But going so far as to tell private property owners what they can do with their trees can also raise passions.
In Toronto, for example, such bylaws have led to frustrated homeowners who have been told they can't cut down their mature ginkgo trees, despite the trees starting to produce their noxious-smelling fruit.
Such a bylaw could have also made it challenging for Paul Taylor to clearcut his tree-covered lot in Winnipeg, which stood as something of an extension of the city’s Assiniboine forest.
Taylor says he did it over security concerns, as the trees hid his old family home from the street, leading to break-ins and vandalism, so he flattened the whole place.
The business owner says he’s still in favour of some kind of bylaw protecting trees, as long as it leaves room for genuine safety and liability situations, and has some kind of replanting requirement.
"I'm generally supportive of protecting Winnipeg's urban tree canopy, and I don't see that as being at odds with being a developer," he says.
Neighbours that were asked about the clearcut didn’t jump to support laws to prevent it.
Brian Paterson, who has lived next door for 67 years and enjoyed the view of the ancient oaks and other trees that grew there, says that within reason, people should be able to decide for themselves.
“Would I rather the trees be there? Yeah, but he has a right to whatever he wants to do with his property.”
Across the street, Bianca Johnson says she loves the idea of protecting trees, but worries about how far a law may go, and what kind of hassle someone might have to go through to deal with, say, a diseased tree.
“In general it sounds great, but details are always the important nitty-gritty bit,” Johnson says.
“There’s always the personal rights versus communal rights.”
While such bylaws do limit the personal, it’s not so different from many existing laws, said Erna Buffie, who published a book earlier this year on saving the urban canopy.
“I have to pull a permit if I want to do any kind of renovation on my property or in my house, but I can go ahead and cut down a tree that's 100 years old without any repercussions,” she says.
“There's something fundamentally wrong with that.”
She says the current lack of protections means, for example, that the owner of the Lemay Forest was within their rights to cut down the roughly 17,000 trees on the property. The forest, and the graves within it, were only saved when the province stepped in to expropriate it last year.
With the city’s trees still largely unprotected, Poulin at Trees Please has also been working to add new ones.
She helped raise money to plant eight trees across from her house, even though she won't be around to see them grow to the grandeur of what they replaced.
"We do this for the next generation of Winnipeggers and kids and grandkids, who need to inherit a city that is livable for them."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2026.
By Ian Bickis | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Keep reading
Show less
More than one in four Montreal-area adults experienced poverty over eight years
One in four faced poverty in Greater Montreal
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
More than one in four adults in Greater Montreal experienced poverty at some point between 2016 and 2023, according to a new study suggesting poverty is more widespread than annual statistics indicate.
The study, conducted by Quebec's Institut national de la recherche scientifique in collaboration with Centraide of Greater Montreal, found that 26 per cent of adults in the metropolitan area -- which includes Montreal, Laval and surrounding suburbs -- lived below the poverty line for at least one year between 2016 and 2023.
"Poverty really affects a lot of people," said Tasha Lackman, president and CEO of Centraide of Greater Montreal, a charity that funds community organizations fighting poverty and social exclusion.
While annual poverty rates have hovered between 10 and 12 per cent since 2020, the study released Thursday found that financial hardship affected a much larger share of the population when measured over several years.
Using Statistics Canada data that tracked people's circumstances over several years, researchers found that 14 per cent of adults experienced poverty for at least three years, while another 12 per cent lived below the poverty line for one or two years.
Lackman said escaping poverty can be difficult because even seemingly minor expenses can become major obstacles.
She pointed to families struggling to afford public transit fares so their children could participate in educational activities, or adults unable to cover transportation costs to attend job interviews or get to work before receiving their first paycheque.
The study found that persistent poverty was particularly common among immigrants, affecting 22 per cent of recent immigrants and 20 per cent of those who had lived in Canada for more than a decade.
Poverty has also become a longer-term problem for seniors. Among adults aged 65 and older, the proportion who spent seven or eight years below the poverty line rose from one per cent between 1992 and 1999 to 11 per cent between 2016 and 2023.
Xavier St-Denis, a professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique and the study's author, said Canada has been relatively successful at reducing poverty among seniors through programs such as Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement.
However, significant wealth inequalities remain, he said, particularly among seniors who reach retirement with little savings and do not own a home.
The report recommends increasing government benefits, particularly social assistance payments, to help reduce poverty.
Single adults under 65 are especially disadvantaged compared with seniors and families, who receive greater government support.
In Quebec, a single adult without health-related employment limitations can receive $845 a month in social assistance, compared with $1,014 for someone with qualifying health-related limitations, according to the provincial government's website.
The report argues that neither amount is sufficient to escape poverty.
St-Denis said concerns that increasing benefits would discourage employment have not materialized in the case of government support for families.
"Benefits increased without having a negative effect on mothers' participation in the labour market," he said, adding that the payments had a particularly positive effect on reducing poverty among single mothers.
Lackman also emphasized the importance of social housing, saying the study found that people living in neighbourhoods with more social housing were less likely to fall into poverty.
She welcomed the focus on homelessness by the Parti Québécois, which won Quebec's Oct. 5 election and is preparing to form a minority government. Its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has pledged to make reducing homelessness a priority.
"We need to make sure our politicians and society in general understand the urgency of the situation when one in four people has experienced poverty," she said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.
By Stéphane Rolland | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Keep reading
Show less
CentreBC pledges $25M 'rural ER stabilization fund' to keep emergency rooms open
CentreBC pledges $25M 'ER stabilization fund'
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
CentreBC Leader Elenore Sturko has announced plans for a $25-million-a-year "rural ER stabilization fund" to help keep emergency rooms open in the province.
The party's campaign pledge says the fund would pay locum doctors and nurses, and fund travel costs and "virtual ER backup."
Sturko, who is CentreBC's only incumbent legislator, says her party's plan will reduce wait times and increase public accountability in health care.
None of the leaders of British Columbia's larger parties have scheduled announcements in the provincial campaign on Saturday as voters head to municipal polls, a week out from voting day in the general election.
The B.C. Conservatives say interim leader Lorne Doerkson will be in Williams Lake where he's voting in the local elections and greeting constituents at campaign offices.
The BC NDP says Leader David Eby has no events while the BC Greens say Leader Emily Lowan is campaigning in Sidney and on Mayne Island.
Eby's decision to call the provincial election for Oct. 24 meant overlapping campaign periods with the municipal vote, drawing criticism from opponents and the Union of B.C. Municipalities.
Advance voting in the provincial election is already underway and continues until Wednesday.
The Conservatives have pledged they would legislate against provincial and local elections within 60 days of each other.
Doerkson said Friday the release of costings for his party's platform was "imminent" but the party hasn't said when that will be. The NDP and Greens have already released their costings.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.
Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Keep reading
Show less
Élections Québec engage déjà pour cet automne et ça paie jusqu'à 27,92 $/h
Même la formation est payée! 🤑
Les élections provinciales s'en viennent très bientôt. Le 3 octobre 2022, tu pourras voter pour ceux et celles qui te représenteront au gouvernement. D'ailleurs, tout au long de la campagne électorale qui devrait être lancée sous peu, Élections Québec aura besoin de citoyen.ne aux quatre coins de la province pour aider dans l'organisation et dans le bon déroulement de cet événement marquant.
Bonne nouvelle si tu cherches à te faire un peu d'argent de poche dans les prochains mois, car le recrutement est déjà commencé et plusieurs emplois sont disponibles, en plus d'offrir des salaires avantageux. Ce sont 50 000 personnes qui seront engagées pour l'occasion, et ce, à travers les 125 circonscriptions au Québec.
Pour être admissible à l'embauche, tu devras être disponible durant la période électorale et/ou le jour de l'élection, avoir 16 ans et plus et être citoyen.ne canadien.e. Tu devras aussi résider au Québec depuis plus de six mois et ne pas être sous curatelle ( être jugé.e incapable par le tribunal de prendre soin de toi et de tes biens).
Les salaires varient entre 15,68 $/h et 27,92 $/h selon le poste que tu occupes. Parmi les emplois disponibles, tu pourrais être agent.es réviseur.es et te déplacer afin de rencontrer les électeur.trices, vérifier l'identité des électeur.trices lors du vote, être préposé.e à l'information ou procéder au dépouillement des votes le soir du 3 octobre.
Si cela t'intéresse et que tu désires t'impliquer, tu peux déposer ta candidature en remplissant un formulaire sur le site Internet de Élections Québec.
À noter que toutes les formations nécessaires à l'emploi sont payées.
Emploi Élections Québec
Salaire : entre 15,68 $ et 27, 92 $/h
Employeur : Élections Québec
Pour postuler, c'est ici