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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.
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Montreal demonstrators denounce police violence amid misconduct allegations
Montreal demonstrators denounce police violence
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Charlotte Glorieux
Several dozen demonstrators gathered in downtown Montreal to denounce police violence, amid renewed scrutiny of misconduct allegations involving city police officers.
The protest at Phillips Square, a public square along one of Montreal's busiest shopping streets, was initially organized in solidarity with student demonstrators in France.
But speakers also condemned police violence in Montreal and the treatment of vulnerable people.
The rally came a day after Montreal police confirmed that two officers had been suspended amid misconduct allegations, including a report that one allegedly urinated on a person experiencing homelessness.
Frédéric Audet, a spokesperson for a Université de Montréal student association, denounced police violence against student protesters in France and Quebec.
Indigenous activist Émilie Fleming-Dubé also addressed the crowd, denouncing police violence against marginalized communities and calling for greater attention to homelessness.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across France on Saturday to protest rising living costs and deteriorating school conditions, with clashes between police and demonstrators leading to about 400 arrests.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.
-- with files from the Associated Press
By Charlotte Glorieux | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Expert says bus model involved in deadly Calgary crash considered ‘extremely safe’
Bus in Calgary crash considered safe: expert
An expert on low-carbon transportation says the roughly 1,000 compressed natural gas buses running in Canada are still considered “extremely safe” after one such bus was involved in a deadly crash in Calgary that claimed the lives of three people.
On Thursday, a chain-reaction crash happened when a transit bus hit several vehicles before rear-ending a parked bus, igniting an explosion that also left more than a dozen others injured.
Calgary police said one officer was taken to the hospital with injuries after running towards a bus as fire erupted.
One of the 12-metre-long buses involved in the crash was powered by compressed natural gas, a kind of fuel considered cheaper and more environmentally friendly than diesel gas.
Buses that run on compressed natural gas are common in public transit and have been in operation for the past two decades, said Josipa Petrunic, president and CEO of Canadian Urban Transit Research and Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC), a national non-profit focused on low-carbon transit research and planning.
“It's considered extremely safe technology, so we all need to find out what happened to create an unsafe environment in a crash situation,” Petrunic said.
There are 958 compressed natural gas-powered buses operating in Ontario, Alberta and B.C., according to a CUTRIC database report.
Petrunic said there are several heavy-duty safety mechanisms involved in building these buses, including a series of tools and technologies designed to manage leakage and reduce the risk of fire. Their tanks are also designed to withstand heavy impacts.
Usually, the most unsafe part of these buses, and any form of public transportation, is the lack of seatbelts, Petrunic said.
A spokesperson from Nova Bus confirmed that it was the manufacturer of the bus that was rear-ended in Thursday’s crash and the company is in contact with Calgary Transit.
The spokesperson also said that it was “premature to speculate on the cause before a thorough investigation has been completed.”
“Safety remains Nova Bus's highest priority, and we are offering our full cooperation to Calgary Transit and the relevant authorities as they work to establish the facts.“
Calgary Transit procures its buses from manufacturers that go through Altoona testing, a rigorous certification process for any new bus model to assess its durability and reliability before being rolled out into their fleet, said Petrunic.
The agency has nearly 250 CNG buses, which represents about 20 per cent of its fleet, according to the agency’s website. The website says the city plans to buy about 150 more this year to replace diesel buses.
As investigators continue to look into the cause of the crash, Petrunic said industry leaders will be looking into what factors went into the collision.
“A series of events had to have occurred in tandem for this cataclysmic event to occur leading to death,” said Petrunic. “A transit crash shouldn't result in passenger deaths.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2026.
By Sadeen Mohsen | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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Urgences-santé engage des étudiants pour l'été et c'est payé jusqu'à 22,91 $/h
Et tu n'as pas besoin d'être ambulancier.
Si tu n'as pas encore trouvé une job pour cet été, sache que l'organisation ambulancière Urgences-santé recrute présentement des étudiant.es à temps plein pour la saison estivale. L'équipe médicale recherche des préposé.es à l'entretien pour les ambulances, les équipements et la bâtisse. Tu pourrais recevoir un salaire allant jusqu'à 22,91 $ de l'heure et même t'ouvrir des portes dans le domaine de la santé.
Pour appliquer, quelques conditions sont demandées. Tu devras donc t'assurer de posséder un diplôme d'études secondaires, de détenir un permis de conduire de classe 5, d'être capable de soulever des charges d'au moins 40 kg et bien parler et écrire le français. Si tu as déjà travaillé dans un poste similaire ou que tu possèdes déjà des connaissances médicales, c'est encore mieux.
Si tu es choisi.e, tu auras plusieurs tâches à accomplir comme vérifier la conformité des équipements, effectuer des réparations et faire l'inventaire ainsi que le nettoyage du matériel paramédical. Tu devras vraiment t'assurer que tout fonctionne bien pour que le personnel de gestions de crise, comme les ambulancier.ères, puissent bien faire leur travail. Tu pourrais aussi être amené.e à t'occuper de l'inspection des véhicules d'urgence. Les quarts de travail par jour peuvent être assez longs et sont généralement de 8 à 12 heures.
L'offre comprend des avantages non négligeables comme un salaire horaire plus élevé que le salaire minimum au Québec ainsi que plusieurs avantages sociaux. Tu pourrais aussi recevoir des primes de soir, de nuit ou de fin de semaine.
Si tu souhaites avoir un emploi durant ta scolarité, Urgences-santé mentionne dans son offre que tu pourrais bien avoir l'option de travailler à temps partiel durant l'année scolaire si tu désires rester dans l'équipe.
Sache par contre que les disponibilités demandées sont plutôt particulières. Tu devras être disponible 24/7 et une fin de semaine sur deux pour une période de quatre mois. Tu seras placé.e sur une liste de rappel, aucun nombre d'heures de travail n'est garanti, mais dès ton inscription sur la liste tu as la chance d'accumuler de l'ancienneté.
Il te faudra aussi être disponible pour te déplacer aux trois centres d'Urgences-santé soit à Montréal, Laval et à Lasalle.
Préposé.e chez Urgences-santé
Salaire : entre 19,95 $ et 22,91 $
Compagnie : Urgences-santé
Applique ici