True Patriot Love - [Sneak Peek] Manitoba in Focus： Affordability, Opportunity, and Canada's Heartland

00:00:00.000 portage in maine is at the heart of canada in winnipeg manitoba but so much is unknown about

00:00:10.200 the heart of canada because so much focus in the media and through politicians is on the big cities

00:00:15.480 vancouver montreal and toronto but what about winnipeg what about manitoba what about the

00:00:19.940 heartland of canada who better to talk about it than veteran television radio broadcaster

00:00:24.540 uh social media influencer a blogger longtime manitoba resident and someone i'm proud to call

00:00:29.860 friend rick low and rick how are you very good how are you jimmy good good good good um you know

00:00:36.200 manitoba is in a lot of ways a happening place you know stories about uh spending billions to

00:00:41.980 upgrade churchill and the portlands to ship natural gas to europe and other things give the

00:00:48.800 people of canada an update what where are we in the state of manitoba in 2026 oh boy great question

00:00:55.300 And by the way, I used to work with a mutual friend, Johnny Borden, who said that basically in the GTA area where you are, nobody west of Timmins knows that Manitoba exists.

00:01:06.100 So I'm happy that we're at least figuratively, if not literally, on the map with you guys.

00:01:10.000 That's great.

00:01:11.120 Yeah, no, please.

00:01:11.820 And that's what we're doing at Rick.

00:01:13.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:01:14.200 So where are we?

00:01:15.820 Well, that's, yeah.

00:01:16.620 Well, you mentioned Churchill.

00:01:17.780 Let's, you know, fingers crossed.

00:01:18.800 that could i was just golfing with a friend of mine a couple of days ago and he said not in our

00:01:23.280 lifetime but down the road that is going to be such a game he feels it's going to be such a game

00:01:28.720 changer uh what with climate change and and uh you know the fact that it's weeks days every year that

00:01:35.280 that port has opened up anyway so that's certainly one thing um but where are we well we can talk

00:01:42.080 about uh you want to talk politically you want to talk socially you want to talk culturally where

00:01:46.640 you want to go with this well i'll start politically rick because they just had a

00:01:50.800 national poll of the approval ratings of premiers across the country in ontario doug ford is rock

00:01:56.640 bottom at barely registering at 20 percent and wab canoe is leader of the pack at 62 percent

00:02:03.840 what is it about wab canoe that has really touched the hearts and minds of so many people in the

00:02:08.640 province that he has such a high approval rating so uh there's a few things one is he's just a

00:02:15.440 mensch okay he's like the kind of guy you want to just go have a beer with uh there was a kind of a

00:02:20.560 viral video about a year ago where he helped a woman uh change a flat tire he didn't well he

00:02:26.080 didn't know he was being videoed okay whatever but he got out of his car and he helped this woman

00:02:31.360 change a flat tire of course being indigenous winnipeg having the most indigenous population

00:02:36.160 in any city in canada it's a huge boon but it's also a huge uh an issue uh you know 90 of our

00:02:43.280 our foster kids are native so um so there's he's just a good guy i will i will counter that by

00:02:50.920 saying in the however long he's been in office he hasn't really improved anything and i don't

00:02:57.060 mean that in a bad way a lot of the problems are unfixable health care every province every

00:03:01.880 province is trying to poach doctors and nurses from every other province um i don't know that

00:03:07.080 whether that's fixable but but um that that's one thing uh that that but but his coolness you know

00:03:14.840 you saw the clip of him uh no boozma until there's kuzma or whatever it was right and you know dump

00:03:21.720 and then making fun of trump with the executive orders and stuff so people kind of like his

00:03:26.360 good-naturedness um he also it's a little bit like um the liberals and the conservatives

00:03:33.720 federally. Right now, according to the polls, you know, Carney's doing well and Polly really isn't

00:03:39.240 making a dent. And it's a little bit like that here because we had Pallister for a long time

00:03:43.800 and then Stephenson. And Stephenson was sort of the Cruella de Vil version of the politician.

00:03:48.680 She was almost, it wasn't, it was a feature, not a bug or cruelty. And so we got a provincial

00:03:54.920 election and one of the big issues was searching landfills for these, there was a few indigenous

00:04:01.560 women that had gone missing and they were allegedly buried in the landfills and she

00:04:05.880 she made it a platform plank to not search for them and that was sort of even though she was

00:04:12.780 failing that was the dagger right so um he doesn't really have a lot of competition and now abhi khan

00:04:19.680 who you will know very well yes yeah absolutely the famous cfl or abhi khan uh is the conservative

00:04:26.500 leader here in the province and he is a little bit like polyesterly he hasn't doesn't have a lot of

00:04:31.300 traction right now um and ironically i don't know if you know this you know that avi khan to become

00:04:35.840 an mla he beat willard reeves in the by-election oh i didn't realize that so cfl and cfl crime

00:04:41.600 yeah isn't that one was yeah one one was avi khan conservative but willard reeves liberal

00:04:45.720 and he barely won it was really close so it was kind of an interesting cfl legend uh yeah so it's

00:04:52.640 pretty fascinating uh and the liberals were willard reeves ran for liberals don't even register in this

00:04:57.860 province so so that's not even a thing so you've got ndp that are really holding the fort and then

00:05:03.780 you've got the conservatives and then the liberals are kind of uh sort of a non-issue right now

00:05:08.580 you touched upon health care and wait times and it made national headlines a few months ago

00:05:13.460 about i believe it was a woman in a winnipeg hospital in the waiting area for like 30 some

00:05:18.340 hours who suffered catastrophic health issues it's a problem in every province in the country

00:05:23.700 from a manitoba standpoint what is the big stumbling block to improving health care in

00:05:29.140 those wait times it's the same as every province it's the federal transfers it's like i don't i

00:05:35.380 don't like i said i don't know that that problem is solvable every other province says hey we're

00:05:40.100 recruiting nurses from other provinces but every other province is trying to take our nurses and

00:05:44.020 our uh uh doctors that one plus is that because of the situation in the states right now there's

00:05:51.140 are a lot of nurses and doctors that are coming up from estates. I know in BC, I just saw a thing

00:05:56.940 about six weeks ago, they've managed to coach quite a few doctors and nurses from Texas and

00:06:01.620 deep south. Those professionals aren't happy with the situation. But it's just the same thing all

00:06:06.720 over. There's too many people, not enough services. You want to cut taxes or at least

00:06:11.060 keep them level, but you want to increase services? Impossible. So either you raise taxes,

00:06:17.020 which no politician wants to do or you don't get the services you want which is generally what is

00:06:22.300 happening i mean for a lot of people in ontario i have family in the maritimes i have a daughter

00:06:27.740 living in alberta now we always see the the license plate friendly manitoba so it always

00:06:33.100 shocks a lot of canadians rick when they see the crime rates in winnipeg in manitoba and the drug

00:06:38.540 related issues why is it so out of control in parts of manitoba okay i have to be really careful

00:06:44.780 here you know i'm a foster parent of a couple of native kids so i do not that notwithstanding um

00:06:51.340 because we have i think the latest poll was 110 000 uh natives living in winnipeg out of 800 000 0.99

00:06:58.780 so that's a and most of them in the downtown area um so a lot of that crime is is indigenous 0.75

00:07:06.220 on indigenous and that doesn't that doesn't diminish it at all i'm just saying um that 0.81

00:07:11.180 there's a real problem you've got and we could talk for hours but you've got i think we have about

00:07:16.140 63 reserves in in manitoba um a lot of them are now they're being flooded we just had a torrential

00:07:23.900 rainstorms about a week ago a couple of them get flooded every year they're in the wrong place

00:07:29.580 some of them have been flooded on purpose because of our hydro um so they're in these isolated

00:07:36.940 reserves and there's nothing to do and so they come to Winnipeg and then there's nothing to do

00:07:44.060 so it's just uh you know it's you can go all the way back to uh Jean Jean Chrétien's white paper

00:07:50.540 you can you can really go back a long way if you want but um that certainly is like so you ask

00:07:56.140 about the crime if I'm walking downtown Winnipeg and I remember years ago when you and I were doing

00:08:00.780 the Argos we we walked downtown uh I don't ever feel unsafe neither does my wife you can walk

00:08:06.460 downtown maybe not at two in the morning but in the evening and we've got a thriving we just you

00:08:12.620 you started this thing with portage and maine we just opened portage and maine again to pedestrians

00:08:16.780 after 40 years i think oh fantastic yeah it was closed and there was a mall underneath it so you

00:08:22.460 couldn't walk across portage and maine which a lot of us thought was really stupid so they finally

00:08:26.940 opened it up again uh we've got the winnipeg old eyes in the double a they play right downtown in

00:08:32.540 a beautiful park um so there is a lot of good stuff happening downtown uh but it's like any

00:08:40.060 city you know i mean we always joke my son and i went to chicago a few years ago and my wife said

00:08:44.620 do we need you need a money belt to hide your money and i go no it's no more dangerous than

00:08:48.700 winnipeg just just common sense right yeah well so yeah but sure lots of and then of course the

00:08:55.180 homeless right that's a a huge deal we've got riverbanks and there's lots of camps and then

00:08:59.900 they want to get rid of the homeless but where they have to go somewhere so they just set up

00:09:05.500 camp somewhere else right you know and the reason i bring it up is i know justin trudeau talked

00:09:12.060 about it in 2015 how he promised potable clean drinking water for every indigenous reservation

00:09:18.060 in the country i as long as i can remember as a as a young man politicians have promised to

00:09:24.460 help the indigenous population but and having a web canoe as premier helps but federally i'm still

00:09:30.940 waiting for someone to do something tangible instead of just throwing money at the problem

00:09:35.820 do you know what i mean yeah and if i could be again i have to be really careful um but because

00:09:42.780 of our uh involvement with our kids um and and my wife's been working for first nations for the last

00:09:48.380 30 years um one of the problems is you can you can give a there's a lot of very

00:09:55.820 high functioning reserves. I was just in Kelowna a couple of weeks.

True Patriot Love - June 28, 2026

[Sneak Peek] Manitoba in Focus： Affordability, Opportunity, and Canada's Heartland

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