[Sneak Peek] Manitoba in Focus： Affordability, Opportunity, and Canada's Heartland
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Summary
Where are we in the state of Manitoba in 2026? What s happening in the heartland of Canada, and who's leading the pack in the race to become our next premier? In this episode of Where Are We? we talk with long-time Manitoba resident and social media influencer Rick Low and former Manitoba TV broadcaster and blogger Jimmmy GoodgoodGoodGoodgood about all things Manitoba.
Transcript
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portage in maine is at the heart of canada in winnipeg manitoba but so much is unknown about
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the heart of canada because so much focus in the media and through politicians is on the big cities
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vancouver montreal and toronto but what about winnipeg what about manitoba what about the
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heartland of canada who better to talk about it than veteran television radio broadcaster
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uh social media influencer a blogger longtime manitoba resident and someone i'm proud to call
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friend rick low and rick how are you very good how are you jimmy good good good good um you know
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manitoba is in a lot of ways a happening place you know stories about uh spending billions to
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upgrade churchill and the portlands to ship natural gas to europe and other things give the
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people of canada an update what where are we in the state of manitoba in 2026 oh boy great question
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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.
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So I'm happy that we're at least figuratively, if not literally, on the map with you guys.
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that could i was just golfing with a friend of mine a couple of days ago and he said not in our
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lifetime but down the road that is going to be such a game he feels it's going to be such a game
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changer uh what with climate change and and uh you know the fact that it's weeks days every year that
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that port has opened up anyway so that's certainly one thing um but where are we well we can talk
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about uh you want to talk politically you want to talk socially you want to talk culturally where
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you want to go with this well i'll start politically rick because they just had a
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national poll of the approval ratings of premiers across the country in ontario doug ford is rock
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bottom at barely registering at 20 percent and wab canoe is leader of the pack at 62 percent
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what is it about wab canoe that has really touched the hearts and minds of so many people in the
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province that he has such a high approval rating so uh there's a few things one is he's just a
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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
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viral video about a year ago where he helped a woman uh change a flat tire he didn't well he
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didn't know he was being videoed okay whatever but he got out of his car and he helped this woman
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change a flat tire of course being indigenous winnipeg having the most indigenous population
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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
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our foster kids are native so um so there's he's just a good guy i will i will counter that by
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saying in the however long he's been in office he hasn't really improved anything and i don't
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mean that in a bad way a lot of the problems are unfixable health care every province every
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province is trying to poach doctors and nurses from every other province um i don't know that
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whether that's fixable but but um that that's one thing uh that that but but his coolness you know
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you saw the clip of him uh no boozma until there's kuzma or whatever it was right and you know dump
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and then making fun of trump with the executive orders and stuff so people kind of like his
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good-naturedness um he also it's a little bit like um the liberals and the conservatives
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federally. Right now, according to the polls, you know, Carney's doing well and Polly really isn't
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making a dent. And it's a little bit like that here because we had Pallister for a long time
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and then Stephenson. And Stephenson was sort of the Cruella de Vil version of the politician.
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She was almost, it wasn't, it was a feature, not a bug or cruelty. And so we got a provincial
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election and one of the big issues was searching landfills for these, there was a few indigenous
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women that had gone missing and they were allegedly buried in the landfills and she
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she made it a platform plank to not search for them and that was sort of even though she was
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failing that was the dagger right so um he doesn't really have a lot of competition and now abhi khan
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who you will know very well yes yeah absolutely the famous cfl or abhi khan uh is the conservative
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leader here in the province and he is a little bit like polyesterly he hasn't doesn't have a lot of
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traction right now um and ironically i don't know if you know this you know that avi khan to become
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an mla he beat willard reeves in the by-election oh i didn't realize that so cfl and cfl crime
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yeah isn't that one was yeah one one was avi khan conservative but willard reeves liberal
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and he barely won it was really close so it was kind of an interesting cfl legend uh yeah so it's
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pretty fascinating uh and the liberals were willard reeves ran for liberals don't even register in this
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province so so that's not even a thing so you've got ndp that are really holding the fort and then
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you've got the conservatives and then the liberals are kind of uh sort of a non-issue right now
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you touched upon health care and wait times and it made national headlines a few months ago
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about i believe it was a woman in a winnipeg hospital in the waiting area for like 30 some
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hours who suffered catastrophic health issues it's a problem in every province in the country
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from a manitoba standpoint what is the big stumbling block to improving health care in
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those wait times it's the same as every province it's the federal transfers it's like i don't i
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don't like i said i don't know that that problem is solvable every other province says hey we're
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recruiting nurses from other provinces but every other province is trying to take our nurses and
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our uh uh doctors that one plus is that because of the situation in the states right now there's
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are a lot of nurses and doctors that are coming up from estates. I know in BC, I just saw a thing
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about six weeks ago, they've managed to coach quite a few doctors and nurses from Texas and
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deep south. Those professionals aren't happy with the situation. But it's just the same thing all
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over. There's too many people, not enough services. You want to cut taxes or at least
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keep them level, but you want to increase services? Impossible. So either you raise taxes,
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which no politician wants to do or you don't get the services you want which is generally what is
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happening i mean for a lot of people in ontario i have family in the maritimes i have a daughter
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living in alberta now we always see the the license plate friendly manitoba so it always
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shocks a lot of canadians rick when they see the crime rates in winnipeg in manitoba and the drug
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related issues why is it so out of control in parts of manitoba okay i have to be really careful
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here you know i'm a foster parent of a couple of native kids so i do not that notwithstanding um
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because we have i think the latest poll was 110 000 uh natives living in winnipeg out of 800 000
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so that's a and most of them in the downtown area um so a lot of that crime is is indigenous
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on indigenous and that doesn't that doesn't diminish it at all i'm just saying um that
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there's a real problem you've got and we could talk for hours but you've got i think we have about
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63 reserves in in manitoba um a lot of them are now they're being flooded we just had a torrential
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rainstorms about a week ago a couple of them get flooded every year they're in the wrong place
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some of them have been flooded on purpose because of our hydro um so they're in these isolated
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reserves and there's nothing to do and so they come to Winnipeg and then there's nothing to do
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so it's just uh you know it's you can go all the way back to uh Jean Jean Chrétien's white paper
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you can you can really go back a long way if you want but um that certainly is like so you ask
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about the crime if I'm walking downtown Winnipeg and I remember years ago when you and I were doing
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the Argos we we walked downtown uh I don't ever feel unsafe neither does my wife you can walk
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downtown maybe not at two in the morning but in the evening and we've got a thriving we just you
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you started this thing with portage and maine we just opened portage and maine again to pedestrians
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after 40 years i think oh fantastic yeah it was closed and there was a mall underneath it so you
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couldn't walk across portage and maine which a lot of us thought was really stupid so they finally
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opened it up again uh we've got the winnipeg old eyes in the double a they play right downtown in
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a beautiful park um so there is a lot of good stuff happening downtown uh but it's like any
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city you know i mean we always joke my son and i went to chicago a few years ago and my wife said
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do we need you need a money belt to hide your money and i go no it's no more dangerous than
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winnipeg just just common sense right yeah well so yeah but sure lots of and then of course the
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homeless right that's a a huge deal we've got riverbanks and there's lots of camps and then
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they want to get rid of the homeless but where they have to go somewhere so they just set up
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camp somewhere else right you know and the reason i bring it up is i know justin trudeau talked
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about it in 2015 how he promised potable clean drinking water for every indigenous reservation
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in the country i as long as i can remember as a as a young man politicians have promised to
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help the indigenous population but and having a web canoe as premier helps but federally i'm still
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waiting for someone to do something tangible instead of just throwing money at the problem
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do you know what i mean yeah and if i could be again i have to be really careful um but because
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of our uh involvement with our kids um and and my wife's been working for first nations for the last
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30 years um one of the problems is you can you can give a there's a lot of very
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high functioning reserves. I was just in Kelowna a couple of weeks.