Power Should Be Back On
Life should be back to usual this morning across the province as Manitoban's head back to a short work week.
Power outages were reported across the province late Sunday-early Monday morning, as fierce weather knocked down trees and power lines around the south end of Manitoba.
Areas around Neepawa, Onanole, Erickson and Clear Lake were affected by the outages.
Manitoba Hydro spokesman Scott Powell said most communities should have had their power back by last night, but did warn sporadic outages might continue into this morning as well.
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Start Getting Out That Yard Waste Today
Dauphin's Annual Spring Clean-up Campaign starts today.
Crews will begin in the Day 1 area and progress through the four day cycle until pick-up across Dauphin is complete.
Residents are asked to place your yard waste near the back lane, but in an area where damage to property won't occur.
If you don't have access to a backlane, please place your yard waste on the boulevard at your curbside.
City crews will be collecting accumulated garden waste, grass, leaves, shrubs and tree branches.
Any unwanted composting material can be dropped off at the City Waste Disposal Site.
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US Loses COOL Appeal
Canada and Mexico have won a final appeal of US country-of-origin meat-labelling rules at the World Trade Organization.
The Canadian government says it will now prepare an application to the WTO for punitive measures.
Failure to change the labelling requirement could lead to tariffs on a wide range of American products including wine, chocolate, cereal and frozen orange juice.
Some U-S lawmakers have already signalled plans to move swiftly -- they're proposing legislation to rescind the labelling rules.
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Flax Processor Seeing Big Business
A Manitoba flax processing plant that faced hard times and closed just a few years ago has had a change of fortune.
Shape Foods sales manager Dane Lindenberg says the Brandon plant is now shipping to twice as many countries as it did just two years ago, and is steadily operating around the clock.
The 65-hundred-square-metre facility was built in 2006 but the previous owner filed for voluntary receivership a few years later and all 60 employees lost their jobs.
The plant reopened about a year-and-a-half later with a new owner, and currently employs about 30 people.
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Wheat Warning
Canadian farmers are being warned about illegally purchasing a variety of hard red spring wheat that was developed at North Dakota State University.
Elgin-ND is becoming popular in the US because of its high yield and quality potential, but FP Genetics is the sole and exclusive licensee and distributor of the seed in Canada.
Elgin-ND is owned by NDSURF and is protected by Plant Variety Protection in the United States.
NDSURF says it will prosecute any known infringement of its PVP rights.
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Study Highlights Canada's Housing Problem
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is calling on all levels of government to work together to fix what it says is this country's serious housing problem.
A new report by the federation finds the long, steady decline in federal subsidies for social housing has left provinces, territories and municipalities struggling against market forces to keep properties maintained, and affordable for renters.
The study finds while the federal government still spends $1.7-billion a year on housing, federal funding as a share of the country's economy has fallen 40 per cent since 1989.
