It is a homerun for recreation in St-Pierre-Jolys’ $2.59-million budget presented May 2.

The budget is down about $25,000 from last year’s expenses, though there was a $57,000 deficit in 2023. The mill rate is flat, but more assessment means $220,000 more tax revenue to offset getting less in other revenue like provincial grants.

Recreation and cultural services get the biggest bump, going up over $157,000 to now have a nearly $476,000 budget.

A second Parc Carillon baseball diamond project grant was confirmed for $47,000. The ball diamond is expected to cost $80,000 total, with $20,000 coming from in-kind contributions and only $10,000 from the Village’s reserves.

A 22-year-old Emerson man is dead after police say he was involved in a single-vehicle collision.

RCMP said they responded to the crash at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday.

“The vehicle was travelling on Provincial Road 200, when it struck a guardrail, went off the road and caught on fire,” they said in a press release.

The collision took place just east of Emerson in the RM of Emerson-Franklin.

Re: Provencher MP hopes for election after ‘very socialist budget’, April 18 edition of The Carillon.

The fact is that there are so called socialist countries where the citizens are betrayed of their social rights by their dictators which exercise total control of the population. There are countries where democratic socialism rules them for the benefit of all citizens. Such countries are all the Scandinavian countries and Germany where there are social programs from the cradle to death. It so happens that the general happiness of the individual is greater in these countries than in every other country of the world. For example, the citizens of Denmark are at the top of the list to have happy citizens. I do not know how they can afford it.

Germany was the first country to introduce a pension system for its labourers and others under the rule of Chancellor Bismarck in the 19th century. The social security items like pensions, health care including dental care and pharma care are not a free for all, but all working persons have to pay a partial contribution from their income which is graded according to the wages earned. Extremely poor people do not have to pay anything at all. The German pension plan even allows persons who are homemakers and therefore do not work outside their homes, to contribute on a volunteer basis for their future pension. This is what my mother has done and she earned a good old age pension that kept her happy.

You do not see many Germans having bad teeth when they open their mouth for a laugh, because of the dental health care. For example, this system guarantees basic fillings for damaged teeth. If you want to have a better filling, say a gold filling in your tooth, you have to pay the difference in costs.

Manitoba Public Insurance is suing a dairy producer, alleging it’s liable for damages in a collision that damaged five motorcycles and caused the death of a Winnipeg man.

The lawsuit, filed by MPI’s lawyers in Court of King’s Bench April 19, names Steinbach producer Pennwood Dairy Inc., its owner and a John Doe as defendants.

The public insurer’s civil filing is seeking $34,946 in towing and repair costs to five motorcycles it insured that were damaged in the Sept. 24, 2022 collision.

Pennwood and the named defendants have not yet filed statements of defence. The dairy producer could not be reached for comment Monday.

You know something has gone horribly wrong when the NDP admits one of their so called “progressive” policies has failed.

That said, to his credit, over the weekend, BC’s NDP premier David Eby did just that.

David Eby’s NDP has now admitted that Justin Trudeau’s decriminalization of hard drugs experiment has failed, leaving ruined lives in its wake, and asked the PM to scale back significant elements of their drug decriminalization program. According to the federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, the Liberals have no intention of doing so.

Ottawa allowed BC to decriminalize small amounts of hard drugs like heroin and fentanyl starting in January 2023, saying it was a way to “destigmatize” drug use and address the overdose crisis.

Re: “Correction of mistakes” (April 18 letter to the editor in The Carillon).

I don’t want to get into a ‘he said, he said’ kind of thing but I couldn’t let author Hendrik van der Breggen get away with his demonstrably false assertions.

Hendrik van der Breggen, in defending Michael Zwaagstra’s pro-infanticide column wrote, among other things, “…there is no apartheid. Israel is a democracy in which Arabs and other minorities have full rights.” This is an outright lie. Apartheid is defined as “…systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.” This is exactly what Israel is doing to Palestinians.

According to Amnesty International and most other reputable organizations, “…Israel denies Palestinian citizens their rights to equal nationality and status, while Palestinians in the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) face severe restrictions on freedom of movement. Israel also restricts Palestinian’s rights to family unification in a profoundly discriminatory manner: For example, Palestinians from the OPT cannot gain residency or citizenship through marriage, which Jewish Israelis can.” In addition, “…millons of Palestians lack adequate essential services, such as garbage collection, electricity, public transportation and water and sanitation infrastructure.”

Headway program director Brenda Brown is leaving the youth rehabilitating program Headway for a role at Life Culture as a support person.

“I’ll be working with youth and women who have unplanned pregnancies as well as women post-abortion who don’t often have support to deal with that aspect of their life,” she said.

Headway, which has as its steering committee the RCMP, Probation Services, Hanover School Division, Child and Family Services, Southern Health, and The Addictions Foundation of Manitoba, works with youth who are in trouble with the justice system or are headed for trouble with the justice system and want to change their lives.

Brown has been working for Headway since 2016. Although her client base is different than those she will be seeing at Life Culture, the drive is the same.

Ever since a young age I have been creative and expressed myself through various forms of art. When I was 10, my grandma taught me how to sew. I remember the exact day… one morning she taught me the basics of the sewing machine and how to sew patchwork squares together. She had to run into town for a few hours, so she told me to keep practicing sewing together squares. Later that afternoon when she came home, I had sewn together enough lines of squares for an entire front panel of a patchwork blanket. That afternoon she helped me make a backing for the blanket. My love for sewing grew from that moment forward. As a teenager I started refashioning and up-cycling clothing for myself as a hobby, which eventually combined with another hobby of mine… 4-H.

I started 4-H when I was nine, doing every creative skill they offered. When I was 16, I decided to do “create your own skill” and titled it: Starting a Business. For that 4-H year I started a business creating refashioned clothing and accessories and started attending a local farmers market every Saturday to sell my creations. I loved every part of it! The business, the creativity, being part of the community, and the lovely customer interactions. After high school this business was put on hold as life changed and I explored new adventures. Little did I know I would end up coming back to it a few short years later.

Inspiration for my current business: Poppy & Mae Co. came about five years ago when my daughter was one year old. I was having a hard time finding country themed clothing for her, so I began sewing her some clothing using refashioned fabrics. When we went out in public, I kept getting comments on her clothing and accessories - people kept asking where I bought them. After telling a few people that I made them I realized there was a demand for country kid’s clothing, and I thought to myself… I could make this into a business, so I did! Since then, Poppy & Mae Co. has grown to include all of my creative hobbies. I do online sales as well as in person farmers’ markets and craft sales throughout Manitoba (but mostly here in the southeast prairies, the place I’ve called home my whole life). My shop focuses on creating quality apparel and products for everyday country style and living! My company slogan is - “one stop country shop” because I make a variety of products including: sewn and refashioned country clothing for children and women, crocheted & sewn farm toys, garden & egg aprons, unique country/farm houseware, hand-painted country home decor, and yummy goodies for your pantry including canning and sourdough baking!

If you see me around the community, feel free to say hello, I would love to meet you!

Spring has finally sprung in the southeast and with it brings new optimism for the year to come. As we are still in session at the Legislature much of my time has been spent in the house debating legislation brought forward by our government. This continues to be a tremendously exciting experience for me, and I have been able to successfully highlight many of the good things that my constituents are doing to move our province forward while using their experience and experience to give some constructive feedback to legislation that has been discussed and debated in the legislature this past month.

So many great things have been happening throughout our region that many days it has been hard not to want to be involved in the excitement. Although being there firsthand isn’t always possible, I have been getting accustomed to using my members statement time in the legislature to showcase the great things and people we are celebrating throughout my constituency. There is a time each month during session when each MLA is given the opportunity to showcase anything that is important to them or their constituency. The time is limited but it is an opportunity to have the undivided attention of everyone in house and this message is broadcast for everyone to view or media to recognize.

This past month I had the opportunity to have three different time slots allocated to me which I greatly appreciated. Since there is so much to talk about even three doesn’t feel like enough. I started the month with highlighting the St.Malo Warriors Junior B hockey team’s CRJHL championship win against the Beausejour Comets. This opportunity was extra special because I was joined by coach Patrick Trudeau and team captain Thomas Maynard who were up in the public gallery as I delivered the message.

My second members statement didn’t recognize a specific individual but instead the tremendous collaboration of efforts shown by four southeast municipalities. Red-Seine-Rat Wastewater Cooperative also know as RSR is a partnership between Hanover, Tache, Richot, and the town of Niverville. This will be a state of the art wastewater treatment plant including more than 90 kilometers of pipeline connecting communities across the 4 municipalities. The collaboration means a significant leap forward in the sustainability and growth of our region and a drastic improvement to the environmental impact of traditional earth lagoons. This collaboration has now been showcased as the first of its kind within the province and unique to the entire country. These types of demonstrations of efficiency and cooperation are why we are seeing the region growing at a rate greater than the rest of the province. People are proud to live in southeast Manitoba and work together to make it better for everyone.