Doug Palson, chief of police of the Manitoba First Nations Police Service. (MFNP.CA)

A Manitoba police chief is believed to have died Wednesday after a house fire in the RM of Portage la Prairie.

Emergency crews were called to a residence off of Road 30 W, located north of High Bluff, just before 5 a.m.

The home was confirmed as belonging to Doug Palson, chief of police for the Manitoba First Nations Police Service.

Once the fire was extinguished, investigators discovered human remains in the home. The identity of the deceased has yet to be confirmed.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

RCMP and the Office of the Fire Commissioner continue to investigate.

© 2025. This article Manitoba Police Chief Believed Dead After House Fire appeared first on ChrisD.ca - Winnipeg News.

Canada has called it quits for now on trying to hammer out another national agreement to improve First Nations child welfare across the country, but will continue to negotiate a deal with Ontario First Nations, according to correspondence between the Department of Justice and the Assembly of First Nations.

In a letter dated Jan. 6 and obtained by The Globe and Mail, Justice lawyer Paul Vickery wrote that the federal government isn’t mandated to negotiate further on a long-term deal on “a national basis.”

Donald Trump’s repeated calls to claim Canada are nothing more than empty threats aimed at winning trade concessions, experts in U.S. relations and defence studies say, as Ontario’s Premier called the idea “ridiculous and a waste of time.”

Speaking at a press conference this week, the president-elect said he’d use “economic force” to annex Canada, arguing that the United States doesn’t need to buy Canadian lumber, dairy or automobiles.

An outgoing Progressive Conservative MPP in Ottawa is apologizing for a social media post that criticized one of the people vying for her seat — a message Muslim groups say was Islamophobic and that the MPP herself has now acknowledged was "inappropriate."  

Canada's Para alpine skiers stole the show on Wednesday with seven podium finishes at a World Cup downhill event in Santa Caterina, Italy.

An investigation is underway at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre, after a middle-aged man died in the ER while waiting eight hours for care.

The man came in shortly after midnight and was determined a low-aquity patient, but just before 8 a.m. staff noted his condition significantly worsened, and he was declared deceased shortly after.

“We never want to see an incident like this happen in our healthcare system,” said Uzoma Asagwara, Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care Minister. “It is a devastating loss.”

“We’re doing everything we can now to understand what’s happened,” she added. “And how we prevent it as we move forward.”

Health officials say the emergency department had roughly 100 patients overnight, and about 50 at the time of the incident.

Details on the patients condition and the treatment they were seeking were not provided. The province says they have launched a critical incident investigation.

“We are going to learn as quickly as we can,” said Asagwara. “As much information as possible as to how we prevent something like this from happening again.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, online wait times showed just under seven hours for adults at HSC, over five hours for children, 10.5 hours at St. Boniface, and eight hours for Grace Hospital.

“It is extremely frustrating,” said Susan Gareau, former emergency department patient. “You want to make sure when you go there you’re being looked after.”

“I’ve spent over nine hours in there,” added another former emergency department patient, Alex James. “I got there at like 4 p.m. I left at like 4 a.m.”

“It was rough.”

“That’s not an acceptable number,” said Asagwara. “We need to continue to do the work to see wait times improving.”

“There have been some improvements at HSC,” she added. “We are continuing to work very hard to see much more needed improvement.”

The province says the critical incident investigation is underway, and the findings will be shared when it’s complete.

The post ‘Devastating loss’: Investigation underway for death of man in Winnipeg ER appeared first on CityNews Winnipeg.

A Winnipeg city councillor says he wants the city to explore expropriating land at Lemay Forest, as protesters continued trying to halt the removal of trees from the privately owned south Winnipeg land.

City councillors were briefed about a preferred passenger rail option to Calgary's airport using a single track, with the ability to connect to the Blue and Green Lines as well as future intercity passenger rail projects.

The water system used to fight the Palisades fire in Los Angeles buckled under the demands of what turned out to be the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history. Some hydrants ran dry, hindering the fight against the flames, local water officials said Wednesday.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was pumping more water from aqueducts and groundwater into the system, but demand was so high, that wasn’t enough to refill three one-million gallon tanks in hilly Pacific Palisades that help pressurize hydrants for the neighborhood. Many went dry and at least 1,000 buildings were engulfed in flames.

In a forceful press conference, officials implored residents to conserve water and not attempt to fight fire with garden hoses.

“I would ask that you turn off your water and turn off your gas, both things before you leave the residence so that we can continue to have that water supply for the hydrant system,” said Mark Pestrella, director of Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.

That prompted a swirl of criticism on social media against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s water management policies.

“You got thousands of homes destroyed, families destroyed, businesses destroyed. I think you can figure out a way to get more water in the hydrants. I don’t think there’s room for excuses here,” said Rick Caruso, a real estate developer and former commissioner with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who came in second in the last Los Angeles mayors race.

President-elect Trump seized on the moment to blame Newsom for the dry fire hydrants. In a post on his Truth Social media network Wednesday, he renewed criticisms of the state’s approach to balancing the distribution of water to farms and cities with the need to protect endangered species including the Delta smelt. Trump has sided with farmers over environmentalists in a long-running dispute over California’s scarce water resources.

“The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need,” said Izzy Gardon, director of communications for California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Regional water officials also pushed back, saying the system was never designed for fighting such massive blazes.

“We’re fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging,” said Janisse Quiñones, CEO of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Peter Gleick, senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on global water sustainability, dismissed Trump’s criticsm as well. Leaving more water in rivers for endangered fish is one thing. Water availability in Los Angeles is another, he said.

“Those fights have been going on for a long time and they have not affected in any way water supply for firefighting in southern California,” Gleick said.

About 40 percent of Los Angeles city water comes from state-controlled projects connected to northern California, and the state has limited the water it delivers this year. Yet the southern California reservoirs these canals help feed are at above-average levels for this time of year.

A widening problem

As wildfires become increasingly common in urban areas such as Boulder, Colorado and Lahaina, Hawaii, public water systems are often unable to meet the firefighting demand. Human-caused climate change is making it worse, experts say.

Beyond water availability, large urban fires can also melt or otherwise damage pipes, causing them to leak large amounts of water, draining pressure from the system, said Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University. Individual homes with water meters that have a remote shutoff can help water utilities quickly stem such losses, Whelton said.

Greg Pierce, professor of urban environmental policy at the University of California who had a family member lose a house in one of the blazes, pushed back on Caruso’s assertion that the loss of water pressure was a clear sign of mismanagement.

Providing enough water could amount to a subsidy for very high-income areas, he said. “I think the conversation has to be more about whether these areas are habitable.”

The 2023 fire that ripped through the historic town of Lahaina and claimed more than 100 lives burned so quickly in a dense area, that pipe bursts made it hard to maintain enough water pressure for fire fighting efforts.

In the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado, the city of Louisville’s water department had workers manually open valves to let untreated water from the Colorado River and Boulder Creek into pipes to restore pressure. That helped firefighters but also led to water contamination.

LADWP is sending in mobile water tankers to help fight the fires. They can then refill at hydrants that still have pressure, Quiñones said. It takes about 30 minutes to refill about 4,000 gallons of water.

For many hours, the fire itself made it impossible for aircraft to gather water from a much more abundant source of water — reservoirs.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Brittany Peterson And Michael Phillis, The Associated Press