Seniors fear rec programs jeopardized by escalating facility fees

Seniors across Winnipeg are at risk of losing access to health and recreation programs after dozens of organizations have been slapped with astronomical increases to facility fees.

A group that represents the Good Neighbours Active Living Centre picketed outside city hall Thursday — some of them holding signs that said “save our seniors centres” and “partners, not tenants” — to denounce the fee hikes.

Good Neighbours executive director Susan Sader says some groups face a ten-fold increase in facility fees. In their case, they operate programs out of the Bronx Park Community Centre at 720 Henderson Hwy.

She said their members can’t absorb such a boost because many have low incomes. Each participant pays $35 a year to join the club.

Winnipeg on track to record hottest September since 1948

While summer is officially over, Mother Nature hasn’t got the memo: temperatures reached 29 C Thursday at Winnipeg Richardson International Airport, pushing Winnipeg closer to surpassing a 76-year-old record.

Winnipeg MP introduces bill to criminalize residential school denialism

OTTAWA - An NDP MP has introduced a bill that would criminalize residential school denialism, saying it would help stop harm caused toward survivors, their families and communities.

The chances the bill actually will be debated and pass into law are slim without it being adopted as a government bill by the Liberals.

The private member's bill proposes that someone could be charged under the Criminal Code for promoting hatred against Indigenous Peoples by condoning, justifying or downplaying the historical and lasting impact of residential schools.

Manitoba NDP MP Leah Gazan says the purpose of residential schools was to extinguish Indigenous cultures and languages and if the government is serious about reconciliation, it must protect survivors and their families from hate.

PTE's Bed and Breakfast’s dynamic duo create powerful host of characters

To play multiple roles is a hallmark of small-town living, a setting in which the driving instructor, the cattle farmer, the hockey coach and the hydroelectric worker are often a single Jack of all trades.

In playwright Mark Crawford’s Bed & Breakfast, a charming two-act comedy, an unmarried gay couple opens up to play themselves, the barista, her wife and the gruff handyman, along with their parents, a pair of newlyweds, a more-than-bicurious British couple, a prudish nanny, a realtor who’s always werking, a nephew who doesn’t know, a teenager who’s beginning to understand and a sweetly loud-mouthed mother who repeatedly and hilariously takes the lord’s name in vain.

And oh my God, was it ever nice to hear such laughter on opening night of the 52nd season at Prairie Theatre Exchange.

Crawford’s central figures are interior designer Brett (Kyle Golemba) and hotelier Drew (Amir Haidar), who have tried for years to make their dreams come true in Toronto despite the city’s untenable real-estate market.

Newcomer killed in Westwood crash was planning October wedding

Nardia Bedward was a newcomer to Canada and just weeks away from her wedding day when she was struck and killed by a pickup truck on Portage Avenue.

New details have emerged about Bedward, 40, who died Sept. 13.

“Nardia was a hard worker with many dreams and aspirations, she touched many lives with her kindness and will be deeply missed by family, friends and all who knew her,” reads a biography in an online fundraiser.

“She was also excitedly planning her wedding day in October and looking forward to starting her family when tragedy struck.”

Half of support staff looking for new jobs: poll

Nearly half of health-care support workers have looked for new jobs, or plan to, a survey found.

The survey of more than 5,000 workers with Shared Health, Southern Health and the Winnipeg and Northern regional health authorities found 47 per cent have been looking for “alternate employment” or plan to in the next year.

A combined 65 per cent of respondents said they were looking for a new job that is unrelated to health care or is in private health care.

More than 25,000 health support workers represented by Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 204 and the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union could walk off the job Oct. 8. The workers include health-care aides, laundry workers, dietary aides, ward clerks, recreation co-ordinators and other support staff.

Man charged with trafficking women

A Saskatchewan man is facing sex trafficking, gun and drug charges after he allegedly held two women against their will in a Winnipeg home.

Police went to a home in the western part of the city to check on the well-being of the woman on Sept. 16. Both victims were transported to safety.

Officers seized a large number of illegal drugs, including methamphetamine, cocaine and psilocybin mushrooms, as well as Xanax pills, fentanyl and marijuana. The Winnipeg Police Service estimated the drugs have a total estimated street value of $86,000.

Police also seized a loaded, sawed-off .22-calibre rifle, a 9-mm Glock handgun, various ammunition and a canister of bear spray.

’It is a bridge’: province reinstates rent top-up program after criticism

The Manitoba government is reinstating a rent top-up program designed to tackle chronic homelessness after it was criticized for pausing it while blaming a lack of funds.

While the pause prevented some homeless people from leaving shelters and getting into housing, Premier Wab Kinew was clear Thursday the program is not the NDP’s answer to homelessness.

“This housing benefit is a program we are working on with the federal government — the federal funding has run out,” Kinew said at a health-related news conference.

“We have decided to step up with additional resources to help ensure more people who need these supports in Manitoba will be able to get the help that they need. But this is not the homelessness strategy. The homelessness strategy in Manitoba is to build new social housing so that we can get people out of tents and out of underneath bridges and into permanent housing.”

Eleven projects get federal housing funds

The homeless, Inuit women who are escaping violence, Indigenous youth who need transitional housing and supports, and people on low incomes are among the first recipients of a federal housing program.

The federal government and the City of Winnipeg announced Thursday that $25 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund capital grant program has been awarded to 11 housing projects.

They are expected to create 1,135 housing units. About half of the units, 597, are considered affordable housing while 613 of the total will be downtown.

It was announced last year that the city would receive $122.4 million from the federal government to fast-track the development of 3,166 housing units, with at least 931 affordable housing units, by 2027.