Deficit of nearly $40M projected for city budget

The City of Winnipeg predicts it will end this year with a $39.3-million deficit for its tax-supported budget.

The shortfall would empty the city’s financial stabilization reserve, eliminating its $31.7-million balance, and require a separate “action plan” to cover $7.6 million of losses if the financial outlook can’t be improved first.

The budget projections are based on financial data up to March 31, a new report notes.

The city blames high snow-clearing and ice control costs, a surge in Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service overtime and workers compensation payments, lower-than-expected permit fee revenue and higher-than-expected police expenses for much of the projected shortfall.

Advance voting for Tuxedo byelection underway

Tuxedo byelection voters seemed to have the one thing on their minds at advance polls Saturday: change.

“I just think we need a change,” Barb Clendenan, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years, said.

She said she has voted Tory all her life but is frustrated with the party. She wants the Progressive Conservatives to listen to all voters, not just “one economic group.” She also likes what the NDP is doing so far when it comes to education and health care.

“This riding has been a stronghold for the PCs,” she said. “Perhaps they need to wake up and not be so sure of themselves.”

‘It’s just surreal’: search for missing Winnipeg woman continues

Family members and friends of a woman missing for more than four days are desperately searching roadways and properties near Whiteshell Provincial Park, trying to find any trace of her.

Brittany Dawn Storey, 29, was driving home from the Rennie area at about 4:10 p.m. Thursday, after a get-together with friends, and was on a group phone chat. She told the group she had struck a tree; the phone call cut out.

That’s the last anyone has heard from her.

Storey’s sister, Jada, says numerous attempts to call her back were not answered.

‘We are on the edge of horror’: Canadian Foodgrains Bank calls for ceasefire as famine looms in Gaza

What would you do if your children were starving and there was nothing you could do to help them?

That’s the question Andy Harrington, executive director of the Winnipeg-based Canadian Foodgrains Bank asks, referring to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“People in Gaza are in dire straits,” he said, noting nearly the entire population, including many children, are at risk of famine.

Half the population of 2.2 million people in Gaza are at Phase 5 (catastrophe) on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale for food insecurity, an internationally recognized way of measuring hunger, Harrington said, noting that more 850,000 Gazans are at Phase 4 (emergency), Harrington said.

Human rights defender urges Ukraine support

The head of a Nobel Peace Prize winning Ukrainian organization says she is thankful Canada is helping her country fight.

Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Center for Civil Liberties, which won the prestigious international award in 2022, for what the Nobel committee called its “outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power,” said the ongoing war isn’t just between Ukraine and Russia.

“This is not just a war between states,” Matviichuk said Sunday before a tour of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.

“This is a war between two systems: authoritarianism and democracy. With this war, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin attempts to convince the entire world that democracy, rule of law and human rights are fake values … If Putin succeeds, it will encourage other authoritarian leaders, in different parts of the world, to do the same.

Western premiers conclude annual meetings in Whitehorse

WHITEHORSE – Premiers from across Western Canada are wrapping up meetings in Whitehorse today aimed at discussing common concerns in their region. The premiers of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, and Yukon meet annually for the Western Premiers’ Conference. Prior to the conference, B.C. Premier David Eby said one of the top items on the agenda is infrastructure related to trade. British Columbia Premier David Eby, fourth from the left, speaks as other premiers listen during a news conference after a meeting of western premiers, in Whistler, B.C., on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Premiers from across […]

Families, friends set to remember victims on anniversary of Manitoba bus crash

The year that has passed since a bus crash killed 17 seniors headed to a Manitoba casino on a bright late-spring day has been one of grief, community support, a slow return to normal and, for some, a long road to recovery. It has also left unanswered questions about the genesis of the horrific crash that left the bus in flames, debris strewn in all directions and first responders dealing with a chaotic scene of death of injury. Dauphin, a city of 8,000 residents in western Manitoba, is a place where almost everyone knows everyone. Most know someone who was […]

‘Felt like I should be here,’ grandson of D-Day vet says of ceremony

Allan Williams looks stoic in the photo. His eyes are fixed on some unknown point, and his square jaw is clenched.

He was going into battle. His boat was approaching Juno beach.

On Saturday, Allan’s grandson Jonathan Williams remembered his grandfather’s sacrifice 80 years later at a D-Day remembrance event at Vimy Ridge Memorial Park.

“I just felt like I should be here today,” Jonathan, who looks strikingly like his grandfather, said. “I feel compelled to carry his story on.”

Senior Residences of Oakdale to bring 270 rental units to Charleswood

Sherry Mooney knows all too well how difficult it can be for a senior in Charleswood looking to downsize.

An area resident of 30 years, Mooney searched high and low for an apartment in a 55-plus complex, but came up empty and ultimately had to leave the west Winnipeg neighbourhood upon selling her home.

“There was no place,” Mooney told the Free Press recently. “There was only one residence that I would’ve been interested in and they wouldn’t even take my name on a waiting list because their waiting list was so excessive.”

Mooney, board president of the Charleswood Active Living Centre, hears and sees a large segment of area residents that are facing a similar dilemma.

Macron hopes to contain far right in national elections after it surged in EU vote. It’s a risky bet

The far right’s surge in France in elections for the European Parliament was widely expected. What came next was not. French President Emmanuel Macron called snap legislative elections, saying he could not ignore the new political reality after his pro-European party was handed a chastening defeat and projected to garner less than half the support of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. He hopes that voters will band together to contain the far right in national elections in a way they didn’t in European ones. But Sunday’s decision to dissolve parliament and send to the polls voters who just expressed their […]

Indigenous midwife aims to bring birthing rituals back to First Nation communities

Melissa Brown Sveinson is Anishinaabe/Dine from Sagkeeng First Nation and the Navajo Nation. She is a registered non-practising midwife and holds a bachelor of midwifery though University College of the North’s Indigenous Midwifery program. She is the co-founder of Zaagi’idiwin, an Indigenous-led organization that strives to centre Indigenous people as the experts of maternal child health in their communities.

Brown Sveinson currently travels across Canada and the United States delivering full-spectrum Indigenous doula training in Indigenous communities.

A doula is …

… a highly trained birth companion who provides educational support through pregnancy, labour and birth, and post-partum. It is a non-clinical peer mentorship role. It is a very well-rounded role rooted in our teachings, culture, language and traditions.