Manitoba

Jordan Charlie, a 24-year-old Inuk, was the fourth person police have shot and killed in Winnipeg this year — but he's the only one whose race is publicly known, and that's a problem, a criminologist says.

Kevin Walby says the Winnipeg Police Service should track and publicly release data about race in all police use-of-force interactions.

"It's the bare minimum any police service can do," said Walby, a criminology professor at the University of Winnipeg.

While some Canadian police services collect and publish data on racial identities when they use force, Winnipeg police neither tracks nor shares such data. Critics say this damages trust with racialized communities and hinders oversight.

Joe Thiessen, superintendent and CEO of the division, which manages public schools in Steinbach, Niverville, Landmark, and the rural municipality of Hanover, said the EAs have to be let go due to a funding shortfall related to changes in the application process for Jordan's Principle programming.

All 93 EAs being laid off were specifically working with Indigenous kids, Thiessen told CBC Manitoba Up To Speed guest host Emily Brass on Thursday.

He blames the situation on miscommunication from the province. Recently, the funding model shifted from a provincial one to a federal one, which the Hanover division was not aware of.

The City of Winnipeg may need to find millions of dollars in next year's budget to cover overspending after its latest financial report shows the forecast deficit for this year has grown.

The city estimates its deficit for this year will be $23.4 million — down from a projected $40-million deficit in June, but an increase of more than $4.2 million from the $19.2-million deficit forecast in the last financial update, delivered in September.

The city has repeatedly drawn from its fiscal stabilization reserve — sometimes referred to as its "rainy day fund" — to balance the budget over the last few years, meaning there is nothing there to help this time.

Destiny Funk said people pretending to work for Manitoba Hydro attempted to lure her into making a deposit on a Bitcoin machine by using a lot of personal information and elaborate theatrics to make everything seem "very realistic."

On Monday afternoon, the 26-year-old received a call by someone claiming to be a Hydro technician, telling her they had a work order to cut her power within the hour due to unpaid bills.

Funk said the person had her name and address, and that it all seemed very legitimate.

Marion Willis, founder and director of the organization, told CBC News that over the last two weeks, nine encampments have been dismantled, helping at least a dozen people to pack their belongings and relocate into shelter spaces and other forms of housing.

"There's no safety, there's no hope at the encampments, and that just elevates the chance that a person will succumb to a fentanyl overdose or violence," she said.

"We have noticed that the shelter system is completely full, that's why it's so important that we have an emergency response, but even more important we have a housing response," Blaikie Whitecloud from Siloam Mission said.

"We're not going to emergency shelter our way out of homelessness."

The provincial government will introduce legislation that eliminates the use of restrictive covenants for grocery stores, which limit the kinds of stores that can open near a particular company's location, Kinew said.

The throne speech — which outlines the government's priorities for the coming legislative session — also says the government will open more than 100 beds at health-care facilities, unveil a new strategy for cutting ER wait times and commission a new statue to replace the Queen Victoria monument that was toppled in front of the Manitoba Legislature.

The one-year freeze on electricity rates, one of the affordability promises in the throne speech, will start in 2025.

Kinew promised a freeze in the 2023 election campaign, and while in office has insisted the utility has the means to service large new industrial customers in spite of warnings from Manitoba Hydro about a looming capacity crunch and the need to generate more power. Hydro has said its infrastructure requires billions of dollars in fixes.