Solid acting drives film home

Bumps in the road as students collect free bus passes

Alexis Enns left her guidance counsellor’s office empty-handed, but no less excited about starting Grade 12 — even though she still didn’t know how she would get there or her timetable — on Tuesday.

Councillors say Main Street Project scuttles other agency’s efforts to house homeless

A Winnipeg outreach agency that’s been largely shut out of government funding says it has found housing for more people in the last five months than Manitoba’s homeless strategy that began last year.

Lebanese movie tackles serious subject with toughness, honesty

“This didn’t all start over a rain gutter,” says one of the judges in a legal case in which a Lebanese Christian is suing a Palestinian refugee, leading to an ugly dispute that threatens to ignite the courtroom and possibly the whole city of Beirut.

The conflict might have been kicked off by a petty personal argument over a leaking drainpipe, but as this potent, worthy but sometimes heavy-handed drama suggests, the personal can be political in the Middle East. And vice versa. In The Insult (in Arabic, with subtitles), that one small balcony with the defective drain expands to take in the whole of Lebanon (and eventually nearby Jordan and Israel), while reaching back into decades of difficult history.

Garage owner Tony Hanna (Adel Karam), an ardent supporter of a right-wing Christian party, is a man of stubborn integrity and hotheaded, explosive anger. Yasser Abdallah Salameh (Kamel El Basha), a Palestinian construction foreman, is a man of stubborn integrity and quiet, seething anger. As the drainpipe situation escalates, neither man will stand down.

A hateful insult is hurled. A punch is thrown. The attempted legal resolution just extends the fight, as the case inflames the media and divides the volatile crowds gathered outside the courtroom.

Winkler-based internet provider delivering high-speed service to 30 rural and First Nations Manitoba communities

Valley Fiber says it is undertaking one of its largest fibre optic projects and is building infrastructure that will deliver internet to 10,000 homes and businesses in rural and First Nations communities across Manitoba.

“These communities will now have access to the fastest internet network in Manitoba, and it will power their lives and their business,” Ryan Klassen, chief executive officer of the Winkler-based internet provider, said Tuesday from Fisher River Cree Nation.

The province has granted Valley Fiber use of two of its underused cables on the existing Manitoba Hydro fibre optic network for up to 20 years as part of the project, which will connect nearly 30 communities — including Buffalo Point, Hollow Water, Black River and Peguis First Nations, along with Fisher River and Fox Lake Cree Nations — to high-speed internet.

Construction should be finished by 2027.

Gillingham to push for new crisis response model at EPC

Mayor Scott Gillingham’s proposal to overhaul the city’s crisis-response system to try to divert thousands of calls away from police, firefighter and paramedic response, will be presented to council’s inner circle next week.

The model, described as a “fourth crisis response pathway,” would transfer 911 calls that are non-violent in nature to citywide crisis response teams. Potentially, 10,000 calls could be removed from police, fire and paramedic response, Gillingham said during the July 28 announcement.

Gillingham is set to present his idea to city council’s executive policy committee Tuesday. His motion asks that the city adopt the crisis response model, in part through a “partnership framework” with the provincial government.

The motion notes the partnership would “support a co-ordinated whole-of-government and whole-of-community approach to implementation, recognizing that sustainable crisis response reform cannot be achieved by any single organization, sector, or order of government acting alone.”

Pointing fingers at Tories three years after election tiresome, accomplishes nothing

There is a point in every government’s life when blaming the previous government stops being an explanation and starts becoming an excuse.

For Manitoba’s NDP government, that point has arrived.

Justice Minister Matt Wiebe was asked last week about a grievance filed by Crown attorneys over excessive workloads and a government attempt to keep a report documenting those workloads out of an upcoming arbitration hearing.

Wiebe said he couldn’t discuss the arbitration case.