Speak like Spock… to your car

Local advocates can't trust federal data on city's homeless numbers

The head of End Homelessness Winnipeg says she has no confidence in data about the city’s homeless population due to problems with the federal system that tracks those numbers.

Jennifer Rattray, the organization’s chief executive officer, told the Free Press Thursday it continues to work with the federal government to resolve problems with the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System, which keeps tabs on people who access homelessness services.

CBC has reported it obtained an internal memo from EHW that shows that as of the end of March, the number of chronically homeless Winnipeggers had fallen to 436 from about 4,400, as a result of efforts to correct the database.

Earlier this year, the organization had reported more than 8,000 people were accessing services.

Those on front lines of city’s homelessness, drug crises express concern at candidates’ lack of attention

Just steps from city hall, two significant challenges facing Winnipeg play out every day.

But despite the proximity to the ongoing homelessness and toxic drug crises that have become woven into the fabric of Main Street, front-line service organizations worry civic leaders have lost sight of what needs to be done.

Marion Willis, executive director of St. Boniface Street Links, says the situation has deteriorated under current Mayor Scott Gillingham and council, with inadequate support for outreach services and an unwillingness by the city to take greater responsibility for addressing homelessness.

“If you look at the last four years, I haven’t seen things get better in our sector. I’ve seen things become amplified in the most negative of ways,” Willis says.

Mayoral candidates share faves, test knowledge in Free Press culture quiz

It’s been said that politics is downwind of culture. However true that is, where politicians stand on hot-button cultural debates such as artificial intelligence, whether they prefer sports over arts and what local restaurants they patronize can offer a window into their sensibilities and outlooks.

The Free Press invited the four leading mayoral candidates among decided voters — according to a recent Abacus poll — to take part in a cultural quiz. (Kevin Klein, who was polling second, did not respond.) While most of the questions are lighthearted, they speak to some of the personalities behind the heated rivalries over budgets, buses, business taxation and beyond.

What was the last book you finished?

● Scott Gillingham: I’m almost done Winnipeg author Paul Vincent Jacuzzi’s book Blind Eyes. It’s a Dalton Drake novel.

Convicted harasser accused of targeting old, new victims, including judge

Agnieszka Ciochon-Newton, who was sentenced to six years in prison for mercilessly harassing two people she believed had wronged her, as well as other crimes, wasted no time when her sentence ended to launch fresh attacks on victims new and old, including the judge who convicted her, court documents allege.

The 58-year-old former nurse was arrested last month after Winnipeg police “became aware that (Ciochon-Newton) was engaging in aggressive and harassing behaviours again, starting almost immediately upon the expiry of her parole conditions” on May 13, Det. Sgt Kylie Case wrote in search warrant documents obtained by the Free Press.

Ciochon-Newton is charged with seven counts of criminal harassment, two counts of uttering threats and one count each of fraud, breaking and entering, attempting to obstruct justice, intimidation of a justice official, mischief and defamatory libel. She remains in custody.

Search warrant documents say provincial court Judge Keith Eyrikson learned in late August that Ciochon-Newton had emailed CBC Manitoba days earlier and threatened him.

Chief says minister offered money to remove highway checkstop

The chief of the Bloodvein River First Nation says a Manitoba cabinet minister offered up to $250,000 for economic development as he was trying to persuade her to remove a highway checkstop that has outraged hunters.