Public Healthy Agency of Canada gets new president as current one steps down

Manitoba’s students are settling into a new school year. Whether you graduated in 1986 or 2006, today’s classrooms look very different from the ones you remember.

Students reflect the changing makeup of our communities — differences in social, emotional, physical and cognitive abilities and socioeconomic stresses are all increasingly present and adding to the complexity of our classrooms.

Meeting these differing individual needs is no easy feat. It requires manageable class sizes, school counsellors, social workers, specialized resource teachers and investment in the systems that can help students thrive. But when those supports aren’t available, students’ needs don’t disappear. Increasingly, it falls to classroom teachers to try to fill the gaps.

When I started working as a teacher more than 30 years ago, we had budgets for resources when we needed them. Today, the needs of students have diversified and increased, but the funding for our public schools is failing to meet them.

Winnipeg police seized fentanyl and arrested three people after pulling over a vehicle with a smashed windshield in the city's north end Friday.

The incident happened at about 8:30 a.m. Oct. 2 on Powers Street near Flora Avenue. While they were speaking with the vehicle's occupants, police officers saw a weapon "in plain view," the Winnipeg Police Service stated in a news release Sunday.

Officers searched the vehicle, finding a machete, plastic brass knuckles with a functioning Taser, 73 grams of fentanyl worth about $3,725 nine grams of cocaine worth about $720, 13 grams of crack cocaine worth about $1,000, prescription pills, cell phones, scales and packaging materials, and $790 in cash.

Anthony Courchene, 41, is charged with seven weapons, drug trafficking and proceeds of crime-related offences. He was also arrested on two Powerview RCMP warrants related to assault and release order compliance charges.