The Wrap: Nurse recruitment costs, funding cut for mobile-overdose van, striking liquor workers rally and a Thai restaurant dynasty

Records obtained by the Free Press show the Manitoba government spent more than $460,000 on airfare, hotels, food, transportation, advertising and other unspecified “professional services” to conduct a nurse recruitment drive in the Philippines — in addition to nearly $2 million in untendered contracts to two overseas recruiting firms.

The Mobile Overdose Prevention Site is at risk of closing its doors because its federal funding is coming to an end. MOPS runs out of a converted RV that travels around the city, offering people a place to test and use street drugs. The program will lose its funding on Oct. 31; Sunshine House, which operates it, is scrambling to raise $275,000 to keep it on the road.

Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries accused the union representing its 1,400 striking workers of dragging out the labour action and refusing to move forward with arbitration. At a rally at the legislature attended by hundreds of its workers, union leaders said they are willing to discuss arbitration, but the provincial government and Crown corporation are acting in bad faith.

Over the last two decades, Sunee Inthon has turned Thida’s Thai Restaurant into a Winnipeg institution.

Now, the next generation of Inthons are making their mark: Pae Inthon opened Mae Sunee Thai Cuisine in the West End last September, and her sister Nok also recently opened her own restaurant, a quick-service eatery called Kiin Thai Kitchen in Linden Woods.