Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 30, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba Western Family Pork Back Ribs Fully Cooked, Selected Varieties, 610g 8 99 ea First 4 Maxwell House Coffee Selected Varieties, 864g 17 99 ea 4 99 ea 5 99 ea $ 5 2 for UNREAL DEAL Take & Bake Pizza Selected Varieties, 14 Inch NEW DEAL. BEST PRICE. EVERY WEEK. Halos Mandarins Chile or USA, 2 lb Bag EXTRA UNREAL DEAL 9 99 ea *of equal or lesser value B U Y 1 G E T 1 f r e e * Saputo Cheese Slices Selected Varieties, 180g Western Family Chicken Breast Boneless, Skinless, Frozen, 3 kg, 29.99 ea 10 99 ea works out to 4 53 lb Made fresh. Made local. 1 79 100g Smokehouse Garlic Coil Prices effective October 30 to November 5, 2025. Offers require use of More Rewards card. See all flyer deals online Pembina • Kildonan • Northgate • St James • Bridgwater Western Family Soft Drinks Selected Varieties, 12 x 355 mL Western Family Potato Chips 235g NOVEMBER 14 , 2025 TH This year’s Manitoba Philanthropy Awards will honouring the following fundraisers & philanthropists: Individual Tickets | $110 Table of 10 | $1,350 BUY NOW! MbPhilanthropyAwards.ca DATE: Friday, November 14 , 2025 th TIME: Coffee Reception 9:30 AM | Brunch & Awards 10:30 AM LOCATION: The MET - 281 Donald St, Winnipeg Don't miss out on the highly anticipated 26th Manitoba Philanthropy Awards, hosted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals Manitoba Chapter! Manitoba Philanthropy Awards Outstanding Foundation Better Futures Campaign Cabinet Outstanding Organization Vickar Automotive Group Lifetime Achievement Joan Blight Michael Paterson Outstanding Volunteer Fundraiser Outstanding Philanthropist Mary Lou Albrechtsen Outstanding Volunteer Fundraiser Janessa Dumas + fees WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ● A5 NEWS I TOP NEWS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2025 I T’S all so predictable and dis- heartening. This week, the opposition Pro- gressive Conservatives tabled a series of amendments to a bill that would give the province the ability to hold people suffering from addictions for up to 72 hours at a detox facility to be established at 190 Disraeli Fwy., on the northern edge of the Exchange District. According to legislative rules, each of the amendments would require de- bate, and that would delay the passage and proclamation of this law past Sat- urday, the government’s self-imposed deadline for the commencement of sobering detention. Quite frankly, missing the deadline won’t prove to be that big a deal. Given the NDP’s majority in the legisla- ture, the facility will open in the near future after the new law allowing for three days of medically supervised detention is enacted. The greater concern is that, once again, we are confronted by the dan- gerously misguided and hilariously misinformed forces who want to block the NDP government’s every attempt to provide critically necessary treat- ment and shelter. Opponents of the NDP’s plans — which include some people who live downtown in fairly close proximity to the proposed facility — are making heroic attempts to frame the blockag- es as some sort of perverse effort to improve public safety. This is the playbook they used ear- lier this year to derail NDP plans to use the same building for a safe drug consumption site. The strategy reads like this: to make them safer, critics will cite the need to keep detox centres, supervised drug consumption sites and mobile overdose prevention vehicles away from, well… virtually everyone and everything. What the opponents can’t or won’t do is propose an alternative. If these ser- vices cannot be offered in the building identified by the province, where else can they be provided? The PC amendments are a par- ticularly good example of this half- baked mindset: a prohibition of any addictions treatment or consumption site within 500 metres of a school, child-care centre, personal-care home, playground, park or community centre. They have also proposed that North End non-profit resource centre Sunshine House’s mobile supervised consumption vehicle be kept at least a half-kilometre away from 190 Disraeli. Tory housing, addictions and home- less critic Jeff Bereza — the MLA for Portage la Prairie — passionately defended the amendments as a way of protecting citizens from people who may be in a “state” from the use of drugs — particularly methamphet- amine. “We want to make sure that there is enough space so that they can’t be harmful to somebody else in the area. If my grandma is living that close, you know, do we really want it that close?” If Bereza’s grandma lives in the East Exchange — which I highly doubt — she would tell her grandson to not worry about detox or safe con- sumption sites, or vehicles attracting addicts because they are already present in abundance in that core area neighbourhood. You could write off this kind of flawed logic as ignorance, or even intellectual dishonesty. The opponents may understand the proposals would make things safer, but they still don’t want to be near it. But arguing against the provision of services to the vulnerable in the neigh- bourhood where they already live is one of the most confounding aspects of this debate. Homelessness, addiction and mental illness most definitely undermine public safety. But if those people are already present and compromising public safety in a particular neigh- bourhood, what possible good will it do to provide less support? Although it seems almost unimag- inable, the PCs and the community opponents of these plans are implic- itly demanding that those people be relocated to some other area of the city. It’s hard to envision what area that would be; the Tory proposals limit eligible sites to shopping mall parking lots and rail yards. At some point, aggrieved area residents and political opponents are going to have to accept the inescapable reality that the Exchange District, along with most of downtown, is a place where vulnerable people congre- gate. The East Exchange neighbourhood that is ground zero for the battles over sobering and safe consumption facili- ties is already a hub of social services for the vulnerable. The province is working slowly but steadily to house the homeless, an effort that should provide some relief in the long term. However, in the short term there is a population living downtown that needs mental-health and addictions help, and expecting them to bus their way to an industrial park in order to get it is completely unreasonable. Strip away all the political hyperbole and it is fair to say the goal of the NDP government’s efforts to establish safe consumption and detox facilities is, ultimately, to make everyone safer. The facilities that have been pro- posed for the building at the foot of the Disraeli Freeway will save lives and put the vulnerable in direct contact with social, health and housing sup- ports. That not only makes them safer, it makes the neighbourhood in which the facility is located safer. What these facilities cannot do is satisfy community and political opponents who only want the problem to go away, without any concern about where it goes. Just as long as it isn’t near them. dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com DAN LETT OPINION NDP trying to solve problem, Tories just want it to go away The combined tally of 93,372 person- al vehicle passengers at the Pembina border crossing was the lowest since at least 1996 (outside of the 2020 and 2021 pandemic years, when governments imposed travel and other restrictions). The highest total was 245,727 pas- sengers in July and August 2006. The Canadian dollar was gaining ground on the U.S. dollar at the time. Barry McLarty, a commercial truck driver who lives in Winnipeg, crosses into the U.S. once a week for work. He and his wife, Susan, spend some of the winter months in Florida. They waited in a queue of vehicles at the Pembina border station when they drove down to Grand Forks, N.D., for a day trip on a Thursday in September. “It’s not as busy as it used to be, but it’s still pretty consistent when you cross, especially if you go down on a weekend,” McLarty, 72, said. He noticed “quite a few” Manitoba li- cence plates in Grand Forks, especially in parking lots outside some big-box stores. “I think a lot of people are doing the day trips because if you pick and choose what you shop for, you can save a lot of money,” McLarty said. Sandi Luck, who owns Bully Brew Coffee House locations in North Dakota and Minnesota, and two Board Room Coffee and Taphouse locations in Grand Forks, said there are signs of a decrease in visitors from Manitoba. “You don’t see the Canadian licence plates as much as you used to,” the lifelong Grand Forks resident said. Luck, who visited Winnipeg last week, said she hopes Grand Forks’ promotions and marketing efforts encourage Manitobans to visit. “I think it’s also our job to have what they’re looking for,” she said. “We’re a big small town. We have a lot to offer.” A new Statistics Canada study found the number of Canadian-resident return trips from the U.S. (by land, air and water) was down 30 per cent in August compared with the same month in 2024. The number of trips to Canada by U.S. residents decreased by 1.4 per cent in August amid steep declines at ports of entry in Ontario and Quebec. It was the third time since June 2006 (excluding pandemic years) when more Americans made trips to Canada than Canadians travelled to the U.S., StatCan said. Despite downward trends in oth- er provinces, Manitoba welcomed more U.S. visitors in July and August (94,970) than it did over the same peri- od last year (81,423). Manitobans who winter in Arizona, California and other U.S. states have started making their way south. The Canadian Snowbird Association is closely monitoring cross-border travel trends, said spokesman Evan Rachkovsky. “While ongoing economic and politi- cal headwinds have made the snowbird lifestyle more complex, the United States remains the top destination for Canadian travellers seeking to escape the winter months,” he wrote in an email. “With new registration requirements now in place for long-term visitors to the U.S., we strongly encourage snow- birds to plan ahead and ensure they remain compliant with all applicable rules before travelling.” Canadians who plan to stay in the U.S. for at least 30 days are required to fill out a U.S. government registra- tion form (unless exempt) and submit fingerprints (unless waived). The U.S. Department of Homeland Security this week amended its regu- lations to require all non-citizens to be photographed when entering or exiting the U.S., starting Dec. 26. Some may be required to provide fingerprints. Facial recognition technology will be used to compare a traveller’s photo with the image on their travel docu- ment or existing information on file. chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca ROAD TRIPS ● FROM A1 JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES Fewer Canadians are driving across the border into the U.S. ;