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Winnipeg Free Press
13-05-2025
- Health
- Winnipeg Free Press
Twelve Manitobans named to Order of Manitoba
The 12 people who will receive Manitoba's highest honour include an expert on hypothermia, the co-owner of a production company, the head of St. Boniface Street Links, an Indigenous elder, a business executive and philanthropist, and a former senator. 'I am very honoured. I didn't really expect it,' said Trudy Lavallee, who is one of the 12, on Monday. Lavallee was the child and family advocate for the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs when she began helping Jordan River Anderson. Ruth Bonneville / Free Press Trudy Lavallee, executive director of Animikii Ozoson CFS, is being honoured with the Order of Manitoba for her advocacy for First Nations children and for developing the concept of Jordan's Principle. Ruth Bonneville / Free Press Trudy Lavallee, executive director of Animikii Ozoson CFS, is being honoured with the Order of Manitoba for her advocacy for First Nations children and for developing the concept of Jordan's Principle. Jordan was born with a rare medical condition that kept him in hospital for the first years of his life. His family lobbied to get funding for home care so he could go home. That funding was locked in a jurisdictional dispute between the federal and provincial governments. Jordan died at age five, never having left the hospital. Lavallee wrote an article about his case that became the basis of Jordan's Principle. That, along with her longstanding advocacy for First Nations children, is why she will be inducted into the Order of Manitoba. Jordan's Principle was established by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to ensure First Nations children have the same government services as non-Indigenous children. The inductees will receive the honour at a ceremony at the legislature on July 17. The distinction celebrates Manitobans 'who have demonstrated excellence and achievement, thereby enriching the social, cultural or economic well-being of the province and its residents.' JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES Gordon Giesbrecht. a.k.a. Professor Popsicle, beside water tanks in his office and research lab at the University of Manitoba in December 2023. Giesbrecht, who retired soon after, is being appointed to the Order of Manitoba. JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES Gordon Giesbrecht. a.k.a. Professor Popsicle, beside water tanks in his office and research lab at the University of Manitoba in December 2023. Giesbrecht, who retired soon after, is being appointed to the Order of Manitoba. Gordon Giesbrecht, known as Professor Popsicle, is another recipient. The retired University of Manitoba professor is a leading authority on hypothermia, ice safety, and cold-water immersion survival. He has demonstrated the techniques needed to increase the chance of survival on television shows hosted by comedians David Letterman and Rick Mercer. 'I am very honoured and very humbled,' Giesbrecht said. 'I'm fortunate the work I did was seen by the media as sexy. I just wanted to get a life-saving message out there and through the years people say I saved their lives or your work is saving lives.' MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Marion Willis, the founder of St. Boniface Street Links, was surprised to get a phone call from Lt. Gov. Anita Neville even though she knew she had been nominated for the Order of Manitoba. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Marion Willis, the founder of St. Boniface Street Links, was surprised to get a phone call from Lt. Gov. Anita Neville even though she knew she had been nominated for the Order of Manitoba. Marion Willis, the founder of St. Boniface Street Links, which helps homeless people and established the Morberg House transitional home for men dealing with addiction and mental-health issues, knew she had been nominated, but was still surprised to get a phone call from Lt. Gov. Anita Neville. 'I feel pretty proud, but I guess my reaction to her would have been a little puzzling. I still don't really understand why,' Willis said. 'I haven't done this on my own. I have an amazing team of people around me.' She said she has spent her life trying to be a change agent. 'I'm glad I've been a rebel with a cause.' Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. Other Manitobans named to the order are: Maria Chaput: She was the first franco-Manitoban woman to be a senator. She was appointed by Prime Minister Jean Chretien in 2002. She retired in 2016 and was honoured with the Order of Canada in 2022. Before her appointment, she led several fundraising campaigns for organizations, including Cercle Moliere. Rebecca Gibson: She is co-owner of Eagle Vision and an award-winning actor, writer, director and producer. She won the 2023 International Emmy Award, only the second Manitoban to win, for the documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Digvir Jayas, VP at the University of Manitoba. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Digvir Jayas, VP at the University of Manitoba. Digvir S. Jayas: The world renowned scientist, whose research has enhanced grain preservation around the world, was vice-president (research and international) and a professor in the University of Manitoba's department of biosystems engineering. He is currently president of the University of Lethbridge. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Files Glen Kruck, project manager for CHHA Westman. Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Files Glen Kruck, project manager for CHHA Westman. Glen Kruck: He was instrumental in the development of Brandon's first homeless shelters and he helped people in need during his 35-year career with Community Health and Housing. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Language keeper Ken Paupanekis teaches Cree at the University of Manitoba. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Language keeper Ken Paupanekis teaches Cree at the University of Manitoba. Ken Paupanekis: The Kinosao Sipi Cree Nation elder has helped to revitalize Indigenous languages. His work at the province's universities will help future generations use culturally relevant learning material. Kristie Pearson: As a fundraiser and volunteer, she has helped raised more than $30 million for various charities and projects, including the Clan Mothers Healing Village, Rainbow Resource Centre, and United Way Winnipeg. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Walter Schroeder speaks at the launch of the Schroeder Institute of Entertainment and Media Arts after the donation of $15 million from Walter and Maria Schroeder through the Schroeder Foundation in 2024. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Walter Schroeder speaks at the launch of the Schroeder Institute of Entertainment and Media Arts after the donation of $15 million from Walter and Maria Schroeder through the Schroeder Foundation in 2024. Walter Schroeder: He grew up in Winnipeg and went to the University of Manitoba, before moving to Toronto where he founded the Dominion Bond Rating Service. He took it from a one-room office to the fourth-largest bond rating agency in the world. After selling the company in 2014, he pledged more than $500 million to the Schroeder Foundation to support educational causes, and has donated $15 million to create RRC Polytech's Schroeder Institute of Entertainment and Media Arts and $1.25 million to help the Ozhitoon Onji Peenjiiee – Build from Within program to help Indigenous teachers. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Charlie Spiring of Wellington-Altus. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES Charlie Spiring of Wellington-Altus. Charlie Spiring: He founded Wellington West Capital, which was sold to National Bank Financial for $333 million in 2011, and later Wellington-Altus Private Wealth. He has given millions of dollars to programs including Siloam Mission, Adoption Options Manitoba, and the Health Sciences Centre Foundation. Photo by Brett Nicholls/The Press Felix Walker, CEO of the NCN Family & Community Wellness Centre, which he has been involved with for over 20 years. Photo by Brett Nicholls/The Press Felix Walker, CEO of the NCN Family & Community Wellness Centre, which he has been involved with for over 20 years. Felix Walker: He was elected a band councillor of Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation at age 25. He leads programs based on traditional Cree values, including reducing trauma to children in care. He also created a group home for youth. Kevin RollasonReporter Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press's city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin. Every piece of reporting Kevin produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CBC
15-02-2025
- Business
- CBC
This single mom says her son's education comes first. That's why she does sex work
When Piper sends her son to school every morning, she calls out a similar refrain: "I love you, try your best, I'll be here to pick you up when school is done," hoping he will be safe and supported. As he disappears into the school building, she disappears too, into the pseudonym Piper, as a sex worker. It's a job the single mother took on in the face of uncertainty and the need for being flexible for her son, who has high needs and isn't always able to attend school unless an educational assistant is there to support him. It's a decision driven by love. "My son's education comes first and I can prioritize keeping him stable in his education and the progress that we've seen so far," she said in the latest This is Saskatchewan podcast episode. Piper is among those concerned about Saskatoon Public School's announcement earlier this month that it will have to cut 80 educational assistants (Piper is not her real name; CBC is using her pseudonym to protect the identity of her son). When her son doesn't have regular access to an EA, the school will call her to pick him up in the middle of the day. It becomes hard to hold down a regular position with those kinds of unpredictable shifts, she said. Part-time hours with full-time pay She started sex work in 2022, when her son was in Grade 1. "I began by working at a brothel. I saw an ad posting online and I could make it work with my hours. There was a shift that I could take and I could make it work," she said, explaining that she can work 20 hours in a week and make as much as she could in a full-time job. In the fall, she had hopes that she would be able to restart her schooling and find more stable, less risky work, but she's had to put that dream on hold, with the latest announcement about cuts to EAs within Saskatoon. "I have a feeling for a lot of people and for us, this is just a really big surprise. And for the kids, I mean, it's devastating," she said. The school division, province and federal government have been at odds on where the responsibility lies, as the division said the cuts were a necessity, due to it not receiving expected federal funding as part of the Jordan's Principle initiative, which is meant to ensure Indigenous children receive the health, social and education services they need. 'Don't know what we'd do' For now, affected parents are waiting to see how this might impact them, a tense situation Katherine Stevenson is also in. Her son Hugo Romanski has Down syndrome and autism, and he requires one-on-one support all day. While she doesn't know if the cuts will impact her family, even as a two-person household, she could foresee it forcing upheaval in their lives. "I don't know what we'd do. One of us would have to stop working altogether," she said. Sometimes, people push back against the idea of equating school with child care, which Stevenson said she understands. But at the same time, the educational system allows parents to work, she said, adding she sympathizes for Piper's situation. "I think people take for granted that you know you're going to have a family and the kids will be typical and things will go just smoothly and school will be straightforward and they'll never have a need for this kind of support," she said. "But that isn't how things go. And I think as a community and as a society, we should be supporting each other." As for Piper, she is honest with her family about what she does for work, and is transparent with them about where she's going and what she's doing, in case she goes missing. "I don't see any shame in doing something that is keeping us fed and housed and really just living the best life that we can currently," she said. More than concern for herself, she's concerned for her son, and his ability to get an education. "In the morning when I drop him off, I make sure my son knows he's loved, he's supported, and I will be there to pick him up after school, said with the hope that I will be." This story is from the This is Saskatchewan podcast — your connection to the stories Saskatchewan is talking about. Every week, Leisha Grebinski and Nichole Huck will cover local issues that matter. Hear the voices that are creating change, shaping policy and fuelling creativity in Saskatchewan.
CBC
14-02-2025
- Health
- CBC
Changes to Inuit child funding program putting families at risk: health-care workers
Social Sharing Health-care workers in Nunavut say changes to a federal funding program for Inuit children are forcing some pregnant women to make a tough choice: have a safe birth or ensure the kids they already have are properly cared for. The Inuit Child First Initiative (ICFI) was launched in 2019 to ensure Inuit kids have access to health and social services without having to leave their communities. Funding for the program, which has mirrored Jordan's Principle and helps backstop a wide range of programs and services, is set to sunset on March 31 unless Ottawa can get approvals through Parliament to extend it by a year — or come up with a longer-term solution. Under Jordan's Principle, First Nations families are to apply for and receive funding as it's needed, with the provinces and federal government later sorting out jurisdictional battles over which is responsible for the bill. Community health centres in Nunavut lack proper birthing services, so pregnant women there typically fly to hospitals in Iqaluit, Winnipeg or Yellowknife to deliver. The territorial government covers the cost of flying an expectant mother and one escort — typically a partner — to an outside hospital to give birth. The federal ICFI, meanwhile, has paid for children to travel with their parents in cases where they've had to leave their communities for medical treatment — including childbirth services — where adequate child care at home isn't possible. Non-medical support now requires support letter One organization helping Inuit women file ICFI applications says since the beginning of November it has seen a drop in the number of applications being approved and an increase in the number of applications being referred for national review. "Previously, when we were getting denials or escalations, we would get a rationale attached from [Indigenous Services Canada] of what the reasoning was. Recently, we are not seeing that," said Erica Loiselle, a senior service co-ordinator with the Arctic Children and Youth Foundation. The organization said from July to October, it helped process 46 ICFI applications in the Qikiqtaaluk from patients — including pregnant women — who wanted their kids to fly out with them. Only two were escalated to national review, two were denied and 21 were approved. But in November and December, only four of the 27 applications it helped process were approved, while 10 were sent for national review and two were denied. Following inquiries from The Canadian Press, Indigenous Services Canada sent a bulletin to ICFI service providers on Monday, confirming it has changed the way it's processing applications. The wide-ranging bulletin said non-medical supports like travel costs, non-medical respite care and child care, would no longer be covered unless accompanied by a letter of support from a medical professional. "The professional must be able to provide a child-specific recommendation based on their professional designation and their knowledge of the Inuk child's specific needs," the bulletin reads. It also said the department is "extending decision-making powers to regional staff to speed up the processing of requests," shifting away from what Loiselle's group has experienced over the last few months. And while Loiselle said ISC has already been "cracking down" on the support letters, she said it isn't always possible to get one from someone in health care. In past, social workers would sometimes vouch for the lack of adequate care in the community. Health-care workers outline challenges women face The Canadian Press spoke with three health-care workers in Nunavut about the impact the change in procedure has had on their patients. They asked to not be named because they are government employees and not authorized to speak publicly about patients' cases. They all said they're worried about women flying out to give birth without having adequate arrangements to look after their kids back home — or women opting to stay put, putting their pregnancies at risk. "We can't definitively ever tell a mom that they won't be approved, but we know reading between the lines, based on the trends that we're seeing, that they won't," one health-care worker said. "And so it has led to situations where mothers have almost delivered in community. And that's a really scary precedent because the health centres are not equipped for safe birth." While no births have yet happened in communities because of ICFI funding not coming through, health-care workers say it's only a matter of time. "It's gotten close to happening. Because when we're in a situation where we're trying to get an approval and we're negotiating with the mom, we sometimes are able to really push in an exceptional circumstance," the first worker said. "But that exceptional advocacy is not a policy that will prevent births in a community. It will happen." The health-care workers also said they also worry about women who decide to travel, even though they haven't been able to make proper child care arrangements. One staffer said patients may worry about "whether there is someone that they trust to care for their children, or ... about putting their children in a different household where it's already overcrowded, [or] there's already food insecurity and there's possibly already violence occurring in that house." One health staffer said one pregnant mother couldn't find anyone else to watch her children other than her partner, who was facing domestic abuse charges. "Her current plan is to drop charges against her partner so that he won't be in jail and he'll be able to watch her children when she travels," said the staffer. In another case, which wasn't pregnancy-related but required a mother to leave their community for medical reasons, a child was left in the care of another family member. "The kid was actually kind of being passed around between a bunch of family members, who sadly didn't identify early enough that the child had a severe respiratory infection," the second worker described. The child, they said, ended up admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa. "It's not [pregnancy-related] directly, but it's an example of when you leave children unattended," the staffer said. It's also putting the women's pregnancies at risk, the health-care workers say. "We've seen a lot of challenges with people wanting to go home early. For example, requesting what we call like elective inductions of labour because they don't want to be separated from their children anymore," said a third health-care worker. "We do sometimes see family services involvement that probably would not otherwise happen. People complain that whoever is caring for their kids are not feeding them properly, and then family services has to go in and provide food, that type of thing." Continue to apply, says federal minister "The government of Nunavut is responsible for providing health care services to all Nunavummiut, including out-of-territory care," Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "Jordan's Principle was never meant to replace the responsibility of provinces and territories in their own specific jurisdiction." While the territorial government covers the cost of pregnant women and their escorts to travel to give birth, there are no programs set up for covering the cost of additional children to travel in cases where there is inadequate child care. "I would just say that, essentially mothers should continue to apply, that obviously we're going to be looking at each case, individually. Nobody wants a family to struggle because of the, hopefully, joyful occurrence of giving birth," Hajdu said, adding the government is working with Inuit partners for a long-term plan for ICFI.
