P.E.I. affordable housing project gets $7.9 million from federal government

Support for combined approach

Re: Balanced drug blitz pays off (Oct. 14)

Your news and reporting on the positive results of co-ordinated outreach coupled with enforcement combining social, medical and police services is important progress towards a safer and healthier Winnipeg.

As is often stated and conclusively researched, the poverty, mental health, addictions and desperation of too many of our brothers and sisters on the streets is a very complex dilemma. Let’s really get behind and support these new initiatives with vigour and sustained support through this combined co-operation with front-line engagement coalition partners.

Manitoba could soon have an autism strategy for the first time, thanks to a private member’s bill that’s garnered rare all-party support in the legislature.

Liberal MLA Cindy Lamoureux’s Bill 232, the Autism Strategy Act introduced in March, would require the government to establish a policy designed to improve the screening and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and support research.

It would identify ongoing supports and services needed by people with autism and their families and caregivers. It calls for annual reports tracking the implementation of the measures identified in the strategy, with a mandatory review and updates of the legislation every five years.

The bill goes before the legislature’s standing committee on social and economic development committee Friday. As of Wednesday, 87 private citizens and organizations registered to weigh in on the proposed legislation.

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DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My recently widowed mother, who’s a former advertising exec from Toronto, invited herself to visit me for a whole month recently — a 28-day sentence. I left Toronto to get away from her, because she befriended all my friends in high school and college.

Anyway, I gamely staged a little party for her at a restaurant, so she’d meet a few people. My friends loved her! She got them playing a mixer game, and everybody had fun.

But then, she went too far. She actually took down some of my girlfriends’ phone numbers on a little list and jotted a couple words on what they liked to do — like the super saleswoman she is. The next day she made lunch and touristy dates, for when I was at work.

A few days later one of them called me and finally spoke the words I didn’t want to hear: “Your mother is more fun than you are!” I blew up! I said back to her, “Well then, how come she had to leave Toronto and come way out here to Winnipeg to steal my friends?”