Winnipeg is facing a housing shortage. We see it in rising rents, increasing homelessness and the growing number of people struggling to find safe and affordable places to live.

Governments at every level have recognized the need for more housing and the City of Winnipeg has adopted policies such as OurWinnipeg 2045 and Complete Communities 2.0, specifically to encourage the type of development needed to address this challenge.

Yet when new housing is proposed, particularly in established neighbourhoods, opposition often follows.

The recent discussion surrounding the proposed development of a six-storey, 120-unit apartment building at 470 Des Meurons St. is one such example.

‘Credibility is a leader’s currency. With it, he or she is solvent; without it, he or she is bankrupt.’ — John C. Maxwell

In Manitoba health care, credibility manifests on the balance sheet. It shows up when a board asks executives to endure change, patients to trust a plan and the government to fund another deficit. Lose credibility and every decision eventually carries interest.

Dr. Alan H. Menkis, in the Free Press, recently asked: “For the patient, where does the buck stop?”

His concern was a health system with many layers: government, Shared Health, regional authorities, hospitals, boards, agreements, legal counsel and executives. Each layer can be lawful. The patient can still disappear between them.

IF you drive through certain parts of the city these days, you’ll see people bent over where they stand. Frozen mid-motion, the way fentanyl leaves a person, folded forward as if the world had simply paused them there. You’ll see people lying on the sidewalk who may be sleeping or may be something more urgent than sleeping. You’ll see it in broad daylight, in view of the bus stop, the convenience store, the school a block away.

Some days the impulse to look away from all the suffering is overwhelming. The mind reaches for something else to focus on, something less heavy, less difficult.

But there are people who don’t look away. Not because it’s easier for them. It isn’t. It’s harder, in fact, because they’re not just seeing it once from a distance. They’re walking into it, every shift, sometimes more than once in an hour.

I think about the outreach workers who carry naloxone the way the rest of us carry keys. Who have, more times than they could count, knelt down beside someone whose breathing had slowed to almost nothing, administered the medication and waited, in that terrible suspended moment, to see whether a life could be saved this time. Who have done this for strangers. Who have done this for people they’ve come to know by name, and have had to do it again, and sometimes again after that.

THE United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes that all children have the right to an education that helps them reach their full potential. It should develop their personalities, talents and mental and physical abilities. Actualizing these rights in the classroom, however, is not as easy in practice.

Every classroom includes learners with different strengths, challenges, identities and experiences. Some students are especially gifted while others have medical needs, require accommodations or manage complex issues that require additional, individualized support.

Under Manitoba’s appropriate educational programming legislation, students are entitled to educational programming that meaningfully supports both their academic and social lives. However, the number of students in Manitoba who require complex support in the classroom surpasses the number of resources teachers currently have available.

The Manitoba Teachers’ Society recently surveyed 3,400 Manitoba teachers about these gaps. Seventy-eight per cent said students are not getting needed support and 63 per cent reported fewer educational assistants. Eighty-one per cent identified class size, complexity and lack of support as top issues — citing an increase in students with complex needs within the last five years. Today, nearly half of teachers have six or more students with complex needs, a sharp rise from previous years.

Every few months, a water and sewer bill arrives in your mailbox, and every year it rises a little. Most of us pay without looking closely. It’s worth paying attention to now, because that bill has quietly become the way Winnipeg is funding the most expensive project in its history. This fall, it becomes a question on the ballot.

The project is the rebuilding of the North End sewage plant, now costing over $3 billion. The city has already raised rates — about $168 on the typical annual household bill in 2025 and roughly $44 more this year — with another increase of around $68 set for next year. Water and sewer rates have been rising for decades to pay for this plant.

Here is what should make you sit up. The city’s own staff warned that this year’s increase could have been much steeper — as high as 28.5 per cent — if the federal and provincial governments had not contributed more money. That shock was avoided only because Ottawa and Manitoba finally chipped in an additional $334 million.

Read that again: the difference between a manageable bump and a 28.5-per cent jump on your water bill was whether senior governments paid their share. Your bill is a dial, and they decide how far it turns.

We use it to build everything from skyscrapers and shopping malls to plazas and highways, and currently, some 70 per cent of the world’s population lives in structures built from it. Today it ranks as no. 2 on the list of the world’s most consumed substances, second only to water.

It’s that ubiquitous “wonder” material called concrete, celebrated by architects and city planners everywhere because it’s cheap, strong and so malleable it’s capable of taking almost any shape. Better still, it’s fire resistant and incredibly easy to use.

With a couple of bags of cement, some sand, water and crushed stone, a single person can build a concrete shelter in just a matter of days.

But like all purported wonder materials — from polymers to plastics — concrete can be hugely destructive when used in vast quantities.