WINNIPEG — Canada’s nurses are calling for a national strategy that ensures seniors have access to care while reducing the impact on the public health system.

“Nurses and health-care workers are stretched too thinly, and Canada’s population is aging,” Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) president Linda Silas said in a news release Friday after meeting with provincial and territorial health ministers in Winnipeg. “It’s time to act.”

The federation called for a national human resources plan to help address staffing challenges, pointing to a Canadian Institute for Health Information report showing more than three million overtime hours clocked by long-term care workers over a one-year period — the equivalent of 1,500 full-time providers.

“We’ve been talking about a crisis in health human resources, a nursing shortage, since the pandemic,” Silas said in an interview.

WINNIPEG — After once leading the country in reported cases, the province has declared the measles outbreak in Manitoba to be over.

Public health officials announced Friday the last laboratory-confirmed case was identified in August.

Since the outbreak was first reported in February 2025, a total of 1,038 measles cases have been reported in Manitoba, including 931 confirmed cases and 107 probable cases. Of all reported cases, 87 per cent were either not immunized or had an unknown immunization status, the province said in a news release.

In May, Manitoba was leading the country in cases for 2026. At the time, the province had more than 600 confirmed and probable cases, making up nearly two-thirds of all reported Canadian cases, Doctors Manitoba had said.

WINNIPEG — Revenue from the province’s new electricity levy on cryptocurrency businesses and large AI data centres will go toward offsetting residential bills, rather than the coffers of cash-strapped Manitoba Hydro.

The levy is expected to generate $20 million annually, which would take about $50 per year off every household’s electricity bill starting in 2027, Finance Minister Adrien Sala told reporters Thursday.

“This is one step that we can make as a government to make life more affordable for Manitobans,” Sala said.

The default levy is set at 100 per cent of the current rate charges, with $20 million in revenue equivalent to a one per cent rate increase, Sala said.

WINNIPEG — The chief of the Bloodvein River First Nation says a Manitoba cabinet minister offered up to $250,000 for economic development as he was trying to persuade her to remove a highway checkstop that has outraged hunters.

Chief Lisa Young said Ian Bushie, the minister of Indigenous futures, raised the money in a private conversation in September, also telling her the First Nation would receive a letter directing it to move the checkstop because it’s on a provincial highway.

Young said Bushie described the money as support for economic development in the community.

“I really felt like I was being pushed into a corner. I also felt that I was being bribed,” Young said in an interview. “It may not have come off that way. But he even further said, ‘And I’m not bribing you.’ So, I really didn’t know what to say.”

WINNIPEG — The federal government is giving Manitoba up to $6 million toward the goal of hiring as many as 90 more family doctors over the next three years.

The funds will be used to expand Manitoba’s practice-ready assessment program, which provides an accelerated licensing pathway for internationally trained physicians who are eligible, to add doctors in rural and northern communities.

“Every single Manitoban deserves to know that, no matter where they live, they have access to quality care,” provincial Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said at a news conference in Winnipeg alongside federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel.

“We know that for rural and northern communities, that means having a doctor not only available, but it means having that doctor available at the right time.”

Suspect arrested in break and enter

Brandon police arrested a man suspected of breaking into a gated compound on the eastern edge of the city on Sunday.

Officers responded around 3:35 a.m. to a report that a man was seen on security cameras inside a fenced-off area in the 2300 block of 49th Street, police said in a news release Sunday.

Police used a drone and the K9 unit to find the suspect hiding in a bush.

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WINNIPEG — The Canada Border Services Agency is adjusting operating hours at 13 Manitoba border crossings beginning Nov. 1 to account for the province’s move to permanent daylight time.

The changes are intended to keep Canadian border crossings aligned with their U.S. counterparts, where clocks will continue to change twice a year, the agency said in a release Friday.

The new hours will take effect at 2 a.m. Nov. 1 and remain in place until March 14, 2027, when the U.S. returns to daylight saving time. The CBSA said the adjustments will improve co-ordination between border officials on both sides, including situations where travellers are denied entry and must immediately return to their country of departure.

The affected crossings include Cartwright, Coulter, Crystal City, Goodlands, Gretna, Lena, Lyleton, Piney, Snowflake, South Junction, Tolstoi, Windygates and Winkler.

WINNIPEG — A western Manitoba man says he is dumbfounded after his car was stolen, impounded by a Winnipeg towing company and given back — to someone that wasn’t him.

Cody Lamb lives in Douglas, about 18 kilometres east of Brandon, but spends weeks away from home working on oil rigs in Alberta.

The 24-year-old says on Sept. 11, while away for work, he heard from his girlfriend who told him his car wasn’t in their driveway. Lamb reported the car stolen to Brandon RCMP the same day.

After filing the report, he heard from Steinbach RCMP on Oct. 1 that his car was recovered that day in Mitchell, just west of Steinbach.