Winnipeg Minute: Issue 114

Winnipeg Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Winnipeg politics

📅 This Week In Winnipeg: 📅

• The East Kildonan-Transcona Community Committee will meet today at 9:30 am. During the meeting, at 10:30 am, there will be a Public Hearing to gather feedback on proposed amendments to the Transcona West Area Structure Plan - changes driven by the federal Housing Accelerator Fund agreement the City signed. The amendments would remove density limits currently in the plan and allow low-rise apartment buildings along collector roads in the area bounded roughly by Lagimodiere Boulevard, Plessis Avenue, Regent Avenue West, and Grassie Boulevard. The federal agreement classifies these changes as a required initiative, meaning the City is obligated to advance them as a condition of the funding deal. If the Committee concurs today, the item moves to the Standing Policy Committee on Property and Development and then to full Council for three readings. This is the first formal opportunity for public input before the proposal advances further through the approval process.
  
  
• The Riel Community Committee will meet tomorrow at 9:00 am. On the agenda is a $6,000 application from the Norwood Community Centre to replace a floor washer, funded from the Land Dedication Reserve Fund's St. Boniface Ward allocation - an application Administration is recommending the Committee deny. City staff conclude the project does not meet the criteria Council has adopted for that fund, which is restricted to acquiring or developing parkland and constructing or renovating recreation facilities, not purchasing equipment. Approving the application would require Council to waive its own rules. The Riel Community Committee can concur with the denial or recommend that Council override the criteria.
  
  
• The Winnipeg Police Service's 2025 annual statistical report shows total crime severity falling 8.8% and violent crime severity falling 11.2% city-wide - but downtown Winnipeg moved in the opposite direction, recording more than 7,600 total crimes, a 17% increase over 2024. A stretch of Portage Avenue from Furby Street to Main Street accounted for more than 4 in 10 of those downtown incidents, where overall crime rose 18%, property crime rose 26%, and violent crime rose nearly 4%. Separately, hate-motivated crimes reported to police jumped from 44 in 2024 to 112 in 2025 - a 154% increase - with Black Winnipeggers and Jewish residents the most frequently targeted groups, and more than 7 in 10 incidents classified as mischief. Across the city, homicides fell 48.8%, firearm offences dropped 24.6%, and youth violent offences declined 16%. Police Chief Gene Bowers acknowledged concern about a 13% rise in vehicle thefts and pledged additional foot patrol presence on Portage Avenue this summer. 
  
  
• Winnipeg-based Jessiman Family Investments has applied to build a 283-hectare (700-acre) industrial development called Catalyst Park in the CentrePort South area near James Armstrong Richardson International Airport. Mayor Gillingham says the project could become the largest industrial complex in the city's history - twice the size of the St. Boniface Industrial Park that opened in 1977. The City installed water and sewer services in the CentrePort South area in 2022, but the northern portion of the broader 8,000-hectare CentrePort hub has developed more quickly because it already had infrastructure in place. Gillingham said the City has been working with the applicant for roughly a year to address planning issues at the site, and he noted at least one aerospace company has already expressed interest in locating there. He flagged additional infrastructure investments needed to maximize the site's potential, including widening Kenaston Boulevard and extending Chief Peguis Trail.
  
  
• The City has approved a new cost-recovery system aimed at breaking a recurring deadlock that has stalled infill housing projects in established neighbourhoods. The problem: developers wanting to build on older lots are told to pay millions to upgrade aging sewers or water mains, but no developer wants to go first and fund improvements that later projects will share at no cost to them. Under the approved system, a developer who pays upfront for sewer or water infrastructure upgrades can recover a proportional share of those costs from future developments that connect to and benefit from the same upgraded capacity - with reimbursement amounts rising 6% annually for the first five years, then increasing with inflation after that. Geoff Milnes, president of Progressive Real Estate Group, described waiting five years to proceed with a 100-unit mixed-use development at 1269 St. Anne's Road because his company was told to pay for sewer upgrades on a pipe section more than a kilometre away, with no formal mechanism to track or guarantee reimbursement.  City officials say the bottleneck has been occurring a handful of times per year as pressure for infill intensifies in areas where aging infrastructure increasingly constrains growth.

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