Winnipeg Minute: Issue 124

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

📅 This Week In Winnipeg: 📅

• The East Kildonan-Transcona Community Committee will meet on Thursday at 9:30 am, and it will hold a public hearing on a proposed secondary plan to guide development of South Transcona, a largely undeveloped area on the city's eastern edge. The plan, prepared by landowners Taggart Properties Inc. and Goldstone Group Limited rather than by the City, would set policy for eventual growth of up to 20,000 people, with roughly 6,400 dwelling units in two new town areas and about 1,000 more across the existing acreages and hamlet at full build-out. Administration recommends giving the plan first reading with 22 amendments, several of which would shift infrastructure costs onto developers, including a requirement that collector roads be widened at the cost of area developers. Other amendments would block phases of development that need access to Plessis Road until that road is twinned, and constrain building near Dugald Road until it is twinned as well. Residents have submitted letters both supporting and opposing the application. If the Committee concurs, the plan advances to the Standing Policy Committee on Property and Development and then to Council.
  
  
• Also on Thursday's East Kildonan-Transcona Community Committee agenda is a motion from Transcona Councillor Russ Wyatt to study a new development charge that would help pay for a long-planned road. Wyatt wants the City to assess a levy, collected through development applications and at the building-permit stage, to fund construction of the Edward Schreyer Parkway, a four-lane route through northeast Winnipeg formerly known as the North-South Transcona Corridor. The proposed charge would be modelled on the Ridgewood Transportation Levy applied in Charleswood to help complete the William Clement Parkway. Because the City cannot currently collect such charges at the permit stage, the motion also asks the Province to amend the City of Winnipeg Charter to allow it, revisiting an approach the City abandoned after an earlier attempt at development impact fees failed legally. If the motion advances, Administration would study the idea and report back within 120 days. The Committee laid the motion over on June 22nd for up to 30 days and is set to take it up again.
  
  
• Premier Wab Kinew has confirmed the Province will contribute $500 million toward the third and final phase of Winnipeg's North End sewage treatment plant upgrade, the largest capital project in the city's history. Kinew said Thursday the money is committed, describing the project as important to housing and the wider economy. The full upgrade is expected to cost more than $3 billion, with the third phase alone estimated at about $1.57 billion to build a new facility that removes nutrients from treated water before it re-enters the river. The first phase was completed earlier this year and the second is due to begin in the latter half of 2026, with third-phase construction scheduled for 2028. Even with the provincial commitment, the City still needs a funding share from the federal government before the final phase can proceed, and Kinew said negotiations with Ottawa are ongoing. Mayor Scott Gillingham welcomed the support, calling the project critical to Winnipeg's future growth.
  
  
• The union representing Winnipeg Transit operators is renewing its call for fully enclosed driver shields after an operator was stabbed with a syringe on the job. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1505 says a passenger reached around the operator's existing partial shield early last Wednesday and stabbed them twice in the leg on a northbound route in the city's core. The operator was taken to hospital in stable condition, and the union says the assailant tried to strike several more times before fleeing. Union president James Van Gerwen said a similar incident happened only a day earlier, when a passenger holding a syringe warned an operator not to move the bus. The union says $2.7 million has already been earmarked for full enclosure shields and argues that both the money and the technology are available. Van Gerwen said members deserve protection before the next attack rather than sympathy after it.
  
  
• The Winnipeg Police Service has resumed its crackdown on open drug use and trafficking downtown and in other trouble spots, with an enforcement push that began last Friday and is set to run until at least November. Police Chief Gene Bowers said officers will target areas identified through crime data, complaints and emergency calls, and that this round will pair enforcement with outreach workers who can connect people to detox, shelter and other supports. The renewed effort follows a 10-day blitz from June 24th to July 3rd, during which officers logged 1,099 events and made 106 arrests, though 93 of those were for outstanding warrants or breached conditions and only eight were drug-related. Police reported that property crime in the targeted area fell 10.5% and violent crime fell 16.5% compared with the same period last year. Mayor Scott Gillingham said enforcement alone will not stop the crisis, while West End business groups that pushed for the initiative want it made permanent. Critics were more skeptical, with a University of Manitoba criminologist calling the crime statistics overly simplistic and warning the activity may simply be displaced to neighbouring areas, and a youth-services director questioning whether the money would be better spent on detox beds and addictions clinics.

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