Winnipeg Minute: Issue 127

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. One of the items on the agenda is a motion from Transcona Councillor Russ Wyatt calling for City staff to study the feasibility of a new development charge - the Edward Schreyer Strategic Regional Transportation Infrastructure Cost Area Charge - to help fund construction of the planned four-lane Edward Schreyer Parkway in northeast Winnipeg. The motion, which has been laid over twice since June, asks for a report back within 120 days and also seeks an amendment to the City of Winnipeg Charter so that development charges could be collected when building permits are issued, citing the Ridgewood Transportation Levy in Charleswood as a precedent. The Committee will also consider formally opening Headmaster Row and Stanley Copp Street, east of Lagimodière Boulevard, which were built during the Province's work on the nearby interchange but never legally dedicated as public streets. Then, at 10:30 am, the Committee will hold public hearings on four applications, including a rezoning to allow an eight-unit infill apartment building on a single-family lot at 513 Pandora Avenue West - recommended for approval by City planners despite written opposition from two area residents - and reduced lot sizes for the next phase of the Sage North development in Transcona. Council and its standing policy committees do not resume meeting until the week of September 8th.
  
  
• Winnipeg Police Chief Gene Bowers is ending the service's years-long practice of letting officers work paid overtime shifts providing security in supermarkets and other stores at retailers' expense. In a memo to officers, Bowers said retail special duty will be scaled back starting January 1st, beginning with Fridays, Saturdays, statutory holidays, and major event days, with bookable hours then cut by 50% before a full exit on May 1st, 2027. Bowers cited the service's recent inability to fill key vacancies, saying retail assignments were impacting its ability to staff frontline shifts. A previous Winnipeg Free Press analysis found officers worked more than 50,000 special duty hours between May 2023 and June 2024, with retailers accounting for 68% of the hours, led by Superstore at more than 20,000 hours. Stores pay between $141.75 and $166.95 an hour for the officers. Mayor Scott Gillingham is backing the decision, saying frontline policing must be prioritized, while the Retail Council of Canada warns retailers will be left with fewer options and a greater reliance on calling police when incidents occur.
  
  
• Four years after City Council directed staff to finalize a deal converting methane from the Brady Road landfill into renewable natural gas, the project still has no completed contract and no buyer for the gas. In March 2022, Council told staff to complete a deal with Integrated Gas Recovery Services that would make Winnipeg a raw landfill gas supplier, with the company covering the $22-million capital cost and $2.5 million per year in operating costs, and the City estimating it could earn about $10.5 million over 20 years. City officials say the biggest hurdle is finding a long-term purchaser, as US tax credits make American renewable natural gas much cheaper to produce and have saturated the Canadian market. The City has also committed to the Province to try to keep the gas in Manitoba, and no longer has a target date for completing the deal. St. Vital Councillor Brian Mayes, a longtime supporter of the project, calls the delay "incredibly frustrating" and plans a motion at the water and waste committee's September meeting directing staff to either present a final deal for a Council vote by the end of 2026 or end negotiations.
  
  
• Meanwhile, the first phase of the City's North End sewage treatment plant upgrade began coming online last Wednesday morning. The new headworks facility, which collects wastewater from underground pipes and pumps it through the system, is the first of three phases of upgrades meant to increase the plant's capacity and meet environmental requirements. The City is warning nearby residents they may notice an unpleasant odour intermittently through September, because the facility's odour control system relies on bacteria that take time to grow. The cost of the headworks rose from an estimated $408 million in 2019 to a final price of $518 million, and the estimated cost of the second phase, a biosolids facility, has already increased from $553 million to $1.035 billion. The total cost of the project is now pegged at roughly $3.2 billion, and the Manitoba government has set a deadline of 2032 to complete it.
  
  
• Five candidates have registered to run for City Council in Waverley West, Winnipeg's fastest-growing and most populated ward, where Councillor Janice Lukes is not seeking re-election this fall. The candidates - Nafiya Naso, Jasmine Brar, Antar Banik, Uche Nwankwo, and Yuanchao Li - say key City services have not kept up with the ward's roughly 72,000 residents. Recreation has been a sticking point, with candidates pointing to the $128-million South Winnipeg Recreation Campus being built in the area, whose aquatic centre remains part of an unfunded second phase, and to a years-long wait for a permanent fire paramedic station now expected in 2027. Several candidates also flagged traffic bottlenecks on the routes in and out of the ward, with residents reporting rush hour delays of an extra 20 minutes just to leave their neighbourhood. Li says he would push the City to review its spending for savings that could fund a property tax discount for seniors and lessen the need to raise overall taxes.

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