Winnipeg Minute: Issue 128

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

📅 This Week In Winnipeg: 📅

• On Wednesday at 9:30 am, the Standing Policy Committee on Property and Development will meet, and one of the items on its agenda is the proposed secondary plan for South Transcona, a large, mostly undeveloped area in the city's southeast. The plan returns to the committee after the East Kildonan-Transcona Community Committee declined to endorse it on August 13th, breaking with City planners who had recommended approval. Also on the agenda is a proposal to create seven new administrative penalties of up to $1,000 for each day a violation of the city's building bylaw continues, a new enforcement tool the Public Service says is not intended to raise revenue. The Committee will further weigh selling three City-owned lots to Winnipeg Habitat for Humanity for $20,000 to $50,000 each, all below their inventory value, and a portion of Pembina Highway land to the Pembina Trails School Division for $1. Several property owners are separately asking the Committee to refund vacant-building inspection fees and empty-building charges levied against them, and the former Aubrey Street bus loop is set to be declared surplus.
  
  
• The Standing Policy Committee on Public Works will also meet this week, on Thursday at 1:00 pm, with several major contracts on its agenda. The Committee is asked to award a contract worth an estimated $19,283,728 to AB Transit Inc. for accessible transportation under Winnipeg Transit Plus, the door-to-door service for riders who cannot use fixed-route buses, an award that exceeds the forecasted budget for 2027 to 2031 by about $3.3 million. Members will also consider a contract of $12,128,349 with M. D. Steele Construction Ltd. for the first part of the Louise Bridge substructure rehabilitation and riverbank stabilization. On the ongoing decommissioning of the century-old Arlington Street Bridge, the Public Service is seeking a cost over-expenditure of $2 million, a 20% increase that would raise the Kiewit Construction Services contract to about $11.9 million. Transit is also seeking a one-time exception to Council's January 2025 decision to buy only diesel buses from 2027, so it can pilot up to seven smaller battery-electric buses on its on-request service, which now carries nearly 4,000 riders a week, and a separate report proposes accepting up to $2.16 million in federal funding for a new active-transportation pathway in northeast Winnipeg.
  
  
• A third committee, the Standing Policy Committee on Community Services, meets on Tuesday at 9:30 am, and among its agenda items is a report recommending Provencher Park as the site of a new outdoor aquatic park in St. Boniface. The heated facility, which would replace the aging Provencher Pool with spray pads and diving boards, is estimated to cost between $18 million and $21 million, of which about $2.5 million has been approved through the 2025 and 2026 capital budgets so far. The project follows the 2024 closure and demolition of the nearby Happyland Pool, which drew resident backlash, and one resident who fought that closure has questioned both the cost and the timing of the report in an election year. The Committee will also decide whether to approve an over-expenditure of $351,126 on an automated drug-dispensing contract with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, which would bring the five-year agreement to about $1.23 million.
  
  
• Former City Councillor and provincial cabinet minister Kevin Klein has entered the race to become Winnipeg's Mayor, declaring his candidacy on Monday and formally registering Thursday in a high-profile challenge to incumbent Mayor Scott Gillingham. Klein, who finished third in 2022, said he would campaign on property taxes and transit, faulting Gillingham for raising property taxes higher than promised and for the troubled overhaul of the city's transit routes. Gillingham faulted Klein for being one of only two councillors to vote against pursuing the police headquarters lawsuit that ultimately won the City a $28-million judgment, a vote Klein defends by saying he wanted clearer cost information at the time. 
  
  
• A new national poll, has found that Winnipeg has the worst safety reputation of 15 major Canadian cities surveyed, with a majority of respondents describing the city as unsafe. The survey, conducted by Liaison Strategies, found that 31% of Canadians consider Winnipeg somewhat or very safe, compared with 59% who consider it somewhat or very unsafe, giving the city a net safety score of -28, the lowest in the survey. That reputation has worsened over the past decade, sliding from a net score of -18 in 2017. The pollster noted that Winnipeg also records the highest Crime Severity Index among the cities surveyed, suggesting its poor perception is matched by official crime data. Only 12% of respondents said crime statistics were the main factor shaping their view of a city's safety, with news coverage, personal experience, and word of mouth also weighing heavily.

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