Winnipeg Minute: Issue 129

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

📅 This Week In Winnipeg: 📅

• The Standing Policy Committee on Finance and Economic Development meets today at 9:30 am, and its agenda includes the City's financial forecast to June 30th along with three separate requests for permission to spend more than Council budgeted. Public Works is asking to over-expend its operating budget by up to $16 million, driven mainly by snow clearing and ice control, which ran $7.2 million over from January to March with a further $7.5 million expected for the rest of the year. The Winnipeg Police Service is seeking authority to overspend by up to $4,534,000, after realizing only part of a $7-million savings target built into its budget. Winnipeg Transit wants approval to overspend by up to $4.8 million on diesel, which has averaged $1.36 a litre through June against the $1.19 assumed when the budget was written. Administration forecasts the Financial Stabilization Reserve finishing the year at $15.6 million once the shortfall is covered.
  
  
• Winnipeg's entertainment funding tax collected $15,464,817 in 2025 and refunded $13,302,380 of it straight back to the city's largest venues, according to an annual report also on the Committee's agenda today. The tax is a 10% charge on admission prices of $5.00 or more at cinemas and at entertainment facilities with at least 5,000 fixed seats, and the facilities in that larger category have their share returned to them. The report names True North Inc., the Winnipeg Goldeyes and the Winnipeg Football Club among the organizations receiving those refunds. That left the City with net revenue of $2,162,437, which is $4,859 lower than in 2024. Over the same year the City paid $6,407,126 in grants to arts and cultural organizations, close to three times what the tax actually raised. The report is presented for information, with no recommended change to the tax.
  
  
• The Executive Policy Committee meets tomorrow at 9:30 am, where Winnipeg's short-term rental licensing rules come up for their first full review, together with a set of proposed changes to the City's business licensing by-law. Under the proposals, applicants could be required to produce Canada Revenue Agency tax information, affidavits and insurance documents to prove a property is their primary residence, and co-owners and other adult occupants of primary residence rentals would have to pass criminal record checks. Operators would also have to notify the City within five days any time police, firefighters or paramedics attend the property, and failing to do so could bring a licence suspension or revocation. The by-law would gain a definition of "nuisance", and rentals advertised through unlicensed channels would have to be booked through a licensed platform. The licensing regime took effect on April 1st, 2024, alongside a 6% accommodation tax on stays of less than 30 consecutive days. Administration describes the proposals as minor amendments drawn from the first two years of the program.
  
  
• Mayor Scott Gillingham has also put a motion to tomorrow's meeting, asking the City to adopt a community crisis response model as its direction for handling mental health calls. The model would create a fourth 911 response pathway alongside police, fire and paramedics, diverting calls that involve no threat to safety and no need for medical treatment to community-based crisis teams. The motion follows a report by Dr. Maria Cotroneo of Pensa Consulting, hired in late 2025, which identified more than 10,000 crisis-related calls or dispatches a year that might be better handled outside the existing emergency services. The motion would also ask the Province of Manitoba to join the City in a partnership covering implementation, governance, funding, accountability and long-term sustainability. Gillingham's motion argues that mental health calls attended by police, firefighters and paramedics strain emergency services, divert police from criminal matters and can leave people with care that is retraumatizing.
  
  
• Winnipeg mayoral candidate Don Woodstock wants to give owners of vacant and derelict buildings 30 days to decide whether to demolish or redevelop them, or have the City expropriate the property. Under the plan he released on September 9th, the City would hand owners pre-approved housing designs at no cost as an incentive to rebuild, and would clear and sell any property whose owner declined. Woodstock also wants mandatory insurance on commercial and residential rental buildings, with the City notified whenever a policy lapses, and escalating fines for landlords whose buildings are repeatedly tied to drug trafficking or the sex trade. Heritage buildings that sit empty for more than 12 months or develop major structural problems would lose their heritage status under the proposal. Woodstock acknowledges the expropriation plan could face legal challenges, but argues the City could work with the Province and the courts to make it work. Thirteen candidates have now registered for the October 28th election, with nominations closing on September 22nd.

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