Winnipeg Minute: Issue 130

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

📅 This Week In Winnipeg: 📅

• City Council meets on Thursday at 9:30 am, and one of the items on the agenda is a proposal to build a fourth emergency response service for mental health calls. The Executive Policy Committee voted on September 15th to recommend that Council adopt the Winnipeg Community Crisis Response model and support a new pathway that would divert appropriate 911 calls to community-based agencies. The model comes from a report by Dr. Maria Cotroneo of Pensa Consulting, hired by the City in late 2025, which identified more than 10,000 crisis-related calls a year to police and fire paramedic crews that could be handled outside the emergency system, including about 3,855 police dispatches consuming an estimated 7,986 hours of officer time. Cotroneo's report does not price the service, stating that detailed costing was beyond the scope of the project, and offers only illustrative annual ranges: between $750,000 and $1.5 million for a dispatch and coordination hub, between $500,000 and $3 million for mobile response capacity, at least $500,000 for technology, and about $300,000 for expanded 911 triage. For comparison, the report notes that Toronto's community crisis service grew from a pilot costing roughly $13.7 million a year to a citywide operation costing between $26.8 million and $35 million annually. The recommendation also asks the Province of Manitoba to join a partnership framework covering governance, funding, accountability, and long-term sustainability, and the report states that total implementation costs cannot be determined until decisions on governance, staffing and deployment are made.
  
  
• Also on Thursday's agenda is a set of seven new ticketable offences under the City's building rules. Administration is asking Council to let enforcement officers issue penalty notices for provisions Council added to the Winnipeg Building By-law on February 26th, with fines of $1,000 for knowingly submitting false or misleading information, $1,000 for an owner who covers a defect before a required re-inspection, $500 for refusing a designated City employee access to a property, $500 for permitting premises to be in an unsafe condition, $500 for failing to provide a certified report when asked in writing, and $250 each for an owner or a contractor who fails to store and secure construction materials and debris on site. Each penalty carries an early payment discount, and the report notes that a fine can run up to $1,000 for every day a contravention goes unresolved. The City's eight-officer building enforcement unit has issued 2,219 penalty notices worth $1,767,000 since 2019, including 167 worth $129,350 in the first three months of this year. Administration claims the new penalties are not intended to generate revenue and that they carry no direct financial implications. 
  
  
• Kiewit Construction Services is one vote away from a $115-million contract to design the final phase of the City's north end sewage treatment plant upgrade, after the Executive Policy Committee voted to award it the development phase agreement. The company is the Canadian arm of Kiewit Canada Group, whose parent company is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, and Council casts the final vote on Thursday. Mayor Scott Gillingham defended the pick against buy-local pressure, noting that Kiewit Canada Group is employee-owned, has roughly 4,000 staff across Canada and has operated in the country for 85 years, and that the winning bid includes Winnipeg-founded engineering firm KGS Group. Three bids were shortlisted, the others coming from a joint venture of Graham Infrastructure and PCL Constructors Canada and from Red River Nutrient Partners, a group that includes Aecon Water Infrastructure, Oscar Renda Contracting of Canada, and MWH Constructors Canada. Gillingham said the winning bidder scored the most points on a technical, financial and interview evaluation, will meet the federal Buy Canada policy, and would have to sign a Manitoba jobs agreement to employ local staff in order to secure provincial funding. The development phase only fixes the cost, scope, schedule and risks of the work, but Councillor Brian Mayes said it "gives the inside track for the whole construction" of the $3.1-billion project.
  
  
• Ottawa is offering Winnipeg $27 million toward reducing combined sewer overflows, the federal government's first contribution to a project the City has so far funded on its own. The Province requires the City to finish a $1.15-billion master plan by 2045 to cut the spills, while federal and provincial money to date has gone to the separate north end plant upgrade. Older combined sewers still serve about one third of the city, carrying rain and wastewater in a single pipe that can overflow in heavy rain or snow and release billions of litres of diluted sewage into Winnipeg's rivers each year. Councillor Jeff Browaty, who chairs the finance committee, called the money welcome given this year's rain events, and Councillor Brian Mayes said it is a breakthrough after years of the City going it alone on what he described as a billion-dollar project. Mayes, who pushed to move the completion date up from the 2090s to the 2040s, said the money could cut a year or two off the schedule. The City will spend about $45 million on the work this year under a temporary budget boost running to 2027, dropping to about $33 million in 2028, and Council must still vote to accept the federal offer.
  
  
• The City plans to spend $800,000 on a consultant to survey how Winnipeggers travel, its first detailed household travel study since 2007. The survey will ask a representative sample of households in Winnipeg and surrounding communities how many vehicles they own, where they go and how they get there, recording the time, purpose, origin, destination and mode of every trip. Councillor Janice Lukes, who chairs the Public Works Committee, said the data will help set priorities for road renewal in a growing city without freeways, and Councillor Jeff Browaty said it could inform decisions on the Chief Peguis Trail extension and the replacement of the Arlington Bridge. The last survey, in 2007, found 80% of trips were made by car and 20% by transit or active transportation, and the new one adds questions on electric bikes, working from home and car-sharing. Answers will be collected online and by telephone in the fall of 2027, with the consultant's report not due until the fall of 2028.

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