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Winnipeg Free Press
39 minutes ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Moving homeless from ‘image routes' is just optics
Opinion To be charitable, you might describe it as 'out of sight, out of mind.' Uncharitably, describing it as an attempt to put lipstick on a pig seems more apt. Winnipeg City Coun. Jeff Browaty dressed it up as a safety issue, and it is, but it certainly feels like the safety part is only half — or even less than half — of the story. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS An encampment along the Disraeli Freeway on Tuesday, July 22. Browaty wants ban encampments on Winnipeg's 'image routes.' And the 'image' part of 'image routes' is perhaps a giveaway. 'Along our major thoroughfares, our image routes, it's not just about the visibility of the encampments. There's an esthetic (issue) but, also, it's dangerous. It's dangerous for the people who are living at those encampments. The ones … around the Disraeli (Freeway) are so close to a major thoroughfare (and it) would be dangerous if (people) were to fall into traffic,' Browaty said. The move would add routes — including Disraeli Freeway, Pembina Highway, Portage Avenue, McPhillips Street, Main Street, St. Mary's Road, St. Anne's Road, Kenaston Boulevard and Regent Avenue — to a motion that is being put forward to halt encampments in community gardens, playgrounds, areas with spray pads and pools, community centres and other spaces designed for children and families. It's something that Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham seems willing to get behind: 'When you've got people … camping close to roads, especially major thoroughfares, to me, it's an issue of safety. I think that can be and should be looked at,' he said. It's easy to understand why city councillors might want to make sure that encampments don't mar the esthetics of the city, because that's obviously something that might reflect badly on the City of Winnipeg and, for that matter, on its councillors. But leaning into the safety side of the argument sounds like more than a little bit of a stretch: after all, while it would be dangerous for encampment residents, especially those under the influence of drugs and alcohol, to 'fall into traffic,' it would be every bit as dangerous for others to fall into a river — and there are many, many riverside encampments. Those squatting in abandoned or fire-damaged buildings are equally at risk — as are those buying and using drugs from questionable and dangerous sources. Weekday Evenings Today's must-read stories and a roundup of the day's headlines, delivered every evening. Overall, this latest move looks more like addressing the optics of the homeless, rather than actually trying to solve the issue. And more than that — if it were successful, it would simply move a transient population to somewhere else in the city, and make it someone else's problem. It seems reminiscent of moves taken before large events like the Paris Olympics in 2024, when thousands of homeless people were moved from encampments near Olympic sites. The French government called it a security issue with no connection to the Olympics at all — activists described the move as social cleansing. The move of people out of Paris, interestingly, lasted only as long as the Games. It's almost become an Olympic tradition: before the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 202 Tokyo Olympics, there were also large-scale roundups of residents suffering from homelessness, poverty and drug issues. Roundups have also happened prior to large-scale economic forums, political conventions, and even prior to the 2022 Super Bowl. Safety is often cited as a reason for packaging up the homeless and shifting them safely out of sight. But, if the goal is really safety, then a ban has to have a plan. It has to include not only a place for the homeless to go, but a place that is also better organized and measurably safer for its inhabitants — and longer-term than simply through the tourist season, accompanied by a fond hope that no one returns to old haunts. Otherwise? Lipstick.
Winnipeg Free Press
6 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
A necessary search winds down
Opinion It was the right thing to do. It was always the right thing to do. And most Manitobans knew it. Early this week, Premier Wab Kinew visited the Prairie Green landfill to mark the end of the search for human remains at the site. He was joined by family members of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, by supporters, and by people involved in the search for a ceremony and smudging. The search was not completely a success — the family of Myran had hoped the search would find a larger part of her remains than were located, and wanted the search to include a larger area — but there is at least the consolation that Myran was found. BROOK JONES / FREE PRESS Prairie Green Landfill in the RM of Rosser, Man. Watching the conclusion of this part of the search for the remains of victims of Jeremy Skibicki — a further search continues at the Brady landfill for Ashlee Shingoose — brings home how important the search was in the first place, and how dispiriting it was that the PC government of the day not only wouldn't launch a search, but actively campaigned on the decision not to search. There have been plenty of apologies and admissions that the decision was a poor one since then: the Progressive Conservatives have apologized, the Winnipeg Police Service has said it regrets its decision to say that a search was not necessary, and the list goes on. But what's surprising is that anyone ever thought the matter was up for political debate, that anyone felt that the potential cost of the search was a legitimate reason to say that two women should have their final resting place be a landfill. Consider this. George Mallory and Andrew (Sandy) Irvine disappeared while climbing Mount Everest in June of 1924, and there have been questions ever since about whether the pair had made it to the mountain's summit. Mallory's remains were found in 1999, but nothing was found of Irvine until September, 2024, when a documentary team found a foot inside a boot and sock protruding from a melting glacier. The sock had a label with Irvine's name sewn on it, and the remains are being compared to the DNA of family members for final confirmation. The film crew that found foot, sock and boot knew how important the discovery was — and not just for understanding more about the Mallory expedition. 'It's the first real evidence of where Sandy ended up,' Jimmy Chin, a National Geographic filmmaker, told National Geographic. 'When someone disappears and there's no evidence of what happened to them, it can be really challenging for families.' Weekday Evenings Today's must-read stories and a roundup of the day's headlines, delivered every evening. Irvine's relative Julie Summers said was 'moved to tears' when she learnt of the boot's existence a report from the PA Media news agency said. 'I have lived with this story since I was a seven-year-old when my father told us about the mystery of Uncle Sandy on Everest.' It's why we search for the lost. Because it matters. Because it's important to family members to know what has happened to their relatives, and where those relatives rest. It matters days after someone disappears, and it matters 100 years later, and it continues to matter, no matter how many years pass. All of us should be able to try and put ourselves in others' shoes. We search for the remains of those lost at sea, lost on land, lost in war and lost in terrorist attacks. Millions of dollars have been spent on all sorts of searches, from hunts for famous explorers and the remains of their expeditions — like those of the Franklin expedition — to searches for individuals who vanish from their vehicles in blizzards, seeking, and failing to find shelter. Helping find the missing is part of being in the community that we call humanity.
Winnipeg Free Press
03-07-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
NATO spending plan challenging for Canada
Opinion How much is $150 billion as an annual government expense? It's three times the annual Canada Health Transfer, the mechanism Ottawa uses to support provincial health care. In fact, $150 billion as an annual expenditure dwarfs the entirety of federal transfers each year ($100 billion) for health, social programs and equalization. In other words, it's a lot of money. However, it's also apparently the price of keeping one particularly bombastic president at bay. Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press files Prime Minister Mark Carney U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently stated that a massive increase in defence spending is table stakes for getting preferential treatment on trade issues. The connection between defence spending and trade was made patently clear last week in The Hague, where the leaders of NATO countries held their annual summit. NATO has been on tenterhooks since January, when Trump warned member nations that if they did not meet the (then) two per cent of GDP spending target, the world's biggest defence spender would abandon the alliance. Trump complained, and with some justification, that some NATO countries (including Canada) are failing to meet the existing target. Canada currently spends just over $62.7 billion on defence. In one of his first acts, Prime Minister Mark Carney pumped another $9 billion into the defence budget, which pushed Canada to the two per cent threshold. However, just as Canada finally fulfilled its NATO spending obligation, the target moved. Late last month, NATO nations endorsed a plan — first suggested by Trump — to increase defence spending to five per cent of GDP over the next decade, broken down into 3.5 per cent on direct military spending (troops, weapons, munitions) and 1.5 per cent on 'militarily adjacent' things such as roads and bridges, emergency health care and cybersecurity. For Canada, the new target would eventually mean $150 billion annually on direct and adjacent military spending. Carney said that over the next five years, Canada can demonstrate increased military spending rather easily in the adjacent category of projects, which could include investments in ports, highways, telecommunications and the development of critical minerals. It's the direct military spending that has the potential to cast a long shadow over the federal budget. Weekday Evenings Today's must-read stories and a roundup of the day's headlines, delivered every evening. Carney said if Canadians support the new spending target, it will mean 'considerations about what less the federal government can do in certain cases.' What federal programs could be impacted? Carney would not say, but when you're measuring increased defence spending in the tens of billions of dollars, you would need to start taking away from Ottawa's other hefty budget lines: transfers to the provinces, infrastructure spending and such programs as Employment Insurance, the Canada Child Benefit and federal pension funds. There is lots of wiggle room in this 10-year commitment. NATO leaders created a 10-year runway to achieve the new spending target knowing full well that in about three and a half years, Trump should cease to be president ('should,' because Trump has mused about finding a way to sidestep term limits). Should a Trump acolyte continue his legacy, it's quite likely the pressure to increase military spending will continue. However, there is one very important caveat in this equation that should be considered: the U.S. currently does not meet the new five per cent target. The U.S. spends roughly 3.5 per cent of GDP on its military, which is the most among NATO allies but still hundreds of billions of dollars below the new target. The U.S. will have to endure a domestic debate about whether this kind of spending is acceptable, even in a world that has been ravaged by conflict. It is often said that time heals all wounds. Perhaps time could, as well, play a major role reducing the need to spend more money on the tools of war by spending a bit more time and money on finding ways to stabilize global security.
