In a sign perhaps of an improving relationship - albeit the relationship probably had nowhere to go but up, it had sunk so low in recent months - Manitoba Justice Minister Dave Chomiak will visit Thompson Sept. 11.
Chomiak's visit comes after Mayor Tim Johnston wrote a blistering July 30 letter as a matter of public record to the provincial justice minister asking if he "could indicate what the City of Thompson needs to do to engage your department in a meaningful manner in addressing our public safety issues."
The visit also shows the city can be successful - at least to some degree - in its overall focused lobbying efforts of more senior provincial and federal government politicians. Over the last few months, the legislative and intergovernmental affairs committee has been tracking its lobbying effort by issue and officeholder. The first such report was released July 27.
So getting Chomiak here might well be considered a success story in itself. His last official visit to Thompson on Nov. 17, 2008 was something of a fiasco, at least on a public relations level. Chomiak was to meet "with community representatives" as well as Mayor Tim Johnston and other councillors, and attend "a lunch meeting with community leaders interested in public safety and justice issues." But it was discovered that even though it was national Restorative Justice Week, local Northern Restorative Justice (NRJ) board members here, as well as local media representatives, and some others working on justice issues in the community, had not been informed of the attorney general's visit until after it was over when the city sent out a news release.
The city blamed the province, saying it was up to them to have publicized the visit, while the province declined to pinpoint blame but acknowledged there had been a communications mix-up with the City of Thompson.
Six months later in May when Johnston was in Winnipeg meeting with cabinet ministers from a number of departments, his scheduled meeting with Chomiak was preempted by a last-minute need for the attorney general to be in the legislative assembly for a vote. Johnston instead met with officials from the department.
Johnston said Gary Ceppetelli, the city's director of planning and community development, who was also along on that trip, casually observed walking between meetings the city seemed to get a much better reception when they met with cabinet ministers - which they were able to do in most cases - rate than just departmental officials.In some very strongly worded language, Mayor Tim Johnston lashed out June 1 at Manitoba Department of Justice bureaucrats for not seeing the issues of gangs and drugs in Thompson as any different from any other community in Manitoba"I hope they're prepared to accept blood on their hands," Johnston told council.
The view of provincial justice officials is that gang and drug problems exist everywhere in Manitoba, Johnston said, and it is up to communities to make their own choices about how to deal with those problems in terms of how they direct policing resources.
"They understand the issues in Thompson," Johnston said, but they [justice officials] think the municipality, as a regional hub, benefits economically in powerful ways, and so shouldn't just be looking at the negative aspects of crime problems being imported as the largest centre in Northern Manitoba.
The province believes Thompson can choose to use "our resources for policing as we see fit," including deploying more of them into fighting gangs and drugs, Johnston said at the time.
The city's budgeted RCMP costs for last year were $3.466 million, Carol Taylor, the city's chief financial officer, told the Citizen last month, while this year the amount is expected to increase to a budgeted $3.508 million.
Insp. Ken Poulsen, the officer-in-charge of the Thompson RCMP detachment, told council June 1 that eight organized crime figures have been arrested in the city over the last year as a result of the deployment of officers from the organized crime intelligence unit out of Winnipeg to Thompson during that period.
Next to about $9 million in wages for City of Thompson employees, the $3.508 million estimated cost of RCMP policing - roughly 31.5 per cent of salary totals expected this year for Thompson's civic employees - is by far the second largest outlay for the municipality by local taxpayers on an annual basis.
While the ranking of policing costs as the second most expensive item for the municipality after civic employees' wages and benefits has consistently remained in the same number two and number one slots respectively in recent years, the overall cost for both has increased inexorably.
For instance, just two and a half years ago - on Jan. 24, 2007, during budget deliberations for the 2007 budget - council projected civic employees' wages and benefits costs of $6.906 million and RCMP contract policing costs of $2. 834 million.
The overall budget has gone up from $18.082 million in 2005 to $18.381 in 2006 to $22.171 in 2007 to $24.537 million last year before being expected to hit a projected $25.497 million this year.
The city has long had a fractious relationship with the Manitoba Department of Justice, at least on some key issues. Persistent demands by various councils, going back more than 15 years under both NDP and Progressive Conservative governments for the province to build a remand centre in Thompson, have largely fallen on deaf ears. The nearest adult remand facility is The Pas Correctional Institution, about four hours away. Remanded youth are sometimes transported to Thompson from as far away as Winnipeg, 750 kilometres to the south.
Johnston said in an interview Aug. 27 he expects the Sept. 11 meeting with Chomiak to be businesslike and that he wants to talk dollars directly. The mayor said he'll tell the justice minister exactly what dollars the city is willing to put of for new crime-fighting initiatives in the area of gangs and illicit drugs and he expect the minister to tell him directly what the province will pony up for such efforts; or if the answer is nothing, to tell him that, so no one's time is wasted, Johnston said.
As well as lobbying Chomiak, the legislative and intergovernmental affairs committee said in its July 27 report other efforts by the city include pursuing affordable housing, loss of housing units through renovations, childcare and Men Are Part of the Solution (M.A.P.S.) funding issues with Minister of Family Services and Housing Gord Mackintosh; delivery of Part 3 of the Manitoba Building Code and Fire Code inspections with Minister of Labour and Immigration Nancy Allan; additional seasonal campsites and dock slips at Paint Lake to accommodate larger boats and additional cottage lots, both road accessible, as well as year-round e-waste depots in Thompson, Minister of Conservation Stan Struthers; boundary expansion of the City of Thompson, which also requires the consent of Vale Inco, Phase 3 of the Thompson Regional Community Centre, VLT gambling revenue distribution to municipalities, a proposed 9-1-1 emergency services call centre to act as a Public Safety Access Point (PSAP) for fire dispatch north of the 53rd parallel throughout Northern Manitoba, which the city has been pressing for since last October, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs and Thompson NDP MLA Steve Ashton; Highway 6 construction, Ron Lemieux, minister of infrastructure and Transportation; the long-delayed University College of the North (UCN) campus first promised in March 2007, Minister of Advanced Education and Literacy Diane McGifford; and again, housing issues, along with VLT gambling revenue distribution, Greg Selinger, minister of finance.
The city has also until recently been lobbying Minister responsible for Healthy Living Kerri Irvin-Ross in support of a plan by spearheaded by deputy mayor Oswald Sawh through non-profit Northern Detox Programs Inc. to establish a non-medical detox at an estimated cost of $2.6 million to $4.3 million in the old Addictions Foundation of Manitoba (AFM) Polaris Building B facility at 23 Nickel Rd., but she turned thumbs down on that idea in July. Instead the province is trying to sell the three-storey 6,993-square foot building at an asking price of $849,000.
