What the province stands to gain from a downtown safety plan not led by police

For the second time in just over six months, a report ordered up by Manitoba about its largest cityhas left municipal officials befuddled.

At the end of May, a relatively obscure provincial entity known as the Treasury Board Secretariat released a report into the city's planning, property and development department, concluding it was rife with dysfunction.

That may very well have been true, but the report's methodology was unorthodox. For starters, it was conducted hastily: It was ordered up on on April 18 and made public on May 28.

It was based oninterviews with 50 anonymous subjectsand presented their anecdotes withoutattempt at substantiation. The report's authorsmade it clear they made no effort to investigate serious allegations of municipal incompetenceand malfeasance.

"While these quotations represent anecdotes rather than 'real evidence,' they reflect how negatively potential investors view the current development environment within Winnipeg," the report stated.

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The reaction to the report was predictable. Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman dismissed the document as a "developer complaint box," while chief corporate services officer Michael Jack said there was no effort to obtain feedback from the city.

At the time, city hall saw the report as a pretext for the province to bring in some form of provincial planning commission to oversee municipal development. That is precisely what Premier Brian Pallister floated in October, when the province released a much more thorough examination of capital-region economic development.

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This lickety-split model worked so well for the province in the spring, it went through a similar routine this fall, ordering up a report into downtown Winnipeg safety on Sept. 18 and accepting a completed document on Nov. 17.

This time, however, the author of the report was not some unnamed provincial treasury official. It was directed by David Asper, the chair of the Manitoba Police Commission, aformer chair of the Winnipeg Police Board and a respected lawyer in his own right.

This lends credibility to an exercise that initially appeared to be aneffort by the Progressive Conservative government to quickly check off a Pallister election promise to improve downtown safety.

The promise stood out as something of an anachronism in Winnipeg, where methamphetamine use has led to a spike in police calls in many areas of the city. In 2019, downtown alone has not been the focal point of police concerns.

As it so happens, this newer provincial report made public on Tuesday concluded any effort to improve safety indowntown Winnipeg "must focus on community health and wellness" as opposed to police activity.

"The general findings of this study do not point to a policing issue. Police definitely have a role to play in a downtown safety strategy but they should not be the lead agency," the report states in its conclusion.

This did not go over well with the Winnipeg Police Service.

"This statement comes as a surprise," Chief Danny Smyth said in a statement of his own. "The Winnipeg Police Serviceremains committed to downtown safety and will continue to advance the strategy outlined in our strategic plan."

According to Smyth, the authors of the downtown safety report did not ask the police to make any recommendations and only met with the police once.

Smyth and other city officials were nowhere to be seen in the rotunda at the Manitoba legislature Tuesday morning, when Manitoba Justice Minister Cliff Cullen presented Asper's report.

As it turns out, the police were not invited. Smyth confirmed this after Cullen declined to answer questions about whether he requested the chief's presence.

Despite the report's conclusion, most of itscontent is not controversial. It recommends the creation of a new "safety communications centre," possibly funded by the private sector. Asper said this would differ from the police's existing communications centre inthat it could focus on safety concerns that are not crimes.

The report suggested more closed-circuit camera surveillance could be conducted downtown and foot patrols could be better co-ordinated.

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It also suggested panhandling enforcement could be toughened up, although Asper conceded he doesn'tknow how that would happen. Winnipeg's existing panhandling bylaw is already in the midst of a legal challenge that dates back to 2007.

The report also doesn't recommend much in the way of health and wellness, besides recommending the government"continues to support and consider prioritizing or reallocating funding resources" to the likes of mental-health services and anti-poverty initiatives.

This could be read as tokenism. Strongrecommendations from bureaucratsuse words like "must" or "should" rather than "consider."

Most significantly, the report does not suggest the province provide the city with any additional resources for the police service. Cullen would not commit to any additional police funding, even though the provincial books are essentially balanced.

To suggest police don't play the lead role in downtown Winnipeg safety is one thing. It's another to commission a downtown safety report without significant police input at a time the policeservice is mulling cuts the city blames on flat provincial funding.

But if the Pallister government's intention was to come up with a downtown safety solution that would not cost the province an additional dime, diminishing the importance of policing would be one way to do it.