Regional fees, community safety and legal reform were front of mind for Flin Flon local leadership at a regional meeting held late last month.
City councillors gave a report about a recent Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) northern regional meeting in Flin Flon June 24, along with a recommendation made to the AMM by the City. The recommendation, which was first brought up by council at meetings last month, called on the province to look into whether or not municipalities could request or receive payment for local services accessed by people who live outside municipal boundaries. For Flin Flon, such a move could reopen the door to the City looking to charge fees to cabin owners and cottage associations who access services in Flin Flon.
That resolution was passed, said councillors and the AMM’s official report from the meeting. Manitoba Justice Minister Matt Wiebe made the trip north for the meeting and spoke with northern local leaders.
“It went very well. We had good representation here - We had the Minister of Justice here and we had some good conversations with him, as well as with our neighbours from all around the north,” said Mayor George Fontaine about the meeting.
“We did make the resolution proposal and it was passed - the resolution that you had here, with respect to looking at outlying areas, for the province to look at taking some kind of action and to study what it is would be the right way to create a relationship between those areas and the municipality that serves them.”
City councillor Mike Slipp said the meeting included a similar resolution from The Pas - the two resolutions were instead combined into one, passed and then moved on.
“The Pas wrote a very similar resolution - we decided to combine them because they were almost exactly the same,” said Slipp.
“It’s not just our area - it’s across the province.”
The AMM is a Manitoba-wide group representing the mayors, councillors, reeves and other leaders of cities, towns, villages, rural municipalities and other organized Manitoba communities - 137 of them in total. The City of Flin Flon has been a long-time member of the group and of its northern caucus. Members of the group can bring forward recommendations to the group at large, which can then apply pressure to the provincial government to approve or disapprove different policies or practices. The AMM’s provincial annual general meeting will take place in Winnipeg in November - that is where the City’s suggested change will get to the province’s ear.
When asked during a meeting last month if the recommendation was a move to try getting tax money from people living in cabin areas outside of Flin Flon, Fontaine said the recommendation was about fixing what he and councillors saw as a wrong with provincial policy.
Justice minister Wiebe had met with city council members during a different AMM meeting in Winnipeg last year.
“We did some follow-up and had some really good conversations about what we need here, what we would like to see here, what kind of help we actually need to put that into place, as well as what our court system is lacking and has been lacking over the past seven-to-eight years,” said councillor Judy Eagle.
“Most of what we talked about was follow-up from last December. What was added to that was what our court system needs to clear these dockets more fully and to monitor more closely, people in our community who need to do community hours, who need to report to the justice committee, people who need to get through their probation with that support. If we're talking about community wellness, community health and community safety, that's part of it - and we're missing those people. We used to have those positions right here. We don't anymore.”
Slipp said that the minister seemed receptive to expanding existing community safety officer (CSO) programs to include Flin Flon, saying there was a local need for such help. Wiebe didn’t specifically say yes or no to including more help to Flin Flon, according to Slipp, but did ask councillors to make a plan for how safety officers would be used and paid for within the community.
“I will say that the justice minister seemed, without saying that ‘Yes, we're going to help you,’ he did seem a lot more receptive,” said Slipp.
“He wants us to put a plan together for how we see the CSO program working in Flin Flon and we're going to do that. There's a lot of hurdles, as a municipality, to get there, but we need to get there. We need help from the government. He didn't say no this time - he didn't say yes, either.”
