Winnipeg | Of Interest

[Wpg_Guy]

‘Give us a chance’
Supervised drug-site operators commit to neighbourhood with transparency, security, zero tolerance for dealers
By: Scott Billeck
Thursday, Apr. 16, 2026



The people who will be responsible for operating Manitoba’s first supervised drug consumption site are urging the community to keep an open mind about the politically charged facility, promising round-the-clock security and zero tolerance for drug dealers.

“We are asking for a chance. Give us a chance,” said Monica Cyr, head of the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre of Winnipeg, which will run the Indigenous-led facility. “We want a chance to show our city that we’ve got a really strong model here, one worth duplicating.”

The facility, where people will be able to use their own drugs under supervision to prevent overdoses, will also provide testing to ensure the substances obtained on the street are not toxic, offer treatment options and social supports.

It will not supply drugs or allow trafficking.

The provincial government initially planned to open the facility at 200 Disraeli Fwy., but community opposition — in part because of its proximity to a school and park — meant the search continued for an alternative location.

The government has since purchased a former warehouse at 366 Henry Ave., and is awaiting final approval to begin operations.

The project continues to face pushback from some residents, business owners and politicians over safety concerns.

Proponents say it will reduce overdose deaths and ease pressure on city emergency services and overwhelmed hospital emergency departments.

In an exclusive interview with the Free Press, Cyr said the AHWC is committed to supporting the surrounding community, including a direct line and email for local businesses and residents to report concerns and lodge complaints, with responses promised within two business days, followed by prompt investigations, further updates within seven days and documented followup, where necessary.

The organization has also created a “good neighbour commitment” — an eight-page document outlining its obligations to the neighbourhood, including a pledge to maintain transparency through open and honest communication, with clear expectations for how issues will be identified and resolved.

That commitment, which will be released to the community shortly, is backed by a cohort of community partners, including Main Street Project, Sunshine House, Substance Consulting, Manitoba Harm Reduction Network and Indigenous-led service-delivery and healing centre Ka Ni Kanichihk.

There is additional support from more than a dozen others, such as the Winnipeg Police Service, Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service and the city and provincial governments.

The Henry Avenue site, a block away from Siloam Mission, is in an area dominated by auto-repair shops, small businesses and outreach services. Within a few blocks, there are also some residential pockets, community programs and spaces used by families and youth.

“We want to… let them know that we are going to do our absolute best… in terms of keeping a clean and a safe environment for all of us,” Cyr said, adding local businesses should be able to thrive and residents should feel safe walking the streets.

“And people who use drugs have the right to live.”

The centre’s transparency efforts will include regular email newsletters, updates and published statistics on the AHWC website. Cyr said there will be around-the-clock security to monitor the area and report any criminal activity immediately.

“We do not want and will not tolerate drug-selling around the neighbourhood,” she said.

At the legislature, the Opposition Progressive Conservatives have argued that similar facilities have been ineffective elsewhere. Critics have also pointed to a recent Alberta study that found there was no material difference in the number of deaths or ER visits after a SCS closed in Red Deer.

Point Douglas city councillor Vivian Santos has been among the opponents of the planned facility. She sent out an email late last month to residents and businesses in her ward detailing her concerns.

“As the local councillor, I must reflect the concerns of residents and businesses who will be directly impacted and ensure that the community is treated as a partner,” she said.

Santos said Thursday that she has yet to see the neighbour commitment document, and that her position remains unchanged.

Ed Gallos, owner of Master Roofing, next door to 366 Henry, said he’d be open to talking with AHWC, but added he’s unlikely to change his mind.

“I don’t know what it would accomplish,” he said. “Nobody is going to convince me it’s going to work.”

Cyr said she expects the facility to open the doors soon. The delay, announced last month by Premier Wab Kinew, is due to pending Health Canada approval.

Data from Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service between March 1 and April 11 shows a high volume of calls for overdose-related service, including 268 to Siloam Mission — 94 of them occurring between April 1 and April 10 alone.

On its busiest days, Siloam recorded as many as 30 calls per day. The Salvation Army, located at 180 Henry, had 95.

Altogether, five nearby sites recorded a combined 574 calls for overdose-related service over 41 days — an average of 14 per day.

Cynthia Drebot, executive director of the North End Women’s Centre, said staff are spending more time responding to overdoses in the agency’s Selkirk Avenue community than delivering core programming, including the centre’s drop-in.

“We’re all bracing for more, and we already feel we’re at our stretched point,” she said.

Cyr offered a hopeful message: “help is on the way.”

SCS will have staff on hand to administer opioid-OD reversal drugs, offering a measure of relief to city emergency personnel and ER workers.

Daily needle pickup will also be carried out with the Downtown Community Safety Partnership, extending from Ellen Street to the west, Higgins Avenue to the north, Princess Street to the east and Alexander Avenue to the south.

On Saturday, the Free Press will offer a detailed look at what a visit to the safe consumption site is expected to look like.

Winnipeg Free Press

[bon_vivant]

^ This is a good thing. Nimbys and naysayers need to get over it.

[pspeid]

Originally Posted by Wpg_Guy

Those with addictions should not be hospitalized, the modern medical system is good at treating acute physical conditions like broken bones, heart attacks, or infections—but it is poorly equipped to handle mental health and substance use disorders.

The city should have zero tolerance for encampments, public land is not to camp, strip stolen bikes and consume drugs, where they go i don't know but it can't be here. The province needs to get tough on drugs and make involuntary addiction treatment mandatory for those who refuse the help or don't leave and individuals like the article below, where drugs have caused irreversible brain damage need to be institutionalized, not left to wonder the streets as a threat to themselves and others.

It sounds like you support mandatory addictions treatment and potentially life-long institutionalization? If that's your opinion I'm not going to attack you for it. If handled humanely, it may, indeed, be a useful, if expensive, resource for dealing with addictions in the province.

Sadly, I think too many people feel, like you wrote early in your statement, "where they go I don't know but it can't be here", and never consider what the next step might be.

Addictions are often harmful and very, very ugly. Our first response is often to simply want to push it away so we don't have to look at the addict or deal with their behaviour. I think some who advocate for addictions supports use this reaction to try to shame opponents by suggesting "you only want to hide the problem" or "you just don't want to have to deal with it".

I think addressing addictions treatments need to acknowledge that the "ugliness" of addictions isn't merely in the aesthetic of the ragged, vacant-eyed user shambling across the street. It's the debasement of basic human dignity, turning a person normally capable of human growth and kindness into a sad and sometimes dangerous mimicry of a human being.

If we're going to consider involuntary drug treatment or confinement, we have to base it on the need to make their treatments as humane as possible.

[EdwardTH]

Originally Posted by Biff

These are the people that we need to move on. If they don't want help to be reintegrated into society then they need to go somewhere else.

If people are open to help, then they should be given it. This is the area where our resources should be concentrated on.

Originally Posted by bon_vivant

Exactly. Help the people who want help, including the mentally ill who don't think they need help. The rest will have to be content with living a nomadic life, constantly being uprooted and told to move along. They have no right to claim public spaces as their own.

Originally Posted by pspeid

What does zero tolerance look like? Do the encampments get removed and the addicted people just set up another encampment somewhere else? Do the addicted people get hospitalized or entered into involuntary addictions treatment?

Originally Posted by Wpg_Guy

Those with addictions should not be hospitalized, the modern medical system is good at treating acute physical conditions like broken bones, heart attacks, or infections—but it is poorly equipped to handle mental health and substance use disorders.

The city should have zero tolerance for encampments, public land is not to camp, strip stolen bikes and consume drugs, where they go i don't know but it can't be here. The province needs to get tough on drugs and make involuntary addiction treatment mandatory for those who refuse the help or don't leave and individuals like the article below, where drugs have caused irreversible brain damage need to be institutionalized, not left to wonder the streets as a threat to themselves and others.

Winnipeg Free Press

Every time the issue comes up we get these facebook boomer takes that just ignore the real issue, that there are no facilities, no treatment, nothing to do with these people without hundreds of millions in govt investment. As if it's so easy to just "not tolerate it" anymore lol. At the end of the day there are no options available. "Make them get treatment", there is no treatment. Show me where all the open beds are. You can't even put them in jail, there's no room in the jails unless you spend hundreds of millions to build new jails. And what are you gonna do, throw a guy in prison for life because he broke a window on a bus?

It's easy to sit on the internet and just say "they gotta crack down!" Doesn't change the fact there are no options. Govt has to build the facilities. If you want it to change then write your MPs and MLAs and tell them you want new prisons and/or treatment facilities that have the resources to deal with these folks, and where you think the money should come from.

I for one would be happy to shelve the CPT extension and fund mandatory detention and treatment centres instead but good luck selling that politically.

[Biff]

Boomer here I guess.

I agree with you, fund and build more mandatory detention and treatment centres. I too would give up the CPT extension for this. I am tired of seeing innocent people randomly attacked, assaulted or killed.

Help the people that need and will accept help with the programs we have or are developing.

The ones like in the bus storey above need to be institutionalized.

[bussche]

Originally Posted by Biff

I am tired of seeing innocent people randomly attacked, assaulted or killed.

This is the exception, not the rule. Most of these people are more of a danger to themselves, than anyone else.

[drew]

^ that may be true. But ask your average citizen if they feel safe downtown, and the reality of crime statistics are meaningless. They don't feel safe, and they are staying away from the area, in increasing numbers, and in areas (especially the East Exchange) where up until recently, people seemed to be more comfortable being.

[bussche]

Originally Posted by drew

^ that may be true. But ask your average citizen if they feel safe downtown, and the reality of crime statistics are meaningless. They don't feel safe, and they are staying away from the area, in increasing numbers, and in areas (especially the East Exchange) where up until recently, people seemed to be more comfortable being.

I think we should be making policy decisions based on reality, not perception.

Validating those perceptions is what makes people stay away.

I live and work in the core and the way some people talk about it makes me feel like I live in a different dimension.

[drew]

^ I also work in the area, and have noticed a stark change in the perception of the area by co-workers and others over the past 12-24 months.

You can set policy on reality all you want, but as long as people feel like, and the visual evidence backs up - a veritable zombie apocalypse - all the good intentions of reality versus perception are going to result in the continued decline of what IMO is the best area of Winnipeg.

[bussche]

In the 14 years I've worked here, I haven't noticed any change in the perception of the area by my co-workers...they've always clutched their pearls and scurried back to the suburbs, except for Jets games.

The problem is we've very rarely set policy based on reality, we're always treating the symptom based on public perception of the problem. It's always been about politics.

Crime? Throw more money at the cops!
Traffic? Let's make roads wider!
Homeless people? Sweep them under a rug!
Drug addiction? Just say no!

[pspeid]

In other news, some investment into the local aerospace industry:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/...nvestment-research-development-9.7168282

Good news, but I also liked this comment from Kinew in the article:

"Based on conversations he had with Prime Minister Mark Carney in Ottawa earlier this week, "there are going to be a lot more investments coming" to that sector, said Kinew."

Sounds like there will be a few nice investments coming down the pipe.

[Wpg_Guy]

Explosion forces residents to evacuate Kennedy Street Manitoba Housing complex
By: Scott Billeck
Monday, Apr. 20, 2026



Residents of an inner-city high-rise say they were forced to evacuate Monday afternoon after explosions blew out a window on the eighth floor.

Darrell Klassen, who lives on the top floor of the 16-storey Manitoba Housing apartment complex at 444 Kennedy St., said he heard several blasts before noticing the smell of smoke.

“The elevators were shut down, so we had to take the stairwells,” Klassen said. “Both stairwells were full of smoke, so I had to mask up and put a wet cloth over my face.”

Klassen said the incident marks the seventh fire in as many years, adding that many are linked to drug activity.

“People are getting evicted, so they start a fire,” he said. “It’s the transients. We have good people living here still. There are seniors that need home care. They’re not going to get that now because this is all shut down.”

He added that he contacted Manitoba’s Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith, urging her to see the conditions first-hand. He said a staffer he spoke with said they would forward his message up the chain.

Multiple fire trucks, along with several ambulances and police vehicles were at the scene.

Winnipeg police confirmed officers responded to the building but did not provide further details. The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service did not immediately return a request for comment.

A Winnipeg Transit bus was at the scene for residents.

Smoke from the fire left a heavy stain on the building’s exterior, stretching several floors above the shattered window.

Cari LaRiviere, a seventh-floor resident, said she had been in the lounge when the alarms began to sound.

“It was loud,” she said. “Scared the 🞵🞵🞵🞵 out of me.”

LaRiviere said the incident triggered a full evacuation — something she had not experienced before.

“We’re so used to it,” she said. “The alarms go off daily. The place is a psychiatric ward. It’s ridiculous the people that are living here, the drugs, the mental-health issues. It’s not a nice place to live.”

She added that while conditions improved for about a year after a management change — following what she described as seven years of “hell” — problems have since returned.

“But the gangs are coming in, the drugs are back in,” she said.

Joseph, who declined to give his last name, said he has lived in the building since the early 2000s and raised concerns about ventilation issues.

“We’re just numbers in this place,” the man said. “There are people that smoke crack, meth. The smell goes all through the walls. It stinks. People smoke in the hallways. But there’s no air circulation. I’ve made 10 complaints.”

William Anderson, a third-floor resident who uses a wheelchair, said he did not hear the explosion before being escorted out.

“It scares me because I don’t know what is going to happen next,” he said, adding he’s seen 🞵🞵🞵🞵 and machetes in the building in the past.

Winnipeg Free Press

[1ajs]

It was quiet the boom could feel it from Hargrave and mcdermot

[cheswick]

Winnipeg based comic co-written by actress Kristin Kruek (who filmed a legal drama for CBC in the city for a bit).

https://www.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg/article/...ic-inspired-by-time-filming-in-manitoba/

[borkborkbork]

It feels like the inability to evict dangerous tenants is itself a housing security issue.

Someone turns their apartment into a drug lab, it explodes, and now suddenly there are 140+ people facing housing insecurity.

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by Wpg_Guy

The city should have zero tolerance for encampments, public land is not to camp, strip stolen bikes and consume drugs, where they go i don't know but it can't be here. The province needs to get tough on drugs and make involuntary addiction treatment mandatory for those who refuse the help or don't leave and individuals like the article below, where drugs have caused irreversible brain damage need to be institutionalized, not left to wonder the streets as a threat to themselves and others.

How do you suggest paying for this?

[borkborkbork]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

How do you suggest paying for this?

Okay, so obviously the pragmatics of how to get this paid for are hard.

But the actual economic calculus? How much does property crime cost? How much does street disorder limit business development? How much does policing and jail cost? How much do encampments diminish property values? How much does addiction cost our health care system?

I'd argue that the depressing fact is that we already spend more on the problem than it would likely take to seriously address the problem.

[BlackDog204]

Originally Posted by borkborkbork

Okay, so obviously the pragmatics of how to get this paid for are hard.

But the actual economic calculus? How much does property crime cost? How much does street disorder limit business development? How much does policing and jail cost? How much do encampments diminish property values? How much does addiction cost our health care system?

I'd argue that the depressing fact is that we already spend more on the problem than it would likely take to seriously address the problem.

Locking homeless/addicts/other vulnerable groups up against their will may sound fine and good, but it can be counter-productive. The main issue is inadequate mental health supports for the people who need them.

I'm not sure how much it costs to hold a person against their will in an institution, but I heard that keeping a person incarcerated for a year, cost in the neighbourhood of $100,000, so it definitely is not cheap.

Medicine Hat, of all places, did a Housing First initiative pilot project 20 years ago, that allowed homeless/vulnerable people to receive a bachelor pad, food, a buss pass, and medical expenses all free of charge. It eradicated homelessness in that city for years, and it actually saved taxpayer money.

source: https://homelesshub.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/4.6-Turner.pdf

If we look at the cost of Police, EMT's, etc. having to take emergency calls for people passed out in bus shelters, and other public places, it's actually cheaper to just give them an apartment. There is also the fact that vulnerable people are more likely to get help for their addictions/issues and look for work when they have a roof over their head, rather than be in constant "survival mode" on the street, which could make a normal person's mental health deteriorate to the point that they self medicate with alcohol or drugs.

[BlackDog204]

The Canadian Government also needs to construct more affordable housing. Back in the 50s,60s, and 70s, the Government did much to construct many low-income housing units per year. This changed around the time Brian Mulroney and the PC's took office in the mid 80s.

BY the 90s and beyond, very few low income housing units have been built. We can personally observe this by venturing through places like Windsor Park, Fort Richmond, Southdale, Maples, Tyndall Park, and parts of East/North Kildonan. These areas were mainly constructed from the 50s to the late 70s.

Compare this with Linden Woods, Whyte Ridge, River Park South, Richmond West, South Tuxedo, Amber Trails, etc. All areas that have mainly been constructed after 1990. There is very little in the way of low income housing.

Western society in general, has taken a political shift to the right in the past 40 years, and problems like homelessness, and income equality have manifested itself as a result. What is considered slightly left of centre (I.e. todays Liberal Party), would have been considered right of centre during the Mulroney years.

The way large corporations and the ultra rich are being given tax breaks, while neglecting the poor and working class, I don't see this problem getting any better in the foreseeable future.

[TimeFadesAway]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

Medicine Hat, of all places, did a Housing First initiative pilot project 20 years ago, that allowed homeless/vulnerable people to receive a bachelor pad, food, a buss pass, and medical expenses all free of charge. It eradicated homelessness in that city for years, and it actually saved taxpayer money.

Unfortunately, there's a large minority or small majority of the voting public who, regardless of any rational economic argument, don't want to see taxpayer money going to 'those people.' This is the biggest barrier.