Steinbach City Council approved to participate as one of 12 communities in the province’s initiative to support Community Safety and Well-Being. 

The Province of Manitoba, the Canadian Centre for Safer Communities, and Headway Steinbach presented on the initiative at the SCP meeting on January 9th. 

The City's Corporate Services Manager, Adam Thiessen says the initiative is to have a Community Safety and Well-Being plan created with the purpose of improving community safety and well-being, as well as reduce crime rates. 

“The prime way that they intend to do this is by coordinating different levels of government and local social organizations to focus everybody in the same direction of the same agreed upon targets.” 

The province of Manitoba is paying for Canadian Centre for Safer Communities to act as the consultant to do most of the work in creating the plan.  

In addition, the province is also paying $60,000 per community that can go toward a priority identified within the city.

Thiessen explains what the City’s responsibilities would be. 

“At the presentation, the request was made to council that the City of Steinbach act as a champion for Community Safety and Well-Being plan development and implementation, and identify a municipal staff representative who can act as a key member of the project team for one to two hours per week on average.”  

The City's role is to be a conduit between the provincial government’s initiative and existing social service providers. 

The City’s time spent on the project is not to exceed the proposed two hours per week on average. 

Councillor Michael Zwaagstra makes the motion to approve and gives some background.  

“As was noted in the spring of 2022, the Manitoba Government announced that they were investing $1.3 million to support the development of Safety and Well-Being projects in 12 Manitoba communities, one of those of course, is the City of Steinbach.” 

He says this is being completely funded by the province, and Steinbach is being asked to allocate a very limited amount of staff time to facilitate and act as a resource to the consultants. 

“There's no city tax dollars being allocated here, the request is simply that we provide a limited amount of staff time so that way we can facilitate this. So I think it makes sense to participate since this is an initiative of the province, and it shows that we're willing to work together with the province on these types of priorities,” he says. “This would also be in partnership with our local group here Headway, which of course has done good work within the city and has all the necessary connections.” 

Mayor Earl Funk says Steinbach has great non-for-profit organizations in the community. 

“I do think it's a great idea to get them all on the same page and all working towards the same goal, and it sounds like this program will do that.”