Nearly 5,000 sets of MMIWG2 licence plates sold in 2024

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This article was published 26/12/2024 (287 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Vehicle owners continue to purchase specialty licence plates from Manitoba Public Insurance, aligning themselves with organizations and causes they believe in.

Plates supporting the families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and two-spirited people, featuring symbols of either a red dress or red handprint, were one of the top sellers during the past year.

MPI said 4,902 sets of the MMIWG2 plates, which have been available only since last December, were sold in 2024.

That was second only to 6,969 sets of Winnipeg Jets Heritage plates, as of Dec. 22.

“It shows that Manitobans care about this (MMIWG2) issue,” said Manitoba Minister of Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Bernadette Smith, who introduced the bill to create the plate in 2022.

Smith’s sister Claudette Osborne-Tyo was reported missing in 2008. Smith founded Drag the Red, which searches in and around the Red River for bodies of missing men and women.

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Ka Ni Kanichihk, an organization that helps people through learning and healing programs grounded in traditional Indigenous knowledge and trauma-informed practices, receives $30 from each pair of plates sold for $70. The money primarily supports education costs for students from MMIWG2S families, with some going directly to affected families.

Smith said the plates not only help families with missing loved ones, but remind everyone in the province about the issue.

“There are still families that are searching for answers and we all need to come together and care about this as humans,” she said. “There’s people out there that have information that could lead to solving some of these cases… these families have not given up.”

Other popular specialty plates in 2024 were the Snowmobilers of MB (4,022), the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (3,150) plates and the Winnipeg Jets regular plates (2,253).

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

Every piece of reporting Nicole produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.