Manitoba government abandons plan to stop putting public notices in papers

WINNIPEG - The Manitoba government is backing down from a plan to stop publishing notices of everything from environmental protection changes to public health orders in newspapers.

Cathy Cox, the minister for sport, culture and heritage, says the government realizes it was moving too fast, and will not enact the relevant sections of an omnibus bill now before the legislature.

The plan, announced last year, quickly ran into opposition from newspaper publishers and others.

Kate Jackman-Atkinson, editor of the Neepawa Banner, said the change would leave people in the dark about issues such as when pesticides are being used in their area.

The bill would also have eliminated mandatory newspaper notices of proposed changes to ecological reserves, hearings of human rights complaints and more.

The notices would have only been required in the Manitoba Gazette, the government's official catalogue of legal notices which is available online.

But critics said most members of the public don't know about the gazette and would not check it regularly.

"It's no secret that newspapers make money from publishing (government) notices, but that’s not why I think this is a bad idea," Jackman-Atkinson wrote in a recent column."I think these changes will make it harder for Manitobans to be informed about the issues that will have an impact on their lives."

Cox said the Progressive Conservative government has heard the message.

"Everything will remain as it was before," Cox said.

"I've listened to a lot of Manitobans ... so based on what we've heard, we know that this is a little bit of uncharted waters here and we were moving too quickly."

The legislative process — passing the bill as-is, but not enacting the sections affecting newspapers — will leave the government the option of imposing the changes at a future date, but Cox indicated the status quo will remain for some time.

"Obviously, I don't know what things are going to look like in 50 years — I mean, everything may be online — but we are saying right now we are pausing, we are listening to Manitobans, we've moved too quickly."

When it first proposed the changes last year, the government said it was simply keeping up with the times by moving public notices to the internet.

It is also in the process of making the Manitoba Gazette available for free. Accessing the gazette currently requires a subscription of $100 a year.