Province performing public-health inspections in city

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This article was published 03/04/2012 (4930 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE province has formally taken charge of all restaurant and food-processing inspections in Winnipeg.

The move, planned for some time, took effect April 1. It ends decades of shared oversight in which the city kept watch on eateries within its pre-1972 boundaries while the province checked in on establishments in the suburbs.

Provincial staff will now conduct all Manitoba public-health inspections in the city, including those involving swimming pools and tattoo parlours.

“This will streamline service delivery and improve the efficiency of our public-health inspection services,” Health Minister Theresa Oswald said in a news release.

With the move, 18 former city public-health inspectors were taken on by the province as of Monday.

When it was first learned all Winnipeg food inspections would come under provincial control, some city politicians expressed concern. That’s because the city inspected restaurants under its jurisdiction far more frequently than the province did.

In a January report, the provincial auditor general said at the rate the province was carrying out food inspections, it would take 21/2 years for it to examine every restaurant under its jurisdiction. In Winnipeg, the province inspected just 49 per cent of the eating establishments it was responsible for during a 12-month period examined by auditor general Carol Bellringer.

Meanwhile, city inspectors attempted to visit each restaurant under their watch twice a year, the city said.

A provincial Health Department spokesman said Monday the province will continue to offer the same frequency of inspections within the old Winnipeg boundaries as the city did. At the same time, it will work to boost inspections provincewide to that same level, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the province has created a new Health Protection Reports website to inform the public on a variety of regulated facilities including food services and restaurants, swimming pools, water-recreation facilities and body-modification establishments.

The website will provide information about all health-related closures including reasons for closures and their length, and details about convictions for serious violations of public-health regulations.

The information found on the city’s Diner’s Digest website will be transferred to the province’s Health Protection Reports website at: www.gov.mb.ca/health/publichealth/environmentalhealth/protection/report.html

Previously, only city-inspected restaurants that violated health regulations had their name published. The province did not publicly report problems involving eateries it inspected. But that will change in the near future, the Health Department said Monday.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca