Preliminary report on Millennium security under lockdown By: Dan Lett Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Mar. 22, 2023

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/03/2023 (929 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is good news, and bad news, on the future of the Millennium Library.

In the good news column: City of Winnipeg administrators have received a preliminary security audit report on the downtown library, prepared by a consultant hired in the aftermath of a tragic December 2022 stabbing that left a young man dead.

The audit was among the most important pledges made by Mayor Scott Gillingham and council to address long-standing concerns about safety at the library system’s flagship location.

Now the bad news: if subtle messages from the mayor’s office and the Winnipeg chief administrative officer Mike Jack are any indication, there appears to be little likelihood the full and unabridged audit will be publicly released.

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A spokesman for Gillingham said in an email the mayor has not yet seen the draft report, and doesn’t expect to “until it’s finalized and (administration) can answer questions and provide advice on what actions to take.”

The spokesman directed questions about “how much of the audit will be released to the public” to the CAO’s office.

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for Jack said: “How the City intends to disclose the information and the recommendations in the report has yet to be determined.”

Expectations for a full publication of the audit were dampened, however, when the spokesman noted the final report from the consultant “could potentially disclose existing vulnerabilities at the Millennium Library.”

“As such, once we receive the final version of the consultant’s report, we will conduct a thorough review and assessment of its contents to determine what we may be able to release that wouldn’t potentially compromise safety and security at the facility, among other considerations.”

Civic administrators are working with the consultant to create a “fit for public consumption” version of the audit.

There is a lot of bureaucratese in that statement, but here is the bottom line: civic administrators are working with the consultant to create a “fit for public consumption” version of the audit. They haven’t provided a copy of the draft audit to the mayor and councillors because that would almost certainly result in a copy being leaked to the news media.

Governments that hire consultants almost always build in an opportunity to sanitize the results to save those at the political level from being embarrassed, held to account for past missteps or boxed into spending too much money on solutions.

When you think about how neglected and mismanaged Millennium security has been, you can bet the first draft made some potentially explosive observations — and thus, we aren’t likely to see it.

This is hardly a strategy unique to the city.

Following the Progressive Conservative government’s thunderous victory in the 2016 Manitoba election, then-premier Brian Pallister unleashed consultant KPMG to study a broad range of public services, most notably health care.

Except in rare instances involving sensitive third-party information, publicly funded consultants’ reports are always the property of the taxpayer and subject to freedom of information regulations.

However, after promising to release all of the findings, the Tories later refused. At first, they actually admitted releasing the full value-for-money audits would politically embarrassing. Pallister then claimed KPMG considered most of the findings to be “proprietary” and had refused to release them to the public.

Hogwash.

Except in rare instances involving sensitive third-party information, publicly funded consultants’ reports are always the property of the taxpayer and subject to freedom of information regulations.

This makes the claim by the CAO’s spokesman — that releasing the entire draft report might expose shortcomings in the library’s security protocols — pretty silly stuff.

All you need to do is read about December’s grisly stabbing incident to know how lacking security was at the Millennium. In that incident, the victim was chased into the library’s main floor in broad daylight by four youth, with no one to stop or deescalate the confrontation.

Subsequent reporting revealed the library had neither the quantity nor quality of security personnel needed to deal with the threat level posed by some patrons. Efforts to open a social services support centre (currently closed) were undermined by a lack of funding for staff with specialized training.

Previous efforts to create security checkpoints at the entrance were hilarious cheap: hand-held metal detectors and bingo tables, staffed by private security guards with mall-level training, was the best the city could do.

The worst part: as incidents of violence and violent confrontation escalated, the mayor, council and city administrators largely turned a deaf ear to pleas from Millennium staff.

The public has a right to see the full and unedited draft of the security audit so it can engage in a full debate about the best ways to make Millennium safe for all.

A sanitized, politically filtered report may save politicians some grief in the short term, but it will put more lives at risk in the long term.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com

Dan Lett
Columnist

Dan Lett is a columnist for the Free Press, providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the Free Press in 1986.  Read more about Dan.

Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The Free Press’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.