Rookie councillor launches website to find what smells in St. B

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This article was published 16/04/2015 (3809 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

St. Boniface Coun. Matt Allard continues to demonstrate rookie politicians can make a difference at city hall.

Allard unveiled a website this week – stbsmell.ca – to track odour complaints in his ward, part of his ongoing effort to track down the source of the smell and get provincial officials to clean up the mess.

“I thought it would be a catchy way for people to put in their complaints,” Allard said of the new website. “It’s a website to facilitate the complaints process about noxious smells in St. Boniface. Actually, anyone in Winnipeg can use the site.”

Allard has been busy since winning the ward in the Oct. 22 election. He put pressure on council to ensure the Marion Street upgrade gets funding, supported efforts to establish an international youth hostel on a former civic property, and has lobbied strongly for the public riverfront redevelopment project, Promenade Taché.

In addition to advocating for his ward, Allard has tackled some city-wide issues. He pushed for enhanced whistle-blower protection for civic employees; performance reviews of the CAO and all senior administrators; and he was on the search committee for the new CAO.

St. Boniface businesswoman Constance Menzies said she knew Allard when he served as president of the Francophone Chamber of Commerce and the Old St. Boniface Residents’ Association and has always been impressed.

“A good way to describe Matt is quietly aggressive,” Menzies, who owns and operates Chocolatier Constance Popp, said. “He’s not a showman, he’s not imposing, but he gets things done.”

Menzies said St. Boniface is home to many active groups and individuals and it needs a councillor who can keep pace.

“You’d have to be a pretty active person to be our city councillor and he is,” Menzies said. “He seems to be anchored, a sensible person and authentically looking out for the best interests of people in the different parts of his ward.”

St. Boniface is a vibrant and colorful neighbourhood but it’s also notorious for the horrible odour that seems most prevalent in the Old St. Boniface and Windsor Park neighbourhoods. It’s an odour that can drift across the city, even into the furthest reaches of North Kildonan.

Allard said the smell issue came up during the election campaign. He brought it to city hall earlier this year, wanting administration to track down the source and put a stop to it but was told that city staff had no jurisdiction on foul-smelling operations – that’s a provincial issue.

Allard said provincial officials told him the odours can be traced to two local firms, a mushroom operation and a meat processing plant.

He made available provincial complaint forms on his own councillor website, which people could download, fill out and then mail in to Manitoba Conservation.

That was a cumbersome process so he came up with a website where the complaint form can be filled out online and then automatically emailed to Manitoba Conservation.

The forms require residents to state the date and time of the problem odour and how it affected their lives.

The stbsmell.ca site went live Tuesday and by the following day Allard was told it had over 1,000 views.

“I’m trying to be proactive on an issue that was raised by residents during the campaign. I think there can be some positive, constructive things out of this process if people are able to file complaints.”

Few residents were aware there was a complaint process to deal with the problem. Allard said he wants the province to put pressure on the offending firms, to install equipment that can eliminate the odours.

“Conservation does meet with these companies that are issued environmental licenses. If (Conservation) sees a flurry of complaints on a given day, they can go to that company and ask ‘what happened because there were a hundred complaints on this day – is there something you can change in your process.’”

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca