Brandon Minute: Issue 127

Brandon Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Brandon politics

📅 This Week In Brandon: 📅

• For the first time, the City of Brandon is taking an internal loan from its development charge reserves to finance growth infrastructure in the city's southwest corner. At its August 17th meeting, City Council authorized spending $1,475,000 from two development charge reserves for water and wastewater servicing, including two 300-meter watermains to be installed ahead of new roundabouts at 26th Street and Maryland Avenue and at 34th Street and Manitou Drive. The water reserve holds a projected closing balance of just $245,060, so the City is borrowing $750,000 from its wastewater reserve and paying itself back over 15 years at 4.45% interest. City director of finance Troy Tripp claims there are no immediate fiscal concerns, saying the arrangement preserves the development charge system under which developers have funded growth-related infrastructure since 2018. Because Brandon has never used inter-reserve borrowing before, no formal framework for it exists - Administration is drafting a reserve policy, slated to come to Council in September.
  
  
• Brandon's first transitional housing complex for men is now home to 17 residents, and the John Howard Society of Brandon will mark its grand opening today at 10:00 am. The $11-million, three-storey building on 16th Street North offers 24 units serving men released from the Brandon Correctional Centre, men who require a halfway house, and men transitioning out of homelessness. The facility operates around the clock with 20 to 25 staff, and in some cases residents complete the final 60 days of their sentence at the site rather than in custody. The opening comes as chronic homelessness in Brandon rose by nearly 20% in 2025, with single men - particularly those exiting the justice system - disproportionately affected. Executive Director Michelle Lemoine called the building a game changer that can break the cycle of men moving between the streets and corrections, and says the city needs more housing options for residents to transition into, given high rental prices and low availability.
  
  
• The Brandon Chamber of Commerce and Westman's federal MPs are warning of local fallout from the escalating Canada-US trade war. New American tariffs on $27.6 billion of Canadian goods took effect after the trade deadline passed, and the federal government answered on August 25th with retaliatory tariffs on over $27 billion of US goods. Chamber President Emilio Brown wrote to members backing Ottawa's decision to walk away from a deal he argues would have compromised Canadian sovereignty, while acknowledging that agricultural producers will find it harder to ship into the US and that machinery dependent on American parts will cost more. Brown is also urging faster removal of interprovincial trade barriers and diversification of Manitoba's export markets. Brandon-Souris MP Grant Jackson fears the tariffs will cost jobs and drive up demand at Brandon food supports like Samaritan House Ministries and the Helping Hands soup kitchen, which he says are already struggling to keep up. Jackson and Riding Mountain MP Dan Mazier are both calling on the federal government to release details of the rejected trade deal.
  
  
• Brandon's new Diversion Depot at the Eastview Landfill held its grand opening on Saturday, with tours of the facility and staff on hand to explain the changes. The depot, supported by $400,000 in provincial funding announced earlier this year, consolidates waste and recycling services into a single site where recyclables, organics, electronics, tires, scrap metal, and many other residential materials can be dropped off free of charge. Residents now enter the Diversion Depot before reaching the landfill scale, with staff directing materials into the appropriate streams - only waste that cannot be recycled, reused, or composted proceeds to disposal. Disposal fees still apply to garbage, at $8 for general refuse up to 200 kilograms, and Freon-containing appliances remain subject to a $31 processing fee. One change for residents: the recycling depot previously available 24 hours a day outside the landfill gates has been relocated inside, and can now only be accessed during the landfill's operating hours.
  
  
• Median wait times for MRI scans at the Brandon Regional Health Centre have more than doubled in two years, rising from nine weeks in 2024 to 23 weeks - just over five months - according to the province's wait time dashboard. Waits at Dauphin Regional Health Centre tripled from eight to 24 weeks over the same period, and more than 3,700 people are now waiting for a diagnostic MRI in the Prairie Mountain Health region, out of over 19,000 provincewide. The Manitoba Association of Healthcare Professionals says the province has only 100 MRI technologists, and its president, Jason Linklater, argues the fix is a written workforce plan rather than another government announcement. Doctors Manitoba has identified Manitoba's MRI waits as the longest in the country, and cautions that reported figures may understate the real delay because they exclude a backlog at the central intake system. The provincial government says it has added 4,725 net new health-care providers since 2023, including 700 staff in the Prairie Mountain region, and blames a backlog inherited from the former Progressive Conservative government. 

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