Manitoba looking into adding GPS tracking, other monitoring to garbage trucks, landfills

The Manitoba government says it's planning to issue a request for proposals to look into measures that include adding GPS tracking to garbage trucks in the province.

The update comes in response to recommendations from a report that looked into the feasibility of searching a Winnipeg-area landfill for the remains for two Indigenous women murdered by a serial killer — a search that's expected to begin next month.

The request for proposals, which the province said will be posted online on MERX, will seek a "qualified service provider with comprehensive knowledge of the waste management industry and technology solutions" that can review the recommendations made in a feasibility study on searching the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran.

Those recommendations included adding video surveillance at the entrances and exits of landfills and equipping garbage trucks with GPS technology to track their location and rear-facing cameras to let operators see what's being unloaded, the province said in a news release Wednesday.

The process will include working with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and the Association of Manitoba Municipalities. Following that, the consultant hired for the job would "identify appropriate, effective technological and operational opportunities for government's consideration to enhance the monitoring of materials brought to landfills," the release said. 

The process is expected to be finished by summer 2025, the release said.

The search for the remains of Harris, 39, and Myran, 26, is scheduled to begin in October, Premier Wab Kinew said last week. The women's remains are believed to have been taken to the landfill north of Winnipeg after the women were murdered by Jeremy Skibicki in the spring of 2022.

Skibicki, 37, was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder on July 11 in the killings of three First Nations women — Harris, 39, Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24 — as well as an unidentified woman who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community leaders.

Contois's partial remains were found in garbage bins near Skibicki's apartment and at the Brady Road landfill in south Winnipeg. The location of Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe's remains is unknown.

During his weeks-long trial, which was heard before a judge alone, Skibicki's lawyers argued he was not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder. Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal disagreed, saying comments Skibicki made during his confession showed the murders were deliberate and planned.

Kinew said in the government's news release that adding GPS monitoring to trucks could help police investigate crimes moving forward, "while ensuring Indigenous lives are given the value and dignity they deserve." He called the women's deaths "the most disturbing crimes that have ever been committed in our province" — and ones that "devastated" Manitobans.

Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine, who is also responsible for women and gender equity, said in the release that families affected by the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people have called for this kind of surveillance for years, and that the update can help "protect some of our most vulnerable citizens."

Two of the relatives of the women whose remains are believed to be in the Prairie Green landfill said in the release their families are "incredibly grateful to know that our calls have been heard, as we have pushed for this work, endlessly." 

Cambria Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris, and Marcedes Myran's sister Jorden Myran — who are also co-chairs of Manitoba's landfill search oversight committee — said their families "look forward to continuing this work, as there are still many calls from the MMIWG2S+ families in the dark that deserve to be heard as we push for a better future for all."

Cambria Harris told CBC News later Wednesday that while the request for proposals might seem like a small step forward, "it's a huge, monumental step" for the families of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people, who "are finally being heard."

"This has been something that families have been asking for years, even before the landfill search. These have been calls that have been echoed since Tanya Jane Nepinak in 2011," she said.

"I don't want to be standing here four to five years from now, fighting for another landfill search, fighting to retrieve someone's remains from the landfill. I don't want another family standing there four to five years from now. 

"So it's important that we get these steps in place … so that we're able to better track people when it does happen."

A City of Winnipeg spokesperson said Wednesday that all city waste hauling contracts have already had a requirement to have cameras and GPS systems on vehicles for the last seven years. That applies to residential and any commercial customers (including multi-family properties), that have signed up for city garbage collection services, spokesperson Lisa Marquardson said in an email.

There are also cameras at the entry gates/scales and other locations around the Brady Road landfill, and all three of Winnipeg's 4R depots have cameras near their entrances, Marquardson said.

But facilities like the privately run Prairie Green landfill, located outside of Winnipeg, are separate from that.