Manitoba will expropriate Lemay Forest to turn into provincial park, premier says
'I want the chainsaws to stop,' Wab Kinew tells reporters
The Manitoba government says it plans to expropriate a privately-owned parcel of land in south Winnipeg at risk of being deforested by a developer, and turn it into a provincial park.
Premier Wab Kinew made the announcement about the Lemay Forest at an unrelated news conference at the Manitoba Legislative Building on Monday.
"I want the chainsaws to stop," he told reporters.
"There's a bunch of paperwork that's going to happen, but I'm communicating this publicly now just so that people hear the message. And hopefully there's no trees getting cut down, and people are just reassured that we're going to turn this area into a provincial park."
A group fighting to prevent trees from being cut down in the area said recently it was on high alert after learning a Manitoba Crown prosecutor was not planning to move forward a private prosecution that had been preventing the developer from deforesting the area.
That prosecution was filed against Tochal Development Group, owner of the roughly 18 hectares of private forest in St. Norbert, over alleged breaches to the Manitoba Cemeteries Act — which says any person who willfully "destroys, cuts, breaks, or injures any tree, shrub, or plant in a cemetery" is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine.
Manitoba Historical Society executive director Tracey Turner said Monday said the forest houses a cemetery site belonging to the Asile Ritchot orphanage, which operated from 1904 to 1948.
The institution "was a place that had a very high death rate and [where] children were being buried in mass graves," said Turner, who called the site "the largest mass burial site in Canada" she's aware of.
Turner said in an interview new research the historical society recently did for a report for the province found at least 3,383 children died at the facility — higher than previous estimates.
The controversy over the developer's actions in the forested area also recently landed one protester in court.
Louise May, a member of the group fighting to preserve the land was found in civil contempt of court in February for breaching an injunction, after she impeded the developer's access to the property in January.
May said Monday she "cried tears of joy" when she heard the news about the land being expropriated.
"I was just extremely pleased and thankful," May said in an interview. "I thought, you know, we had maybe come to the end of the road of possibilities. This morning when they started cutting, I felt the least hopeful I had ever felt."
Planner disappointed
John Wintrup, a planner working with the developer, said he was shocked and disappointed to hear Kinew's announcement.
"Nobody from any government official has ever reached out to us on that. We reached out to them multiple times," Wintrup said in an interview, adding he thinks the expropriation process will be "costly, lengthy," and "punishing for the taxpayers of Manitoba."
"I don't know what this means. I'm waiting to hear exactly what Wab Kinew said, what the government's doing, what actions they're doing. But he's certainly not talking to us. He's ignored us all along here.
"And I don't believe the land owner is just simply going to roll over and give his land up."
Wintrup also said the developer needed a large police presence to be able to access the site on Monday morning because of protesters in the area.
Winnipeg police later said a woman demonstrating was arrested "for attending on private property and interfering with authorized employees." Police said in a news release the 39-year-old woman was charged with contempt of court and mischief, and released on a promise to appear.
Last year, city council rejected a plan to build a 5,000-bed, 2,500-unit assisted living facility in Lemay Forest. Tochal appealed the decision and the Manitoba Municipal Board held a public hearing in February.
Wintrup previously said the developer was waiting to hear back to determine if the project can move forward. But with or without housing, the owner is looking to make use of the land.
Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham said he was glad to see the province, which has more money than the city, found a way to resolve the matter, adding the city will help where it can "in anything we need to do to convert it to a park."
"I think we needed a resolution. This is a private piece of land where the developer has certain rights," Gillingham said in a phone interview.
"But yet, of course, there are many in the community who really want to see these lands preserved as forest. And so I think what the province has done today is use the resources and powers available to them to bring a resolution to this matter."
'Exhausted other avenues': Kinew
Kinew said the province's decision to expropriate the land comes after it "exhausted other avenues" to serve what he called the public interest in preserving the forest — including exploring using legislation related to heritage, conservation, environment and cemeteries.
"Each step of the way, we've either been rebuffed or been advised that we're not going to be successful," he said.
The premier said he hopes the announcement "is going to be enough to just calm the waters and allow what should be now a negotiation and a fairly boring process, if you will, to be carried out," including determining the land's fair market value.
"For me, the public interest at the end of the day is to put the chainsaws down, to put the folks who are really fired up about this at ease, and to just let Manitobans know, instead of some kind of showdown or some kind of conflict, instead you're going to have a beautiful provincial park that everyone can enjoy," Kinew said.
Kinew said Monday there's already been "a good-faith attempt" to buy the land first, with an offer he said he understands "was way more than what the developer paid for this area."
"And so while reasonable steps have been attempted and have not borne the result that I think serves the public interest, we're now going to move ahead with expropriation," he said.
With files from Cameron MacLean and Radio-Canada's Ilrick Duhamel