Millennium Library user praises community hub as advocates criticize councillor's call to move it

Advocates are criticizing calls by a Winnipeg city councillor to move a community hub out of the city's biggest library, with some suggesting the comments are discriminatory.

Coun. Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood), who's also the chair of Winnipeg's community services committee, says the space connecting people with social supports inside the Millenium Library should move elsewhere. 

The councillor said in an interview Wednesday the library is not an appropriate place for those services, expressing concern about safety and the number of visitors dropping. "When people are suffering from addictions and [mental health crises], they are unstable and very frequently very unsafe," he said.

"I appreciate the work that's been going on in the Millennium Library," the councillor told CBC's Information Radio. "I appreciate the advocacy around it. However, the Millennium Library has been a place that should be for library services."

Michael Redhead Champagne, board member at the non-profit Fearless R2W Inc., said that shouldn't be the case.

Champagne is one of the people behind the community safety host program, which trained security guards at the library with de-escalation skills and trauma-informed care. He said the library is ideal to provide services in the "most accessible way possible," and that the hub is actually one way to address safety concerns.

"I'm willing to entertain anybody's ideas on how we make it better, but I'm not willing to entertain ideas about simply removing the space, and moving those people quotation, quotation, 'out of sight, out of mind,'" Champagne said.

"This is their home as much as it's our home. They have a right to use the library. They have a right to exist downtown just like all of us do."

The community connections space has referred more than 1,500 people to support services since it reopened on Oct. 30. It was closed for 11 months before that, after Tyree Cayer was killed inside the library's main floor on Dec. 11, 2022.

The hub aims to connect people with library resources as well as shelter and housing, social assistance, benefits, employment, ID assistance, mental health and addiction services, and food security services.

Duncan said those services shouldn't be under the city's jurisdiction, and the province should fund a downtown hub of its own.

"That is a provincial responsibility, and the folks at the Millennium Library in the community connection space have been doing a great job at picking up the slack," he said.

The councillor added people looking for help shouldn't be "paraded" in a public place.

"We could look at alternative spaces where they could have their decency and dignity to go and ask for a hand up in life," Duncan said.