Brandon lands conservation dispatch

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This article was published 15/06/2023 (1090 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If faced with a dangerous situation, conservation officers in the province will soon be able to call in to a main dispatch centre in Brandon for the first time in the service’s history.

A new 24-7 centralized dispatch service for conservation officers will operate out of the Brandon Public-Safety Communication Centre, located in Brandon Fire and Emergency Services’ Firehall No. 1.

Currently, the communications centre takes calls for 195 fire departments in the province, eight police departments including Manitoba First Nations Police Service, all 911 services for rural Manitoba and radio communications for environmental enforcement officers with Environmental Climate Change Canada.

An organization as large as Manitoba Conservation needs to have backup, said Robert Stewart, director of emergency communications at the Brandon Public-Safety Communications Centre.

“It’s a scary prospect for an officer to be in the middle of nowhere and potentially get into some trouble,” said Stewart. “They could phone the RCMP to do some motor vehicle branch queries and things like that, but they didn’t have radio contact. They had radio contact with each other, but they didn’t really have radio contact with a central communication centre.”

The City of Brandon signed a $1.2-million contract with the provincial government to provide the new centralized dispatch service, which was announced in the Wheat City on Wednesday by Natural Resources and Northern Development Minister Greg Nesbitt, Justice Minister Kelvin Goertzen and Manitoba’s chief conservation officer, Earl Simmons.

The contract is for three years, with an option for a two-year extension.

All conservation officers are trained to a police standard, said Simmons, who added giving them the ability to reach a dispatch centre enhances both officer and public safety.

“We’re not limited to just doing natural resource enforcement. We’ve come across all kinds of other things like car accidents, impaired drivers, people who are wanted,” Simmons said. “And if somebody’s wanted, we’ll arrest them, take custody, and turn them over to the appropriate agency.

“So, having the ability to call and say, ‘hey we arrested somebody in a warrant right now and we have them in custody, or we need assistance’, is reassuring to me as the chief to know that my folks have somebody to talk to and they make it home to their families at the end of the day.”

There are “20 or so officers” in Westman, said Simmons. According to data provided by the province at the request of the Sun, there were 583 prosecutions, 319 warnings issued for a total of 902 from 2020 to June 14, 2023, in the districts of Neepawa, Boissevain, Virden, Carberry and Shoal Lake.

Additionally, the Manitoba government is reopening the conservation district office on Queens Avenue in Brandon that was closed in 2009, which will be staffed by two new hires, a sergeant and one officer.

Brandon is not a rural community, said Goertzen, but in many ways, it services rural areas around it.

“It’s a hub to Westman and different parts that don’t have the kinds of services they would have in larger centres. So, it’s a recognition that not everything has to be in Winnipeg and a recognition that we need to have services all around the province and Brandon is an extremely important part of that,” Goertzen said.

To become a conservation officer, incumbents must complete 16 to 20 weeks training at an approved law enforcement facility.

There are new conservation officers in training in Alberta, according to Nesbitt.

“Our full complement right now is 90, and we’re currently down. But we have nine recruits in Alberta right now. That’s going to bolster that number, and we’re going to hire another class this fall. And once that’s done, we have plans to increase our numbers across Manitoba and reopen more offices that were closed under the previous government,” said Nesbitt.

The provincial government promised to fill vacant conservation officer positions, but they have failed to do so, said Tom Lindsey, the NDP critic for natural resources and northern development.

“Under the PC government’s watch, vacancies have more than doubled since 2021, with one in five positions currently empty. In other provinces like Saskatchewan, conservation officers are paid nearly 30 per cent more,” Lindsey said in a statement to the Sun.

The new dispatch centre is expected to be online sometime in early August, said Stewart, who added, “we’ll flip the switch for conservation and take them over.”

All Manitobans are encouraged to report poachers and human-wildlife interactions by calling the Conservation Officer Service TIP line (toll-free) at 1-800-782-0076.

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

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