MFNPS headquarters moving near Brandon

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This article was published 05/02/2025 (224 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba First Nations Police Service (MFNPS) will be moving out of its headquarters in Portage la Prairie to a new First Nation-owned facility on the edge of Brandon later this fall.

The new facility will be part of a future conference centre that is currently under construction at the corner of Highway 10 and the Trans-Canada Highway on land owned by the Waywayseecappo First Nation.

“The big thing is space,” MFNPS Interim Chief Jason Colin said on Tuesday afternoon. “We’ve kind of outgrown the area that we’re in right now, and so we need the appropriate office space for our service, which is continuing to grow certainly in the last couple of years.”

Currently, the MFNPS is headquartered on the top floor of a former Indian Residential School building in the Portage area that is leased from the Long Plain First Nation.

It’s expected the building will eventually be turned into a museum, so the Manitoba First Nation Police Service had been looking for a new location.

“We’ve been looking for quite some time for a new location to move to, and Waywayseecappo … they’re building a new building and offered us some space there,” Colon said. “It’s given us the opportunity to have a new building that’s going to fit with everything that we need.”

The MFNPS currently serves 10 First Nation communities in Manitoba, including Birdtail Sioux, Canupawakpa, Long Plain, Opaskwayak Cree Nation, Roseau River, Sandy Bay, Swan Lake, Waywayseecappo, Brokenhead and the Gambler First Nation. While the police service will still maintain these detachment locations, the Brandon location will now serve as its headquarters.

Moving to Brandon gives the force a chance to work more closely with other law enforcement partners in the area, such as the Brandon Police Service and the RCMP, Colon pointed out.

“It’s a good opportunity for all of us.”

The construction of the multimillion-dollar facility — the Waywayseecappo Commercial Centre — began in 2023 with the groundbreaking taking place in May of that year.

The facility was initially designed to accommodate Indigenous groups in need of a large indoor gathering space outside of their home communities. The 25,000-square-foot facility was supposed to be up and running after 18 months, and was to house a 17,000-square-foot conference room that could hold more than 300 people, a commercial kitchen, and a VLT lounge.

The remaining space was originally meant for the community’s Child and Family Services offices and a Jordan’s Principle office, as well as commercial office space.

But shortly after construction began, Waywayseecappo’s chief and council were approached by the MFNPS to see about moving their headquarters to the facility.

“When we started the building, that’s when they really came to us and started saying ‘Hey, we’ll give you a letter of intent …’” Chief Murray Clearsky told the Sun. “That’s why the construction (of the facility) was delayed. Otherwise, it would have already been completed.”

Waywayseecappo hammered out a deal with the MFNPS to build a modern police headquarters within the structure that will utilize two and a half floors and approximately 16,800 square feet of space.

“It’s kind of central for them I guess,” Clearsky said.

The architectural design of the facility was created by Brandon-based Samson Engineering.

Construction on the interior section of the facility that will become the new MFNPS headquarters began this past October. The new MFNPS facility will include three six-hour holding cells, an armoury and a large evidence room. It will also include a large gym on the second floor, a training centre and several boardrooms. The police headquarters will also have parking for 64 personnel.

“It’s pretty much state-of-the-art that we’re doing in there,” said project manager and ADVA Marketing general contractor Shane Robb on Monday. “It’s a fantastic building.”

Construction on the rest of the facility is also moving forward. In addition to the commercial kitchen space, the VLT rooms and the new police space under construction, Robb added the conference room space will be unique, with three rooms — each of them 2,200 square feet in size — that are separated by operable partitions that can be removed or added as needed.

“They can be rented out as two rooms in one room, or they can be rented out as three rooms all together — one giant room. They all have big screens in them, and they all have state of the art communications, audio, video. It’s going to be fantastic.”

With the decision to expand the space leased by the MFNPS in the new facility, Waywayseecappo had to look for an alternative location for its other planned services. As a result, the band and council has decided to further expand the facility, even before construction on the original conference centre and police headquarters has been completed.

The 25,500-square-foot expansion, the plans for which are still under development, will house the Waywayseecappo Child and Family Services offices, a Jordan’s Principle office, as well as other commercial office space. Robb said the drawings are in the works for the expansion, and the steel “has already been ordered,” with construction planned to start on May 1.

“Waywayseecappo is making a significant investment into not only their community and the Manitoba Indigenous police community” Robb said, “but (also) the Brandon community.”

Construction of the new Manitoba First Nations Police Service building is expected to be completed in October.

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