Province eyes GPS tracking of garbage trucks

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WINNIPEG — The case of a Winnipeg serial killer, who discarded his victims’ remains in dumpsters, has prompted the Manitoba government to determine global positioning system technology must be added to garbage trucks.

The province has budgeted $200,000 for a vendor to devise a plan to improve Manitoba’s waste management systems and landfill surveillance to help police investigate crime and to serve as a “deterrent,” said Municipal and Northern Relations Minister Ian Bushie.

“We want to be able to look at this as a deterrent, for sure, so we don’t have any other families go through the situation the families are going through with the Prairie Green Landfill,” Bushie said Wednesday.

Jeremy Skibicki was sentenced to life in prison last week after being convicted of four counts of first-degree murder for the 2022 slayings of Rebecca Contois, Marcedes Myran, Morgan Harris and an unidentified woman known as Buffalo Woman. Skibicki targeted the vulnerable Indigenous women after searching for potential victims at city shelters.

The remains of Contois, Skibicki’s final victim, were found in a garbage bin in North Kildonan and later at the Brady Road landfill. Winnipeg police later learned Harris and Myran’s remains had likely been dumped at Prairie Green Landfill, north of Winnipeg. An excavation and manual search is expected to begin there this fall. Police do not have a definite suspected location of Buffalo Woman’s remains.

The province issued a request for proposals Wednesday that echoes some of the recommendations in the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs’ final report of the Prairie Green search feasibility study.

It called for mandatory GPS tracking systems to be installed in garbage trucks for all waste removal companies in Manitoba, mandatory rear-facing cameras in all garbage trucks so operators can observe material as it’s being dumped into the truck, and video surveillance of landfill entrances and exits. It called for support from the provincial government for smaller municipalities and communities to implement such changes.

A Manitoba government request for proposals, which was to be posted online Wednesday, seeks a qualified vendor with “vast knowledge” of waste management facilities and information technology to review and recommend practices to improve the monitoring of material taken to landfills, and to provide a road map of how to get there.

It also looks for how to establish “a cost-shared grant support program to landfill operators in adopting the recommended solutions.”

The review must work collaboratively with the assembly and the Association of Manitoba Municipalities and be completed by the end of 2025.

“We are pleased to see that the government is taking the recommendations from this First Nations-led feasibility study seriously and is making concrete efforts towards implementation,” Grand Chief Cathy Merrick said Wednesday.

“This step represents a significant commitment to the safety and dignity of our Nations and demonstrates a shared dedication to finding solutions that will aid in the recovery of our loved ones,” Merrick said in a news release.

The Association of Manitoba Municipalities declined to comment Wednesday. It said the government news release was the first it had heard about it.

“We look forward to learning more details from the provincial government,” a spokesman said.

The City of Winnipeg currently requires all garbage trucks that collect its trash to have GPS installed. Trucks have rear-facing cameras so operators can observe material as it’s being dumped and the Brady Road landfill has video surveillance, a city spokesman said in an email Wednesday.

The City of Thompson also has GPS monitoring on its residential garbage and recycling trucks and the garbage truck that empties commercial waste bins, spokesman Ian Graham said.

The GPS monitoring has been in place for more than two years. There is video surveillance at the scale near the entrance to Thompson’s dump, where commercial loads are weighed and where landfill users pay their tipping fees, Graham said. There is no video surveillance of the waste disposal areas, however.

The City of Brandon did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The province is looking for best practices and ways to enhance monitoring systems “to make things more all-encompassing, if they aren’t already,” said Bushie, who noted there are more than 200 waste disposal facilities in Manitoba.

The minister couldn’t estimate the cost of such measures and said the province doesn’t want to add to the “financial burden” of municipalities.

An Ontario investigator who has experience with landfill searches said he doesn’t think such measures will deter anyone from dumping a body in a garbage bin, but will “significantly” help police investigations.

Sean Sparling said those who commit such crimes aren’t aware of measures such as GPS-equipped garbage trucks.

“At the time they do these crimes, the likelihood of them knowing it is nil,” said the director of Investigative Solutions Network Inc., who is a former deputy police chief in Sault Ste. Marie.

On the investigative side, he has seen how effective GPS technology can be in landfill searches. In one case, the remains of a 2011 homicide victim that were deposited in a dumpster in Sault Ste. Marie was tracked to a landfill in Michigan.

“We knew exactly where it was supposed to be within 100 yards, square,” Sparling said. “That’s because of the tracking of the trucks.”

» Winnipeg Free Press