Maybe not a lot of tangible work gets done at an Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) convention, but the semi-annual get together of municipal officials from around the province is a networking opportunity that is second to none, said Dauphin deputy-mayor Christian Laughland.
This year’s fall convention took place, Nov. 25 to 27, at the RBC Convention Centre in Winnipeg.
“I think the City of Dauphin is pretty well respected at the AMM level. There’s a lot of people there that we all know, not just myself, but the staff and the other councillors that go and it’s a really good event to go and see what everybody else has got going on,” Laughland said.
And a lot of people like to hear about what Dauphin has got going on, especially at the City Caucus.”
The new recreation deal between the City and the Rural Municipality of Dauphin was a hot topic at the Cities Caucus meeting, as was the fallout from this past summer’s wildfires and the extensive infrastructure projects most communities are working on or are facing.
“It’s always good to go and hear the stories,” Laughland said.
“Thompson talked a lot about the fires they had up there. They’re also hosting the winter games, so they are really excited for that. There was a lot of wastewater conversation, which Dauphin is ahead of the game there. We’re working on ours. But places like Winkler and Steinbach are dealing with that.
“It’s unfortunate that there’s an election in a year and some of those people might not be around, but it’s still fun to go to the fall convention and talk to all those people.”
On top of the plenary sessions and keynote speakers, the convention also provides an opportunity for some face time with provincial officials.
This year the City met with Minister of Labour and Immigration Malaya Marcelino, as well as with Minister of Education and Early Childhood Learning Tracy Schmidt.
“(Marcelino) was great to meet with,” Laughland said.
“(Schmidt) talked really highly of the Dauphin area and everything going on here. We obviously discussed the new day care, Prairie Park Place. She was really happy to help us there. The next step there is staffing, so we talked about that. And she heard about the Dauphin Kings hosting a Countryfest game this weekend and she wanted to see the jerseys. So it was a really good conversation with her, as well.”
Finally, City officials met with the deputy minister of Housing, Addictions and Homelessness.
“They had nothing but compliments about how Dauphin is handling the (housing) the situation especially at the highrise, and how good we’ve been to work with,” Laughland said, addling on top of the formal meetings, there were several impromptu conversations with provincials officials in the hallways such as Agriculture Minister and Dauphin MLA Ron Kostyshyn, as well as Premier Wab Kinew, who, Laughland added reiterated the promise that physical work on the new community justice centre will get underway in 2026 in his keynote address.
“You pass these people going through the hall ways and they’ll stop for some quick conversations. Those relationships, we didn’t have that with the previous government. Those guys wouldn’t come up to us and talk to us, they would more so avoid us in the hallways,” Laughland said.
“These current ministers and MLAs, and the premier, they’ll walk out of their way when they see people from Dauphin to strike up a conversation. It’s a nice breath of fresh air.”
