Justice Minister Matt Wiebe was joined by local MLA Ron Kostyshyn in the City last week to meet stakeholders regarding the Dauphin Community Justice Centre project currently in the works

And for the two municipalities which are partners in the project, the meeting felt like a positive step forward in the process.

Both mayor David Bosiak and reeve Ernie Sirski left the meeting pleased to see the project moving forward.

“The council chamber was full with probably six or seven folks from various government departments, plus the ministers,” Bosiak said.

“We had a good hourlong discussion with the RM and us basically discussing what we would like to see in the facility.”

“The feeling that I get from it is that they’re serious about this facility and the reason I say that is because it wasn’t just the minister and our representative, the minister of Agriculture, but they had a whole bunch of other people there,” Sirski added.

“The ministers control the purse strings, but these are the people that they get stuff done.”

Bosiak said the municipalities shared their vision for the centre being more than a place to incarcerate people. Ideas about training programs and skill development, community service options and victim’s services were among the discussion.

“It was very open-ended in the sense that lots of ideas were presented and I think it was a great first step,” Bosiak said, adding there were representatives of KPMG in the room. KPMG is the firm contracted by the province to act as their consultants in the information gathering process.

The main message, Bosiak said, was that there would be no barriers to the project created by either the RM or the City.

“We want to be partners,” he said.

Sirski added there were no real specifics about the project revealed in terms of timelines

Read the full story in this weeks Dauphin Herald.