4 meetings in 1 chaotic day: Winnipeg city council approves police labour deal

The City of Winnipeg has approved a new labour deal with nearly 2,000 police employees during a chaotic day at city hall that required members of council to attend four separate meetings.

During a special council meeting held within the lunch-hour break of a regular council meeting, Winnipeg's elected officials voted 15-1 to approve a five-year contract with the Winnipeg Police Association.

The collective bargaining agreement calls for an expanded role for civilians and cadets within the service, cuts some overtime hours for officers who attend court, and offers annual wage increases near 2.5 per cent for the first two years and around 1.6 per cent during each of the remaining three years of the contract.

• Winnipeg police union contract calls for civilians, cadets to take over more work from officers in uniform
• Wednesday's council agenda: A deal for police, more time for scrutiny, less school-zone enforcement

The contents of the contract, however, took a back seat to the procedural wrangling that was required to place the deal before councillors for a vote.

Several members of council's unofficial opposition seized on the short notice to consider the deal — with voting coming about 18 hours after it was made public — as an example of what they claim is Mayor Brian Bowman's heavy-handed approach to pushing legislation through city council.

The Winnipeg Police Association, which represents 1,443 officers in uniform and 526 civilians, ratified the contract on Monday night. A special meeting of council's executive policy committee was then held on Wednesday morning, before the regular June council meeting, to consider the deal.

2nd special meeting called

That took place but was then rendered null and void after North Kildonan Coun. Jeff Browaty pointed out members of council were not provided with notice of the special meeting.

Browaty said the deal, which will cost the city an additional $55 million over the next five years, deserves at least one more day of council scrutiny.

"We've been asked to vote on an agreement that has major implications moving forward, without disclosing all the details," said Browaty, opining police are getting higher wage increases than members of other unions.

That forced council to take a break, during which Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry Coun. Jenny Gerbasi accused Browaty of trying to sabotage council proceedings in order to score political points.

Bowman then called a second special meeting of executive policy committee to approve the deal over the lunch hour. The mayor, however, still required a two-thirds vote of council — 11 out of 16 members — to hear the matter in the afternoon.

Since the mayor usually can only count on nine votes in the chamber on any issue — the seven members of executive policy committee plus Couns. Gerbasi and Matt Allard (St. Boniface), informally known as "EPC+2" — the mayor chose not to roll the dice on a rare and embarrassing defeat on the floor of council.

Instead of asking for council to suspend its normal rules to debate the last-minute police contract, he called a special meeting of council later on during the lunch break.

'They've put a gun to our heads': Wyatt

Several opposition councillors, including Browaty, Janice Lukes (South Winnipeg-St. Norbert), Shawn Dobson (St. Charles) and Russ Wyatt (Transcona) complained about the procedural wrangling.

"I'm typically uncomfortable voting on something presented at the 11th hour," Wyatt told council, comparing Wednesday's proceedings to a 2009 event when former mayor Sam Katz called a special council meeting to approve the sale of the Winnipeg Square Parkade.

"This is a political ploy," he said. "They've put a gun to our heads."

Council speaker Devi Sharma (Old Kildonan) told him it was not her decision to call the special meeting within a meeting.

Bowman did not address the wrangling in his comments about the deal, which was supported by all but one of the councillors who complained about the lack of notice.

Only Dobson voted in opposition.