Millennium Library user praises community hub as advocates criticize councillor's call to move it

Advocates are criticizing calls by a Winnipeg citycouncillorto move a community hub out of the city's biggest library, with some suggesting the comments are discriminatory.

Coun. Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood), who's also the chair of Winnipeg's community services committee, saysthe space connecting people with social supports inside theMillenium Library should move elsewhere.

The councillor said in an interview Wednesday the library is not an appropriate place for thoseservices, expressing concernabout safety and thenumber of visitors dropping. "When people are suffering from addictions and [mental health crises], they are unstable and very frequently very unsafe," he said.

Information Radio - MB8:27City Councillor Evan Duncan on secuity concerns at the Millennium Library

Winnipeg City Councillor Evan Duncan tells Host Marcy Markusa why he feels the Community Connections hub should be moved out of the Millennium Library

"I appreciate the work that's been going on in the Millennium Library," the councillor told CBC's Information Radio."I appreciate the advocacy around it. However, the Millennium Library has been a place that should be for library services."

Michael Redhead Champagne, board member at the non-profitFearless R2W Inc., said that shouldn't be the case.

Champagne is one of the people behindthe community safety host program, which trained security guards at the library with de-escalation skills and trauma-informed care. He said the library is ideal toprovide services in the "most accessible way possible," and that the hub is actually one way toaddress safety concerns.

"I'm willing to entertain anybody's ideas on how we make it better, but I'm not willing to entertain ideas about simply removing the space, and moving those people quotation, quotation, 'out of sight, out of mind,'" Champagne said.

"This is their home as much as it's our home. They have a right to use the library. They have a right to exist downtown just like all of us do."

'A provincial responsibility': councillor

The community connections space has referred more than 1,500 people to support services since it reopenedon Oct. 30. It was closed for 11 months before that, after Tyree Cayer was killed inside the library's main floor on Dec. 11, 2022.

The hub aims to connect people with library resources as well as shelter and housing, social assistance, benefits, employment, ID assistance, mental health and addiction services, and food security services.

Duncan said those services shouldn't be underthe city's jurisdiction, and the province should fund a downtown hub of its own.

"That is a provincial responsibility, and the folks at the Millennium Library in the community connection space have been doing a great job at picking up the slack," he said.

The councillor added people looking for help shouldn't be "paraded" ina public place.

"We could look at alternative spaces where they could have their decency and dignity to go and ask for a hand up in life," Duncan said.

Joe Curnow, who's with the advocacy group Millennium For All, said the hub isan "incredibly effective" space that provides life-saving resources.

She saidsuggesting a library should only offer traditional services is exclusionary.

"I hear that as a dog whistle racist framing of who deserves to be in the library," she told CBC's Up to Speed Friday.

"The kind of racism where folks don't have to be explicit about who they are excluding from a space or from a group, but they can suggest it such that listeners can kind of get it, but they can still plausibly deny it."

Up To Speed8:31Should the community connection space inside Millenium library be moved elsewhere?

Winnipeg city councilor Evan Duncan wants to move the community connection space inside the Millennium library elsewhere. CBC Host Faith Fundal spoke with member of Millennium for All group about the proposed removal of Community Connections space at the Millennium Library

Curnow says the community connections space makes library workers feel safer, and that there isn't evidence that shows the space isdriving visitors numbers down.

"When something does happen in the library, it gives a space for folks to de-escalate, decompress," she said.

"It just baffles me that we would suggest that pushing more people out of the library is a strategy for addressing concerns about [attendance]."

Visitor applauds services offered at library

Levins Joseph, who lives in British Columbia but travelled to Winnipeg last month, said he's visited theMillennium Library every day since he got to the city.

Though he doesn't use the community connections space, he says it makes sense for the services to be offered there.

"To have that type of access here in the library is probably helpful for the people that do need it," he told CBCNewsoutside the library on Saturday.

Joseph says he's been to libraries all over Canada's major cities, but that he'snever seen anything like the community connections space.

"I think it's pretty cool," Joseph said, adding that it could savepeople the time of having to go to different social agencies for support: "You can find it all here at the library."

A report on safety and attendance at theMillennium Library and other public libraries in the city is set to be discussed at acommittee meeting next week.