Winnipeg Mayor Gillingham adds Coun. Eadie to inner circle days after Rollins withdraws

Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham appointed Coun. Ross Eadie to Winnipeg city council's executive policy committee Thursday, filling the vacancy left in the mayor's inner circle following the resignation earlier this week of Coun. Sherri Rollins.

Eadie, the councillor for the Mynarski ward in the North End, was first elected to council in 2010. This will be his first time serving on city council's most powerful committee.

A press release from the mayor's office described Eadie, Winnipeg's first blind councillor, as a champion for accessibility who also advocates for better transportation infrastructure.

The councillor takes over as chair of council's water, waste and environment committee, which is responsible for overseeing $3 billion worth of upgrades to the North End Water Pollution Control Centre, the largest of Winnipeg's three sewage-treatment plants. 

Eadie said he would not have accepted an appointment to the executive committee if Gillingham had not offered him water, waste and the environment as a portfolio.

"He offered me what is our most difficult standing committee and departmental issues that we're going to have to deal with for the next couple of years," the councillor said Thursday outside the mayor's office.

Eadie said the Manitoba government and Ottawa must help Winnipeg complete the North End sewage upgrades, which the province initially ordered the city to make in 2003.

"If the other levels of government don't come in, what's going to happen is the water bill-payers will be paying the full shot," he said.

Eadie's addition to EPC required Gillingham to move Coun. Evan Duncan (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood) over from water and waste to become the chair of property and development, the role Rollins held before her resignation.

Eadie, a labour-affiliated councillor, effectively replaces the left-of-centre Rollins, who withdrew from EPC on Tuesday.

She had served on the EPC since she was first elected to council to represent Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry in 2018.

After she resigned from the committee, she said too little information flows to members of council, while Gillingham stated the two had differences of opinion over the province's plan to move homeless people from encampments into Manitoba Housing.

Eadie is the first Mynarski councillor to sit on EPC since the early 1990s, Gillingham's office stated. Eadie previously served as a member of the Winnipeg Police Board, initially from 2014 to 2018 and later for several months in 2022.

In 2016, Eadie was suspended from the police board for three days as a result of a 2015 incident where he said he drank too much at a series of bars and woke up at the Main Street Project shelter.

In 2017, the police board reprimanded Eadie for disclosing the desired location of a new North End district police station.

Gillingham expressed no concern with the Mynarski councillor.

"I have full confidence and trust in Coun. Eadie," the mayor said Thursday outside his office. 

"Coun. Eadie also has the wisdom and the experience to take the long view of things. He's very thoughtful, very detailed and can reach compromises where that's needed as well."

Also on Thursday, Gillingham named Coun. Markus Chambers (St. Norbert-Seine River) deputy mayor in place of Coun. Janice Lukes (Waverley West), who will now serve as acting deputy mayor. 

Both titles come with ceremonial duties but may also place the councillors in the mayor's role when he is on vacation or otherwise absent.