Mayor excited about strong year for Town of Ste. Anne

The Town of Ste. Anne continues to grow as the value of building permits soared in 2023. 

“In 2023, we saw 53 permits taken, building permits taken, for a total value of 27.6 million (dollars),” says Mayor Yvan St. Vincent. “And just to compare that, in 2022 we had 49. So, a few more this past year and the value at 4.6 million.” 

He believes the community is an attractive place to live for several reasons. 

“Our proximity to Winnipeg and Steinbach of course helps us. The cost of living, particularly housing, is still quite reasonable in this area and we've had some keen developers who have seen the advantages of being in this area and have certainly invested in our area to make these opportunities for people to build and move here. So, I think it's just kind of a combination of all those things.” 

2023 also saw the region come together in support of the Maurice Chaput Arena in Ste. Anne, helping raise enough money to make the necessary repairs so that it would be able to open for this winter. 

Work continued on the lagoon expansion which was expected to be completed in September but delays in the project have moved the completion date to summer of 2024. 

“That's come at a big cost,” says St. Vincent. “And we've tried to make it clear too, that the lagoon costs were going to be big, whether we expand it or not because our lagoon is very old and needed a cleaning, for lack of a better word. So that was going to be very expensive no matter what. But we've also had to expand the lagoon to accommodate the newer neighborhoods and the newer developments. So, there was going to be a huge cost lagoon wise anyways and frankly this is probably better this way because we're doing it all at the same time.” 

It was also announced in 2023 that the town would be getting a new vocational high school with a daycare centre. Later in the year, the province also announced that the town would be getting a ready-to-move childcare centre. 

St. Vincent says it is exciting to see the community continuing to grow and notes that it does create some challenges. 

“Whenever you see your population grow as quickly as we have, that brings obvious challenges like road maintenance, snow clearing, all those other kinds of things and the implications that has on our police force, our firefighters and all the services that we offer, whether they're human resource type services or whether they are infrastructure type resource services, it impacts them all. So, we want to be strategic in our growth to make sure that we can keep up and keep our level of services high because that's something we pride ourselves on.” 

While the town is not directly responsible for providing health care in the community, the mayor says it still has a role to play. 

“This is a provincial issue,” he says, talking about the reduced Emergency Room hours at the Ste. Anne Hospital. 

Southern Health says Ste. Anne Hospital is currently experiencing a temporary physician shortage. In November, the Emergency Department hours were trimmed, and it is now open from 8 am to 4 pm, seven days per week. And the obstetrical services at the hospital were suspended. That is expected to last for approximately six months. 

“It’s critical for us as a town to make sure our residents have access to proper healthcare,” says St. Vincent. “So, we certainly do advocate when appropriate and as much as we can because we recognize the need for our hospital to be open and to be open as much as possible. That's very important to us.” 

He notes the hospital is important for the whole region, not just the town, as people from across the region access health care services in Ste. Anne. 

“Both (hospitals in Ste. Anne and Steinbach) certainly recognize that they're both critical, and ideally, would both be operating at full force to serve all of this region.” 

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