Manitoba Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine says staff are safe after fire at Winnipeg constituency office

Manitoba Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine says her staff are safe after a fire at her West Kildonan constituency office early Tuesday morning, a week after the windows were smashed.

“Our staff are safe. They are working from home for obvious reasons,” Fontaine said Tuesday. “My priority is to make sure that they are safe and that they know that I support them.”   

The Winnipeg Police Service major crimes unit is investigating after firefighters were called to the St. Johns MLA’s office at 1763 Main St. shortly before 5 a.m., police confirmed in a call with CBC News. 

The fire was declared under control shortly after 5:30 a.m., the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service said in a news release later Tuesday morning. 

Firefighters searched the building and found no occupants. No injuries were reported, the fire service said. 

Damage estimates were not available.

Winnipeg firefighters were called to the St. Johns MLA’s constituency office at 1763 Main St. shortly before 5 a.m. on Tuesday. (Ron Dhaliwal/CBC)

The fire at Fontaine’s office happened just over a week after its windows were smashed. The nearby constituency office of Point Douglas MLA Bernadette Smith, who’s also the provincial housing minister, has been hit by four fires since the start of August. 

Last week, Winnipeg police said the service’s major crimes unit was investigating the series of fires at Smith’s office.

“The fact that Minister Smith’s office has been vandalized, as well as my own, I think should concern everybody,” Fontaine said. 

A spokesperson for Premier Wab Kinew’s office said the incident is a “serious matter” and the province would not comment further, as the fire is still under police investigation.

However, during a speech at the Oodena Circle at The Forks for the Southern Chiefs’ Organization’s annual Orange Shirt Healing Walk on Tuesday, Premier Wab Kinew spoke about growing political divisions across North America, urging Manitobans to “keep peace” and “keep calm.”

“I just want everyone here to make a ton of noise and send support to Nahanni Fontaine,” Kinew said at the event for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Fontaine says her staff are safe after the fire at her office. (Ron Dhaliwal/CBC)

Everyone deserves to be safe when they go to work, Kinew said.

“Vandalism and political violence is reprehensible. We have no place for it in our society — none. It doesn’t matter if you don’t agree with someone’s politics, vandalism and that kind of violence is just not acceptable,” he said. 

Gillingham said Winnipeggers should “settle our differences at the ballot box.”

Patrick Allard, who ran against Fontaine for the St. Johns MLA seat in the last election and is co-organizing a rally this week calling for her to be removed from office, told CBC News that if the fire was in fact an act of arson, he wants the culprit to be put “in jail for a long time.”

While police have not yet disclosed the cause of the fire, University of Manitoba Prof. Christopher Adams said more Canadian politicians — including Manitoba representatives — have faced escalating threats and violence over the last decade.

“I think this is part of a pattern in which the civil discourse, of people being able to talk out their differences or to raise their voices rather than be violent, I think we’ve gone beyond a certain phase in our political history where some people think it’s all right to go and threaten property and the lives, the actual well-being, of politicians,” said Adams, who is an adjunct professor of political science and chair of the Arthur V. Mauro Institute for Peace and Justice at the U of M.

Adams said it’s particularly concerning to see a First Nations politician’s office hit by fire on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. 

He fears threats and violence will continue to escalate. 

“What I worry about is that things are escalating, and I’m worried that somebody is going to get killed with arson,” he said.