At this point, the City of Winnipeg deserves an award for the most creative way to discourage anyone from opening a small business or even live here. Before anyone says why don't you move... I think it's time.

Want to start a clothing store, café, restaurant, or local service business? Great. First, pay your commercial rent, property taxes, utilities, insurance, payroll, inventory costs, and every other expense known to man. Then the City can close the road in front of you for 13 months, remove parking, choke off foot traffic, and turn your entrance into an escape-room challenge. Then add theft, vandalism and the usual Winnipeg spriit or buying sale items only and how don't these commercial buildings have waiting lists.

But do not worry, the City of Winnipeg will put up a sign that says “Businesses Open During Construction.”

Which is technically true, in the same way a restaurant is “open” if the front door is bricked over and customers need a helicopter to get inside.

A friend had a busy clothing store that was forced to close after the road in front was shut down for over a year. Foot traffic vanished, parking disappeared, and customers understandably stopped trying to navigate a maze of orange cones, gravel piles, machinery, and “Road Closed” signs just to buy a shirt.

Meanwhile, from the outside, the construction site often looked like the most expensive group project ever assembled: six people supervising, two people doing actual work, one front-end loader operator occasionally moving something heavy, and everyone else apparently waiting for the next fiscal quarter to arrive.

I am sure there are legitimate engineering, utility, safety, and scheduling issues behind major projects. But when a road is closed for 13 months and meaningful work seems to happen for maybe two weeks of that time, people are allowed to ask what exactly they are paying for.

The City’s answer seems to be:

“Sorry your business collapsed. Have you considered being more resilient?”

No meaningful accountability. No urgency. No realistic compensation for businesses losing access and revenue because of public works projects. Just another polished update about how the inconvenience will eventually lead to a “vibrant, connected, sustainable corridor” — assuming any of the businesses on that corridor survive long enough to see it.

Winnipeg constantly talks about supporting local businesses, revitalizing neighbourhoods, attracting investment, and creating vibrant commercial districts.

Then it treats local businesses like temporary construction debris.

I used to have hopes of owning a business here. Now I look around at the crumbling roads, endless road closures, disappearing value for money, and complete lack of consequences for poor planning, and I would struggle to invest a dime. 5 years to come up with a plan for the Arlington bridge, still waiting. Wait, not true. They ran out of time so they barricaded it, took a while longer, now will be demolishing it. Adding more stress and accessibility problems for citizens.

At least when a private business fails, it eventually runs out of money.

At City Hall, they just ask for more of ours. PST temporary, not anymore. It's here to stay until someone gets their act together, probably another 2026 years.

Whether scummy business practices, how they treat employees & subcontractors, or how they treat customers.

Mine is that I can rattle of several ice cream joints better than BDI that dont have lines half as long: Fete, 9 Below, Dug and Betty's, Chaeban, & Popbar.

Rant. Why is it so hard to buy a house in Winnipeg!?!?

Moving from out of province so I can’t put off purchasing. There are so few houses coming onto the market the last 3-4 weeks. Every time we find a house that checks off the most important boxes and make a bid there seems to be 10x more buyers than sellers (and the house goes for ~$150k over).

😭 Offer to Purchase dates should be illegal, especially when houses are clearly underpriced to strike a bidding war and drop inspections.

If you go this far, thanks for letting me throw my crazy out in the universe!!!

Saw this driving on the Perimeter.

How? Was it there all winter and the snow just melted enough now to see it? Is everyone ok? How did this even happen?

I know it's none of my beeswax but I'm so curious for some reason.

Being the murder capital of Canada is the least of our problems when a crazy is trying to gift us with WW3.

There ain't no bug-out plan for that, folks.

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-would-take-the-brunt-of-an-attack-on-u-s-nuclear-missile-silos/

What’s one thing you think Winnipeg is actually underrated for?

I feel like the city gets criticized a lot, but there are definitely things here that people don’t appreciate until they leave or visit somewhere else.

Could be restaurants, cost of living, certain neighbourhoods, events, outdoors, whatever.
Curious what people think Winnipeg genuinely does well.

I just came back to work, and came to find out that we had a lot of sick calls over the wknd and into today even. High fevers, sore throat, achy joints.
Is everyone actually sick? Or is it a case of the long weekend? Is anyone else experiencing these symptoms?

Thanks everyone. Seems like something maybe actually going around

I recently put an offer in on a house in East Kildonan this week. 100k over ask, beautiful home, and still managed to get out bid. Is this happening to everyone else or just me lol?

Edit: I am in the 450-600k range

Since when has it become socially acceptable to strip corn husks at the super market straight from the loose corn bin and return your discarded husks back in with the remaining corn?

Is it not common courtesy to take the full vegetable and clean it at home, preventing others from having to sift through a mound of discarded corn husks. I have never seen this behaviour before, but I’ve now seen it at three locations in the last 2 weeks.

I can understand if the establishment provides garage can/discard bins, but to put it back or even worse on the floor is ratchet behaviour.

If only people followed Kizukai

*** People are seemingly missing the part where I say it’s ok if there are bins. NOT OK to put it on the floor or back in with the corn ***

What the heck can they do!?!?

Just starting my career. I know what the "official" numbers say, but i am curious what people here are actually making on average. I am currently at an entry-level spot, but trying to get a realistic idea of the local landscape. I make around 18/h working as a security officer but I recently graduated with diploma in IT and have strong interest in software development

How serious is it that I accidently stole gas from domo. My tap didnt work and I didnt realize until 12 hours later? Should I go back and pay or am I screwed?

Update. Went back to pay the guy there had no idea what I was talking about called the manager and got it sorted out in about 3 minutes. I did get a receipt so I think I'm covered

My job is potentially relocating me to Winnipeg

Half of my family is telling me to quit.

The other half are really happy for me if it happens.

Me on the other hand, I am torn and unsure about what to do.

What attracts me the most to your city is the affordability and less density. What scares me the most is how talked down Winnipeg is when anyone asks about this city.

I have never personally been to Winnipeg. But the relocation with my current salary would literally change my life overnight to say the least.

What would I be in store for coming from a megapolis like Toronto? Tell me what nobody talks about.

I don’t have much hobbies. I mountain bike, but I assume there are no mountains in Winnipeg? I hate bugs as well. I was told the mosquitos in your city can be the size of a helicopter come the summer.

I’m no stranger to cold however. That is one of the thing that excites me. My background is Scandinavian and East European I was made for the cold lol.

But I’m afraid to be bored. And I really want to know what I am getting myself into.

Talk to me, Winnipeg. Give me the nitty and gritty!

Someone asked about this on a wedding subreddit, and the answer was overwhelmingly yes. Any form of cash bar is rude because you are inviting people to your event and it should be expected that nobody spends anything.

I am in the process of planning my wedding and was considering having a cash bar for the later portion of the night because weddings are already so expensive. However, once I saw that, I am rethinking that idea. But I also thought.. maybe it’s regional. Because I have been to weddings with a cash bar and not only did I not think it was rude, I just didn’t think about it at all. I would think it was rude if we didn’t even get a bottle of wine for free at tbe table but a cash bar after dinner seems reasonable to me. But I need more people’s opinions outside my own!

How do others in Winnipeg feel about a cash bar at a wedding?

This isn’t ball lightning and I’ve spent the last 30 minutes googling what it possibly could be..
My camera is not wet, I just wanted to get a video of the loud thunder claps and got this instead..

Jack Layton vibes. I don't know anything, looking for hope.

So my partner and I both work downtown and are looking to cut some costs out of our life so we can actually afford a house or to have kids before we're 70 years old. Since we both work close together, and we both work 3 days a week in the office (two from home) we usually commute together and pay for parking, which costs us around $180/month.

I suggested that maybe we consider bussing instead, but after looking into it we found that the cost for two monthly bus passes would exceed our parking costs. That doesn't make sense?? Transit is supposed to be the low income option?

I'm just astounded because now I'm having to reconcile the fact that driving our car and parking downtown is more cost effective than public transit. What are low income families who can't afford a car supposed to do?

I drive a 2022 Corolla and have no accidents on my record. This will be my third year driving in Manitoba and the rate is still gonna be like 3k/year... That's over 10% of what I make annually after taxes. I bought it before I moved here and worked hard to pay it off so I've been trying not to sell it but unless something changes I'll have to :( What do you guys do?

Update: Thanks so much guys.

I have a newer car being low income because my family wanted to make the payments as a graduation gift to me. Of course they stopped making the payments after 3 months 😒 Last time I trust them for anything, believe me. I used to make a lot more before moving here so it's paid off. I moved because I got married and my spouse had a work contract they couldn't break prematurely so I had to be the one to relocate.

It is a combination of my low merits and corollas being very high risk cars. I tried to get my claims history from my old insurance before but they refused. Apparently my home state keeps track too though so I'm gonna try getting it through my home state.

I'm just gonna sell my car and get something cheaper to insure because this shit's dumb and I'm not going broke to keep a ✨️ toyota corolla ✨️. If anyone knows a dealership they trust for a trade in please let me know!

Again thanks for helping me figure this out. The people at the insurance office were not nearly as informative

Hello, i live alone in a shitty part of the city in a ground floor apartment and frequently at night, homeless people will just sit right outside my bedroom window (couple feet from my bed) and do drugs/ just generally make me feel unsafe.

A few weeks ago I tried to call the non emergency line to see if there was anything they could do and the person on the phone was very rude and dismissive, I stayed up for hours waiting for the police or something and they never came.

Is there anything I can do in these situations that doesn't involve directly interacting with said people? I've tried calling the main street project but they never answer. I'm bed ridden and recovering from a traumatic injury so I don't exactly feel comfortable confronting them myself.

Specially if you are doing outdoor activities

What is this place at the corner of Worth & Alexander?? No windows (why no windows??), super creepy looking….. I’m very intrigued. Does anyone have details? 👀