Kate Sjoberg: Homelessness and the Speed of Trust

Kate Sjoberg has been calling for more housing in Winnipeg since long before she became Executive Director of Resource Assistance for Youth (RaY). With over two decades in community development and nonprofit leadership, including prior roles at the Wrench, North Point Douglas Women's Centre, the Spence Neighbourhood Association, and Main Street Project, she's seen the city's homelessness response from nearly every angle.

Her assessment of the city's encampment policy is blunt: the map of where people can't go covers nearly the whole city, and the recent sweeps at Main and Logan broke trust in the very place Winnipeg told people to come for help.

In this episode, Kate shares:

• The city's encampment policy map: nearly all of Winnipeg marked red with places people can't go

• Why housing people faster than "the speed of trust" fails, sometimes within four hours

• The recent sweeps at Main and Logan, and why Kate calls them indefensible

• How decades of government pullback built a sector expected to perform miracles on underfunded budgets

• From the AIDS crisis to the toxic drug supply: the quiet movement keeping Winnipeggers alive

Get involved:

• Get trained on how to administer naloxone - Nahuen Consultation is running community drug poisoning training sessions this summer.

• Learn more about the Right to Housing Coalition

• Support Resource Assistance for Youth (RaY)

Episode Transcript:Stuart Murray 00:00

This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands on Treaty One territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji, Cree, Dakota, and the Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Amanda Logan (Voiceover) 00:20

This is Humans on Rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray.

Stuart Murray 00:31

Kate Sjoberg has been executive director of Ray, which is Resource Assistance for Youth, since July of 2025. She's been a public voice on Winnipeg homelessness policy for years. Specifically, she brings over two decades of experience in community development, social policy, nonprofit leadership, prior executive roles at the Wrench, North Point Douglas Women's Center, the Spence Neighborhood Association, plus academic work as an instructor in urban and inner city studies at the University of Winnipeg. Kate Sjoberg, welcome to Humans on Rights.

Kate Sjoberg 01:09

No, happy to be here,

Stuart Murray 01:10

Kate. So one of the reasons I wanted to have a chat with you was the city has brought in in 2025 a policy mandating the public service enforcing existing bylaws against camping in specific zones, and I did some research on you've been at this since in 2019. You talked about the city looked like a map of red, which meant places that people could not go. So let's kind of warm listeners up a little bit about you've been at this since 2019. Why has it been important you to talk about this since 2019? Your background, who you are, and how did you personally get involved in this? And then we'll dive into the policy.

Kate Sjoberg 01:49

I think a lot of Winnipeggers feel this way too. You know, growing up in Winnipeg, so I played sports and I got to take the bus and go to different parts of the city. And I noticed at the time, kind of just the different feel of different communities, particularly regarding like how how like well being was represented in terms of what I was seeing, in terms of how well the housing stock was, in terms of where people were more likely to be asking for money. So you know, when I was growing up, the outward evidence of poverty had more to do with like people asking for money on the street, and a lot less to do with like public visible homelessness. Right? It's interesting now. Like, so I'm in my 40s, and I've got lots of young people in my life, lots of very young, very young people in my life. And you see, with with children, just like the interest and the curiosity. Like, is that a person okay? Why don't they have a home? And there's just a natural kind of like caring that happens. I think most parents see that with their kids, right? And and just feeling like quite sad, you know. And and we see this like I see this with nieces and nephews of mine. Like, what's actually happening here? Why why is this happening? You know. And so for me, it's often it's it's long felt like it's a reflection on me how the rest of my community is doing, and it really doesn't matter how well I'm doing if if my neighbor or my or or someone living in in the city of where I live is not doing well. Like it it speaks to my character also in terms of like what are we doing collectively to make sure that every single one of us is okay, and I think also I, you know, there's an ethic that many of us share that like any of us born in different circumstances would have to survive the the those set of circumstances, and how well would we do? As I mentioned to you, I'm going to my parents' 50th anniversary tomorrow. Congratulations, by the way, congratulations to my mom and dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, grew up with like a lot of comparative stability to to a lot of folks living in Winnipeg, and and just really aware that had I grown up in in a situation that was a lot less stable, I don't know how I would survive a lot of the conditions that many people in the city are surviving. So, and you know, you host a podcast on human rights, and you know, I think I I also have trouble when I'm what I hear. On the one hand, we're a human rights supporting country, we're a human rights supporting city, but then there's so much evidence in our midst of of human rights breaches again and again and again, and in fact, a very young woman died in remand over the weekend, which is a place where if if we're going to be taking away people's freedoms, we should at the very least be able to uphold the safety of the person and medical support. You know, so these tragedies continue to occur. Now, on the other side, folks often I think, feel overwhelmed, and maybe we'll talk about the collective overwhelm today. But because I've been so like lucky to work in all of these amazing organizations with amazing people, but inside of amazing communities that are actually surviving these conditions and showing the skill sets to survive the conditions of. Homelessness of intensive kind of structural violence, like I see solutions all the time, and I see people like actively creating, like dealing with complexity, accommodating complexity, and then working through like, okay, well, if this is the reality of the situation, what can we do with it to to truly uphold human rights? And so I feel it's not that I feel optimistic. I think it's a little too shiny for how I feel, but but I just I guess what I'm saying is I see the evidence all the time that we actually have the capacity to work with the challenges that we're seeing and do better than what we're doing right now.

Stuart Murray 05:36

So and we're going to get into that because I again I love that when you looked at some of your media reports of what you've done, you know, you've looked at solutions, which and you and and through a myriad of organizations, which is a collective, which is I think really important. I want to get into that conversation, but before we do, I want to sort of just get a sense. You know, you mentioned when you were traveling on the bus and you saw different situations, and you're you were made aware of it, and you talk about young children being curious and sort of wondering, is everybody okay? You know, I guess I just wonder, Kate, when does that curiosity change to kind of some of the things that happen in our city where people drive down Portage Avenue? They know full well. I mean, these are people driving in cars, not on the bus, and I'm and I want to be very careful. I'm not trying to throw shade on anybody. I'm just saying that people observe these situations where people are trying to find shelter in a bus shelter, and instead of being curious, they look away. And so, where does that curiousness? I mean, from your perspective, it hasn't lost in you, but I wonder what happens to people where they just look at it and say, "You know, if I I've got so many things in my own mind, I got to get to work. I got to do this. Meanwhile, you're driving a car. Somebody is not having any money to take a bus. They're looking for shelter, and that curiosity of how do we help people. And I think when you start talking public policy, it's how do you break through that barrier and get people to say we need to be curious. We need to always be curious.

Kate Sjoberg 07:08

I mean, I think I think you've already identified what's going on. So, and and I think and I kind of want to talk about the collective stress that people are under. Okay, so you know, even before COVID, like you know, there there was there was massive financial difficulty in the 80s. There was massive financial difficulty in the 90s. So there's been these kind of waves of like financial crisis, housing crisis, these kinds of things that have reached beyond like the impact of the folks that are poorest in Winnipeg and affected like you know middle class and even upper middle class families, right? And so I think the collective stress right now is real. And what I'm talking about is not what we're seeing in public. I'm talking inside of people's households. You know, COVID has had a big impact on on people, and it's had a big impact on how we socialize, how we connect. There's been a lot of studies that show that that's that's having an impact, and so people have less; they're less available for compassion when they're experiencing more stress themselves. I think that's part of what's going on with people having you know less less space for for what they're seeing in public. But where I see, I don't know. Maybe it's not that there's an opportunity, but I think I think there's an opportunity to develop skill sets together, right? So, so one of the things that we're we're going to talk about is the matter that and house neighbors are living in the same communities. They're living in the same communities in a time where we're, regardless of how much housing we're building right now, we're going to see increases in in unsheltered people because we're going to continue to see more wildfires. We're going to see more flooding events where people are moving to Winnipeg from other communities. We're going to see more people needing to move to Winnipeg from other countries because of more events, right? And so, the collective stress is going to increase, but the requirement for us to really care about one another as a community and come together as a community is going to increase, and so it's actually the great time right now to practice. Okay, housed neighbors are really stressed out, unhoused neighbors are really stressed out. How do we create community anyway? That's interesting to me, right? Like that's really interesting because I think in the nonprofit sector, especially those of us doing outreach, we've kind of I think missed an opportunity over the past years to say to broader Winnipeg, like yes, we are here as a support for you as you're working through these very difficult emerging challenges of being good neighbors between housed and unhoused neighbors. Those of us doing outreach have said, "Outsource your relationship building work to us. We'll take it on. What we should have been saying is, we know Winnipeggers are already good at taking care of one another. Bring us in when you need us, but we can't. Do everything, and the and the issue is is getting worse. So, is up to all of us to practice these skill sets now.

Stuart Murray 10:07

Can you give some examples of that, Kate? I mean, what I'm getting at is that you know, I on this podcast, I've been you know really fortunate to talk to some really really intelligent, thoughtful people who are doing some really good things, and you know, just part of the the notion. And I do think that there's an element of I'll just sort of say education. I'm not trying to simplify it, but you know, where for example, I do a walk every morning for coffee, and when I walk, I notice that there are encampments on the riverbank, and you know, the next time you look at them and all of a sudden they're gone, and so the question is: I mean, one could sort of look at that and say that it's somewhat insightful because you know it's there. I mean, they're not they're amongst the trees, so it's not like you know that they're obviously looking for a home and a place to sort of feel comfortable. But I think the notion is that overall there seems to be a sense that they are, you know, not not. I'll just use this term, good neighbors, because people look at them and say, well, you know, look, there looks like there was a lot of debris there, and one of the ones that I learned when I was talking to some folks about homelessness earlier was the the fact that when they try to set up places to live, and when it gets cold, they understand that they might need some warmth to survive, and so that might mean starting a fire to survive. Well, again, you know, without an understanding of that, some people are all of a sudden on 911 Hey, there's a fire. We need to put it. So, so from your perspective, like like you know, I mean, and and again, what I love about what you've done is you're not looking at this and saying, "Well, we just need to get people housed. I mean, it is such a complex, complex issue with so many different levels that I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because you know, as you said, you're a solution-oriented person. It's not about perfectionism. It's about getting solutions to to to issues that we deal with. So, give us some thoughts on some of the solutions and how you see that, and how people might look at some of these unhoused people, maybe with a little bit more kindness, rather than either a looking away or saying why why are they taking up this space when it doesn't look great?

Kate Sjoberg 12:23

Yeah, I just want to affirm. I'm calling for more housing all the time. Like we need more housing, we need more housing, we need more housing. And I've had the privilege a couple times now of working in organizations where I was leading, you know, permanent housing, transitional housing, and outreach, or an organization that like Ray that's doing even more than that, right? And so, and so, being able to integrate between those services, like how do we flow people through, and how do we do it in in a way that's going to be the best for that person, like the person who's identifying their own like priorities, wants, needs, and what's going to work best for them, and what what we're working with in terms of what's available, but that's the that's the problem. What's available? We don't have enough housing available, and people continue to become housing unhoused faster than the rate at which we're adding units of housing, right? And so that's frustrating. Like it's frustrating for Winnipeggers to hear that and then be like, "Well, what does that mean? But I think that's the important thing to grapple with, like we're going to be working with people being in housing Winnipeg for the foreseeable future. So how do we live together while we're while we're waiting for the housing to be built? I'm just going to give examples of of things that I know that like people have reported to me, right? So a friend of mine, when she realized that everyone was going towards digital, like digital money, like like no more paper bills, no more coins. But people are people are still asking for money, so she's made it a point that when she knows she's going to be in the car, she actually rolls up $5 bills into into a roll, so that it's easier for her to grab and actually hand to someone. It's easier for the person to grab it, and so she puts her little rubber band over it. So she prepares herself when she's going out, and it's just a way to make sure that people who are actually asking for money can get something while the rest of us are just using like credit cards and interact, you know, payments. In other neighborhoods, I've heard about neighbors, and this happened on Waterfront Drive a couple years ago. Neighbors partnering with people living unsheltered, so housed and unhoused people working together to do a neighborhood cleanup. And something I want to just talk about, like the garbage piece, comes up a lot. I don't know where you live. I live in a home where my garbage is picked up once a week. Okay, so but if it wasn't picked up once a week, I don't really have the ability myself to take my own garbage all the way to the dump. In my last job, we worked with the city on a garbage pickup program for some of the encampments that have been around for much longer, and so the city was actually picking up garbage from encampments in the same way that they pick up from your place or my my place, without. That service, it's very difficult for people who are living in an encampment to do anything with the garbage around them because often the actually like the city provided garbage cans that are in parks are are full. They don't necessarily have garbage bags to pick things up. You know, neighborhood partnership of doing a neighborhood cleanup worked really really well. Often folks talk about safety, and a camp is in a place where I want to be. I feel unsafe. I've worked with a number of outreach teams when issues like that come up, and when there is a relationship with the person that's camping, outreach groups often have a very high success rate of saying, hey, this mom would really love to use the the structure. Would you mind moving over to that corner of the park, just so that the kids feel a little bit more comfortable? I've never heard of an example of a person camping saying, "I don't want this to feel safe for a child, you know. But it's just about a conversation.

Kate Sjoberg 15:59

Like people want to be good neighbors? They don't want to be living in a place where there's a lot of a lot of garbage. It's often simply a matter of circumstance, like choice. You know, maybe they would have loved to camp in the place that's far away from the from the structure, but the day they were camping, there was somebody else in the far corner, so they chose. You know, like all of these pieces. So yeah,

Stuart Murray 16:23

no, and I mean, Kate, I guess one of the things is you sort of, you know, and this is a big conversation in the sense that it's not a Winnipeg issue. It's, it's, you know, I'll just say it's a Canadian issue and it's broader than that. I get it, but we're Canadians, and so you know, every city in Canada is having this this conversation about how can they do a better job and what does this look like, and you know, there's always different levels, and the policymakers are dependent on who the elected officials are of the day, and it's how they perceive it. I guess the question that I would like to sort of get your thoughts on is, you know, most recently the city of Winnipeg put in some policy and talked about the 50 meters, what's available, and I think the outcome of that, as you said, is that there were red dots, and it looked that at some point the red meant where you could not set up an encampment, and so you know I went on and I looked at that map, and as you said, it was pretty much the whole city was red, and I guess my question, Kate, is when you think about the fact, and I just want to get sure to look at my notes here, because I know when you had a conversation about what was happening here, it wasn't just you. I mean, it was was Ray Sunshine House, West Central Women's Resource Center, Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, Main Street Project, Public Interest Law Center, and homelessness Winnipeg and the U of M Faculty of Law, and you know you all looked at this and gave comment, and I guess the question is, was any group of any of you consulted before the policy came into place? Because I guess the question would be if you could just kind of go in the you know the Rocky and Bullwinkle way way back machine, and start from scratch and say, you know what, we've got a problem here. It's been identified, or there's there's issues that people aren't comfortable with in these these sites. We're asking all of you, rather than we're going to come up with this and tell us what you think once it's policy. We're asking you now, what should we do with with the the outreach that you have with the grassroots that you have, the organizations, the cross section. Kate Sjoberg, what should we do as City Council to deal with this issue?

Kate Sjoberg 18:29

City Council often is seen as as not necessarily a housing provider, but but starting with City Council, City Council has been involved in a number of decisions over you know my adult lifetime, where there was an opportunity to, for example, ensure that there was affordable housing within a development, and decisions like that, where where council has said they were going to go in that kind of a direction, and then and then at the last minute reneged on it, or allowed the developer not to provide the affordable housing that they should have, right? And so it's really important to to identify that our situation right now doesn't come out of nowhere, and every level of government has a responsibility in creating the homelessness that exists right now in Winnipeg. And I think it's also important, and maybe you're going to ask about this, but just to go even further back, you know, there wasn't homelessness on these territories prior to colonization. Everyone belonged to a community. Everyone had a relationship of sovereignty with the land. And you know what we're working with now is also a product of land theft and generation over generation loss because like connected to that primary land theft, but also generation over generation building of wealth for those of us that were afforded access to land, and then you know in the next generation able to leverage that land towards you know education or other investments these kinds. Things right, and so so you know earlier in the in the conversation you asked about like where does this come from, like part of it is this ongoing settler colonization that continues in Canada and continues as regards treatment of Indigenous people, right? So what I would have said, you know, hey, how do we work with what we're seeing? I'm going to say in the in the five years prior to kind of the lead up to this policy that was implemented in in November, outreach groups in the city of Winnipeg were like just building excellent practice between them in terms of number one developing relationships of trust that. that so I want to talk about the issue of consent and trust and moving at the speed of trust, because it has a lot to do with people's later success in housing or a lack of success in housing. Because I hear a lot of like, well, this outreach group is better because they move people and they get the job done, you know, and and what happens when we move faster than the speed of trust? When we when we you know ask people to do something that's beyond their comfort comfort level, is that time and time again the initiative fails. So the idea was to get them housed. Well, we didn't have a really good understanding of what their situation actually was and what they wanted, and so they were out of that housing within the day, right? And I've seen that happen multiple times, where someone is given a nice new clean unit, and they don't stay there longer than four hours because they feel unsafe in the building, because they feel unsafe in the neighborhood, because the person that they felt the safest with back in the encampment isn't living with them. All of these things, right? You know. So, but when outreach practice is really good, the outreach groups are are communicating so well that all of them know which unit is is coming available tomorrow, and who's going to be the best fit in that unit, and they can communicate between one another between like what's happening on waterfront, what's happening in Osborne Village, and you can get as like granular as oh we were gonna house Ellen there, but Tracy's health condition just changed and she needs the unit more, and so let's go with Tracy today, and then when the next unit comes available, we'll talk about the other person, right? And so there's often a lack of understanding of that level of specialization that outreach workers are doing, and issues like like many many people who are living unsheltered are relying on outreach groups for their daily prescription, for their ride to the doctor, for connecting with loved ones at a memorial that's happening.

Kate Sjoberg 22:51

You know, and so those trusting relationships result in better success in housing because the outreach groups that are doing that work, know what's happening with the person the best. Is that a solution? Not necessarily, because you know a number of those outreach groups. Like there used to be an outreach group through West Central Women's Resource Center. There isn't anymore because they were defunded. You know, MSP has two vans over the winter time that work all throughout the year, all throughout the city, but in the summertime they only have one van, you know, and so as the number of people living unsheltered goes up, there needs to be a commensurate response in terms of outreach support. But I I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about how we need to reduce the amount of structural violence that people are experiencing who are living unsheltered, because that sets back the clock. So you know the sweep that we've seen recently really set back the clock for lots of people living unsheltered in terms of their short and long term housing success, if and when they get housed, because that broke trust with people, and that resulted in you know higher stress levels, different drug use patterns than they were used to, potentially more like closer to catastrophic events with with their drug use. We've really got to watch for the stigmatization of people living unsheltered, the amount of like negative interventions they're experiencing, and remember that if you are living unsheltered, it's usually at least a little bit a part of lifelong experience of trauma. Very few people who are living unsheltered had one incident that led to them being unsheltered. It's usually many, many horrendous things that have happened in their lives prior to living unsheltered, and then the experience of living unsheltered adds even more trauma. You know, so we've got to be careful about the additional structural violence that we put on people.

Stuart Murray 24:55

Yeah, I mean, there's just so much that you said there that is really worth kind of diving into. I mean, I think one of the challenges, Kate, is for some when they look at our city and they see people that are unhoused, you know, the feeling is well, you know, just kind of quote unquote get them off the street. Okay, so well, what does that mean exactly? Well, for your perspective, I think you mean it means they should have some form of shelter, but I think one of the things that is interesting that you brought up is from the outreach side the sophistication that exists with the understanding of how that can work. I don't think many people have any understanding of that at all. They just see they just see numbers. I don't even think they see people from time to time, they just see numbers, and you know the fact is that when you talk about that sophistication, and and you know like so many of these things come down to as you just said, you know, organization gets defunded or they only have one vehicle running instead of two, and in my mind, I mean those are tough decisions to be made. I don't mean that they're easy at all, because it all comes down to a pot of money and where do you put your funds and what does that look like? And a lot part of also of that, Kate, is who's got the loudest megaphone, right? I mean, how do you kind of get that there? But I do think that I've talked to you know a number of of what I'll just call community leaders of different different backgrounds, who are starting to use language similar to what you use, and that is, this is our community. This is where we live, and you know it's not acceptable for us to look left when there's a problem over here on the right. And I don't mean political. I'm talking about just you know what's over there, you you know we we have to find ways to how do we get engaged in that, and I think one of the biggest challenges is, and again I'd love your thoughts on this, is that sometimes we get over organized. In other words, that this organization does this, this organization does something similar, that organization is something similar to the two of them. This organization, you know, and then all of a sudden you've got all these organizations with different titles and acronyms and stuff, and people are just saying, "Hey, K Pasa, like just like where are we going with? Are we getting administration heavy when we should be doing something that is front line driven?

Speaker 1 27:19

Yeah,

Kate Sjoberg 27:19

that's interesting. I mean, I I haven't checked this forensically, but we have a lot of nonprofits in in Manitoba, and and likely much more than other places, and so that's a product of I would say like a very special social conscience that's here, and maybe has lineages way back to the 1919 strike, but I think part of what's happening is that there's unfortunately this structural gap that continues to widen, and that's been happening. I mean, so you know, if you follow the trajectory of, it's been a while since I talked to this, so I'm just going to try to you know retrieve information, but the pulling back that happened in the '80s, and then especially in the '90s, of the the the social supports from the from the state. I'm talking like education, healthcare, these kinds of things. And there was a there was an explicit attempt. And you know, this is also a time when, like, there was a time when churches played more of a role in social supports, right? And and churches have also kind of like pulled back in terms of their capacity. But then there was this active and purposeful creation of the third sector, the nonprofit sector, to gap fill for where government decided to pull back, and and that was a part of like a political shift in terms of critiques of big government, let's say, right. But what that means, as say, there's a defunding of healthcare or a defunding of education or a shift in postsecondary education from being publicly funded to to relying more and more on private, is that often there's there's a service component that needs to be made up by someone, and everybody knows that that needs to be filled one way or another. But what happened is that governments decided to fund nonprofits and decided to fund nonprofits that were largely overfunded. Like I've never worked in a nonprofit where we were funded to actually solve the problem. It's always been piecemeal. It's always been well, you know, we're we're going to give you. You asked for this amount. You showed us in in your numbers what it would take to actually do the job. We're going to give you half of that or 75% of that, and and ask but ask you to keep getting the outcomes that you you promised, right? So nonprofits are you know like not. I don't love this language, like but performing miracles every day, but it shouldn't necessarily be that way. We should have a healthy and robust healthcare system that doesn't have to be like band aided back together all the time. We should be able to address racism in healthcare so that people actually want to go to the hospital when they've had a catastrophic event, as opposed. To, you know, there were so many people that I served at Main Street Project Shelter, for example, who should have been in a hospital hospital bed but would not go there. And so, frontline shelter staff were working with people who had just had surgery or should go for surgery. These kinds of things, right? So, it's interesting to talk about the amount of nonprofits and why that might be the case. So it would be really, really great to to think more about how government can actually and like a lot of the problems that nonprofits are dealing with are structural problems created by gaps in the system.

Stuart Murray 30:35

Would you say like from your your perspective of how you've researched this and and again you've lived it from a front line perspective. What you've seen and what you've witnessed. Would you say that is there some thinking that should be brought to this question around the fact that maybe let's put government to the side? Let's look at something that is more community driven. And I just sort of go back. I mean, you mentioned the 1919 issue that we had here in Manitoba and Winnipeg, you know, my understanding is that one of the beautiful things that took place in Winnipeg was the coming together of labor and management around creating the United Way. I mean, it was very much a sense of saying we can do better here, people. And yes, we might look at the way that we run our organizations from a management and a labor perspective, somewhat different, but we all live in this community, and so that sense of what the United Way is, and I think today they still do a great job. But my point is that there was a coming together of of what you would call two structurally different social backgrounds of saying we got to put that aside and say what are we going to do for the people of this city? And so, you know, is it always that what's government going to do from your perspective?

Kate Sjoberg 31:47

So I I don't think it's either or, and I agree. United Way does great work. Winnipeg Foundation does great work, but we are talking about like a problem of democracy, right? And and when we too heavily rely on foundations for the work, that moves us away from democratic use of our our collective, you know, resources, and moves into the priorities of very specific foundations. So, you know, and this is so. Just to be clear, this is not a commentary on United Way or Winnipeg Foundation, they've undergone very public, very methodical efforts to ensure that their investments are getting to the Winnipeggers that need it the most. But it is government's role to ensure that every single citizen of Manitoba of Winnipeg is supported towards health equity, like all of the socioeconomic indicators, right? And so it's actually like it's our elected officials' job to do that, and our elected job, our elected officials' job to fix it when it's not working. That's why I elect my representatives, right? Like the Winnipeg Foundation has no like has no responsibility to meet Kate Sjoberg as like a resident of Winnipeg, right?

Stuart Murray 33:05

Yeah, yeah, no, no. I listen, and I and I love the perspective because I think one of the things that's interesting is you know Section Seven of the Charter, which is you know sort of that whole issue around you know what your ability is and what your rights are as a human being. I mean, you know that is something that governments do oversee is the charter. The reason I wanted to ask you that question, Kate, is because you know when I've been doing this podcast and and I've done it for a number of years now, and and it's it's just interesting that a lot of times when human rights issues come up and the challenges, it's because of the systemic change, or the not-I should say-not the systemic change. That the systemic issue, the problem, is so ingrained that to try to sort of you know adapt here or change over there or make an adjustment here, you know, it's like no, we have to change the system. You know, you cannot go in and just do sort of a small change, and one of them, frankly, is putting more money in. I mean, you know, you can put more money in, and I think people would sort of say, "Thank you so much. But what's the outcome? How are you measuring the outcomes of what it is that you're putting into the into the system? If you were to look at this again from your perspective, from a systemic issue, is there a way that you would say we have to back up and look at how we have approached this, and change the way completely how we structure this and how we look at this.

Kate Sjoberg 34:28

Like one of the things I think about is how we talk about child poverty. So Manitoba has a horrendous problem with child poverty. We we always tick very far up among the worst places in Canada. Well, what is child poverty? Child poverty is family poverty. What is family poverty? That's stagnating wages. It's stagnating EIA rates. It's inability to afford to go to school. It's inability to afford the bus to go to school. It's inability to find a job. Right, and so. It's an interesting strategic move, and important to talk about children. Absolutely, it's important to talk about children. But when you separate the child from the family, you get less of a sense of the strategic fix or the the structural fix that we're in, right? And so, and also, by the way, it feeds into this this colonial problem of separating children from their families, which only increases harms, right? And so I'm very, very interested in ensuring that families can stay together. Well, what if families need to stay together? One of the things we can do is reduce their economic stress, ensure that families have access to housing, like like all of these pieces, but also ensure that every neighborhood in Winnipeg is well resourced, you know, has a really healthy local community center. The schools are well resourced. People can get on the bus and and afford to get on the bus and get around the city in a good way. All of those pieces, right? So when I when you talk about going way back, like that's one of the things that comes to mind,

Stuart Murray 36:01

I want to say, are you hopeful? I think you are hopeful, but I guess I want to put into context the fact that when you go back, how long you've been doing this? You know, back to 2019 when you first became you made a CBC report back in in in 2019 Have you seen? I mean, I know there's issues and challenges, Kate. We can talk up a lot about that, but you know, if we were to just sort of maybe change the conversation slightly again, from a positive perspective, in in those years, have you seen some positive things that have taken place in in terms of conversations or in terms of this issue? Have you said, well, you know what? I know we've got big challenges in front of us, but I have seen where there's been some actually some pretty positive outcomes.

Kate Sjoberg 36:47

It's really important to talk about, and I'm going to go way back on this too. So you know, around the time that Kali Shiva was created in Winnipeg, so this was when just like everywhere else in North America, people who were dying of HIV/AIDS were being ignored by their families and the system, and essentially killed by neglect and killed by ignorance and killed by homophobia. Right, but people came together to support one another, and it was the the survive like the the surviving families themselves who learned how to care for people, and and also learned about the matter of the spread and how to how to reduce the spread, and then there's a strong kind of Venn diagram between people like folks who suffered that event and folks who were also impacted by the war on drugs at the time. So the emergence of a toxic drug supply that kills people, who learned themselves how to keep yourself safer when you're using drugs, right? And so, and so, in both cases, the medical professionals have learned from the folks who survived the issue themselves and taught themselves safer practices, and that has now been codified in in medical research now, right, and so Kali Shiva turned into Sunshine House, which is continues to be a leader in Winnipeg in terms of in terms of listening directly to the people that are most impacted by the issue and learning from them, right? So there's been this silent, gorgeous, and like grief-filled and heart-filled movement of loved ones of people impacted by the toxic drug supply, who have been advocating for people, but also learning how do we use naloxone, how do we support someone who's experiencing a drug poisoning event, how do we keep people alive so that they are available for treatment if and when they are interested in that treatment, right? And it's silent and it's quiet and it's dignified. It's not always quiet. A lot of a lot of people are really really loud, but but to your point, like what's what is motivating? It's that I I meet Winnipeggers every day who, just like me as a young kid, are like, "What is going on in the streets of Winnipeg? How do I support someone who looks like they're suffering, even though it's kind of overwhelming? Even though I've maybe never met someone who's living unsheltered, even though I don't have like personal experience with drug use, I'm going to learn how to use an naloxone kit. I'm going to get over my personal fear and overwhelm about engaging in this practice, and over time, I'm going to have a skill set that really, really matters in terms of caring for other people. And so, it's symbolic of this like beautiful, beautiful commitment that we can have with one another, and being like, like my stake in this city matters, and it matters just as much as your stake. And we keep one another alive. We keep one another safe.

Stuart Murray 39:46

So you mentioned using a naloxone kit, right?

Speaker 2 39:50

Yeah.

Stuart Murray 39:51

Okay. So, so just on that, I mean, I'm just saying. So, if anybody's listening, and you know, I'm going to ask you outright because I'm interested. Yeah. How, as a citizen, can I learn. To use that, or what is the process involved in that?

Kate Sjoberg 40:03

There's a number of folks training in the city. I actually heard the other day that Nahwen Consulting is offering public training, and so that's Victor Mundaka. He works out of Nadine Mac. I think it's on Monday that he's offering, but you know maybe maybe I can send you a bunch of options, Stuart, that you can you can like tack on. Yeah,

Stuart Murray 40:23

I would love that, and I'll put that into the notes and all of that. And and I think that would be great because I'm just saying, you know, as you're saying that, I mean, this information is it's new to me as a citizen, and I think, you know, if if people, you know, it's one of those things where when people start to say, and I mean, I always think in during these podcasts, Kate, what I like to be able to do is to ask my guest, in this case you, if people want to get more involved, like in whatever the issue we're talking about, and we know what we're talking about in this issue or in this podcast. How can they do that? And I mean, you've just given some examples, and I think that's super important because I think a lot of people just they just don't know, and so then you get down into the notion of the education of the issue, so that people can find out where some of these resources versus saying, "I didn't know what to do.

Kate Sjoberg 41:08

Yeah, yeah. So I'll I'll I'll dig up some options that make sense for people. But another one is the right to housing coalition. Like they've been a leading voice on ensuring that we're building housing as quickly as we need, but also with you know to the numbers that we need.

Stuart Murray 41:24

Yeah. Okay. No, that's awesome. Have you, you know, I I neglected to ask you this at the outset, but you you know you've got a tremendous depth of understanding of these issues and your involvement. Did you take any formal education that got you involved in some of this, or is this just kind of something as started as a young Kate Sjoberg as an athlete going around the city and said, "I'm curious and I'm looking for solutions.

Kate Sjoberg 41:49

Yeah, so I got a chemistry degree at the UW, but then I also decided to take politics. But I have to say, like, what the the place I learned the most was I got involved in student politics, and I was with the with the University of Winnipeg Students Association for two years, and so you know, a lot of the skill set that I use today, the foundation was built, you know, doing that that community organizing work and policy work, student student activism. Yeah,

Stuart Murray 42:20

yeah, good for you. Is there a place that you would say if you were to look around Canada, maybe broader? I don't know. That you would say, you know, like always, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are places that are are very very active, very progressive on these issues, and what we need to do is understand there might be different climates, there might be different socio-economic issues. I mean, it's not like a one-size-fits-all. But from your perspective, Kate, is there a place you would say, you know what, these people have got it going on? Like this community or this city or this whatever has really, really engaged in this, and they're making some tremendous progress.

Kate Sjoberg 42:57

Yeah. So the Manitoba Harm Reduction Network is doing trainings all the time, and they do the they do it for the public. And so, you know, aside from what I mentioned about Victor, like Mattt Harm Reduction Network has trained trained like 20,000 people over time in in harm reduction ethics and practice. There's been this interesting emergence over the time of Instagram. You know, this consultant trains on this part of like maybe it's decolonizing work. This person trains on community organizing. This person trains on somatics and somatics and working in community. You know, and so I can think of a few names like that. But I I would kind of want to like think some more before I suggest like like broad interest. You know, yeah, yeah,

Stuart Murray 43:40

no, no. Listen, I mean, Kate, I did have the folks from Manitoba Harm Reduction on this podcast, and you know, they were exactly as you said. I mean, the amount of you know sort of education they're doing, but you know, they also brought up something I thought was very salient, and that is they have to be invited in. So it's not like they have a free you know entry, and so now you're talking about a barrier potentially of saying we're not sure we want that organization in our school. So now you're talking about school trustees. You're talking about teachers, right? I mean, so it starts to spin into a different direction potentially. So, but but but the point is, and I think I want to stick with this point because this is important. There's organizations that are proactively there, so it's not like you, you know, if you you can find them, they're there, and they're prepared to be a part of this. So, I think it's I think it's amazing. I when when I was thinking about this conversation, you know, I really was looking forward to it, and I the reason I was looking forward to it is because, you know, when I look back on your your interest and your involvement and your passion and the fact that, you know, a lot of times people will just sort of talk about the problem, and that's important. But a lot of people just kind of leave it there. You're very much on the other side as and saying, look, we we understand the problem, we can talk more about it, but now we need to shift and talk about solutions. And I think that that is. Something that I think is is so so valuable as we sort of talk about outcomes of where we're at versus how much more money can we throw at this as a as an issue, and and so well I mean that's important and I you know mean your voice you know I hope we can shout it from the rooftops you know so people could hear it, but I, but I would say, Kate, from you know this podcast, you know, always kind of talk about sort of the hourglass as it sort of starts to trickle to sort of the the sands of time ending. I always sort of ask my guests, is there anything that you wish that I would have asked you that I didn't? In other words, like this is a platform for you, and I thought, man, I thought we might get into this conversation, and we didn't. And so, could I just take a few minutes and talk about this on the basis of saying, for those people that are listening, this is an opportunity to educate those listeners.

Kate Sjoberg 45:54

Yeah, sure. I guess thanks for that. A primary caution for me and something I'm really concerned about is that we seem to be very much in a time of different classes of human beings and the creation of a class of human beings that we're not even talking about as if they are human beings anymore. And I think for people that are concerned about human rights, I think we need to be really just aware that that's where we're at in the public discourse about what's happening for people who are using drugs and people who are living unsheltered, and particularly concerning last week with the with the police sweeps that happened was that they happened in an area where we have chosen to invite people over time. Like as a city, we've designated the area of Main Street and Logan, and I've heard the language even of like that's the homelessness campus. That's where we want people to go. It's also a place where people seeking health supports and basic need supports are going, and they feel safe. And so, as a city, over time, we've created this space where we're saying, "Please come here for your health services. And then last week, we sent in in police, a police force that were actively detaining people, and so there, it's such a breach of like it's such a matter of bad faith. It's such a matter of of breaching trust between policymakers and the front line, right? So I really want people to kind of understand the gravity of what happened last week. I think it was a real, real horrific moment for the city of Winnipeg, and particularly in a moment we're in a we're in a public health emergency around HIV. Right, you've been highlighting my focus on solutions, and I want to talk about solutions. So, as someone that I've relied on very, very heavily, particularly over the last five years, is Dr. Martin Broken Martin Brokenleg, and his theory around the circle of courage model has been around since I'm going to say, like the late '90s, but it remains such a methodical and helpful approach to to thinking through you know the interface between nonprofit service providers like the folks that I've worked with forever, and folks that are seeking services, and rather than be deterministic about like, well, this person is a drug user, we're going to stream them through to treatment, and that's that's the pathway. It invites everyone to consider four quadrants that are very connected to brain development and what our brains love to do of the circle of courage, which is independence, generosity, belonging, and mastery. And so, I've been very heavily coaching the people that I work with over, particularly the last five years, when we're working together, to think about those four quadrants in our own lives, but also to like expand the options with the folks that we're working with, and look for like how does this person feel belonging? Where can we build independence? Where can this person feel like they're giving back, and feel like a real human being because they're able to give back through their skill sets? And so I really encourage folks. You know, it's it's really provided me a way to help frontline service providers think more creatively and get more excited about the work because there's more like it opens up the field of possibility as opposed to stay really deterministic and so it allows us to just be humans together you know it's such it's such a nicer way of working you know so Martin Brokenleg circle of courage model.

Stuart Murray 49:22

Okay, Martin Brokenleg Circle of Courage model is is that somebody who is is Martin alive today? I mean, is he a mentor of yours? And

Kate Sjoberg 49:31

no, I I have not met him, but his name is Doctor Martin Brokenleg, and he's he's from the states, and he's he's a social scientist.

Stuart Murray 49:40

Okay, all right. I'll make sure. I mean, that sounds fantastic. And I did say where we're going to go, but I do think I need to just sort of probe this one more time. You know, your notion about the sweep that was done, sort of Logan and Maine, and I mean, I guess that's one of the questions you talk about trust. You would think, for whatever reason, they felt that the police. Department, City of Winnipeg Police Department felt they had to do that. Is that somehow somebody would have said, you know, given a direction to do that, and you would you would have thought that somebody might have said, well, just a minute, before you do that, please understand, we're very aware of what's happening there. We have no challenge in what's happening. As a matter of fact, we're inviting people into that area. So by going in there and doing kind of a sweep, you are are are setting what we have been working on so far back, and I just wonder, Kate, how where where would that disconnect be from your perspective?

Kate Sjoberg 50:31

I'm astonished. I'm I'm astonished at the way that people have been treated and the way that the approach has been defended. I don't think it's defensible. Yeah, and I think I think Winnipeggers are right to have questions about exactly what exactly what you articulated.

Stuart Murray 50:50

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's I I it's kind of not the way I kind of want to close the podcast off because I, you know, I mean, this is just a big, big, big issue. But I mean, it comes down to what I think you have said at the begin outset, and what I tried to also articulate is that, you know, we're we're Winnipeggers. I mean, we're Winnipeggers from all angles, and we need to understand that we have to treat every Winnipegger on both sides of us the same way that we would like to be treated. I mean, it can be as complicated or as simple as that. And and you know, I I want to thank you and your your what you've done and the organizations you've worked with. And you know, I talked to Levi at Sunshine House. It was a really interesting conversation, also. And again, great learning opportunity for me, as has this conversation been, Kate. So, Kate Sjoberg, I just want to say thank you for finding some time to talk about a very big conversation that that I need to have you on more because there's more to talk about here. But I appreciate the the issue you've shared with us about the encampment policy that the city's brought in where it has not been successful, offering up some some solutions, which I think is really really appreciated. And so, along with that, I'll just say thank you for your time and thank you for what you're doing for the city of community of Winnipeg.

Kate Sjoberg 52:13

Yeah, total pleasure. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Matt Cundill 52:16

Thanks for listening to Humans on Rights. A transcript of this episode is available by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode. Humans on Rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray. Social media marketing by Buffy Davy. Music by Doug Edmond. For more, go to humanrightshub.ca.

Tara Sands (Voiceover) 52:36

Produced and distributed by the Sound Off Media Company.