Local News
Winnipegger David Ganetsky becoming go-to guy for mould and asbestos removal throughout Western Canada
By MYRON LOVE David Ganetsky’s Enviro Doctors is fast becoming the preeminent specialist throughout Western and Northern Canada when it comes to mould and asbestos removal. In the past year alone, Ganetsky points out, his employee numbers have grown from 10 to 35.
“Over the past couple of years, our business has been growing exponentially,” he reports. “We currently have seven crews (each consisting of four members) operating in places such as Thompson, Brandon and The Pas. We have one crew that specializes in mould removal.
“We have contracts for projects – beyond Manitoba – in Saskatchewan, Alberta, Northwestern Ontario, Nunavut and Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. None of our competitors match our geographical reach.”
Ganetsky and Enviro Doctors have come a long way in just nine years but, for the long time resident of Garden City, his latest reincarnation is built on his many years of experience as an entrepreneur. The son of Walter and Penny Ganetsky notes that he was inspired to pursue a career largely in business by his work with his zaida, the late Bernard Mondell, who was in the wholesale business.
Following high school graduation (from Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate), he began looking for business opportunities. “My first business venture was in communication,” he recalls. “I founded Delta Communications, one of the original cell phone providers in Winnipeg.”
He learned the art of business largely by hands-on experience but, he points out, he also took a number of business courses over several years.”
Ganetsky’s work history also includes working in sales in the golf business and serving for two years as executive director of the Portsmouth Retirement Residence. His entry into mould and asbestos removal came about through his work as a business consultant.
“I was hired by a company involved in mould remediation and removal to help grow their sales,” he recounts. “After helping them to achieve their goal, I could see that there was a void in the marketplace. There was no company specializing specifically in mould removal. I did some research into the industry, took a few courses and proceeded to open The Mould Doctors.”
That was in 2014.
As business grew, Ganetsky notes, he began to get a growing number of calls asking about asbestos removal as well. As a result, in 2016, he changed the company name to Enviro Doctors to better encapsulate the services Ganetsky offers.
(He later added a demolition service.)
The mould and asbestos removal maven points out that there are very stringent guidelines to be followed in his line of work, in particular when it comes to asbestos removal. “We are required to do a yearly audit,” he says. “We have one fulltime staff member dedicated to ongoing training.”
Ganetsky observes that there is a clear relationship between mould build-up and health issues. It has only been in recent years that doctors have become aware of the link between mould build-up and ongoing flu-like symptoms and respiratory ailments such as asthma, he reports
He adds though that not everyone is affected negatively by mould build-up. He explains that mould build-up is created by a combination of high humidity or moisture, resulting from a spill or a leak, and a “food source,” such as drywall or furniture.
“Much of the time, mould is invisible,” he notes. “We at EnviroDoctors can do an air quality test which will confirm the presence of build-up.”
Homeowners can remove small amounts of mould, he suggests, by spraying the affected area with a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water, then wiping way the black film.
He points out that mould is a particular problem in Aboriginal communities. “We have sent our teams into numerous First Nations bands throughout Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Northwestern Ontario and the North. There was one such community, for example, where about one-third of the houses had mould problems.
“Most of these communities suffer from overcrowding, neglect and lack of knowledge how to prevent mould build-up,” he points out. “As part of our service, we try to teach the community members how to prevent the development of mould.”
Ganetsly notes that he is proud of the fact that the environmentally-friendly formula Enviro Doctors uses for mould removal was developed in a Canadian laboratory.
He further touts Enviro Doctors’ “fresh air guarantee,” which includes free air quality testing and a follow-up test 90 days after completion of the work.
Enviro Doctors’ potentially most high-profile project to date may be the upcoming excavation of Winnipeg’s Prairie Green Landfill in hopes of finding the remains of two or three female Indigenous murder victims. While the original estimate for the project was around $180 million, a new report released in late January by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and ISN Maskwa (an Indigenous-owned company that provides emergency response training and services) suggest that the work can be carried out for about $90 million.
“We have been approached to participate in the project,” Ganetsky reports. “That landfill is one that accepts asbestos.”
Ganetsky states that he believes that excavation is doable, providing fundinf can be found. “Wab (Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew) is on board,” Ganetsky notes. “Maybe we find something. Maybe we find nothing. But at least it may give the families of the murder victims some closure.”
Local News
Application filed by two former members of Etz Chayim Congregation against the congregation to have their memberships restored dismissed by judge
The following is taken from the Canadian Jewish News website: “Manitoba’s Court of King’s Bench has dismissed Hadass Eviatar and David Hoult’s application challenging the termination of their membership at Congregation Etz Chayim. In his decision, Justice Vic Toews noted that, although Hoult’s letter describing a hypothetical attack on the synagogue may have lacked sensitivity given the political climate, he did not intend to threaten violence against congregants. However, the judge ruled that the court did not have jurisdiction to intervene in the membership dispute under Manitoba’s Corporations Act, finding that the couple had no financial, proprietary or economic interest that would entitle them to the remedies they sought. The judge concluded that religious organizations are generally free to determine their own membership rules and ordered each side to bear its own legal costs.”
If you would like to read the original article that broke the story about the battle between Hadaass Eviatar and David Hoult with Etz Chayim Congregation you can go to Epic Court Battle.”
Local News
Jewish Federation now says Jewish population of Winnipeg in 2021 (according to the census) was 13,940 – not the 16,000 figure that the Federation had been touting for years
By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted Oct. 27, 2026) Longtime readers of The Jewish Post & News (and this website) would probably know that I have long had a very strong interest in establishing as accurate figures as possible when it has come to reporting the size of Winnipeg’s Jewish community.
For years I argued that our Jewish Federation was exaggerating the size of our Jewish population. I heard the figure of 16,000 bandied about by leaders in our community quite often when it came to reporting the size of our Jewish population – without any empirical evidence to back that figure up.
I had long maintained that the only reasonably accurate figures when it came to reporting the size of Winnipeg’s Jewish population were those produced by the late Evelyn Katz, when she was the unofficial demographer for the Jewish Federation – over 30 years ago. What Evelyn would do is keep careful track of births, deaths, numbers of newcomers but, perhaps most important: the number of people who had left our community.
Thus, in August 2022 when I interviewed Faye Rosenberg Cohen who, at the time, was just about to retire as the Jewish Federation’s Chief Planning and Allocations Officer, I was somewhat astonished to hear Faye say, when I asked her what proportion of our Jewish community was made up of immigrants, she answered that “I can honestly say when I look at those numbers it’s somewhere around 1/3 of the community.”
In response, I asked: “So you’d say it’s somewhere between 4-5,000?”
Faye said: “I think it’s more than that.”
I wrote in that article, “I indicated my skepticism at that time, saying ‘You know that I’ve always been skeptical about the numbers that have been used by the Federation for the population of the Jewish community. I think though that it’s always been more of a case of identification – who identifies as Jewish.’ ”
Later, after the results of the 2021 census were released, I wrote that “if you take into account the results of the 2021 census, the Jewish community cannot be larger than 14,270 at a maximum. But that figure would also include anyone who had either said either their ethnic origin was Jewish or their religion was Jewish.”
Since many of the individuals who had said on the 2021 census that their ethnic origin was Jewish, but their religion was something else, I maintained that ascertaining the real size of our Jewish community was highly problematic.
Still, for the sake of argument I was willing to accept that, realistically, it was somewhere between 13,000-14,000 – but nowhere close to the figure of 16,000 that had come to be suggested by our then president of the Jewish Federation or by other leading figures in our community.
So, it was with a sense of satisfaction that I heard Sharon Graham, who is now the Jewish Federation’s Community Planning and Allocations Lead say to an audience of over 50 people who were at the Gwen Secter Centre on Thursday, October 22, that the Jewish community in 2021 was – at a maximum: 13,940.
Sharon was at the Gwen Secter Centre to speak to Remis Lecture attendees. Her presentation preceded a presentation by Jewish Federation CEO Jeff Lieberman. Sharon used a PowerPoint presentation to provide some very interesting insights into where our Jewish community was at in 2021- and I’m offering some parts of her presentation here for you to read because I thought they were so interesting.
I had actually made many of the same observations about the results of the 2021 census in my own reporting back in 2022, but seeing what I had written confirmed by the Jewish Federation’s point person on planning told me that Sharon has a much more realistic view of our community than did Faye Rosenberg Cohen.
Here, for instance, is a slide that shows the proportion of our Jewish community that is made up of immigrants. It’s slightly under one fifth, not the one third percentage that Faye had suggested.
But, what really set Sharon’s presentation apart from anything else I’ve ever seen presented by someone from the Jewish Federation – other than the aforementioned Evelyn Katz, was the slide she projected which showed that, while there had been a large influx of newcomers to Winnipeg’s Jewish community between 2016-2021 there had also been a significantly high number of people who had left our Jewish community in those same years, as you can see in the following slide:
That is something we just don’t hear discussed by leaders of our Jewish organizations, but let’s be realistic: For many newcomers who came to Winnipeg and were counted as new members of our Jewish community, Winnipeg – for a variety of reasons, was a stepping stone to other communities. It may have been for reasons of better job opportunities, moving closer to other family members, or – the reason that we hear so often when it comes to people saying they want to leave Winnipeg: the weather.
But, whatever the reason, Sharon’s figures show that, as much as GrowWinnipeg may have been an abiding success when it’s come to attracting newcomers to our Jewish community here, getting them to stay long term is a different story.
And, while there were other aspects of Sharon’s presentation that certainly merit discussion, especially the figures she produced about intermarriage, rather than delving into them here, I thought it useful simply to insert them for you, the reader, to see – and draw your own conclusions.
Local News
Marty Green expands his protest against extremist Jewish settlers to two more venues – and is arrested twice more
(Tuesday, October 27) We received the following press release about Marty Green being arrested again, both at the University of Manitoba and at Shaarey Zedek Synagogue:
Both sides came to blows on Saturday, October 24, at the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue as security personnel sought to prevent Marty Green from interfering with synagogue traffic as he protested just outside synagogue grounds against the actions of religious settlers in Israel’s occupied West Bank territory. Synagogue Executive Director Rena Secter Elbaze quickly intervened to prevent further escalation. Police arrived shorty thereafter and detained Green for 45 minutes before driving him home and releasing him. It is not clear whether their decision not to lay charges was the result of their own onsite investigation or whether it was at the request of the synagogue executive.
Green has now been arrested four times in the last month and faces multiple charges for disturbing the peace, including two episodes at the Asper Campus and one more this past Friday (Oct. 23) at the University of Manitoba. While Green says initially he was merely handing out leaflets (at the Asper Campus), since his first arrest on September 23, he has returned to the campus with a large placard and an acccordion, accompanying himself while singing songs with lyrics that include such phrases as “The Jews Are Bananas….B-A-N-A-N-A-S”. In addition to listing actions of the religious settlers as including arson, vandalism, and theft, he pointedly alleges that the IDF has been backing up the settlers in their actions.
Green had earlier notified the Shaarey Zedek that he was contemplating bringing his protest to the synagogue. He was told that if he attempted to enter the grounds he would be prevented from doing so. At that time, Secter Elbaze told Green that his intentions were inappropriate, declaring the synagogue to be “a house of worship dedicated to prayer, learning, community, and spiritual engagement.” Green responded that if the synagogue were willing to contact the Crown and inform them that “that there was never any legal basis for their claims that I was conducting myself inappropriately at the Asper Campus” (with regard to his earlier arrests) that he would “voluntarily refrain from carrying his informational campaign to the synagogue(s).”
Green further argues that the recent “psak” (religious ruling) by leading Israeli rabbi Rov Dov Lior, in which Lior declares that it is not merely permissible but praiseworthy for Jews to steal olives from Arab orchards….that this ruling brings his protest within the proper realm of religious discourse. He says further that if the local rabbis were willing to speak out to their congregations against the aforesaid psak, that he might have refrained from taking his campaign to their grounds.
Although Green was released on Saturday without charges, police confiscated his placard. They explained that it was being held as evidence pending an investigation by Major Crimes as to whether it constituted hate literature.
There was no further information given as to what happened at the University of Manitoba.
