Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says he hopes the province’s planned supervised consumption site in Winnipeg will open soon, after the province learned it didn’t need a permit it had asked for from the federal government.

Kinew said Thursday that information came in the last 24 hours, after what he described as months of the province working to get the permit for the project.

“The federal government didn’t share that information with us, but they’ve shared it now, so we’re going to move ahead with it,” Kinew said in French to Radio-Canada’s Le 6 à 9 host Jérémy Laniel on Thursday.

The premier said while the site itself is ready, he wants to make sure the province has a plan for neighbourhood safety and does engagement with police and the health-care system. 

Kinew said he hopes the site will open “in a week or two.”

​During its third throne speech in November — the address that outlines the priorities of the government for the coming legislative session — Manitoba’s NDP government committed to opening a supervised consumption site in Winnipeg in January.

​The province has said before that the facility will allow people to inject drugs, with staff on hand to respond to overdoses and guide people toward treatment. The centre wouldn’t supply drugs, just offer a space for supervised use.

​As of Thursday, the only supervised consumption site in Manitoba with an open application with Health Canada was Winnipeg’s Sunshine House Mobile Overdose Prevention Site.

An NDP government spokesperson told CBC News in December that the province was planning to open a supervised consumption site at 366 Henry Ave. and had submitted an application to the federal government via its “urgent public health need” stream. 

A Health Canada spokesperson previously told CBC News the province wouldn’t need approval from Health Canada to open an urgent public health need site, which offers similar services to a supervised consumption site.