Plenty of vague ideas, few good ones

Dan Lett

WITH less than two weeks to go before Winnipeggers go to the polls to elect a new council and mayor, voters find themselves in a very similar predicament.

There are 12 names on the ballot for mayor, but few real choices to fill one of the most powerful and impactful elected offices in the entire province.

And what of the campaigns on offer?

They all want to make the city safer and more efficient. Some even have plans to accomplish that, but most of the candidates have committed only to the idea of safer and more efficient, providing few details on how we’re going to get there.

Put another way, there are few truly bad ideas, but hardly any really good ones.

The vagueness of the pledges exposes many of the candidates in two ways. First, it demonstrates they simply don’t understand the complexity of the problems they want to fix.

Second, and more importantly, most of them don’t know how municipal government works.

For example, quite a few candidates have promised to “fix” Winnipeg Transit, but other than statements of intent, almost no one has come up with a concrete plan to get it done.

The reality is that public transportation is desperately underfunded by the provincial government. Winnipeg Transit cannot survive on revenue from fares, because ridership is declining. At the same time, it needs more buses, drivers, improved routes and some way of reducing the cost to ride in order to make it more affordable for people who have no other way to get around the city.

Those candidates who created policies on improving the service often retreat to a pledge to negotiate a better deal from the province. With respect, if a better deal was there to be had, it would have been done by now.

All this uninformed hope about the future of the city separates the candidates into one incumbent and the rest of the pack.

Gillingham is doing what incumbents do: he is running on his record. He has promised some good ideas, such as a significant upgrade for 311 — the city’s general information and service access hotline — along with a pledge to continue making robust investment in infrastructure and pursuing progress on housing and public safety.

And what of the challengers?

Although some ideas from rivals fall into the category of “not bad, but not great,” the biggest downside of the pledges made by the rest of the pack is they often lack practical strategies for making them a reality.

Perennial candidate Don Woodstock, for example, has one of the most expansive and detailed platforms ever seen in a Winnipeg mayoral election. However, when it comes down to figuring out how to pay for all those bold ideas, Woodstock falls into a predictable narrative.