The Paul Wells Show - Winnipeg’s new mayor Scott Gillingham talks about his plans to revitalize the city

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

In Winnipeg, problems like homelessness, addiction and crime have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. Their new mayor, Scott Gillingham, won the election with just 27.54% of the vote, on a promise to raise property taxes in order to revitalize the city. This week, Paul flies to Winnipeg to meet Gillingham and talk to him about solving big problems at a local level.

It's a big world out there and sometimes it seems like it's breaking. I'm talking to the people who are trying to fix it. This week, Winnipeg's new mayor. The pandemic has changed things. It exacerbated things like homelessness, addiction, crime. Good luck with that, Scott Gillingham. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. Just about everyone I met in Winnipeg last week asked me the same question.

Did you really come here to interview the new mayor? One of the people who asked me that question was the new mayor. I guess Winnipeggers are used to being flown over. But I've always believed that local politics is important politics. Where we live, where we work, how we get from place to place, whether we get along. These are local issues everywhere. So the challenges facing Winnipeg are worth your time wherever you live. And in Winnipeg, as in a lot of places these days, it hasn't been going well.

Here's one measure of what it's like in Winnipeg these days. I told the doorman at my hotel that I wanted to walk to the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and could he point me in the right direction? He winced, physically recoiled. Are you sure you don't want me to get your car, he said. We were talking about a 10-minute walk down Portage Street in broad daylight, but these days you never know what you'll see. The new mayor's name is Scott Gillingham.

He's a former minor league hockey player, a former Pentecostal minister. He was on city council for eight years before he ran for mayor, and he barely won. He got less than 28% of the vote, about 4,000 votes more than Glenn Murray, who used to be Winnipeg's mayor and who led in every poll before election day. Turnout in the election was lousy, about 37%. We saw that sort of thing in local elections all over the place this year. So only 1 in 10 eligible voters in Winnipeg voted for Scott Gillingham. The last thing that made me want to meet this guy is the way he won.

Partly it's that Glenn Murray's campaign fell apart. The former mayor left city politics 16 years ago to run and lose for the federal liberals. Then he had a cabinet job in the last liberal government in Ontario. And then he went to work for an environmental NGO, where a bunch of employees told the CBC that Murray had run a toxic workplace. That CBC story ran in the middle of the campaign, and Glenn Murray's campaign went up like the Hindenburg. But in an 11-candidate field, it was hardly obvious who would rise when Murray fell. In the end, it was Scott killing him. Unlike most of the others, he had a detailed and costed platform. His big promise was to

raise property taxes by 3.5% per year for four years in a row. Usually that's the kind of talk that ends campaigns, not the kind that gets them over the finish line. Maybe Winnipeggers are starting to understand that this isn't a time for easy answers. The night before I met Gillingham, I went to Judy Wasilisialisa's house for tea. She used to be a provincial cabinet minister and then the NDP member of parliament for Winnipeg North. She ran for mayor a couple of times. I asked her what she'd tell Scott Gillingham if she could. This is how her answer began. Your campaign to increase property taxes and to deal with this, the crumbling infrastructure in Winnipeg is important and you need to, you need to follow through on that, but you've got to do much more. You've got

to be bold and brave on the issues that are at the heart of where we go as a city and how we can become a shining beacon of light in this country. You've got to deal with the serious issues of poverty and homelessness and crime and drug abuse and mental health issues. And this is where her answer wound up. Shortly after my husband died, my son Joe, who decided to come home to live with me just to keep things going, went out one night and came back by Uber, got dropped off at the front of the house, walks around to the side. And just before he opens the door, he got jumped. He wouldn't come in at first because Joe was afraid

that they would come in and get after me, and I was alone. So he laid out there and waited until they were gone and came in, and then I heard him screaming in the kitchen. He thought his leg was broken. So I raced him to the hospital. I don't say that story for any pity or any, I don't know what the word is, but I say it because it shows how deeply ingrained this phenomenon of disenfranchised young people is happening in our city.

And if we don't deal with that, we're all going to be looking over our backs. We're all going to be wondering and always worrying and regretting that we as a great city haven't got the wherewithal to give people's home place to sleep other than bus shelters and give youth some purpose other than hanging out on the streets and getting high on meth. A lot of people have stories like that. Last week, Winnipeg recorded its 45th murder of the year, a new record with almost two months left in 2022. So yeah, I flew to Winnipeg. I figured the least I could do for a guy facing a job this big was to look him in the eye. After the break, my conversation with Scott Gillingham. Hey, Scott Gillingham, thanks for letting me into your office.

Thank you, Paul. Thanks for coming. You're one of the first visitors, so welcome. Why these days would anyone run from air? What got into you? That's a great question. I think it's about the opportunity. I am an eternal optimist, and I'm humbled that many people in my life encourage me to take the opportunity to run for mayor when it was available.

It was available this year. And I just really believe that we can do so much more as a city together to tackle our challenges and to seize the opportunities we have. And so the opportunity to be part of building a stronger city and working with other people to make things better for all Winnipeggers is an opportunity I want to seize. You grew up just a little bit out of town and you've been coming into Winnipeg and working here for your whole life. Tell me about the Winnipeg you grew up with and then tell me a little bit about how it's changed for better and otherwise. You're right.

I grew up on a farm outside of Winnipeg, about an hour southwest of Winnipeg. My family's still on the farm there. But, you know, Winnipeg was always kind of the magnet. You always, everyone kind of was drawn into Winnipeg. So whether it was for social events or professional sporting games or go to university or college, growing up and then coming to Winnipeg, I mean, I remember vividly as a kid coming in and shopping at Eaton's in the Bay downtown for Christmas. And then driving home and looking out the back

window and literally seeing the lights of Winnipeg glow in the sky and just as a kid kind of driving away from the city and then as you get older you know you're coming in as a teenager once you get your license you're coming in to go to movies or go to the Jets games and watch Dale Howarchuk and Paul McLean play right that was part of my certainly memories and then you know coming in to live after high school and work or go to university or college, as a lot of my friends did. And in Winnipeg in those days, you know, the malls in the outer area were growing and the, you know, new communities were growing. You know, those are the things that I remember.

Now, you've been a city council for two terms. You decided to run at the beginning of this year, so nearly a year ago. But probably you've been thinking about the problems that a mayor should tackle for as long as you've been coming to city council. What was your project when you decided to run? When I first started, I think it's changed, Paul, because when I first considered running, it was before the pandemic. And so the challenges that we were facing, and I chaired the finance committee for almost six of the eight years, the challenges were cost control and making sure the budgets, emergency services budgets, police, fire, paramedic, were sustainable for taxpayers. Making sure that we were getting good value for our money. Trying to catch up on investment in infrastructure that had been underfunded for

decades. Then the pandemic hit. And I think like all cities that I've observed, certainly across Canada, the pandemic has changed things. It exacerbated things like homelessness, It exacerbated things like homelessness, addiction, crime. And though it's not always the case too often right now, those three things are playing off one another, crime, homelessness, and addiction. The pandemic had a significant impact on city budgets and city finances. Certainly in Winnipeg, over $220 million

was the financial impact on the city's budget and no mayor no council gets sworn in and you know with uh with a section in their manual as to how to govern through a once in a century pandemic and so my decision ultimately to run for mayor was made about a year ago when we were still arguably in the pandemic. And so some of what needs to be addressed is absolutely, I'll call it a hangover from or the result of the impact of the pandemic. I've been talking to some people since I came to town about that. And they say that it's not the same city. Being the mayor of Winnipeg is not the same gig as it would have been in 2019.

That people aren't coming downtown. The only people who are downtown are people who have no choice but to be downtown. And you're seeing more of these issues of homelessness. Well, I'll start with homelessness. What do you do about that? Because I think a lot of the other problems stem from that or are connected to that. I think, first of all other problems stem from that or are connected to that.

I think first of all, I would say that in many ways, you know, those you've been talking to, I would agree with that assessment. It's not the same city. Homelessness for sure is pervasive, not only, you know, in the core of our city, but we see it also in parts of the city we never saw it before. Way too many people living in bus shelters, for

example, or living in encampments by the river or near railway tracks. It's so important. What I made a commitment to do is that I will take one of the positions of my mayoral staff and hire a senior advisor on homelessness and addiction to liaise with and to work with all the social service agencies, our city departments, the province of Manitoba and their departments to really tackle and address the issues of homelessness and addiction that are so prevalent in our city. So I'm not going to add to my mayoral budget, my mayoral staff budget, but I actually take one of those positions and

make them a senior advisor on homelessness and addiction. That's really step number one. Pulling together, working with the provincial departments, the social service agencies that are providing for our homeless Winnipeggers or unsheltered Winnipeggers and coordinating a plan is also really, really critical. And so I'm committed to doing that as well. And I've committed to extending funding to 24-7 safe spaces. Right now, the City of Winnipeg has provided funding to two organizations that provide safe space or shelter for people. I said I would extend the funding through this term of council and actually add more funds to open another one right now. And one of the things I'm doing immediately is to make sure the City of Winnipeg has a very up-to-date policy and plans regarding shelter for people in extreme weather, cold conditions. We have so many City of Winnipeg buildings. We want to make sure those buildings are available

where appropriate for people to come in and out of the cold. I mean, it's a beautiful November day, abnormally beautiful November day here in Winnipeg. The cold weather's coming, the extreme weather's coming. We have to be ready so that the men and women, boys and girls living on the street or young people living on the street in Winnipeg have shelter. So the obvious question or at some point, a question that becomes obvious is how are you going to pay for that? And the answer to that is one of the big political decisions that you had to make

is your campaign. You're going to raise property taxes by three and a half percent. Yes. I got that right. When did you decide and how gutsy a move did that feel like when you announced it? Was it a gutsy move? Perhaps, but it was, it was to me about being credible, about being honest with Winnipeggers to say,

this is what I believe it's going to take. Now's the time to make investments in the city of Winnipeg. Now's the time to invest in our city services. Now's the time to invest in people so that we can make sure people are in out of the cold. So it was always the plan all along to tell people how we're going to pay for this and how much investment it's going to take. Okay. Not only in Winnipeg, but certainly in Winnipeg,

for the last few administrations, the notion of asking people to pay more for municipal government, municipal services has been a taboo. Are these false economies? Have we been sort of cheaping out on providing the kind of services that people who live especially in the center of big cities should be able to expect? Again, to go back to the pandemic, and I'm not leaning on the pandemic, but the reality is the pandemic has had a significant financial impact on the city of Winnipeg. We had, thankfully, a fairly strong financial stabilization reserve fund. The Rainy Day Fund is what we call it. We had a strong balance in the Rainy Day Fund going into the pandemic.

We've really had to draw down on that. And so the financial health of the city of Winnipeg is such that we need that investment coming out of the pandemic. We're also facing inflationary pressures. Households are facing inflationary pressures. are facing inflationary pressures so to the city winnipeg you know our fuel costs have gone up for all of our city vehicles and labor costs you know are going up so those are also part and parcel of what in looking at it you made the requirement to to look at raising revenue um those three things, the impact of the pandemic, the inflationary costs we're facing, and really my strong belief is now is not the time

to retreat on Winnipeg or retreat on our services or retreat on our economy. Now is the time to invest. And so that's why I called for the increases to the City of Winnipeg's frontage levy and property taxes. How much of the new revenues is inflation going to eat? Are you going to have money left over for investments? I believe we will.

Ultimately, we'll have to see where the inflationary rate sits by the end of the year and as we're putting our next budget together. But most of the property tax increase and frontage levy increase I called for is dedicated funding. We've said, here's what we're raising and here's what it's going to go pay for. For example, in the frontage levy under provincial law, all of that money has to go to roads or sewer work. It can't go to buy paper for the public works department.

It's got to go towards that. So people will be able to see where the revenues we're raising are going. And is municipal payroll going to be another challenge? I've talked to mayors before who, whenever they have some money available, there's really substantial demand for pay increases. I think that the collective bargaining agencies, understandably, are taking a look at the inflationary pressures

that the households of their members represent. And I believe realistically, yeah, we're looking at having to address that. You won one of the narrowest mandates in recent Winnipeg history in any municipal election across the country. You won with one of the smallest vote margins. You got a little under 27% of the vote. A little under 28%. Yeah, I think 27.5 or something in that neighborhood, yes. Squeaking past Glenn Murray, who's been the mayor of Winnipeg before

and who was favored in most of the polls until not long before the election. In September, did you think you had a shot? In September, did you think you had a shot? And what does that narrow mandate mean for your ability to carry out your projects? I always believed we had a shot. I really did. And for several reasons. I knew we had, and I have a really excellent team, a really strong platform. And, and then I think a record on council,

I think that was people could point to, it was a current recent experience. So people, many people knew who I was and those that didn't, it would be easy for them to look back and say, okay, this is who, you know, who Scott has been on council. But I always believed we had a shot if we followed our plan. There were a couple of other factors that you know in the bigger picture broke our way when you know story broke about mr murray and his time in alberta um there's no doubt that that caused his support to drop

to the point you made earlier we we came out with two key things. In September, one was a policy called the Big Move, which was an investment, the call for investment in roads and cycling infrastructure and transit. And the decision to say to Winnipeggers, this is how much the platform is going to cost and this is how we'll pay for it. I think all of those things combined helped us to get across the line and to eke out, you know, it was, it was eking out a narrow victory. I acknowledge that,

but I always believed we could. I always did. As far as what it means that I had, you know, a very narrow margin of victory and only 27.5% of the vote at a time when only 30% of, 37% of eligible voters came out. I go back to this, that my,

the theme of my campaign was uniting to build a stronger Winnipeg. Yeah. And so now's the time for me to, you know, deliver on that. And I always I'm committed to delivering on that, pulling people together, those that voted for me, those that didn't vote for me, to do what we need to do to strengthen Winnipeg and make it a healthier, safer, stronger city. You've also got to work with other levels of government. And we're pretty close to a provincial election. And on current form, the incumbent conservative government's got a fight ahead of it. You might have to work with the new democratic government before long. Tell me about the recent history of relationships between the provincial government and the city government.

And how important is it to you that you be able to keep those relationships on and even keel? It's very important that the relationship between the city of Winnipeg and the provincial government and federal governments and indigenous governments are strong relationships, collaborative relationships where possible. There's no doubt a few years ago, certainly the relationship with city of Winnipeg and the

province of Manitoba was very, I'll just say adversarial. That's probably the best way to describe it consistently. Ultimately, we're serving the people of Winnipeg in this context. And when the city and the province are fighting and consistently fighting, it's the people of Winnipeg we're serving that end up on the short end of that stick. So many of Winnipeg's're serving that end up on the short end of that stick. So many of Winnipeg's challenges and many of our opportunities are shared opportunities with the provincial government and the city of Winnipeg. And Winnipeg is unique. Manitoba, I should say, Manitoba is unique of all Canadian provinces. Every other province has at least two major urban centers.

Winnipeg is 54%, 55% of the population. It is the one big city. I mean, we have Brandon, we have other cities as well. But Manitoba is unique. As Winnipeg goes, so goes the province of Manitoba when it comes to our economy. And as the province goes, so goes Winnipeg in many ways. So that's the approach I am taking and will be taking with the Premier, with Premier Stephenson and any future Premier.

And with the, you know, with the federal government as well, that the health of Winnipeg is critical to the health of the province of Manitoba. We'll come back to my conversation with Scott Gillingham in a minute. I want to take a moment to thank all of our partners, the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy,

the National Arts Centre, our founding sponsor, TELUS, our title sponsor, Compass Rose, and our publishing partners, Toronto Star and iPolitics. On addiction, I was a little surprised to discover that Winnipeg doesn't have a supervised injection site. Provincial policy, if I'm not mistaken. Is that something that Winnipeg needs? And would you advocate for a change in the approach

to the treatment of drug use in downtown Winnipeg? Yeah, I'm certainly open to that. I really am. And I've been consistent during my time on council. My position hasn't changed. I'm very open to the conversation. First and foremost, these are real people, real men, real women, real young people struggling with a life controlling substance issue.

So we have to lead with compassion. Winnipeg, right, does not have a supervised consumption site to this point. My position has been and remains that it's really the province of Manitoba that would need to lead that because it is health care. It's under the purview of healthcare. In Winnipeg, we don't have the jurisdiction as a city, nor the resources, nor the department as a city to provide healthcare services. And, you know, when I've looked at other cities and jurisdictions that have supervised consumption sites, where it seems to be working best is where there are other services co-located

with that service. And so, you know, I've heard people say, well, just the city of Winnipeg can go ahead under provincial jurisdiction. You have the authority to go ahead and just open a supervised consumption site. To me, first of all, unless the province opens it because it's health care, unless other services are co-located, we're going to do a disservice, I think, to the people that need to be served and to the citizens of Winnipeg. I'm open to being a partner. I absolutely am. But because it's primarily healthcare, we really need the province to lead that. Is that a situation that pops up on a bunch of big files where city and province agree that there's a problem, but each says you go first?

where city and province agree that there's a problem, but each says you go first? I think that may have been a fair statement, you know, over the years. I'm hopeful. I've spoken to, you know, the current premier, many of her, Premier Stephenson and many of her ministers. I've spoken to, you know, Wab Kanu as well,

as the leader of the opposition. There is an election next year. And I said, look, I'm committed as mayor of Winnipeg to working in partnership where we can. Levels of government are not always going to agree. I get that we're not always going to agree, but where possible, where we can work in collaboration, we need to. And where there's a jurisdiction that is, you know, where there's an issue that's provincial jurisdiction, but it's impacting the city, I'll certainly be pointing that out. For example, yesterday, I was grateful to be invited to an announcement by

the province of Manitoba on their investment for, in Winnipeg, it's called the Downtown Community Safety Partnership. The city of Winnipeg, we have invested over the years in the Downtown Community Safety Partnership, DCSP. And what that organization does is they make the downtown safer by taking some of the call volume load off of the Winnipeg Police Service and their staff go into the downtown where people are living in bus shelters or struggling on the street and they can connect them to the resources they need. So rather than a call for service come in

for someone who's struggling with a mental health addiction, rather than two officers with badges and guns showing up, we can have the Downtown Community Safety Partnership. Many of them are peers. Some of them have lived on the streets, they understand, get a better response to those individuals. The city and the province both have provided funding over the years. I've committed in my platform,

I will extend that funding for four years during my term. And the province just yesterday announced their extension of the funding. That's collaboration to make the downtown safer and ultimately to get the people who are struggling with addiction, get them the services they need. That's a good kind of collaboration that I want to see more of.

There's the administrative aspect of these issues and there's the jurisdictional aspect. There's also, I mean, kind of a mounting human problem. The people I've spoken to say that they're afraid in parts of Winnipeg, that it feels dangerous in a way that it hasn't before. How do you get ahead of a trend like that? And I recognize that. I acknowledge that as well, that we have, you know, right now a feeling, a perception, even, for example, the parts of our city downtown is not safe. So we do have to overcome that. We tackle it on several fronts, and I've committed to tackling it on several fronts.

Well, we need more people living in the downtown of Winnipeg. We need more people calling the core of our city home. And to do that, we have to make sure that just like people in the suburbs have amenities that they rely on, grocery stores, walking paths, parks, we need to make sure that the center of our city has those amenities as well. We cannot rely on office workers in the downtown to provide the presence for restaurants and retail and just the feet on the street for safety anymore. Again, post-pandemic, we've got to change. There's a change, I think, to more and more people working from home or work from home hybrid. So we need more people living in the core of our city.

So several things that I have said we'll do. One, I'm going to tasking our staff to look at the office to residential conversions quicker. So if we've got unused office space, can those be changed into residential properties? More people living in the downtown is critical to a perception of safety. But in addition to that, we really need to go back in Winnipeg to a focus on preventing crime. Right now, just the calls for service and the police are responding to crime. And we need to go back to focus on preventing crime and how can we make sure that we're kind of stopping crime before it happens.

Investments in groups like the Downtown Community Safety Partnership, also important as a presence on the street. So there's several initiatives that we're going to tackle to make Winnipeg safer. Before you got into this politics business, you were a Protestant minister for 20 years. I was. Irrelevant to your current job? Key to success in your current job? How would you describe that prior existence as it relates to your current existence? There's a lot of overlap.

It was good preparation for my last eight years on council. I believe it would be really good preparation for my time as mayor. It's about service. And so if you're a faith leader of any denomination or religion, at its core it's about serving and trying to make lives better and, you know, giving of yourself, you know, in an effort to improve a community and improve people's lives. And it's about people.

I mean, that's what, you know, being a minister has been about and politics is about people. So I think serving people at its core is what faith leadership is about. Serving people at its core is what politics is about. You had to take some tough questions about your earlier positions on same-sex marriage. I mean, for the sound of your answers, they felt like hard questions. Like you weren't sure how to express your journey on that issue. What would you say now?

Well, I think you use an appropriate term journey it's it's a journey that uh you know that i've been on i think many people in faith communities are on because many times faith and i'll say culture can clash in that sense right or or the faith communities you know over here and the culture is over there. And so it has been a journey for me. I'm still on a journey of faith. I'm still a Christian man and my faith is strong. We live in a community that I'm grateful for where people need to be treated with equality, need to be treated fairly. And to me, same-sex marriage is a matter of treating people fairly and equally.

Can you still perform marriages? I can still perform marriages, yeah. Do you? I don't. I haven't performed a marriage in three, no, two, two and a half years, about two and a half years, about two and a half years. So yeah, at this point, I was asked that before. I don't plan on performing any more marriages. It's just this role.

As a counselor, I was very busy. As a mayor, I'll be extremely busy. Do you need some early wins? What are your first couple of big projects that you need to put in the window? I mean, this council has barely changed. It's essentially the same city council as it was last year. And we've got a mayor who's a familiar face to Winnipeggers. So what do you need to get done pretty quick to show that something's changing?

I think delivering early on some of the promises I made during the campaign. One of them was to have a more collaborative council that is working better for the people of Winnipeg. I made an announcement today as in Winnipeg, we have what's called the strong mayor's model. So we have an executive, the mayor has an executive policy committee. It was six people. I said I would cut it to five. This is essentially your cabinet essentially my cabinet i said it would cut it to five and so we did that today we announced five what that forces me to do as a mayor is to go to more counselors to get support for my ideas or motions that are coming forward it forces me to collaborate more and so because

you don't have the votes in the in your pocket when right right because in winnipeg you need you know we have a mayor and 15 councillors you need nine nine votes to get anything across most things across the line or get it supportive i i committed to being a collaborative mayor and working hard to to build relationship with and and to uh to bring more councillors to the table. So we've already made that commitment, delivered on that commitment today. Thankfully, yesterday, as I mentioned a moment ago, one of my commitments was to extend funding to the Downtown Community Safety Partnership.

It was very good. I very much appreciated Previous Stephenson inviting me yesterday to the announcement that they will provide more funding to the Downtown Community Safety Partnership. So those are two early wins. I think another two things that need to happen right away, as I said, the cold weather is coming, so we need to get a policy in place and a process in place immediately to make sure that Winnipeggers have a safe, warm place to be when the cold weather comes, if they're living on the street.

And then I also said that we would develop a strategic plan for the city of Winnipeg. Myself, all councillors are going to get in a room together, put a strategic plan in place that will give us the priorities for the city for the next four years, and then we'll turn around and use the multi-year balance budget to fund that plan. Again, that's a theme of collaboration.

Those are things that, to me, that need to happen as soon as possible to show I'm delivering on what I said I would do, and ultimately it's better governance for the people of Winnipeg and the people who are most vulnerable right now in our city. Those living on the street

have a warm, protected place to be. You've got four years. What do you hope to be able to show for your time as mayor when it comes time to move on or get reelected? Delivering on the platform. And so in four years, by the time we're through four years, I want Winnipeg to be safer and healthier. There's more activity and vibrancy in the downtown. Our roads are in better condition

and we're taking steps towards a stronger economy, a stronger local economy. Because you know, as cities, we have very limited, certainly here, we have very limited revenue streams. Property taxes is the primary source of revenue for the city of Winnipeg. And so we need a strong local economy so that people can have good jobs, purchase homes, or rent apartments, and contribute to not only a local economy, but also to making the investments that in turn provide the revenue necessary to deliver city services. So my goal is that we have a very strong economy. You said that only 37% of the eligible voters voted. Yes.

This is a story we hear in election after election at the local level across the country. What does that turnout say about people's perception of city politics and how can you turn that around? of city politics and how can you turn that around? As far as turning that around, I think that you're trying to impress upon people the importance and the impact of local government. And it is just that.

It's local. It's the day-to-day stuff that people care about. It's the pools and the playgrounds and the roads and the potholes and the police and fire department. I mean, and Winnipeggers in any city, you're so much closer to your local politician, your municipal councillor or your municipal mayor in many ways than you are to your member parliament, for example. So I think, you know, one of the ways to get more people voting, I hope, is to try to continue to impress upon people how important the local government, the city of Winnipeg,

is to their daily needs. What 37% voter turnout says, I don't know. I mean, we've had a lot of talk, even as a team, and people I've been listening to and talking to, you know, why the low voter turnout? i was sharing you with you just a moment ago that i was watching the voter turnout in our tarot cities as well in municipal elections that wasn't strong either um in winnipeg i didn't know if it was just because we had 11 candidates uh you know that were vying for mayor was it was it just a bit of kind of candidate overload for people

and it led to almost decision paralysis and the sense of there's so much noise from so many candidates? Or just was it kind of someone said, maybe it's a hangover from COVID, people didn't want to go out? I don't have the answer, as you can tell, as far as why the voter turnout was only 37% at Winnipeg.

I really hope that over the next four years, we can help people see how important municipal government is to them and in four years from now, see a stronger voter turnout. You've been really generous with your time. Thanks so much for letting us know a little bit more about what's going on here. Paul, I really appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you. Thank you so much. Paul, I really appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you. Thank you so much. As I flew back to Ottawa, I found myself thinking about a paradox. I think you can hear what a straight shooter Scott Gillingham is.

A member of his own staff called him a nerdy boy scout. Another staffer said you can't rush him through his day because he refuses to jaywalk. He's the mayor, he says. He needs to set an example. But I mentioned that he used to play minor league hockey. A season each in the Steinbeck Hawks, the Dauphin Kings, and the Winkler Flyers. I looked up his stats. Turns out he racked up a lot of penalty minutes. Somehow I find that encouraging. There'll be days when this job requires Gillingham to play with his elbows up a bit. I'm glad to know he's been practicing thanks for listening to the paul wells show paul wells show is produced by antica in partnership with the national arts center and the university of

toronto's monk school of global affairs and public policy it's published by the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Thanks to our founding sponsor, TELUS, and our title sponsor, Compass Rose. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Hayley Choi. Our executive producer is Lisa Gabriel. Stuart Cox is the president of Antica. This week, audio production on location

was done by Sierra Noble from No Fun Club. The mayor's staff recognized Sierra as a local singer-songwriter. Check out their 2021 single, Let Me Out of Here. If you're enjoying this show, spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday. you