NOTE: Woodstock agreed to answer our questions in a sit-down interview at RRC Polytech. His answers are presented verbatim. OtterAI was used in transcribing the audio to text.
What would you do to make transit service in Winnipeg more functional, reliable and safe for its users? What plans do you have, if any, to reduce car dependency in the city?
Transit has to play a vital role in making sure that the community moves from point A to point B. Because if everybody has a car, we’re in trouble. It’s a small community. It’s a small city, and our streets weren’t big enough to expand. Even Toronto is having issues, and they’re even coming up with right-sized vehicles nowadays to kind of minimize the amount of buses in certain routes. Right-sized transport. So for me, it is making sure as a former bus driver, one who has been in the seat for 10 years, is to make sure that we retain our drivers.
That’s the first priority for me because I know once we can retain our drivers, then we won’t have the buses lagging, delayed, cancelled, etc. And so that approach to me is making sure that management doesn’t penalize the drivers. Something nobody is talking about because they don’t know.
If I’m driving on the street today, my license comes from MPI, and if I get into an accident, MPI rules me at fault or no fault. In the transit world, as it is today, if MPI rules me not at fault, transit management can turn around and rule me at fault, and I can lose my job. So the first thing I say is I put the authority back into MPI and not with transit anymore. That’s the first thing.
Second thing for me is the supervisors with the white cards. They love to give you white cards. And the way in which they do it is so demoralising that people don’t know that it’s a morale killer. You see a supervisor coming out to see you, you know you’re getting a “red card” for the rest of your shift. Even if you read it, you still don’t understand what is. You have to go see them. Some stupid complaint, or reasonable complaint, or fearful complaint. It doesn’t matter what is. But then for the next fifteen hours, twenty hours ‘till you go see them. You’re nervous about it because then they could put you on stage and get rid of you. If we solve those problems …
Then let’s look at safety. Because now, let’s say we solve those problems, we look at safety. So you have drivers who want to work. Now you have the drivers who don’t want to show up because they’re afraid of being stabbed. But everybody is talking about transit safety and the lack of fear and the fear “evasion thing.”
But nobody, unless you’re a driver, you wouldn’t know this. The vast majority of people creating issues on transit buses are those with issues in society, drug addiction, mental health issues, and homelessness. So my homeless policy dovetails with it. You can’t speak about safety on transit without addressing the underlying factors.
What goes with it, and that is the drug addiction, the homelessness, etc. So we solve these issues, and then we talk about our bus shelters. Our bus shelters—I will take back my bus shelters. The bus shelters were not meant for being bathrooms; they weren’t meant to be toilets. They weren’t meant to be bedrooms. They weren’t meant to be smoking venues. They weren’t meant for nothing but an opportunity to commute in public to get back and get a warm place, a sheltered place, a pit stop, so to speak, so they can wait on their next bus.
I guarantee you, if the king was coming here next week, not one person would be in those shelters, and all the shelters would probably have glass in them. They would all be pristine.
Come back to that homelessness issue and the drug addiction. It’s a proven fact. Nobody can dispute me, and if I find a person who does, I can have a conversation with them. If I take somebody off the street and provide services for them and provide them with the resources they need, there’s no need for them to be on the street anymore because I’m helping them.
So, when I am mayor, I am going to make sure that there’s nobody living on my street. I will triage them. Give them the support they need because it is cheaper, and I say that without fear of contradiction. And I dare anybody listening to prove me otherwise. I’ve seen enough studies, I’ve heard the conversation, I’ve read enough to know it is cheaper for me to take somebody off the street, put them in a home, provide services for them. So that being said, then when I look at transit and the future of transit and what we do with a growing city that we have now, today that’s the way
Next: “right-sized transport,” which is the first time it’s going to be probably mentioned in this political cycle, Toronto is already looking at it. Instead of putting some of these big buses into these neighborhoods and only have one and two people ride them, you can take three or four smaller-sized vehicles.
You could even electrify these vehicles and put them into neighbourhoods like some areas of Transcona. If you get caught behind a transit bus in some streets of Transcona, you’re in trouble because there are parked cars and only two vehicles can pass at a time, and the bus takes up a lot of space, right? So, in those neighborhoods, I want to look at investing in right-sized vehicle transportation for those areas because then I can buy some smaller ones.
Buses; electrify those as well. It becomes a quieter, nicer, safer neighbourhood, and there’s no rumbling and shaking and noise and the pollution and all. So that’s where my future is. The first electric bus that was built in the city was because of me, Don Woodstock.
So I went to Jim Rondeau when I was driving transit at the time, and said, ‘But Jim, this don’t make no sense, Mister Minister. With all due respect.’ New Flyer Industries is in my backyard. New Flyer Industries, the world’s leader for electrification of buses. Manitoba Hydro is the world’s leader for the cheapest form of renewable energy. Why am I driving a diesel bus again? Tell me. This don’t make no sense. And Jim says, “You know, Don, you’re right. We missed all of this.”
Nine months later. How many years? Nine years and months. Nine months later, the first electric bus was built. So, the reason why we’re not electrifying two thirds or a third or thirty percent of the fleet? We will be electrified in my first year.
The only reason why we don’t have more electric buses on the street is because of bad politics. Every election is called. You and I could be the best of neighbours, and what happened? Somebody rings a bell and tells you to hate me because I am NDP or you are green or you, and all of a sudden, you know we’re hating each other. Bad politics.
At the end of the day, the politicians laugh at us because they get to keep the community how they want it. I’m breaking them all, and I have broken them all. I’ve advocated for things in the city. People thought I was elected, that I am supposed to be elected to go through City Hall and get governments to do things. You just have to be a Donald Woodstock, determined as hell, and insist that you love this city, and I work here.
The future of transit is a must. The future of reliable transit is even more of a must. But the truth? The future of reliable, efficient transit, a new word, it is a must in my book because, as a former bus driver, I see what the seniors have to go through with this new transit change. I know what they go through because I physically live among them.
I live in North Main. I don’t live in some albatross somewhere else, and I live in the city, unlike some people. And I know what’s going on here. So for me, that is a big thing, and I will correct that.
What do you think the city should be doing to ease the housing and homelessness crisis? What specifically would you change about the city’s current approaches?
Instead of leaving people in the street like they do now, which is inhumane; none of us who are listening now would pass eight, nine, ten dogs or cats like we see people on the street. Main and Higgins and Logan, pass them by without wondering or thinking “I’m making a call to the humane society, and I’m including myself in this. I’m including myself because I live in North Main, and my office is at Lombard Avenue.
So, I have to travel in around the downtown core on a regular basis, and I said to my wife, they have suddenly convinced me that I can’t see people strung out on the street, bent over like noodles, and I should go on with my daily life. But if I saw five, six cats or dogs out there, I would be tempted to pull over. My first instinct is to pull over and make a call to the human society. I’m not playing this game anymore. It is cheaper to put people in a home and provide services for them.
My policy is very simple: I’m going to triage everybody. Anyone who has mental health issues, who have a drug addiction issue, whatever issues they got. I’m going to triage you. I am going to fulfill my legal obligation, which is to find housing support for you, as the mayor of the city.
Case in point; the Marlborough Hotel is empty for three and a half, four years now. 280 rooms. Behind the Marlborough is a theatre. I could retrofit that to about two hundred rooms. That is four hundred plus rooms right there. It will take six months to a year to retrofit it. So be it. Okay?
The point is, when I provide this housing support for you, then I would turn it over to the federal and provincial government because they’re responsible for housing slash healthcare. So, it’s a relationship, that somebody with some courage and some understanding need to say enough is enough, because at the end of the day, the federal government will tell you it is cheaper to put somebody in a home and provide services for them than leave them on the street. And Winnipeg is cold.
Tommy Prince, the Indigenous leader, the most decorated Indigenous veteran, died not far from here: homeless. Veteran. There are some veterans on our street. About 30 per cent of them are homeless. So we need to find a way to make sure that the housing situation is a well-rounded one that involves treating people in a humane way. So we don’t have people like what happened in the current administration.
Homeless people, there’s about four or five homeless people who have died under the current administration’s watch, and I’m saying it will never happen when Donald Woodstock becomes mayor.
As mayor, I’m taking everybody off the street. I’m providing services for them, because maybe I’m frugal, because I’m a businessman, maybe because I understand how to save money. Maybe the others don’t because they’re not businesspeople. That’s the only thing I can think of it.
But at the end of the day, I’m taking them off the street. I’m providing services for them, and then I’m going to hand them over to the federal government because the federal government is responsible for healthcare, and they will be able to as long as I provide them with the facility. So, all I got to do is find facilities.
What I’ll do different: all of these abandoned buildings you see around the place, and there’s a few of them not far from here and your campus. I’ll retrofit them, and it’s a matter of saying to the city’s Planning Department: what normally takes six months to a year? We’re gonna work overtime this weekend, and we’re gonna take a week. And if you can’t do it in a week, I’m finding somebody else. I’m finding another planner who wants to work.
There are people out there, like myself. My business? I work. My wife and I work seven days a week. People thought we were crazy. If you look up JamRock Security, it’s opens seven days a week, and there’s a reason. We’re not afraid of work. So much so that I believe that with the housing issue, it’s putting a stranglehold and pushing people out, and having people on the street because of the housing issue.
Because yes there’s an element to it where it’s a housing issue. They can’t find housing. I’ve talked to a few of them. I’ve talked to one guy who’s living in Saint Boniface right now, living in his car. He’s in the park at Saint Boniface right now. If you go see him, that’s where he lives until it starts getting cold. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He was one of those people that have housing and said benefits. I know he’s in the park in his car. So yes, we need to look at the housing stock.
And so, one other thing that’s going to add to that housing stock again—all those derelict homes that we have boarded up. The fire department go time and time again—I’m giving the owners 30 days. I’m going to hand them a piece of paper and say, “Guess what? Here are some plans that you can choose from to build with. You’ve got 30 days to decide which one of these plans you want, and they are for free. I’m going to give them to you for free because I want you to bulldoze that thing in 30 days. You don’t bulldoze it in 30 days? 30 days later, that building is coming down. I’m leveling it. I’m clearing it. And guess who’s gonna pay the cost? Who pay for the cost? I’m gonna expropriate your property if you don’t pay me. And give it away, and give the lot to somebody who wants to build.”
But (former mayor Sam) Katz didn’t come to you and give you an option. So my 30-day option, people are loving it because it gets rid of the eyesore, get rid of the home that is sitting there to be used for drug dens, etc. But now, you have 600 plus lots available to you. Boom, let’s go build. That’s it. So that will solve the housing issue because you have more people in housing, and it’s supply and demand. The less you have, the higher the price. The more you have, the cheaper the price. Business sense. It’s a commonsense business approach, and so as a business owner, that’s what I will be into.
Public disorder has become a major concern among surveyed voters. How should the city best deal with it? The police budget is a major expense for the city. Are people getting value for their money?”
So let’s talk about the police budget for a moment. I say to you, I’m going to give you a 100 thousand dollars to manage this classroom we are in and everything in here in these four walls. Every year, I give you a 100 thousand dollars, but I’m going to charge you for every time you open the door. I’m going to charge you for your hydro, your water, and every student that comes in. And I’m going to charge you for every time I have to sweep the floor.
So, at the end of the year, I take 60 thousand dollars from your 100 thousand. You have to pay me. What then is your budget to manage this facility? 40 thousand. Did you know the police have to pay for parking? They have to pay for the building. They have to pay for water. They have to pay for gas from the city. Out of their budget. We have been fed this hocus pocus math, all in the effort to try and minimize and force the police into a financial corner that they cannot expand. Meanwhile, the city is expanding.
We have three times as many people as when the system was designed. In some cases, five times as much, and yet still we have 10 times as much phone calls in for help. But the police budget is too much, they say. Let us be reasonable and let us be sensible and let us have some mathematical calculation in this.
I’m no mathematician by any means, but what I’ve described to you just now is not a hundred-thousand-dollar budget. It’s a forty-thousand-dollar budget here now. So let’s take away everything that the police pay back to the city. Why not every cost that the police pay to the city? Why not take it as the city’s expense and put it on the other side of the ledger? Because who pays for the water for city hall? Which one of the councillors? Which one of them pays for their hydro? Which one? Which one of them pays for their own parking?
You see where this is going? But, yet still, we apply a different math to the police for any of them on the buildings. Why? The same math should apply to the police, and the same math apply to City Hall and other public buildings. The same thing for libraries. The same math should apply, right? But then why are we penalizing the police? We need the police to grow as the city grows, otherwise we’re going to stop the growth of the city. We can’t stop the growth of the city. I’m advocating for the growth of the city to continue, but I’m not. I’m not gonna sit by and allow us to keep saying, “Oh, the police budget is too much.”
You back up a second. What? What’s your mathematical calculation that gets you there? It’s the perception by the general public because that’s what the media has been pushing, the narrative they’ve been pushing for the longest while, and we just accept it. We need to know, to question it, and that’s where this is.
So public disorder, graffiti: people just do their thing. Recently, couple nights ago, I had to call the police. Guy just walked up for no reason and just started spray painting everywhere. And some of these things came from; I had a policy that I set out for this, and the policy is very simple. We’re going to get people to do community service. We are going to charge people a 1,000 dollars, 5,000 thousand dollars, and businesses up to 1,000 thousand dollars.
Because when people recognize that you can’t just litter anymore and think it’s okay, and when you get a warning, it’s $5,000, it’s a warning with community service. So, you get a ticket, but you have to spend and do about a 1,000 hours of community service. So now it forces you to think: if I’m going to do this again and get more community service, and the community service is going to involve you sweeping the street.
So some people say, “Oh, you bring back the chain gang.” Then that’s almost a chain gang. But what we’re doing is getting people to understand: this is your home, and you can’t spit anywhere, you can’t throw garbage anywhere, you can’t litter anywhere—no such thing. And if people catch you doing it, and people are videotaping you doing it, the police don’t have to be there to give you a ticket. If I witness you doing any kind of graffiti, and I take a picture and a video of you doing it and send it in, you know what happens to you?do We’ll find you. Soon or later, we’ll find you, and you’ll be made to the community. Always.
They don’t do that nonsense outside Canada. There are countries outside of Canada here and outside there. And besides, we are at the bottom of the ladder for being a healthy, safe, clean city. I am not going to be the mayor, and we stay at the bottom. No way! You vote for me, we’re not at the bottom anymore. After the first year or two, we are coming off the bottom.
When I started my campaign to get the city to do anything for recycling, we were at the bottom of the ladder for cities that recycle. At your world and mine on YouTube, you’ll see me with my dreads. You’ll see I have some black here instead of grey, and you’ll see me right across there at the old Market Square, where the old Market Square was. Old Market Square. That’s where I took my first video, and I presented an option to the city.
Today, we have moved from 30 percent of the participation rate in the recycling program to over 90 percent participation rate. So, I know it can be done, and I have done it with one sector which is recycling. I was in the park just today, and instead of these big square blocks that was there, now we see bins that says “recycle this.” That came about because I done that. So I know the things I’m saying here can be done because I, without public office, I’ve done these things. So, if I have the capacity to do it without public office, give me the vote. It’s done. It’s an easy fix.
While poverty and addictions are largely another government’s responsibility, are there ways that you can see that the city of Winnipeg could be doing more to solve these issues?
As mayor, the working relationship that I believe I’m going to foster with Wab Kinew is going to be unique and special. And here’s why: both of us have been here a long time, but beyond that, we need a different working relationship with the premier. It’s no secret. I would bring that to the fact that having gone out and championed a few things on my own time, I believe I can get the premier’s attention and say let’s work together to solve these issues.
The housing one is the biggest one. So, if he knows that I am retrofitting, for example, the Marlborough Hotel, and he knows I have blinders on. And I don’t ask his permission, but I have blinders on retrofitting it with the approval process overnight. Because some people think the approval process takes six months. No nonsense.
I’m calling people together and we’re working this weekend. Tell us what we need to do, where we need to get the engineers in here. We ain’t going home tonight, buddy. Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna work tonight. We’re gonna work through the night. We’re gonna put in some 16-hour days, and I can tell you this much: my campaign manager and I worked some twenty-hour days for Mother’s Day, doing flowers. And trust me, he knows I’m capable of doing 20-hour days for three or four days. So, it’s not a secret.
So, it’s possible that we can say to the engineers, “We have a special project we’re going to work on for this month, and we’re going to make sure the approval process and everything is done. We have put out a bid tender and get the bid process going and get people who want to get in there and bid.”
If the premier sees us, the leadership of the city doing that, and we tell him, “Mr. Premier, we’re going to retrofit Malborough, and we’re going to have 280 rooms in the next six months, and we’re going to triage everybody and get this.” He sees it physically going. I genuinely believe he will come on board.
The problem is that nobody is actually making that step forward. Everybody is having meetings after meetings. And elections come and go, and we’re still planning. Imagine the current mayor coming on, still making promises of what he’s going to do. I’m going, you sat there for four years, really? You should come out and say, like, I have done this here. Here are the things that I’ve done for the last 20 years. You should say, here’s my list of accomplishments for the last four years.
I like to get your vote to continue these things. Where is that list? What has it been? And that’s what; that’s the difference between having a working relationship and a partner with someone rather than having someone who sits in a chair and say they’re the mayor. I won’t do that. I’m going to have a very good working relationship by my actions, not words.
Voters are concerned about the rising cost of living and affordability. What do you see as ways the City of Winnipeg could make life less expensive for residents?
We haven’t brought out our apartment policy yet. We haven’t done that one yet. The residents are paying a high cost of water bill in this city. It’s like six, seven dollars a cubic meter that they’re charging. They made a profit last year of about 40 million dollars. That’s a surplus. Now remember, the city of Winnipeg is a nonprofit corporation. If we are a non-profit corporation and we have a surplus, what should we have done with that surplus? They put it into general revenue instead.
I am going to separate water from general revenue, so the revenue of water will remain public, and whatever we are doing for water, the citizens will know. And when there is a profit, like there was a profit last year, the citizens will benefit from that profit. Instead of it going into general revenue and just getting spent, they are now coming back to us for more increases.
What happened? You have other departments that are delinquent. One of those departments is the procurement department. One such department has a contract for road work, for example, that says, “Hey, if you. Build on the little stretch of road here, see a kilometer of road on Portage Avenue.” One kilometer for easy calculation. All the steel and the gravel and the concrete and everything that’s currently on the street, you get to pick it up for zero dollars. And then you take it to your yard, and you get to recycle that, and you get to do what? Sell it for anywhere between 40 and 50 dollars a ton.”
Why on God’s green earth do I want to do that? As an avid recycler for the city, I will be in the recycling game. The city of Winnipeg will be in the “recycling of aggregate business.” So, I’m taking up the asphalt and I’m selling it, so we, the citizens, can make money from it. I’m taking up the concrete, and because these are 8-inch-thick concrete times one kilometer. So, it’s not a little piece of concrete we’re talking about.
Can imagine if it’s 50 kilometer or 100 kilometer of road that we do, and I’m just talking about one. And we could literally save. My rough estimates shows me that we could save about 50 million dollars a year if we’re in the recycling of aggregate business.
So, with the savings from the water, I’m going to find a way to make sure we have a saving this year. Next year your water bill is reduced to two dollars and 50 cents a kilometer instead of six dollars and 80 cents.
Affordability. Imagine it moving from $6.80 to $2.80. You know how much savings that is? And then I’m going to say to everybody, “guess what, guys? Instead of me raising your property tax this year, we have just estimated that we are going to make about. 60 to 70 million dollars from the recycling of aggregate, from the steel we picked up off the roads, from the concrete, from the asphalt, we’re going to make about 67 million dollars. Guess what? Your property tax will be frozen this year.”
Imagine if we continue to look for those savings, because when we continue to look for those savings Wow! I said to one fellow, the only reason why I look for these things is because, as a small business owner, if I don’t manage my resources properly, I wouldn’t be in business. JamRock Securities are very successful. One of the most successful alarm companies in the city because I’ve managed my resources properly. Simply put.
The same approach needs to be done for the City of Winnipeg. There are departments that are delinquent. The planning department, for example, needs a major shock in the system. Needs some bad. There are some permits people that are unbelievable the way we do things. It’s almost like we’re in 1915-26 like, man. Come on.
And I make recommendations, and some of the recommendations they’re looked at: I make recommendations because my business takes me in and out of properties and buildings and so forth, and I’ve seen things enough to know that what we currently have is not working. It’s not working.
One guy, for example, he’s starting a new business. True story, because it’s a client of mine. He has a current location. He opens a new location. The city charged him, charged him a permit fee to open this location. He pays the permit. Then the plumber comes, and the plumber has to take out a permit to work, and for the plumbing in that building. The electric guy, this guy comes. He has to take out a permit to do business inside it, right? The HVAC guy comes. He needs a permit. The alarm company comes to put in the cameras. We need a permit. The roofing guy comes, “Whoa, hold on, hold up!”
And on top of that, he has to pay a retainer fee. They haven’t even told him yet what that retainer fee is for, and the retainer fee is 10 thousand dollars. And if he don’t pay, what do they do? Stop order. They put that stop order on his work. So, which means now he has to stop everybody. Once they put a stop order on your work, the electrical guy is still getting paid, but he’s gone on to another job. If he starts another job, you know when he’s coming back to your job? Nobody knows.
Now you find another electrical guy who tells you no. Because Joe Blow Electric started, he can’t work off of that plan. He has to draw his own plan. So he’s designing another plan for you, which is 30 or 40 thousand dollars. The way we’re doing things in the city, I’m embarrassed for the people who are in the administration. I’m embarrassed for them, literally.
But that will change. When I’m in, we will have this city open up for business. We will have this city friendly when people want to come and work, and people want to open businesses. Small business community is going to thrive.
I came here in 1999. This is home for me. I have 2 children born right here. I have a business here. I worked for Transit for almost 10 years. My wife worked for Transit for eight years. We love this city. I love this city. This is home for me. This is where my children were born. I’m going to fight for this place, and I’m going to advocate for the right to leave behind a healthier, sustainable future for my children and your children and everybody’s children.
I’m not going to watch it deteriorate and rot and do nothing. It’s deteriorating; it’s rotten. But we can do better, and we need to do better because it’s still a beautiful place, despite the negativeness that the current political climate has put us into. The crime in the city is out of control. The dirt and the filth and the streets in the city are out of control. The way in which people view the city is not beneficial, and not just people. There’s a handful of people who view the city in such a negative light that you go online and you see them writing things about “Winneberg” and calling it all kinds of names.
That will change when someone like me, who has the ambition to look at it through a different lens comes, and not just pumping up stories. We did not have the recycling plan we have now when I started my campaign to change it. Today we do.
We’re not as environmentally friendly as we should be yet. From where I’ve started, from where we were till where we are now, we are much better off. I believe we need to still go further. Composting should be here already, on a large scale. My vision for a recycling plant is where the citizens are making money off their returns, whether it’s an old computer, we give you so much dollars for it. A can, we give you so much money for it.
Calgary is doing it. People from Calgary calling me, asking me for electronic equipment to send to them. There’s money in it. Why are we not there? Because it’s done. I’ve never been elected. That’s the only reason we haven’t done it.
And I am confident that this time around, with the mess they have created for transit, I’m confident that I’m going to be the next mayor of the city, because we have tried the people who have no idea about transit, and they have to pay for consultant, expensive consultant, four million dollars, and what did the four million dollars get us? A total catastrophe.
It’s time we vote for someone who has been in the seat for ten years. Who understands transit better than everybody else running? To those in the mayor, and that’s gonna lead us to where we now have a path where transit, functional transit, is a part of our city planning going forward in a big way. The crime level in the city will improve. Because now we’re gonna take pride in our city again. We’re gonna have less kids in trouble.
My main theme for my campaign is “more sports, less crime.” When I started this campaign twelve years ago, we didn’t have a professional soccer team. We didn’t have a professional basketball team. Now we do. More sports, less crime.
I walked around the first campaign with a soccer ball, a football hung around my neck, and people thought I was looking silly. It’s getting the message through that if we engage our youth into sports, we’re less likely to have them get into trouble, and that’s the message: “more sports, less crime”. A future that sees our young people. Investment in our young people. Our recreational facilities have been gutted by this administration. I’m going to invest in our recreational capacity because they’re like essential services to a lot of communities. Because when there’s an emergency, the first place to get opened up is the halls. So we’re going to treat them as such. So that means their buildings are going to be kept in upkeep for their building.
There are a lot of community centers when the roof needs to be fixed, they have to raise funds to fix it. This is crazy, and yet it’s a city owned building. This doesn’t make sense. We pay with taxes; it needs to be managed properly.
The water, your water bill will reduce once I’m in, because I’m gonna take it out separately from general revenue, and I’m going to make sure you get the benefit of the surplus. But things like those you can only do if you are a better manager and a better businessperson than what is here now.
And to all of those people out there who are wondering how they’re going to survive if we reduce, if we can save taxes. I generate income rather from getting in the business of recycling of aggregate. I don’t have to raise your taxes. I don’t have to try and gouge you, and so that will have a little bit more cushion, a little bit more money in your pocket.
And towards seniors who struggle with the bus system, help is on the way. Our firefighters, we’re busy paying overtime, 10 million dollars in overtime. When we spend two and a half, three million dollars and hire more firefighters, we save ourselves seven million dollars. That’s a business decision, but it’s also the right decision because you’re not burning out your firefighters, you’re not putting them into harm’s way, and you’re not forcing them to take leave of absence.
Transit. We will bring back the old route. We want the 16 and the 18, and the 66, right, Grant? We want it to be simple for people to figure out where they’re going. So, we’re going to bring back some of those names and bring back some of those routes, and we’re going to keep some of the new ones that work. There are some of the new ones that work, but some of the old ones didn’t work. So we’re going to tweak it.
Graham Avenue will be open. Graham Avenue will be open again. All them boulders and collars and the nonsense. Graham Avenue will be open again, so people can get through. Use it as a harbour once again. Everything runs through Graham Avenue. We’re gonna go back to those days.
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