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?

Accessibility and affordability for transit services is a major focus of mine, and should be for anybody running for municipal government. Our transit system is very behind the times when compared to cities across Canada, and is riddled with barriers that discourage Winnipeggers from using our transit services.

My plan features major improvements that could be implemented almost immediately:

1. Enable the use of Debit/Credit cards to pay for fare on our buses;

2. Implement dedicated transit and carpool lanes on major routes like Pembina Highway and Osborne Street;

3. Freeze fare prices from increasing, while seeking to lower them.

Furthermore, I would intend to look at long term solutions like expanding the eligibility requirements of the WINNPass program to include more people, as well as expanding regular transit hours to 2:30 a.m. to better serve workers and patrons engaging with our night life and provide a safe way home.

We need to earn back the trust of safety on our transit services, as well. The 2020 implementation of only half-shields for drivers was an embarrassing half-measure by the City in the name of reducing costs, and is only being rectified now this year. Furthermore, we can expand on our pilot program that involved Community Safety Team peace officers being present on our buses, and implement it fully, without needing to rely on over-burdening the Winnipeg Police Service to implement it themselves.

When it comes to the safety of our passengers and workers, we can’t afford to think short-term costs. The more we can ensure safe travels, the more trust in ridership increases, the higher overall revunue we can collect to keep developing our transit.

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?

The city is not approaching this crisis with an holisitic view. Homelessness isn’t just about a lack of housing; it’s the result of a wide range of issues plaguing our social safety nets. Right now, our city seems more content with simply removing people from ecampments, and moving them out of site. While I do support the continued funding of outreach programs the city has previously engaged with, I don’t feel they go far enough. We need to setup systems and programs that allow a path for an individual to build a foundation to regain a sense of place within our society.

We can do this by providing more resources to our shelters & outreach programs (such as Eagle Urban Transition Centre, End Homelessness Winnipeg, Naatamooskakowin, Ndinawe, RAY, Sunshine House, and Rainbow Resource Centre), as well as post-incarciration support programs (such as John Howard Society, Elizabeth Fry Society, and Future Hope) to help facilitate a smooth transition to stable housing and community re-integration. We can also work with the province to expand safe consumption programs and provide direct pipelines to addictions counseling, as well as provide more direct mental health services to people who are struggling.

Ultimately, we need to focus on preventing people from reaching the point of homelessness, rather than waiting to react to it once people get there. 

Furthermore, we as a city can encourage more affordable housing development by pre-zoning multi-story mixed-income housing with mandatory affordable units, enforce vacant building and land surcharges to discourage developers from sitting on empty buildings, and establishing a municipal land bank and tax increment financing programs to assist non-profits, co-ops, and Indigenous housing providers to build homes for all. 

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 money?

I believe the truth of the matter is that our current system of law enforcement has become widly inefficient, and geared towards being reactive as opposed to proactive when is comes to crime & public disorder; which has resulted in bloated budgets, too much overtime pay, and over-burdened police service members, expected to be able to respond to a wide array of situations outside of their scope of training.

We need to fully re-evaluate our approach & budget allocation when it comes to crime prevention. Fundamentally, police should serve primarily as a response to violent situations, yet they are all we as a city have access to when it comes to people having a mental health or well-being crisis, & drug addiction intervention. We need to reallocate funding provided to the Winnipeg Police Service to establish & reinforce alternative crisis response programs across our communities (such as the CST, ARCC, DCSP, etc.), and allow them to provide specialize care tailored to the areas they respresent. We can and should seek to provide a network of services that allows our community service members to better train & focus on their areas of crisis response, while simultaneously giving Winnipeggers a wider variety of services they can rely on meet their needs.

While poverty and addictions are largely another government’s responsibility, are there ways that you see that the City of Winnipeg could be doing more to solve these issues?   

As stated within my responses above, we must be proactive when dealing with issues of poverty & addictions. Our municipal government has plenty of methods to prevent people from reaching these points. We can implement stronger enforced rent control standards, and develop our own city tenant protection unit to work alongside the provincial RTB and eliminate renoviction practices, and price gouging to help with housing affordability.

We can provide easier access to transit services to reduce barriers of getting to work, and participating with our city at large. We can offer more funding to community centers throughout the city that provide safe, no-cost third spaces for folks to engage with their communities. We can also work with the province to setup safe-injection sites and offer clear paths towards counselling & addictions services to people who are struggling.

And lastly, we need to end our approach of treating addiction as a crime, and re-engage & re-establish trust in our social services that those who seek help will be treated with empathy and not derision or a criminal charge. 

Voters are concerned about the rising cost of living and affordability. What do you see are ways the City of Winnipeg could make life less expensive for residents?

Rent & gas prices has climbed exponentially over the years, and it’s becoming harder and harder to participate as a resident of Winnipeg. I would seek to close loopholes that landlords frequently use to raise rents above rent control caps, as well as establish a dedicated municipal City Tenant Protection Unit that works alongside the RTB to track renovictions, enforce proactive building inspections, mandate developer-funded relocation assistance, and give more strength to tenants to stand up against predatory practices.

Furthermore, I would implement various ways (as mentioned above) to strengthen our transit bus systems, and deliver a more consistent, reliable service to reduce the need for people to seek much more expensive alternatives like taxis or ride-share services. As well, I would create a bike rental service as a means to offer yet another affordable alternative method for transportation.

We also need to encourage the development of more housing co-ops, and affordable rental units by pre-zoning areas along main transit corridors that restricts developers from building units with the sole purpose of maximizing profit.