The Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board has a long history of engaging mayoral candidates campaigning to be the next mayor of the City of Winnipeg. Representing over 2,400 REALTOR® Members, the Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board has a vested interest in connecting with candidates to learn more about their plans on matters that affect the health of the real estate market and homeownership for Winnipeggers.
This is the first of our special weekly feature leading up to election day on October 26 called “A Conversation with 2022 Mayoral Candidates” where candidates share their vision. Scan the QR code above to listen to Shaun Loney’s podcast interview.
By Shaun Loney
The day I decided to run for Mayor of Winnipeg I was helping to clean up an abandoned homeless camp near our home in St. Boniface. As I was picking up garbage, I realized that a woman had been living there. I noticed a large split in a cottonwood tree where she’d sought shelter. I told myself then and there: “What we are doing clearly isn’t working, it doesn’t have to be this way, we have to act now”.
I’m an entrepreneur, author and economist. On so many issues, Winnipeg is stuck and we need to do things differently.
I’m running for Mayor because I have the experience that Winnipeg needs now: fixing broken systems, creating jobs where none existed, preventing crime, saving tax dollars by addressing big city issues and seizing issues and turning them into opportunities for citizens.
For too long City Hall has focussed on managing problems which has led to overburdened emergency services, ever increasing infrastructure deficits, underfunded services and young people leaving our city for better opportunities elsewhere. It is time we move on from endless debates about whether we should cut our way or spend our way out of our problems. I favour taking new approaches to getting things done when it is obvious that the old systems no longer work.
We can stem the tide of young people leaving the City for opportunities elsewhere by creating green jobs. If elected Mayor, I will establish a Tree Trust, modernizing Winnipeg Transit to become MetroMobility, make Winnipeg the electric vehicle capital of Canada and lean into retrofitting our buildings. I agree with Winnipeg Council’s recently released report Community Energy Investment Roadmap that says we can create 100,000 person years of employment by leaning into the green economy. I’ve created social enterprises that install ground source heat pumps (Aki Energy - winner of Canada Clean50) and BUILD (ScotiaBank Green Business of the Year). I have the entrepreneurial know-how to create these jobs.
Our housing strategy will focus on using new tools to raise capital required to support an innovative Land Trust here in Winnipeg that can convert vacant houses to renovated homes. We will also increase density using leading edge practises from other jurisdictions to make sure neighourhoods are brought along in a respectful fashion.
We will improve City services by understanding that the growth in City spending in the last 15 years has gone to emergency services. Tackling emergency service workloads will be key to freeing up dollars for the services that Winnipeggers expect and deserve out of their tax dollars. We will do this by giving police, fire and paramedics a new tool to free them up to do the jobs they signed up for. This means creative financing tools to engage Winnipeg’s amazing nonprofit sector to lower their workloads and to pay them on a get-it-done basis.
I look forward to working with the Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Association. Your work is important to the City and your perspectives are needed. Thanks for the opportunity to share some of my thoughts about the City we all love.
Visit shaunforwinnipeg.com for more info.
Bio: Shaun Loney lives with his partner Fiona Muldrew and their three boys in Norwood. He is co-founder of BUILD (ScotiaBank’s Green Business of the Year in 2014) as well as a co-founder of Aki Energy.
Loney is recognized for his work as a social entrepreneur nationally as an Ashoka Fellow and won Ernst and Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year. He has a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Manitoba. He is also the author of five books including Manitoba bestseller An Army of Problem Solvers, and The Beautiful Bailout on how to rethink and improve the way governments work while saving taxpayers money. Shaun was also a senior civil servant with the government of Manitoba (Director of Energy Policy).
The Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board is a non-partisan organization that works with all elected officials in support of our Members and a better Winnipeg for all its citizens. Nothing in the podcast or this publication should be seen as an endorsement of any candidate in Winnipeg’s civic election by the Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board.
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Jenny Motkaluk
Listen to the Podcast version