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 next submission in 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 Chris Clacio’s podcast interview.
By Chris Clacio
Winning is rebranding the city back to the preceding “Winnipeg: Heart of the Continent” slogan. The reason, I believe, is that Winnipeg isn’t only the heart of North America, but for myself I believe the city is the heart of the world. Physically speaking, I’ve seen a map where all the roads and highways on the continent connect back here. Even in Manitoba’s political scene, the Province of Manitoba has made commitments to strengthening the city of Winnipeg relationship to the 17 surrounding municipalities by creating a capital planning region body to support economic development. I would love to promote that piece of the story as the mayor of the biggest city in the Province of Manitoba and the centre of the country.
Winnipeg has always been a city of commerce and trade. Our founding history of the past being called the “Gateway to the West ‘’ and the “Chicago of the North” is proof enough for me that the city of Winnipeg is the perfect city to have an entrepreneurial spirit and become an entrepreneur. And which is why I call myself a civic practitioner and a policy entrepreneur.
The best strategy to attract business investment to Winnipeg is to promote and work with the Capital Planning Region and the surrounding municipalities to better coordinate our planning departments and projects for the long term. One of the greatest business investments is in the CentrePort Canada area of the region. Some industries I would love to see within that area of the region are tiny homes manufacturers, brand name entrepreneurial companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla or Steve Job’s Apple to open up headquarters or production lines in the region. I believe the future of work will be the technological gig and shared knowledge economies. I would also love to see that Economic Development Winnipeg and the Chamber of Commerce support indigenous, black, Filipino, and people of colour businesses within the city and province. The city of Winnipeg and the region are growing because of immigration, and that is how we will become a million people strong.
I would address Winnipeg’s chronic housing shortage in several ways. Firstly, by reviewing and researching whether removing or merging the downtown zoning by-laws to match the rest of the city will help to build more residential dwelling in downtown, secondly by eliminating single-family homes — or the technical term is Residential 1 zoning — within the planning department, thirdly by making mixed-use zoning the standard practice for selecting development projects for housing going forward within the city, fourth by including an inclusionary zoning, density bonusing, and ev-ready policy within the development process, and fifth, by removing parking standards in the zoning by-laws.
As mayor, I will have the highest level of office inside city hall that will provide me with enough resources to be able to better coordinate with all 15 city councillors. First off, the plan when I get elected on October 26 is to meet with all current or newly elected councillors separately and as a whole to set my priorities as mayor with all councillors as early in my term as possible. I truly believe the mayor needs to learn to step back and support the councillors more than directing and giving orders.
My early platform announcements were expanding and rebranding the office of public engagement into the office of civic engagement and the creation of a 4-year participatory budget process for city council. Meaning. if a citizen or group of citizens in a ward has an exciting and innovative idea to create an active transportation route in the neighbourhood, they would either go to the office of civic engagement or their local councillor, they would be directed to the key staff and department to get that route constructed into their neighbourhood. The project would be funded through the participatory budget process to receive funding for enabling the infrastructure.
The benchmarks that I would take to move key projects of core civic services forward and faster is, number one, a complete and major overhaul of city governance and administration within city hall. Winnipeg city governance has changed numerous times within the past 50 years. The most recent governance and administrative review, which happened back in 1998 and was called the Cuff Report, replaced the board of commissioners with a Chief Administrative Officer (CAO). The vision is to create a hybrid model which would help mitigate the workload of the CAO to a team of commissioners who would support the CAO in managing and delivering the proper resources for city staff and council.
The second action step I would take is replacing the current procurement process from a request for proposal towards a qualification-based selection, or a request for qualifications process. This process would expedite and set standards that would provide an agreement to be written and set by the city’s procurement standards, not by negotiation.
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.
Previous Candidate articles
Don Woodstock
Kevin Klein
Robert-Falcon Ouellette
Rana Bokhari
Rick Shone
Shaun Loney
Jenny Motkaluk
Listen to the Podcast version