Not much of a race when most of the field can’t find their running shoes

With less than two weeks to go before Winnipeggers go to the polls to elect a new council and mayor, voters find themselves in a very similar predicament.

There are 12 names on the ballot for mayor, but few real choices to fill one of the most powerful and impactful elected offices in the entire province.

And what of the campaigns on offer?

They all want to make the city safer and more efficient. Some even have plans to accomplish that, but most of the candidates have committed only to the idea of safer and more efficient, providing few details on how we’re going to get there.

Put another way, there are few truly bad ideas, but hardly any really good ones.

There are few truly bad ideas, but hardly any really good ones.

The vagueness of the pledges exposes many of the candidates in two ways. First, it demonstrates they simply don’t understand the complexity of the problems they want to fix.

Second, and more importantly, most of them don’t know how municipal government works.

For example, quite a few candidates have promised to “fix” Winnipeg Transit, but other than statements of intent, almost no one has come up with a concrete plan to get it done.

The reality is that public transportation is desperately underfunded by the provincial government. Winnipeg Transit cannot survive on revenue from fares, because ridership is declining. At the same time, it needs more buses, drivers, improved routes and some way of reducing the cost to ride in order to make it more affordable for people who have no other way to get around the city.

Those candidates who created policies on improving the service often retreat to a pledge to negotiate a better deal from the province. With respect, if a better deal was there to be had, it would have been done by now.

All this uninformed hope about the future of the city separates the candidates into one incumbent and the rest of the pack.

Gillingham is doing what incumbents do: he is running on his record. He has promised some good ideas, such as a significant upgrade for 311 — the city’s general information and service access hotline — along with a pledge to continue making robust investment in infrastructure and pursing progress on housing and public safety.

And what of the challengers?

Although some ideas from rivals fall into the category of “not bad, but not great,” the biggest downside of the pledges made by the rest of the pack is they often lack practical strategies for making them a reality.

Perennial candidate Don Woodstock, for example, has one of the most expansive and detailed platforms ever seen in a Winnipeg mayoral election. However, when it comes down to figuring out how to pay for all those bold ideas, Woodstock falls into a predictable narrative.

New ideas will be funded by trimming costs across the board, increasing efficiency, selling naming rights and — one of Woodstock’s greatest hits — eliminating all consultants’ contracts. This is a classic case of paying for dollars in savings that might produce pennies.

It’s not surprising the best-of-the-rest come from Kevin Klein, who served on council and spent a brief time in the provincial government. But even then, his math is vague and wobbly.

For example, Klein wants to expand the Alternative Response to Citizens in Crisis program, which pairs medical professionals with police officers. That’s a good idea, but he has no idea how to pay for it. (And his website refers to the program as ARCH, when it is really ARCC.)

Klein also wants to deploy nine “advanced care paramedic” SUVs that will respond to the vast majority of wellness checks and low-acuity medical calls. This, Klein argues, will end the practice of dispatching a truck and entire firefirefighter-paramedic crew, which is costly and cumbersome.

wfprelatedhttps://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/2026/10/09/klein-promises-revamped-system-for-mental-health-wellness-calls:wfprelated

Those are potentially solid ideas, but they fall apart in two major ways. First, the United Firefighters of Winnipeg union does not want to stop dispatching firefighters to medical calls. As a result, Klein has just lost the UFFW’s support.

Second, he rather casually suggests the province will pay for the advanced paramedicine vehicles and increase in ARCC staff. No one can say that wouldn’t or couldn’t happen, but it’s unlikely, given the fact the NDP is fighting its own battle to control costs.

The people who don’t vote will end up getting the mayor they deserve

Polling has shown that Gillingham, not surprisingly, is out in front among committed voters. And turnout in municipal elections is so tragically low, it’s hard for other candidates to engineer an upset.

Klein likely had the best chance to make this a legitimate two-horse race, but he made a couple of tragic mistakes. He entered very late, and he got into a mudslinging competition with another candidate for reasons that no one can explain.

Voters may not like Gillingham, and may curse the fact that there aren’t more legitimate candidates, but if more people turned out to vote, then this would be a better race.

As it is, the people who don’t vote will end up getting the mayor they deserve. Even if it’s by default.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com