Mayor and premier both change plan to meet at Festival

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/02/2019 (2145 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There was no love lost on Valentine’s Day for Manitoba’s best-known Brians.

Neither Premier Brian Pallister nor Mayor Brian Bowman showed up for the Festival du Voyageur’s 50th anniversary media launch, which both were scheduled to attend. They were replaced by Rochelle Squires, minister of francophone affairs, and St. Boniface Coun. Matt Allard, respectively.

Pallister’s office said he had a “scheduling conflict” and was in meetings during the event. His staff confirmed Wednesday he was back in Winnipeg after a trip to Costa Rica, but said he wasn’t available for media interviews.

Meanwhile, Bowman was at a last-minute news conference to announce the retirement of the city’s chief administrative officer, Doug McNeil, in April.

A week ago, the mayor requested a meeting with the premier to discuss what the city perceives as a funding shortfall from the provincial government. Pallister has so far declined to meet face to face.

“We’re still hopeful the premier’s office will make time available. Obviously, we’ve got some pretty difficult challenges with the recent communications from the province,” Bowman said Thursday, citing the Manitoba government’s refusal to pay for $40 million worth of road repairs carried out in 2018.

City hall is also concerned about the province’s proposal to switch $34.7 million from the north end sewage treatment plant to cover its share of the Waverley underpass and other projects.

Bowman also said the province continues to withhold $2 million from the second phase of the southwest transit corridor that was due in 2018.

The finance committee this week directed the public service to get clarification from the province as to whether the funding changes are merely proposals open for discussion or directives, “which seems to be more consistent with their recent communications,” Bowman said.

Pallister and Bowman last met for more than two hours in December, a rendez-vous the mayor said occurred weeks before the latest funding proposal from the province.

“Since that time however we’ve received numerous correspondence and had meetings with their provincial ministers on matters that are incredibly serious for taxpayers and will affect every citizen in the city of Winnipeg. Our public service is seeking clarity from their public service but these are pretty significant dollars that the province is throwing around,” Bowman said, adding: “We’re having this discussion in 2019 on a budget that was passed in 2017.”

He wanted the meeting with Pallister to get “clarity” on their position, noting: “The hope is I’ll be able to meet with him as soon as possible, but to date they’ve simply declined.”

“There are times when the leadership of either the province or the city just need to sit down and go over things. It can help,” Bowman added.

While Pallister kept quiet, Manitoba’s Finance Minister Scott Fielding waded into a debate Wednesday night on Twitter.

Fielding, a former two-term Winnipeg city councillor and senior member of ex-mayor Sam Katz’s inner circle, noted his disappointment about Winnipeg’s new impact fees, which are taxes on new residential developments that were brought in under Bowman’s watch.

“Disappointed all decisions seem to start and end with raising or creating new taxes on residents of Winnipeg,” Fielding tweeted, tagging Bowman and the City of Winnipeg.

The mayor accused Fielding of trolling online.

“This is a government that promised during the campaign to be more collaborative. Their motto was ‘better together’ and I don’t think they demonstrate that when they troll municipal leaders,” Bowman told reporters Thursday.

Fielding told media gathered at his office Thursday: “First of all, I think it was the mayor that trolled us to be quite frank with you, in terms of his approach. We were trying to work collectively with the City of Winnipeg.”

“We as a province have been trying to do everything we can to get our house in order and to keep taxes low. We’re going to continue to do that. What we see from the city is their first option tends to be to jack up taxes on residents and also to create new taxes. We don’t think that’s the right approach. We think they should really roll up their sleeves and address these issues. Quit taxing residents to the max.”

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca