Bokhari says mayoral platform minds the ‘gaps’ in city

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This article was published 12/07/2022 (897 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After spending six months crafting her mayoral platform, Rana Bokhari decided to focus on community, sustainability and prosperity.

Bokhari, a lawyer who led the Manitoba Liberal Party from 2013 to 2016, is confident her plan and background set her apart from the other 11 candidates in the Oct. 26 election.

“I come from a different lens and different representation,” she said. “I’m not taking the city back to the ’90s here,” she said in a reference to Glen Murray, who is running for mayor after holding the job from 1998 to 2004.

Her first pillar of community highlights accessible and affordable recreation spaces, green spaces for gatherings, safe spaces to welcome newcomers to the city, support for multi-generational families and collaboration with First Nations communities.

“When you are engaged in life as a Winnipegger, you can see the gaps. I see the gaps in community. I see the gaps where we aren’t cultivating the recreational piece in our community centres. There’s a lot of newcomers and people with children who would value having these community centres more available.”

On sustainability, her plan focuses on converting to biofuels and clean energy, halting sewage dumps into the city’s rivers, active transportation and solutions to infrastructure.

“We’re in an era of climate change and needing to acknowledge climate justice. Green spaces, urban spaces and urban gardens are amazing, innovative ways to not only connect the community to the environment, but help with the sustainability and environmental piece,” she said.

“We need to be thinking 10, 20, sometimes 30 years in advance and we have to be considering the demographic change that will happen in the next 10 to 20 years. What Winnipeg looks like will look very different, so we have to start addressing those issues.”

In terms of prosperity, Bokhari wants to help small businesses, seek affordable housing solutions and provide better access to services.

“There is a generation of Winnipeggers that needs to see a vision for the future that is innovative, that demands us using the new technology, that demands us dealing with climate change, that demands dealing with the rights of women, children and human rights and that demands protecting our lands and waters. That wasn’t happening in the 1990s,” she said in another reference to Murray.

As the city deals with recent violent crime against innocent bystanders, Bokhari wants it known she is against community policing.

“Community policing is not the solution and is the wrong way to go about this. We need community organizations and partners to come together and deal with the addictions and poverty issues together,” she said.

“We have an addictions crisis in Winnipeg… It is a crisis and demands a crisis response. We also have a poverty crisis and a homelessness crisis. It is time for an immediate response in the short term as well as the long term.”

She said it is important to consider and listen to front-line workers who deal with crime. She will release her policies on crime in the coming weeks.

The next step for Bokhari is to start door-knocking and talking to voters with her team, which she is proud to say is all women.

“I don’t think that’s been done before. I think it’s something to celebrate. We have women who have every experience under the sun, who are grassroots and understand what people are going through.”

Other candidates include Scott Gillingham, Shaun Loney, Jenny Motkaluk, Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Jessica Peebles, Rick Shone, Desmond Thomas, Idris Ademuyiwa Adelakun, Chris Clacio and Don Woodstock.

bryce.hunt@freepress.mb.ca