Out with old and in with new

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/10/2014 (3785 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The voters of Winnipeg demanded change and they got it on election night, plunking eight new posteriors into city council’s 16 seats.

Half of the municipal status quo in this city was wiped away on Wednesday evening, as three incumbents were defeated and five new faces filled empty seats, including the mayor’s chair.

In Elmwood-East Kildonan, troubled one-term councillor Thomas Steen was soundly thrashed by the NDP-affiliated Jason Schreyer, son of former premier and Gov. Gen. Ed Schreyer.

In St. Charles, two-term Tory councillor Grant Nordman, another Katz loyalist, was defeated by the apparently unaligned Shawn Dobson.

And in Daniel McIntyre, NDP-affiliated Cindy Gilroy knocked off six-term fellow leftie Harvey Smith in her second attempt to do so in as many elections.

Add in a near-death experience for council speaker Devi Sharma in Old Kildonan, where she narrowly survived a challenge from the labour-endorsed Suzanne Hrynyk, and the 2014 Election Night amounted to a repudiation of Sam Katz’s city hall.

During the outgoing mayor’s final term, too many councillors appeared all too eager to ignore calls for audits into improperly procured and over-budget construction projects as well as questionable real-estate transactions.

This doomed both Nordman and Steen — and likely would have doomed Katz and outgoing St. Norbert Coun. Justin Swandel, had they stood for re-election.

In the place of the small-C conservative Katz, who was focused on fixing potholes and pavement, Winnipeg’s new mayor is Brian Bowman, an urbanist-progressive Tory in love with dreamy talk and rapid transit.

Swandel has been replaced by community activist Janice Lukes, an effective former ward assistant who earned a one-day-a-week job in his office by badgering him to fix problems in his ward.

Another former council assistant, Matt Allard, easily won the race to replace his old St. Boniface boss Dan Vandal, who stepped down to run as a federal Liberal in Saint Boniface-Saint Vital.

The final new faces are Tories who reclaimed wards previously held by Tories. Lawyer and investment-firm owner Marty Morantz replaces Paula Havixbeck in Charleswood-Tuxedo, while pastor Scott Gillingham succeeds Scott Fielding in St. James-Brooklands.

Despite those two Tory holds — and the election of a Progressive Conservative mayor — city council has taken a slight shift to the left.

For 10 years, Sam Katz led a de facto centre-right majority on council, as elected officials with ties to Conservative and Liberal parties outnumbered NDP-affiliated councillors.

This allowed the small-C conservative mayor to pursue a moderately conservative political agenda.

This morning, Winnipeggers will wake up to a council led by a mayor far less conservative than Sam Katz, leading a city council with five New Democrats, five Liberals, three other Tories and two councillors whose ideologies will be better understood with time.

This is not the significant shift to the left that would have resulted from a mayoral win by former NDP MP and MLA Judy Wasylycia-Leis. It’s just a slight adjustment that would have been pronounced had Sharma flopped in Old Kildonan.

Winnipeg now has a very centrist council where Gillingham, Morantz and North Kildonan’s Jeff Browaty could wind up serving as the unofficial right-of-centre opposition.

Mayor-elect Bowman would be wise to place at least one of these three on executive policy committee. The still-young Browaty is now a council veteran, while the highly skilled Morantz may prove of particular use at budget time.

And with Smith’s departure, Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry Coun. Jenny Gerbasi is now council’s elder stateswoman. She is almost assured a seat back on EPC, where Bowman will need a rapid-transit-loving ally.

Bowman did, after all, promise to build six bus corridors by 2030. Compared to Katz’s incoming pledge to do away with business taxes — something the outgoing mayor failed to do — that seems like a utopian dream.

There is no question this council has changed, dramatically.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca