Murray announced Wednesday afternoon that he will be running for mayor in Winnipeg this fall, after submitting documents to register his campaign at City Hall. “I love this city. We will do things quickly,” he told reporters Wednesday. “We will return to the kinds of collaborations that made us so proud of our city.” Murray was mayor of Winnipeg from 1998 to 2004, when he resigned to run for the Liberal Federal Party. He lost that race, but was elected a Liberal member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament in 2011, where he held various cabinet posts until retiring from politics briefly in 2017. In 2020, Murray ran to replace Elizabeth May as leader of the federal Greens, but lost.
The city has “huge challenges”
Murray said that since he returned to Winnipeg a few years ago to work in the private sector, he has been impressed by how difficult it is to repair developments, the city’s collapsing infrastructure and how much the city’s most vulnerable are suffering. “This city has some huge challenges. It is on a scale of challenges when I was first elected mayor,” he said. “I have never had more experience in my whole life. I am much more capable of doing this job than when I was young and did it for the first time.” Asked why he would not stay in the private sector and work there to improve the city, he said he believed major changes were needed at the municipal level. “There is a real frustration in the private sector that there really needs to be some change in the public sector so that we can get back to business in the city,” he said. Murray says he did not make the decision to run and consulted with several people to run for mayor before making the leap. He said he would present his platform at a later date.
Challenge “high profile” to other candidates
In an interview with CBC News on Tuesday, Murray said he was able to fix some financial issues during his tenure as mayor. Aaron Moore disagrees with some of these comments. “I think his decision to freeze property taxes for many years is part of the reason we are in the current financial situation,” said Moore, a political science professor at the University of Winnipeg who focuses on municipal policy. “I think suggesting that he did some financial magic as mayor and now has to come to fix it again is in a way ignoring his contribution to the problem.” Moore also believes that many still think a lot about Murray. He also characterized it as quite mediocre or progressive, depending on the subject. Murray’s real estate tax freeze, for example, was a fiscally conservative move, Moore said. The fact that he left Manitoba could inspire some skepticism among some voters, Moore said, although he also believes Murray could make life harder for some competitors. “With someone as high-profile as Glen Murray running, it can make some of the other contenders reevaluate their chances of winning,” he said.
Winnipeg must move on, opponents say
Murray is now the 11th person to run for mayor in Winnipeg on October 26. The other 10 candidates are Idris Adelakun, Chris Clacio, Rana Bokhari, Scott Gillingham, Shaun Loney, Jenny Motkaluk, Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Rick Shone, Desmond Thomas and Don Woodstock. After Murray announced his candidacy, Shawn said in a statement that Winnipeg needed to “look ahead” and “find itself at a crossroads” in infrastructure, debt, homelessness, transportation, public safety and finance. accessibility. He accused Murray of leaving the Winnipegers in 2004 and leaving his job as mayor. “I’m not a politician, I’m a father of two, a small business owner, a community volunteer and I love my home. I’m excited about our future. Now is not the time to look back,” Shawn said. “We do not need a mayor who is more interested in being a star on the national stage.” On Murray’s proposal for concerns about the city’s financial position, Gillingham’s opponent, currently an adviser to St. James, until recently chairman of the city’s finance committee, said “there is still money in the bank” after a $ 220 million hit by the pandemic. Coun. Scott Gillingham (St. James), who is now running for mayor, says “things have changed a lot in this city” since Murray took office. (CBC) “[There was] no gradual assistance through it from the province of Manitoba. “We maintained our creditworthiness; so we did a very good job,” Murray said after the announcement. Gillingham said the focus of his mayoral campaign was to communicate a vision for Winnipeg “that is exciting and realistic and achievable and moves the city forward”. “Glenn has been … away from Winnipeg for almost 20 years,” Gillingham said. “I was here with my hand on the wheel and I lead in all this, and so I am ready to take the leadership of the position of mayor.”
