Civic Transition Plan

🏛 1. Transition & Relationship Building

• Meet with the outgoing Mayor to ensure a respectful, transparent transition.
• Hold individual and collective meetings with all elected City Councillors to build trust, align on shared goals, and begin a new culture of collaboration.
• Visit as many city departments, work sites, and staff as possible—including the 10,000 City of Winnipeg employees—through listening sessions, open forums, and site visits to connect with frontline workers and understand day-to-day operations.
• Begin a comprehensive review of active City projects, policies, and planning files to assess alignment with strategic priorities, fiscal health, and equity.

🧭 2. Mayor’s Office Reform

Transform the Mayor’s Office from a closed executive silo into a collaborative leadership and civic coordination hub. Make the Mayor’s Office a model of transparency, humility, and shared leadership from day one.

New Structure:

• Chief of Staff
• Deputy Chief of Staff
• Office of New Civic Innovation
  • Renew the Strategic Initiatives Unit to Civic Innovation Lab — a small team focused on cross-departmental collaboration, equity-centered innovation, and public mandate delivery.
• Matriarch Community Advisory Council to the Mayor’s Office

Direct coordination with:

• Executive Policy Committee (EPC)
• Full Council
• Office of Civic Engagement (independent but collaborative)
• Elders & Knowledge Keepers Governance Council
• Restorative Justice Committee

Core Purpose:

• Break silos within City Hall
• Build bridges across departments, council, and neighbourhoods
• Center Indigenous governance principles, public collaboration, and systems-
• thinking in civic leadership
• Support the implementation of participatory budgeting, infrastructure
• reforms, and community-led planning

💰3. Transparency, Fairness & Ethics

• Eliminate discretionary funds and opaque salary top-ups for Standing Policy Committee (SPC) Chairs as well as strengthen the councillors ward budgets.
• Cap total annual compensation for the Mayor, elected officials, and senior administrators at $200,000 during the multi-year budget cycle — a symbolic and structural gesture to restore fairness and public confidence.
• Set a $2.5 million annual cap on the Mayor’s Office operating budget — including all staffing, operations, and civic innovation functions — through the term. This amount reflects projected inflation between 2018 and 2030 and aligns with a modernized, accountable, and collaborative model of civic leadership.
• Open the books — Commit to quarterly, line-by-line public expense reporting for the Mayor’s Office.
• Increase transparency and clarify around structures, SPC/EPC responsibilities, compensation, and decision-making processes — in plain language.
• Issue annual, public Mandate Letters to each SPC Chair outlining expectations, deliverables, and reporting duties as a condition of appointment
• Publish an annual Mandate Letter and Civic Progress Report to Council and the public — outlining leadership priorities, cross-departmental goals, and measurable citywide outcomes.

⚖ 4. Civic Governance Reform

To renew trust in the City of Winnipeg, Chris’s first term would begin laying the groundwork for trust and future leadership by modernizing city governance, strengthening accountability, and renewing civic trust. This would feature:

• 🗣 Redefine the Mayor’s role as a convener and civic facilitator — not a partisan executive.
• 💼 Let the Mayor table a draft budget (built with the Public Service), while ensuring full Council retains the power to debate, amend, and approve it.
• 📄 Allow the Mayor to directly request staff reports and policy research without needing a committee vote — to improve responsiveness and reduce bottlenecks.
• 🌐 Follow best practices from cities like Halifax, Calgary, and Vancouver, where Mayors lead strategically but power is shared collaboratively.
• 🛠 Consider adapting useful tools from Toronto and Ottawa (like draft budget powers or staff direction mechanisms) — but always with strong Council oversight and safeguarding transparency.

📘 5. Restructuring the Mayor’s Role on Council

“The Mayor should lead with vision, not veto.”

City Hall needs a leadership model built for the 21st century — one that centers collaboration, not control.

Right now, too much power is concentrated in the Mayor’s Office: control over the Executive Policy Committee (EPC), selective access to resources, and behind-the-scenes influence over Council’s agenda. This top-down approach sidelines Councillors, undermines transparency, and weakens public trust.

We need a different kind of leadership — one that coordinates across wards, departments, and communities to deliver real results. As Mayor, I will act as a facilitator and strategic convener, not a political gatekeeper.

Other cities are already moving in this direction. In Vancouver, the Mayor chairs Council but doesn’t control the agenda. In Halifax, the Mayor helps coordinate consensus. In Calgary, the Mayor works with Council to set citywide goals. Even Toronto’s “strong mayor” tools — like drafting a budget or requesting staff reports — can support transparency and accountability when used in the public interest, not political advantage.

Winnipeg deserves its own model — built on fairness, coordination, and trust.

This reform will:

• ✅ Give all 15 Councillors a more equal and active role in shaping decisions
• 🤝 Promote real collaboration across wards, departments, and communities
• 🔍 Open up Council processes to residents with more transparency and less partisanship
• 🏗 Build the trust we need to plan for the long term, together
• 📊 Focus the Mayor’s role on public value, not personal politics
• ⚙ Align every civic decision with Winnipeg’s needs through strategic coordination, not backroom bargaining

Leadership still means accountability. As Mayor, I will take responsibility when things go wrong, give credit when others succeed, and always put the public first.

This is how we Build the Trust — and make civic leadership work for everyone.