Winnipeg Centre

Winnipeg Centre encompasses the historic core of Manitoba's capital city, stretching from the Exchange District and the Forks northward through the North End and westward toward the airport. The riding includes some of Winnipeg's oldest and most culturally significant neighbourhoods—Point Douglas, the West End, Wolseley, and the downtown commercial district—as well as the Exchange District National Historic Site, with its collection of early twentieth-century warehouses and terracotta-clad buildings. Winnipeg Centre has the largest urban Indigenous population of any federal riding in Canada, with close to 40 percent of residents in the Point Douglas area identifying as Indigenous on the 2021 census. It is also one of the most diverse ridings in western Canada, home to large Filipino, South Asian, and African communities.

Candidates

Leah Gazan (NDP) is the incumbent, first elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2021. A member of Wood Mountain Lakota Nation in Saskatchewan, Gazan was born in Thompson, Manitoba, and grew up in a family with deep ties to the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the NDP's predecessor party. Before entering politics she was a lecturer at the University of Winnipeg's Faculty of Education and worked with the David Suzuki Foundation on Indigenous-led conservation. In Parliament, she co-founded the #WeCare campaign to end violence against Indigenous women and girls, won unanimous consent for a motion recognizing the residential school system as genocide, and championed a Red Dress Alert system for missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Rahul Walia (Liberal) is a Winnipeg-born community organizer who interned under the late Senator Murray Sinclair and co-founded a social impact fund. He worked in the federal Ministry of Transport before seeking the Liberal nomination, which he won by acclamation.

Tom Bambrick (Conservative) ran as the Conservative Party candidate in the riding.

Gary Gervais (Green Party) stood as the Green Party candidate.

Donald Grant (People's Party) ran on the People's Party platform.

Debra Wall (Animal Protection Party) represented the Animal Protection Party of Canada.

About the Riding

Winnipeg Centre contends with some of the most acute social challenges of any federal riding in the country. Homelessness, housing insecurity, and the opioid and methamphetamine crises have been persistent issues in the North End and downtown core. A 2024 street census counted nearly 2,500 people experiencing homelessness in Winnipeg, with the majority concentrated in neighbourhoods within this riding. Emergency shelters operate at or above capacity, and encampments in parks and along riverbanks have become a visible feature of the urban landscape.

The riding's economy reflects its inner-city character, with employment concentrated in healthcare, social services, government, hospitality, and the cultural sector. The Exchange District and the Forks are major tourism and entertainment destinations, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights anchors the southern edge of the riding. Small businesses along Selkirk Avenue, Ellice Avenue, and Sargent Avenue serve the riding's diverse immigrant communities.

In 2025, affordability dominated the campaign. Median household incomes in Winnipeg Centre remain well below the national average, and residents faced rising food and housing costs against a backdrop of limited affordable housing stock. Indigenous rights, child welfare reform, and the federal government's response to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls remained defining issues in one of Canada's most socially engaged urban ridings.