2022 Winnipeg Municipal Election

Winnipeg held its municipal election on October 26, 2022. Voters elected a mayor, a councillor in each of the city's 15 wards and school trustees in the six school divisions within the city, 41 races in all. The mayoralty was open: on October 23, 2020, Mayor Brian Bowman, a former privacy lawyer first elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2018, announced that he would not seek a third term. "In my view, Manitoba has far too many career politicians. I won't be one of them," he said. Two councillors gave up their seats to run for mayor: Scott Gillingham in St. James and Kevin Klein in Charleswood - Tuxedo - Westwood.

Fifteen people registered to run for mayor, and 11 completed the nomination process by the September 20 deadline. No one ran against Devi Sharma in Old Kildonan or Markus Chambers in St. Norbert - Seine River, who were acclaimed, so councillors were elected by vote in 13 wards, where 42 candidates were nominated. 195,530 people voted, a turnout of 37.5%, down from 42.33% (216,003 voters) in 2018.

Mayoral Race

Scott Gillingham was elected mayor with 53,663 votes, 27.54% of the 194,853 votes cast for mayor. Glen Murray received 49,272 (25.29%), Kevin Klein 28,806 (14.78%), Shaun Loney 28,567 (14.66%) and Robert-Falcon Ouellette 15,029 (7.71%); the other six candidates together received 19,516 (10.02%). Gillingham finished 4,391 votes ahead of Murray. Results posted early in the evening showed Murray in the lead; all results had been reported by 10:07 p.m. Computed from the City's record of mayoral elections since 1971, Gillingham's share is the smallest of any winning candidate, the next smallest being Susan Thompson's 38.3% in 1995, and his margin is the narrowest since 1977, when Robert Steen defeated Bill Norrie by 1,819 votes.

No opinion poll during the campaign put Gillingham ahead of Murray: Probe Research found Murray the choice of 44% of decided voters in July, with Gillingham at 16% and Ouellette at 13%. In Probe's September survey for the Winnipeg Free Press and CTV Winnipeg, Murray had 40%, Gillingham 15% and Loney 14%, and 39% of respondents were undecided. A Leger online poll conducted from October 6 to 11 and commissioned by Gillingham's campaign put Murray at 28%, Gillingham at 19%, Klein at 14% and Loney at 13%.

Computed from the City's results by voting subdivision, in which advance votes are included, Gillingham and Murray each carried seven wards and Loney one. Gillingham's largest share was in St. James (42.2%), the ward he had represented, where he led Murray by 3,542 votes. He also carried Waverley West (37.9%), St. Norbert - Seine River (33.7%), North Kildonan (33.6%), Charleswood - Tuxedo - Westwood (32.7%, to 29.8% for Klein, its former councillor), River Heights - Fort Garry (29.2%) and St. Vital, by 283 votes. Murray's largest shares were in Point Douglas (38.5%) and Old Kildonan (37.9%); he also carried Mynarski, Transcona, Elmwood - East Kildonan, St. Boniface, by 247 votes, and Daniel McIntyre, where he finished 28 votes ahead of Loney. Loney carried Fort Rouge - East Fort Garry with 29.7%.

The Candidates

Scott Gillingham was born in Carman, in southern Manitoba, and was a Pentecostal pastor for 22 years. Elected councillor for St. James in 2014 and re-elected in 2018, he was the city's finance chair for more than five years and sat on Bowman's executive policy committee; he resigned both roles in April 2022 and opened his campaign in May. He promised to raise property taxes by 3.5% the following year to pay for roads, rapid transit and other services, and to increase frontage levies by $1.50 per foot, the equivalent of a further 2.6% property tax increase. He also proposed holding increases in the police budget at or below inflation, appointing himself to the Winnipeg Police Board and sending outreach workers instead of police to low-risk mental health calls.

Glen Murray was mayor from 1998 until 2004, when he resigned halfway through his second term to run, unsuccessfully, for the federal Liberals. He moved to Toronto, was elected a Liberal member of Ontario's legislature in a 2010 by-election and was appointed to cabinet within months. In 2017 he resigned his Toronto Centre seat to become executive director of the Pembina Institute, a Calgary-based environmental organization, and in 2020 he ran unsuccessfully for the leadership of the federal Green Party. He entered the race on June 22, 2022, and pledged to freeze property taxes, add one per cent to the business tax and seek to replace the City's provincial operating grant with one percentage point of the provincial sales tax.

Kevin Klein, councillor for Charleswood - Tuxedo - Westwood since 2018, had been publisher of the Winnipeg Sun and a divisional president at MTS. He entered the race in late July. He proposed keeping the 2.33% property tax increase in the City's budget, with the revenue from two percentage points of it devoted to road renewal, and asking the province to put sheriffs in hospitals to free up police resources.

Shaun Loney, a social entrepreneur, had directed Manitoba's energy policies for the provincial government and then spent two decades building organizations aimed at job creation and fighting poverty and homelessness. He was the first of the 11 candidates to announce and had never run for office. He proposed a 3.7% property tax increase, folding the business tax into commercial property taxes, and using social enterprises to address problems such as homelessness.

Robert-Falcon Ouellette, a veteran of more than 25 years in the Canadian Armed Forces and an academic administrator, finished third in the 2014 mayoral election with 36,823 votes and was Liberal MP for Winnipeg Centre from 2015 to 2019. He proposed freezing the police budget during his first term and using the savings for grants to community safety groups.

Of the other candidates, Jenny Motkaluk, an entrepreneur, had finished second to Bowman in 2018 with 76,554 votes; she pledged to freeze property taxes and to use the police board to remove Police Chief Danny Smyth. Rana Bokhari, a lawyer, had led the Manitoba Liberal Party from 2013 to 2016. Rick Shone owned an outdoors shop; Don Woodstock, a Winnipeg Transit operator, had run for mayor in 2018; Idris Adelakun is a biosystems engineer; and Chris Clacio, a grocery worker, had run before for mayor and school trustee.

Campaign Issues

In a Probe Research survey conducted in July, 64% of respondents placed reducing poverty and homelessness among the top three issues for the next mayor and council, alongside reducing crime and increasing public safety; road repair followed at 53%. Homelessness and poverty ranked higher among residents of the core area, and crime among those of the city's northwest.

Property taxes divided the leading candidates. Gillingham and Loney proposed increases of 3.5% and 3.7%, above the 2.33% in the City's budget; Klein committed to the 2.33% increase but said he would later seek to reduce it. Murray, who had frozen property taxes for several years as mayor, pledged to freeze them again while raising the business tax and seeking a share of the provincial sales tax.

The police budget, $320 million, was more than a quarter of the City's budget. Bokhari proposed diverting 10% of it to social service organizations and Ouellette proposed freezing it. To house people experiencing homelessness, Gillingham proposed modular housing on six vacant city-owned lots and Klein trailers on city-owned land as temporary shelter. Murray, Loney and Bokhari supported a safe consumption site in Winnipeg; Gillingham and Klein did not. In a 2018 plebiscite, voters had rejected opening Portage and Main to pedestrians, 134,203 to 72,300. Loney and Bokhari said they would open the intersection; Klein said he would leave the barricades down after they were removed for structural repairs if that was more cost-efficient; Murray said he would not reopen it, but left the possibility open for the future.

On September 29, CBC News reported that Murray had been forced to leave his position at the Pembina Institute in 2018 after complaints about his management, and reported allegations by former staff that he had used sexual innuendo in the workplace, physically harassed a former employee and drunk to excess at some functions. Murray's lawyer said he had resigned "for personal and family reasons" and that any harassment allegations were "categorically untrue". His support in the polls fell after these reports.

Council

Twelve incumbents returned, two of them by acclamation, and one was defeated. With two open seats, the new council had one first-time member, Evan Duncan, and two former councillors, Russ Wyatt and Shawn Dobson.

• Old Kildonan: Devi Sharma, first elected in 2010 and council's speaker in the 2018–22 term, was acclaimed to a fourth term; no vote was held.
• Mynarski: Ross Eadie, first elected in 2010, won a fourth term with 3,779 votes (42.59%). Natalie Smith, a former assistant to NDP MLA Lisa Naylor, received 2,016 and Aaron McDowell, Eadie's executive assistant until June, 1,798.
• Point Douglas: Vivian Santos, elected in 2018 to succeed Mike Pagtakhan, won a second term with 4,459 votes (54.48%). Moe Eltassi, a former Winnipeg Police Board member and clothing store owner, received 2,485.
• Daniel McIntyre: Cindy Gilroy, first elected in 2014, won a third term with 5,476 votes (52.50%). Sal Infantino, a business owner, received 2,484 and Omar Kinnarath, a community organizer, 2,470.
• St. James: Shawn Dobson, councillor for St. Charles until that ward was dissolved when boundaries were redrawn in 2018, had then lost to Gillingham here, 9,130 to 5,740. He won the open seat with 4,880 votes (33.61%), the smallest winning share in any council race, ahead of Kelly Ryback, a retired businessman (3,693).
• Waverley West: Janice Lukes, first elected in 2014 and acclaimed in 2018, won with 8,580 votes (80.90%) over Pascal Scott, a trade adviser (2,026).
• Charleswood - Tuxedo - Westwood: The seat was open for the fourth straight election. Evan Duncan, 39, a juvenile counsellor with Manitoba Justice who had come within 500 votes of winning it in 2014, won with 9,491 votes (52.12%), 2,636 more than Hal Anderson, a CJOB radio host (6,855).
• River Heights - Fort Garry: John Orlikow, councillor since a 2009 by-election, announced in February that he would run for mayor and changed his mind three months later. He was re-elected with 12,237 votes (73.13%).
• Fort Rouge - East Fort Garry: Sherri Rollins, elected in 2018 to succeed Jenny Gerbasi, won a second term with 9,704 votes (75.94%) over Michael Thompson, a project co-ordinator who had finished fifth in the ward in 2018 (3,075).
• St. Norbert - Seine River: Markus Chambers, first elected in 2018 when the ward was created, deputy mayor and chair of the Winnipeg Police Board, was acclaimed to a second term; no vote was held. Only three councillors had been acclaimed in the previous 20 years.
• St. Vital: Brian Mayes, councillor since a 2011 by-election, won with 12,500 votes (83.51%), the largest share in any council race.
• St. Boniface: Matt Allard, councillor since 2014, when he succeeded Dan Vandal, won with 10,124 votes (67.79%). Nicholas Douklias, a restaurant owner, received 3,876.
• Transcona: Russ Wyatt, councillor from 2002 to 2018, defeated Shawn Nason, who had succeeded him in 2018, by 976 votes, 6,010 (46.38%) to 5,034 (38.85%), in the closest council race. Nason was the only incumbent defeated.
• Elmwood - East Kildonan: Jason Schreyer, first elected in 2014, won a third term with 5,554 votes (62.19%) over Ryan Kochie, a red seal cook (3,376).
• North Kildonan: Jeff Browaty, council's longest-serving member, first elected in 2006, won a fifth term with 10,725 votes (72.69%). Andrew Podolecki, an insurance manager and his only opponent in 2018 as well, received 4,030.

Voting and Turnout

Advance voting ran from October 3 to 21. 1,898 people voted at City Hall, 13,365 at malls and universities and 18,626 at 15 community centres, one per ward, from October 18 to 20. Another 7,278 voted in 153 seniors' residences, personal care homes and hospitals, and 728 by sealed-envelope ballot (vote by mail), compared with 231 in 2018. The 41,895 advance votes were 5.1% more than the 39,840 of 2018 and the most ever cast in Winnipeg. On election day, 153,635 people voted at 198 locations, staffed by about 2,000 election workers.

Poll pads, electronic voters' lists first used at advance polls in 2018, were used at all advance voting locations and, on election day, in the Old Kildonan, Transcona and Waverley West wards, where voters could vote at any location in their ward.

Turnout was 37.5%, compared with 42.33% in 2018 and 50.23% in 2014; 20,473 fewer people voted than in 2018. Computed from the City's record of past elections, it was the lowest turnout since 1989 (34.0%).