Oct 14 2024-- Summer’s Over But The Heat Is On City Hall

The Great Canadian Talk Show

Episode 26 has behind-the-stories details, with your comments, about our recent columns and reports in the Winnipeg Sun and Season 5 podcasts!

Part 1- We've been bringing forward exclusive interviews and investigations about what's happening in Winnipeg.

Marty Gold tells how you can help ensure strong independent reporting makes up for Trudeau-funded media consistently failing our community.

It's necessary to pick up the pace on the fundraising drive in October. We are within $2500 of our budget goal! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to donate today

5.00- Listeners expressed concerns that in our interview with Coun. Jeff Browaty about Metro's Plan20-50, he seemed uninformed about the implications of the "aspirational" development blueprint. Marty explains what will happen next, with 12 member RMs turning down the document.

About 80 folks gathered in Niverville to see Manitoba Stronger Together raise troubling questions about the "expert" ideas given priority by the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region board over proper stakeholder and public consultations. When a plan requires greater population density in Oak Bank than in Brandon, you know something fishy is going on. (The next MST session is on Nov. 2 in the RM of Ritchot.)

Marty discusses how density targets will destroy the character of the St. Boniface business district, as Mayor Gillingham and Coun. Matt Allard nod approvingly.

15.20- Gillingham's plan to reconstruct Portage and Main will obliterate commuting times to and from St. Boniface. Nobody at City Hall cares about St. B- but we do.

19.30 Part 2- The first hint anyone got that 7-Elevens were on the chopping block was in Marty's Sun column, and word is up to 20 total are being shut down. Last week two in the North End and one in the West End closed.

Now, 3 out of 4 retail building are closed at the corner of Ellice and Arlington.

How will City Council stop the decay?

27.00- More coming about homeless encampments on our riverbanks. The hazards facing property owners and residents, first described in our Sun exclusive, are worse than we knew.

The Superintendent of the Winnipeg School Division had to apologize after a guest speaker extolled the virtues of terrorism as "resistance." Hear why Matt Henderson had a very bad week after sailing though his first year.

Before the WSD apology, some people posted support for the pro-terror message and thanked the division for displaying it on the arena jumbotron. How many were involved in the "pro-Palestinian" rally held on Yom Kippur in River Heights, near the Chabad synagogue? Fans of Iran were. Marty assesses how the cops would react if a pro-Israel rally is held near a mosque.

⁠We're looking at holding a Town Hall on Oct. 29 - Interested? Let us know!

E-transfers, sponsor inquiries, comments - [e-mail]

41.20 Part 3 'Hell on Wheels' - listen to the story behind the story of this week's Sun column about violence on Transit buses.

46.00 - We explain how the short-staffed supervisor crew cannot possibly handle the volume of trouble calls from drivers. Before they showed up last weekend, Marty videoed an incident that could easily have turned into yet another stabbing, with the belligerent pulling the race card when challenged.

53.00- City officials need to ride the buses, share the pain, and shore up procedures until Transit users can feel safe. Enforcement of decorum on board - "turn down your radio!" and no foul language - is urgently needed. With the new routes coming in 2025, and only 4 supervisors on duty at night on weekends, it will only become more unpleasant and dangerous if nothing changes.

Mayor Gillingham's 'root causes' approach holds the rights of homeless bus shelter dwellers above transit users getting to work, school and appointments. What do councillors say to women and seniors and teens too petrified to take a bus?

A sample of public comments rounds out the episode such as: "The city likes to gag its employees. That should rattle a few cages."