Marketplace Magazine sat down with some of the mayoral candidates to ask them the questions that matter to local business. The following are excerpts from our video interviews. Go to www.marketplacemagazine.ca to watch the full interviews.

Sam Katz

What do you see as the biggest challenge that faces businesses in the city?

Specifically from a city point of view, obviously there would be the business tax. (That) would certainly be a challenge. As you know, when I was elected, we decreased the rate by 20 per cent, from 9.75 to 7.75, and in addition to that, we now have a small business tax credit, which means…one third of small businesses in the city do not pay any business tax at all.

So business tax is certainly one, and that’s how we’ve dealt with it to date. The other challenge would be red tape. When I came in, I established the Red Tape Commission. They came up with 30 recommendations and in the end, 98 per cent of those recommendations have been implemented, which is very positive.

There is a lot of talk about our downtown and relocating business downtown—what are you and the city doing to help bring more people downtown?

Well, I think first, you have to look at some of the positive things that are happening downtown. Since I’ve been in office, we’ve had some major (ones)—obviously everyone knows about the MTS Centre and Manitoba Hydro; we also see what’s happening with the (Canadian) Museum for Human Rights and the avenue buildings being converted into commercial and residential…These have never happened before. We have a lot of residential going into the Exchange District and waterfront—a lot of good things happening downtown.

There certainly is more work to do, there’s no question about that, but what we want to do is make sure that people feel safe when they come downtown. Whether you live there or whether you work there, we want people to feel safe, which is one of the reasons a little while ago, my first announcement was adding a total of 58 more police officers. Twenty of those were specifically directed to walking the streets, making sure that people see a police presence. Potential criminals see police, they won’t be committing the crime. If you have a presence, that makes all the difference in the world, in addition to 20 more officers to join the gang unit, to basically address the gang issue, which is an extremely important issue, and the only way to do that is to be on them and monitor them 24 hours a day. In order to do that, you need more bodies; you need more resources; and then the additional cruiser car—and most people don’t know—one cruiser car takes 18 officers to keep on the streets.

So there are a lot of positive things that are going on downtown. We’re also working with Centre Venture to address some of the other issues. For example, places that basically are selling liquor—working with the (Manitoba Liquor Control Commission) to see how we can address what they call the “king can bottle.” There’s a lot of things we need to do, so we’re working with them as well—a lot of positive things happening; others, we’re definitely working on. You may have heard there is a wonderful opportunity for the A & B Sound building and block to become something very wonderful as well…a lot of investment coming into our city, which is a good thing.

Public-private partnerships are an increasingly popular way to undertake large projects. What other ways can private enterprise help to become involved with the city to get infrastructure projects completed? Do you foresee a time that a private company could build a highway and use tolls to pay for it, such as the 407 in Toronto?

Let me say this—first of all, public-private partnerships, in certain circumstances, are the ideal way to go. And in others, they’re not the way to go. That’s number one. And as you know, we’ve done a few of these already and I’m thankful because it gave us the opportunity to get it done now—for example, the Disraeli Bridge.

It’s like, ‘Pay me now or pay me later. You pay me later, it’s going to cost you a lot more money.’ Right now, we have a situation with Sponsor Winnipeg, where the private sector has come to the table. I believe to date we have $1.3 million that they’ve basically sponsored for community centres’ new programming, which is a wonderful thing.

We have community centre sponsorships available, we have bridges available—there’s no end to what’s available. We would certainly encourage the private sector to take a look at that and see what opportunity might make sense for them, because it’s an ideal situation. That’s number one. And specifically speaking, a “toll situation”—not in my thoughts whatsoever.

Why can’t we have a one per cent city tax added to retail sales as a consumption tax that would then go to…the infrastructure deficit? Could we not have a consumption tax that would help pay for it? And why can’t we charge bedroom communities some sort of a city tax for the use of our amenities?

Let me start off with the first one, consumption tax. The Association of Manitoba Municipalities actually came up with a proposal. They were talking about a one per cent or two per cent contribution from the provincial sales tax. That would give the City of Winnipeg approximately $130 million a year, just to give you an idea of the value of that, and that’s based on per capita.

I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear the province didn’t want to be a part of that, and to be very frank with you, the City of Winnipeg is a creature that was created by the province, so if there was a provincial sales tax, it has to be done by the province. But that has been discussed, and I can assure you, that’s still out there and will continue to be discussed...And hopefully someone will come around and say, ‘You know what? There’s some validity here.’ Because what most people may not understand is 1) there is only one taxpayer and 2) out of every dollar of tax, cities, for example, like Winnipeg, we get seven cents out of that. The province gets 65 cents and the feds get the balance. And what I’m giving you is the net number after transfers, so that’s what it is, so that’s the gross number after transfers and everything. And you can see that cities that are doing the most work cannot do what they have to do with 7.2 cents out of every dollar and the province getting over 65. It just doesn’t work…If I had the power to do it and give the city one per cent from the provincial sales tax, I would have done it yesterday!

Judy Wasylycia-Leis

What do you see as the biggest challenge that faces businesses in the city?

Let me first acknowledge what you said earlier, which is the fact that business is fundamental to the future of Winnipeg and is the economic engine. And so we have to pay attention to what it is that makes businesses stay in Winnipeg or leave and why we’re not attracting more to Winnipeg…I think the biggest issue that I’ve heard from the business community is that we are lacking the sense of safety and security in our streets and we are lacking in terms of well-built city streets and back lanes and infrastructure.

So it is really a question of the state of the city in terms of its beauty and its lack of repair, causing terrific levels of crime and huge problems on the streets, that then are a barrier to businesses setting up here in Winnipeg, and it’s the number one reason for why they think about shutting down. It’s not taxes; it’s partly red tape, but the number one issue that I hear over and over again is that sense of well-being and the fact that we’re sort of stagnant as a city and we don’t have the sense of being an exciting, well-built city that knows where we’re going.

At any level of government people talk about red tape—there’s a Red Tape Commission that was put in place by the current mayor—how would you help to address red tape at City Hall?

If there is a Red Tape Commission to get rid of some bureaucracy and red tape at City Hall, you would hardly know it talking to businesses. If I hear one common message over and over again is that it takes so much money and so much time to get anywhere with a permit and to get through all the licensing requirements and pay all the fees.

It seems to me that a lot more work must be done to actually streamline the process and take away some of the barriers. I heard just yesterday from a small business-person who set up a small marketplace kind of shop, selling spices and products from India, a reputable businessman, but it took him forever just to get the inspector out and to finalize the license and in the meantime he loses valuable time to make the business grow.

…I also think we should be looking at some sort of one-stop shop for business in the city, a place where you can get a coordinated, cohesive response to moving forward with a new business or renovating an old business or expanding a business. It seems to me it’s taking far too long; it’s far too tedious for a business community. I think again, businesses have lots to say on this, lots of good advice, and their voice should be heard at City Hall.

 In regards to development in the housing sector and commercial development, we’ve got IKEA coming, there’s a new stadium and a new shopping centre around Polo Park… and the development of CentrePort. What this means, though, is that our crowded roads seem to be getting more crowded… What can we do about development and making sure that we’re planning ahead to say if we’re going to do these things in this area, that we’re looking at traffic flow and how that’s all going to work?

Well, I go back to the fact that the city doesn’t really have a real urban plan and it really is an agenda driven by developers, and growth is good and expansion and these new developments are great, but there has to be a plan for how in fact you build the infrastructure to ensure that the traffic can be accommodated and that we’re not just expanding without thinking about how you renew what you’ve got.

 …We’ve just sort of said yes to developers and wherever they want to be, we let them go and we don’t think about the secondary plans, we don’t hold them to their obligations in terms of infrastructure that must go along with those developments, and we don’t adapt the city’s infrastructure and our basic transit ways to reflect the new changes in development.

 …One of the ways we can actually take some pressure off of our roads is in fact rapid transit. We’re one of the only cities of our size, the only city of our size in this country, that doesn’t have any kind of rapid transit. What do we have? We’ve got a half-finished rapid transit corridor between downtown and the University of Manitoba. It’s been halted because Sam Katz has decided that bus rapid transit, which he started, isn’t good enough and he wants light-rail…

What about having a one per cent retail sales tax added as a consumption tax so that you’re raising money through consumption, similar to how the GST was implemented, but done so that that money could be used to help infrastructure or rapid transit or planning, etc. Could a consumption tax do that?

Well, I’ve proposed, as you know, a two per cent increase in property taxes every year for my first term as mayor as a way to deal with the years of neglect and the fact that we’ve had a property tax freeze for the past 13 years. And in that context I think a two per cent in property taxes will be accepted by Winnipeggers.

I’m not so sure that they would accept more than that right now after having seen so little evidence of their money going into the things that matter most to them. And so I think that we’ve got to…prove that we can get that back on track as a city and start doing a proper planning process and start putting taxpayers’ money into fixing potholes and helping the police and renewing our parks and public places.

…Where I would suggest we go first is get back to talking to the other big city mayors about a new deal for cities and a fair share of the revenue that is now generated by the federal and provincial governments. Sure, we can talk about an additional one per cent increase of the GST or the PST or a separate new consumer tax altogether, but first let’s talk to our partners at the other levels of government about what’s an appropriate source of revenue from the taxes that are collected for a city the size of Winnipeg, for any big city in this country.

The fact is that for every dollar that we raise in terms of the taxes for the city, we only get eight cents back, and so I think maybe first we need to look at a fair deal, at a fair share and let’s be bold and clear about the needs of a big city in this day and age and the importance of the local community in the context of the rapidly changing global world.

Rav Gill

We also asked all other mayoral candidates to submit their answers to similar questions. Only one candidate responded, Rav Gill, whose answers follow.

1)     What do you see is the biggest challenge that faces businesses in the city?

 Shortage of workers for larger companies, and from my experience an affordable lease for smaller businesses.

2)     What can be done to mitigate the deterrent for businesses to move the downtown, such as panhandling and safety concerns particularly at night, etc?

I encourage surveillance cameras and LED lighting downtown as two pieces of technology that can make an immediate impact, even though they aren't going to solve the problem completely.  The best long term solution is to get more people living downtown which will make it safer, and therefore encourage more businesses to come downtown.  Another deterrent not mentioned is parking.  Most people aren't aware they can have their parking validated.  Many people also aren't aware they can have a Downtown BIZ employee escort them to their car, business, or residence.

3)     In general, what is the City of Winnipeg doing, or what can it do to help attract companies from outside of the province to relocate here?

A competitive business and property tax is paramount to attract new companies to invest in Winnipeg.  This is also an issue that the city has to work with the province on.  We should question the province's decision to sit idly by as our 3 westerly neighbours engaged in a trade agreement benefitting the 3, and left Manitoba (Winnipeg) on the outside looking in.

4)     There has been a lot of development in recent years in the housing sector, in commercial development and the development of CentrePort. All of this means that our already crowded roads with poor traffic flow are getting busier. Without well-planned road systems, moving goods and products throughout the city becomes more of a problem, hampering additional development. What is or should be the plan to develop more of a freeway system as in other larger centres to help alleviate this?

The most important and pressing infrastructure development in the next 4 years is to continue the completion of the inner ring in the city, and to have it done right.  It's unfortunate that Bishop Grandin was built with stop lights instead of overpasses, but that won't be the case with Chief Peguis. When complete the inner ring will alleviate a lot of traffic congestion and be the first step to the freeway like system.

5)     What would your plan for the small business tax be for the next four years?

I would like to reduce the business tax every year.  Even if budgeting only allows for a small decrease it shows businesses which way we are going.  I think most business owners will also agree that education tax on their properties is the more serious issue at this time  and they want a mayor that will deal with province on that issue first.

Marketplace Magazine also requested responses from all other mayoral candidates. Any responses will be posted online at marketplacemagazine.ca.