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Infrequently Asked Questions

Winnipeg Centre

"This is the centre of the universe."

Ed Ackerman (Independent)

What is a pressing issue unique to your riding, and what would you do about it?

Ackerman is concerned about housing in Winnipeg Centre.

"Well, I'll start with the solution: The solution is own a home on minimum wage, and I'm gonna work at that, putting homeless people or people that are renting with homes that need to be used," said Ackerman.

"I'm photographing every boarded-up house in Winnipeg Centre, and I'm looking at putting people with the homes."

What do you like least about politics?

"Inaction. Either no action or action that's not what the people voted for or want," he said.

"There's about 57,000 people in this riding -- that's 57,000 different points of view, so, that's a bit of trouble with politics, too. Except, if you can make a phone call and talk to your MP and they look into it. Having a politician, you know, a member of the government, your MP, answering the phone is a good thing."

What is your riding's best-kept secret?

"This is the centre of the universe. This riding is the centre of Winnipeg, centre of Manitoba, centre of Canada, centre of North America," Ackerman said.

"It's also a hole, this riding. I've joked about Winnipeg itself is the centre of the universe, just like the centre of a doughnut. If a doughnut didn't have a hole, it would just be a bun. So, it needs a centre."

What is the best advice you've ever received?

"That would be from my dad, and it wasn't in words . . . It was almost like neglectful parenting," he said. "It was 'Go ahead. Do your own thing. And you can fail at that, or you can succeed at that, but it's, like, you doing it.'"

What book could you not finish?

"The dictionary," he said with a smile. "The plot is really hard to follow."

What is your usual mode of transportation?

"Walking is my most usual mode of transportation," Ackerman said. "Because I've got feet and they're attached to me.

"Actually, there's a joke about that: 'Feet run in our family,'" he said, laughing.

By Brenlee Coates , a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.

"I'm totally against favouring your friend. Whatever it is, it should benefit everyone instead of the individual."

Joe Chan (Independent)

What is a pressing issue unique to your riding, and what would you do about it?

"In Winnipeg Centre, we have lots of immigration, new immigrants," Chan said.

If elected, Chan said he plans to increase the number of hours the MP's local office provides immigration assistance.

"I will make sure I will put more time on there, at least 70 hours per week," he said.

What do you like least about politics?

Chan is most put off by corruption and nepotism.

"I'm totally against favouring your friend. Whatever it is, it should benefit everyone instead of the individual," he said.

What is your riding's best-kept secret?

"We have the most poor, poor neighbourhood comparable with any other riding," he said. "We have the higher welfare people"

What is the best advice you've ever received?

"Somebody told me, if we can have the federal criminal law say that if any house who grows marijuana, the government should keep the house," he said

"That's the best political idea I've ever heard. That would cut down a lot of grow-op, a lot of crime."

What book could you not finish?

Chan said he couldn't finish an encyclopaedia. "Because their information keeps popping out every year, I could never finish in my life," he said.

What is your usual mode of transportation?

Chan has a four-cylinder Honda. "I have a small engine, for mileage purposes," he said.

By Taylor Burgess, a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.

"You should live life as big as you can make it."

Kenny Daodu (Conservative)

What is a pressing issue unique to your riding, and what would you do about it?

"I really think there's a lot of poverty around here, and nothing has been done for a very long time," she said.

"What will I be doing about it? Lowering taxes."

What do you like least about politics?

"I'm not a politician, I have nothing to not like, Daodu said, indicating that as a rookie candidate, she's not sure what she'd like least about being elected.

What is your riding's best-kept secret?

"The best-kept secret in this riding is the sense of community spirit amongst people," Daodu said.

"Even though it doesn’t really seem, and the media definitely doesn’t portray it, people in Winnipeg Centre are very loyal to their community and have a big sense of pride as to . . . where their community is going.”

What is the best advice you've ever received?

"You should live life as big as you can make it."

What book could you not finish?

"You know what? I can't remember never not finishing," Daodu said, adding that she finishes everything she starts.

What is your usual mode of transportation?

Daodu uses her feet.

"It's so quiet to take a walk. I walk to work, and to everywhere," she said.

She says that she walks for her health, "and I see more people in the community, too."

View Kenny Daodu's Canada Votes Profile »

By Taylor Burgess, a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.

"If you are humble to people, they will rise to you."

Dan Hurley (Liberal)

What is a pressing issue unique to your riding, and what would you do about it?

Hurley sees Winnipeg Centre's poverty as the riding's main issue. He would like to see "more recreation and athletic facilities for people [and] programs for children to get involved in."

What do you like least about politics?

Hurley says he doesn't like partisanship and divisiveness.

"In other words, you know, 'my party's better than yours,'" he said. "If you're not part of the right party, you're somehow, you know, just, excommunicated or denigrated for that choice."

What is your riding's best-kept secret?

Hurley says that the restaurants in Winnipeg Centre are among the best in the city.

"I go to so many that it's hard to pick one over the other." If he did choose one, he said, "then I'd get in trouble."

What is the best advice you've ever received?

"If you are humble to people, they will rise to you," Hurley heard from an imam from Egypt at a recent Ramadan dinner with Muslim leaders.

"In other words, don't think of yourself ever as above anybody. You should always look people squarely in the eye, and you need to be always at their level, because people will respect that."

What book could you not finish?

Hurley says that he has a bad habit of not finishing books. But he's embarrassed to say that he hasn't finished Navigating a New World by his current boss and former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy.

"I regret that I've only read two-thirds of it. So, he's not going to be very happy to hear that," he said.

What is your usual mode of transportation?

"Usually my feet." Hurley said, noting that he lives only 15 minutes away from work and he usually walks to the grocery story.

"If we need to get around town, I will take our car."

View Dan Hurley's Canada Votes Profile »

By Taylor Burgess, a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.

"I've fallen in love with walking since I moved to Winnipeg."

Jessie Klassen (Green Party)

What is a pressing issue unique to your riding, and what would you do about it?

"Winnipeg Centre has one of the lowest household incomes in all of Canada." Klassen said. That could be helped by the Green Party's policy plan to put a Genuine Progress Indicator in place, to measure things that aren't included in the GDP, such child poverty, she said.

"We also put forward a guaranteed liveable income, which is unique to any of the parties."

What do you like least about politics?

"I think I'm surprised at ... what little faith the general public has in politicians," Klassen said.

But she is a new candidate, and very passionate about her party.

"I'm amazed at the general public's lack of knowledge of what it means to run as a candidate, the process involved, the work involved."

What is your riding's best-kept secret?

"Well I have quite a sweet tooth," Klassen said, confessing that she sometimes treks from her Wolseley Home to Goodies on Ellice Avenue to snack on gelato or mini-desserts.

What is the best advice you've ever received?

It came from her friend Tanja Hutter, who ran for the Green Party in the last federal election: "She told me to just be myself and speak the truth and that will come through."

What book could you not finish?

"I really like to read, so I've rarely stopped reading a book in the middle. Every once in a while, if I'm reading a fiction book and it's just not going anywhere, I'll close it up," she said.

What is your usual mode of transportation?

Klassen points to her feet. "I love to walk, I've fallen in love with walking since moving to Winnipeg," she said. She moved to the Manitoba capital from Ontario in 2006.

"I just find that it's a really relaxing and enjoyable way to get around."

View Jessie Klassen's Canada Votes Profile »

By Taylor Burgess, a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.

"If you want a real cultural experience, walk down Sargent Avenue at eight o'clock on a Friday night, and it's just a United Nations."

Pat Martin (NDP)

What is a pressing issue unique to your riding, and what would you do about it?

The aboriginal youth in Winnipeg Centre having been marginalized, Martin said.

"There's no silver bullet, but identification of it as a key social objective is the first step," he said.

What do you like least about politics?

"I hate the travel, I absolutely hate it. And I resent what it's done to my family, the pressures on family life," he said.

"I think that's why you don't see an acceptable number of women in politics. Some have made the judgment call and they won't sacrifice their family for a career in politics."

What is your riding's best-kept secret?

Dining on Sargent Avenue; Martin shared a little resentment towards Corydon Avenue, a popular street for socializing, calling Sargent Avenue in his riding the "real deal."

"If you want a real cultural experience, walk down Sargent Avenue at eight o'clock on a Friday night, and it's just a United Nations," he said. "Africans, Indians, Portuguese, Aboriginal, it's really interesting."

What is the best advice you've ever received?

"Don't ever forget where you came from," Winnipeg-Transcona MP Bill Blaikie told Martin as he was entering politics.

"I try to think of that in mind because, if you lose sight of why you did this, you could get sucked into the quagmire of spinning your wheels."

He also remembers the words of Miss Piggy: "Never eat for lunch more than you can lift."

What book could you not finish?

Ulysses by James Joyce.

"I'm ashamed of it, yes, because I was even thinking of having a annual fundraiser on Bloomsday," Martin said.

"But I'd be such a hypocrite because I carried this book around at several times in my life, in my backpacks and under my arm, and I led people to believe that I read it, and never finished it."

What is your usual mode of transportation?

"My whole theme of my campaign is One Less Car. So I'm gradually phasing cars out of my life, I hope to be car-free by sometime next year or so," he said.

"I still keep one that I drive very little," he said, but mostly he travels by bicycle.

View Pat Martin's Canada Votes Profile »

By Taylor Burgess, a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.

"No part of Winnipeg will ever be safe until poverty is fully addressed."

Lyle Morrisseau (First People's National Party of Canada)

What is a pressing issue unique to your riding, and what would you do about it?

Morrisseau believes that poverty is an issue that needs to be addressed in Winnipeg Centre.

"We need to be able to focus on this whole campaign to be able to bring the attention to the issue of poverty in such a wealthy country," he said.

The country needs "to address a fundamental concern on poverty itself by empowering people to be able to do what is necessary to overcome poverty, thus creating a diverse economy within the area that they reside and to be able to seek solutions from them, from the voters," he said.

"I believe that no part of Winnipeg will ever be safe until poverty is fully addressed."

What do you like least about politics?

"The mannerism in the House of Commons and the inability for people to work together from party to party," Morrisseau said.

"When the walls come up and the egos are there, we have to be able to take those walls down and to be able to work together as people to be able to solve some of the most fundamental issues facing all Canadians today.

"When it comes down to it, they are people first, people first and parties last."

What is your riding's best-kept secret?

"The best resource we have, and that's the people themselves."

What is the best advice you've ever received?

"To be open and honest about the issues, in terms of not to sugar-coat them but rather to be able to look at them for what they are and how they really affect people," Morrisseau said.

He believes this advice is well-suited for dealing with the issue of poverty.

What book could you not finish?

"I couldn't finish [Leo Tolstoy's] War and Peace because it was pretty boring," he said.

What is your usual mode of transportation?

Morrisseau hails from Sagkeeng First Nation, but said while in the central Winnipeg riding, he is taking the bus.

"It's a good network, and it gives me an opportunity to experience what people are going through every day," he said.

View Lyle Morrisseau's Canada Votes Profile »

By Karen Kornelsen, a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.

"I think that the best-kept secret is all that land was stolen from aboriginal nations in Canada."

Darrell Rankin (Communist Party of Canada)

What is a pressing issue unique to your riding, and what would you do about it?

"In the 2006 election it was reported that [Winnipeg Centre] was the riding that had the highest rate of poverty in all of Canada," said Rankin.

"The key anti-poverty measures that are in the Communist Party's platform are things like to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour."

Rankin also wants to develop "a huge housing program," he said. Co-operative housing would create jobs and improve living conditions, he said.

What do you like least about politics?

Rankin says he takes umbrage at the opportunism in politics.

"A lot of the other parties do not get the same financial largesse that the larger parties feed off of, the election trough," he said.

"A lot of political parties get their expenses back, if they get enough votes. And the smaller parties who spend money, they pay 100 per cent of that. So it's a really discriminatory system as a whole."

That puts small parties like his at a disadvantage, Rankin said: "There's a little bit [of] narrow opportunism."

What is your riding's best-kept secret?

"I think that the best-kept secret is all that land was stolen from aboriginal nations in Canada," said Rankin.

"The people that are living there now are there as a result of colonial theft of aboriginal land. And that's a really hidden aspect, a reality of Canada as a whole," he said.

"Particularly in Manitoba, there's not just the First Nations but the Metis nation, which is an aboriginal nation," he added. "All that, I think, has to be brought out into the open, so that's a really important secret as part of our reality today."

What is the best advice you've ever received?

Rankin said he was once advised to keep your feet on the ground and your head looking towards the stars.

"The idea of improving society," said Rankin, requires that "you always have to be there, you have to have that vision.

"But at the same time, you're not going to win everything, you need a medium. We have to base our tactics on reality."

What book could you not finish?

Leninism and the National Question by P. N. Fedoseyev.

"I go through so many books, and such a variety too," said Rankin.

"I picked out what was important in that book and used it for material for the students," said Rankin.

"The parts of the book that talked about the development of the new Soviet people, I thought was totally unscientific," he noted. "But otherwise it's a superb book, an excellent book."

What is your usual mode of transportation?

Rankin uses public transportation for his daily commute. While his large family does have a vehicle, "only when time is of the essence I'll take the car, and I usually leave it at home and it's quite often not used," he said.

By Tania Kohut, a student in the Creative Communications program at Red River College.