A chat with mayoral candidate Glen Murray

A former Winnipeg mayor is back and looking to return to the City of Winnipeg’s top job.

It’s been 18 years since Glen Murray served as the city’s mayor, and since then he’s sat as a Liberal MPP in Ontario and ran for the leader of the federal Green Party. Murray was also a city councillor for three terms before his time as mayor.

“I’ve served for 15 years at city hall,” he said in an interview with CTV News Winnipeg.

Murray said when he was mayor the city was transforming for the better, but now he sees lack of policing and lack of infrastructure maintenance.

“I see so much of that momentum slipping away,” he said. “I don’t see anyone else in the race who’s got that kind of experience or that kind of vision.”

Part of Murray’s vision if elected is to build the downtown residential population. He said he’d like to see about 30,000 people living downtown.

“There’s a plan that many of the businesses in the city have been working on that will be released soon and it’s going to show how that can happen, how that can be funded,” he said.

Murray said the city also needs to invest in green tech and smart tech.

“We’ve really got to ramp up that sector that we’re not talking about,” he said.

As for increasing safety in the city, the mayoral candidate said we need more eyes on the streets.

He noted there used to be beat cops in the downtown area who worked on the streets.

“When you had eyes on the streets, you had safer streets and you had patios out and you had shops,” Murray said.

You can watch the full interview here with mayoral candidate Murray, and hear more about what he is promising to do if elected mayor.

CTV News will be conducting interviews with all 11 mayoral candidates in the lead-up to the election. You can find more coverage of the mayoral race on the CTV News Election Page.