Manitoba Election

Alon Weinberg - St. Johns

Why did you decide to run in the 2011 Manitoba election?

I decided to run to help the Greens grow and to raise issues of the past ten years that will affect the next 50, that have been completely ignored by the other three parties. For instance, we have an electoral system that is consistently turning more and more people off, with only the votes of the winner of a seat counting towards seats. I believe having a numbered 1st-2nd-3rd choice ballot would ensure that only a candidate with 50% of the votes or more would be elected. Also, we have massive poverty and the erosion of the North End housing stock while half a million dollar homes are being built on what was farmland in Waverley West, extending our city at a great cost to the older, shoulder neighbourhoods along with the core, as our tax dollars continue to pour outwards to build roads, sewers and transit to the edge of town, not to mention maintaining this infrastructure over decades. Greens would move to redesign our cities to make them more safe, liveable and healthy, and I believe I have some ideas to contribute towards this goal. We need to start organizing as citizens, bottom-up and not top down.

What experience will you bring to compliment your role as MLA?

My various positions in the education field: as an environmental educator for 5th and 6th grade students and as a high school educational assistant have taught me about the virtue of patience and creativity in communication and of the need to include youth in decision-making processes. We are not fostering a healthy citizenship in youth by repeatedly telling them they are our future leaders - we need them to begin to act as the leaders of today to fill the void created by a generation of visionless politics. I bring vision and a collaborative approach to organizing that I gained in running a faith based project on ecology, identity and environmental issues in Manitoba, an experience that allowed me to wade into the full religious and cultural diversity of our greater society to create community around our common values and vision for our communities. My experience living in intentional summer communities as an intern taught me non-violent communication, a skill needed when dealing with a politically diverse population facing grave daily challenges, seeking to vent these challenges upon those associated with the system. Instead, through patient, compassionate, and active listening, we can learn to include those most on the political and social margins in our collective journey forward.

Is there anything in particular you would like to change in our province? In your electoral division?

I think citizens should meet to devise a better way to elect MLAs so that all votes count in one way or another, unlike the current first past the post system. I would like to see more democratic space created through regular public forums, so citizens can hear each other and make new connections through which they become more actively self-organizing. I'd also like to see local citizens committees established around various issues so that people are empowered to tackle community challenges, while being offered small honorariums for their time. Rather than a one-way communication from the MLA to residents, committee chairs would be communicating directly to their fellow citizens using resources and training provided by the MLA's office. I would like to see an end to mass poverty in northern Manitoba via programs encouraging greater health in general, but especially among the Aboriginal population facing a major diabetes epidemic. Child poverty can be eliminated through a universal basic Income, guaranteeing everyone a minimum standard of living without the negative psychological cycle of welfare. Much individual talent and innovation gets lost when individuals struggle to make ends meet, but in the long term the basic income frees people up to invest in their talents and dreams.

What is one thing you stand for that is not a part of your political party's platform?

I have been convinced that the best way to improve elections is for ballots to include a 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice etc. Called an alternative vote, on the first counting if no candidate has 50% of the 1st place votes, the last place candidate is dropped and those ballots' second choices redistributed. After this round, either someone is again dropped and their ballots redistributed, or someone has reached 50% and is declared winner. That someone can control the whole seat under our current system just becasue they have the biggest block of votes - even if it's less than 50% - is the logic of how gangs work, and perhaps explains all the negative attack ads. With numbered choices you can vote FOR what you want not just against the party you may despise. Our party officially favours more of a proportional representation model that, through some of the seats being determined through party lists, gives the parties MORE power, but I have come to see that so few citizens are part of parties or of the electoral process, that making elected officials more accountable to local citizens will help build democracy from the ground up rather than the usual top-down 'vote as you're told' disempowering politics now in place.

Do you have any other comments regarding your candidacy?

I understand many progressive voters fear a PC government, recalling the massive cuts and privatizations by Filmon in the 1990s, and so might vote NDP out of fear and cynicism because of our first past the post system. If this is you, or if you don't vote because your vote never counts, then let's organize over the next 4 years to change the electoral system. Democracy is being fought for around the world in the streets. Just because the regime is not disappearing activists or cracking our heads in the streets, we have no reason to assume the democracy we take for granted will endure forever. Democracy needs to be dynamic and evolving and actively practised or it will become lost, and to some degree - the G20 $1billion police state in Toronto for instance - many of our freedoms have already been eroded, our sovereignty sold out through free trade deals that only benefit the rich. Isn't it time we collectively confront the free trade globalization ideology that increases the gap between rich and poor and start to vote FOR a vision? Voting once every 4 years is the least one can do democratically and only a small step towards getting organized as citizens and redefining our common values.

What is your favourite location in the electoral division you are currently a candidate for?

It has to be somewhere along the river, likely a little nook at Scotia and Cathedral where you can sit beneath 100 year old trees, watch the moon illuminate the Red, and imagine the history of this country during and before the fur trade when machines could not be heard and the rivers were the main transportation arteries of culture and of the economy. Honourable mention to the CPR tracks on the western boundary of the riding where I walked many quiet nights growing up in West Kildonan.

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