No-Show Sammy

The Uniter, like many Winnipeggers, has election fever.

If you’ve been reading along for the past few weeks, you may have noticed our feature called the Better Voter Series.

Our goal in creating space specifically for election coverage was to highlight issues that matter to our readership composed of University of Winnipeg students and those in the downtown community.

By tackling topics like crime and accountability we aimed to present an alternative voice in the swarms of constant coverage of the civic campaign.

In that mission, we looked at the races for council and school board seats but the majority of our conversations around the office were about the mayoral contest. As a student-centric paper, one reality that keeps coming up is that incumbent mayor Sam Katz has yet to attend a U of W-organized debate in his 2010 campaign.

He was invited to participate in the University of Winnipeg’s Global College Student Advisory Council and University of Winnipeg Students’ Association (UWSA)‘s mayoral debate on Sept. 27 organized to discuss the city’s status as a human rights hub, the youth employment crisis and creating a safer Winnipeg. His biggest competition, former MLA and MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis, in addition to other contenders Rav Gill and Brad Gross attended the forum.

Mayor Katz did not.

The Uniter and Mouseland Press originally hoped that their Oct. 13 Political Party that saw council candidates from the Daniel McIntyre ward banter issues would be a mayoral candidate debate.

With the three other mayoral hopefuls showing keen interest in participating in the event, Uniter staff worked to provide context, information and accommodating dates to Katz’s camp. In the end, no commitment to attend was made with communication halted.

With two major U of W election events missed by the mayor of six years, I took the opportunity to inquire as to the reason during my interview with him for the Better Voter Series feature “Mayoral Candidate Profile.”

In response to why he has been absent from U of W debates thus far, he implied that the decisions were out of his hands.

“Here’s the scenario, I think I have attended so far about 10 forums or 10 debates, including Red River College and I can tell you that my campaign manager basically schedules everything,” Katz said.

“If I wasn’t there and obviously I wasn’t, that means I was somewhere else doing something, at another function. So sometimes scheduling doesn’t work out but I can also tell you I have been to Red River College so I’m happy to go to these places, I don’t have a problem with that.”

Mayor Katz did attend Red River College’s mayoral debate on Oct. 6 as well as forums hosted by the CBC, the Winnipeg Free Press and CJOB, among others.

In the interview, he went on to defend his absences at U of W events by plainly saying he is not in control of where he appears.

“The only answer I can give you is that my schedule is not mine, my life has not been mine for the last two months,” he said. “They do all the scheduling and if I wasn’t committed somewhere, then obviously I was committed somewhere else because I can’t think of one night in basically the last six weeks that I haven’t been doing something.”

While Katz says he’s committed to engaging youth and working to create jobs to keep them in Winnipeg, by reducing the issue of his no-shows to scheduling it’s clear he has minimal desire to make time for them on his platform of important issues and appearances in a real, tangible way.

The U of W is made up of creative, intelligent, outspoken voters that deserve a mayor who respects them enough to show up, in their house, hear what they have to say and offer up solutions and ideas that make sense.

The UWSA is providing that opportunity tomorrow night, Oct. 20, by hosting the Mayoral Candidates Forum and Voting Pledge Party. All four candidates have been invited to appear at the event designed to encourage young voters to cast a ballot as well as step up to a mic and speak on on issues that matter to them.

According to the UWSA via press release, three of the four candidates will be in attendance. Katz has declined.

Sometimes, actions speak louder than words.