Winnipeg mayoral candidate Mike Vogiatzakis says he's focused on safety

Mike Wojcikis, welcome to CBC. Well, thank you for having me here. So let's start with asking about public safety, a big issue in this campaign. What would you do to make this city safer than it is now? Well, public safety, I think, all starts with the problem that we're having in the city. And the problem is we have an outbreak of mental health, addictions, homelessness. And, of course, people are having trouble with finances in the city. So I think it's those four things that are fueling the fire in the city. when you have all the violence and you have people with drug habits breaking into people's homes and robbing people to keep their habit alive. So I have a new plan. It's called Winnipeg Village, a place where I want to take people from the end of town where all the problems are really becoming. And that's, you know, Higgins and Main and that area there is a big crime issue. So we came up with Winnipeg Village, which is a Vivo village in Minneapolis. And they have a 64% success rate. so basically you take people off the street you give them a place to stay a room where there's a lock and a door where they feel safe and then following that they wake up the next morning they take a shower they have breakfast they meet with a counselor and we find out what kind of help we can give them so we work with detox centers we're going to work with mental health professionals so it's a start to get people off the streets and give them a safe place to be it it'll stop encampments it'll get people uh give people hope we're going to be able to give them their identity identity back we're going to be able to do so much for them so let me interject and ask you if um if someone is living uh homeless on the street uh with addiction and they're not ready for the wraparound support but they need housing what would you do for them so we we would give them housing in the meantime we'd give them that one room we have in there and we give it to them until they feel comfortable enough to come out and say okay i'm ready for help so we would feed them every day we would give them a place to shower you know a Winnipeg Village was built around a community So it's a 50,000 square foot warehouse. So these homes are built in a little warehouse, which is a little community where they can walk around and talk to each other, make friends. Of course, there's rules where you can't have drugs or any weapons or any of that kind of stuff. So it's a place where people start to feel safe again. And then they start to want their life back again, and we want to give it to them. You've had, obviously, a personal experience with crime in the city with the loss of your brother. How has it affected your thinking on the issue of Winnipeg and safety? You know, January 24th, 2024 changed my life forever. There's a fire in my heart and soul to make change in my brother's memory. It was a drastic situation that we went through. I saw so many problems as we were going through this with the police and paramedics and the city of Winnipeg. And from that day on, I was determined to make change, even though I run a very successful funeral home for them. I've been leaving that behind and focusing on the change Winnipeg needs so this doesn't happen to another family again so maybe we can give our kids a future because right now you see a lot of darkness and I deal with the other end of it which is the death industry and I see the suicides coming in I see the drug overdoses coming in and I see the crime on the streets and the end result is is death so I'm pretty motivated there's probably not anyone as motivated as I am to make change in the city of Winnipeg and that's including changing the police fire paramedic program. So I was going to ask you that next. How much more would you spend on frontline officers and emergency responders? And if I may, how would you use them differently than they're used now? So what I would do is change it completely. I would take the cadet program and I would change it to an apprenticeship program. So as a funeral director, we have to go through an apprenticeship program to get our license. So at the end of the two year of your apprenticeship program, you're a pro. You can go in there and deal with families and do what you need to do because you've done it all already. So I want to take the cadets and give them a future. This is our younger generation. they need hope so once we hire a cadet under an apprenticeship program they would actually become a police officer in their fourth year so i want to do it on a three level i want to give the cadets to the police i want to give cadets to paramedics and cadets to firefighters so we would start with you know 30 maybe cadets and what this would do a lot it would help if cadets would get out on the streets they put they would patrol areas i would try to get them to do all the non-emergency things that happened in the city of Winnipeg where the actual police officers can take care of what they're taking care of now. And then what happens is in the fourth year of a cadet program that we have a licensed, ready-to-go, experienced cadet who's going to be a police officer and take somebody's job who's retiring. And, you know, there's other ways, and same with paramedics. So paramedics don't have a cadet program. But boy, would it be a blessing to have a cadet program for them? You know, if somebody falls now... So you want to feed the system in a different way? I want to ask you some character and some challenge questions now. You don't live in Winnipeg. You live in the area of St. Andrews. So why should someone in Winnipeg vote for a mayoral candidate whose primary residence isn't in the city? Well, I'm invested in the city more than most people are. All 12 candidates sitting on that board, I probably pay more taxes than all of them put together in the city of Winnipeg. We run numerous commercial buildings in the city of Winnipeg, plus three funeral homes in Winnipeg. and I have a residence in Winnipeg so I have bought a residence in Winnipeg to move here in in the near future and I do spend some time there now so did you do that because you were running for mayor was that like the thinking around it was uh it was thinking of moving back to Winnipeg and I mean but so much went on between my brother's murder and everything else at that time where we just needed a stable place to stay so St. Andrews is six minutes away from Winnipeg some people may say well you know what does he know about Winnipeg people need to know as a funeral director. I'm hands-on in Winnipeg. I see what goes on every day. I'm driving to the hospitals. We're driving to the cemeteries. We're driving in traffic. We're downtown. So I don't, I think having a mayor that lives in St. Andrews really doesn't make a big difference. It's a short drive. And are we going to start tearing apart Manitoba? You know, most firefighters, paramedics live on the outskirts of the city. If somebody was having an emergency and they were on an operating table and the doctor was coming from St. Andrews, would they say, oh no, I don't want him operating, he's coming from St. Andrews, I don't think it makes much of a difference. Would it make a difference if you were in Brandon? Well, I mean, you're in Manitoba still, so... But you're talking proximity. Brandon is two and a half hours away. I'm six minutes away. And again, I'm invested in the city. I'm here every day. There's not a day that I'm not in Winnipeg. I do want to ask you about character. So you do have a conviction for assault in 1988. You have contempt of court in the 80s, discipline for operating a funeral home in Selkirk without a license um court records showed financial judgments against you as well um how have you changed why should people trust you well i mean uh 40 years ago you do a lot of change in 40 years and that's my training ground that's where i got my experience from is making mistakes and sometimes you make mistakes you climb up that ladder you fall you get back up and you know we'll talk about the assault i was a young kid 20 years old uh assistant coach for hockey team and somebody assaulted an old older coach with a stick so i simply got up and and stopped the assault, but I grabbed the individual who was assaulting the coach and I held him against the wall. And because I put my hands on him, that was assault. The contempt of court comes from the judge saying, we don't need young people like you protecting us. We can protect ourselves. So I lost my temper at that point and said, Hey, what do you mean? Are you saying if I'm driving home today and I see an elderly person be beaten up, I should just do nothing? And he said, mind your own business. So that's where the contempt of court charge came from. And, you know, through, I ran a company called Roadshow Sound and it was the largest DJ service probably in Canada at the time. We were doing 50 weddings, 50 socials a night. So when you run a large business, there's lawsuits and there's disagreements and you go to court and that's what happened. And most of them were settled. And back then I was young, not the experience that I have in business now. So it's good. It's a learning field. It's a lot of experience that you gain when you go through the system. So last question for you, Mike Wojcikas. You had said to me in the green room that you believe this is the most important election, maybe even in recent history. You said in history in Winnipeg. Why are you the right person to lead the city over the other 11 counties? Being a funeral director for 27 years, dealing with the grief of families every day, carrying families through the most troubled time of their life, there's nothing I haven't heard or seen. And most of all, the murder of my brother. That has changed me as a person in general. and like I said, it's set my heart on fire to make change. I don't think there's anyone more motivated than I am to get into City Hall and make the change that you need. Not only that, I'm not politically connected. I'm coming in there as an independent guy to be your voice at City Hall, to make change. And sometimes it's good. A new guy walks in, new look, new ears, fresh thinking, change to the city. Good luck on October 28th. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me here.