Regina's new city council could be the most progressive in many years

This is an opinion piece by Paul Dechene, who live tweets nearly every Regina council meeting as @PDCityHall and is a co-host of the Queen City Improvement Bureau on 91.3FM CJTR.

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Long before the polls opened, I suspected Regina would see a dramatic shift on council and Nov. 9 did not disappoint.

The big news was Sandra Masters, the former board chair of the Regina Exhibition Association, who unseated Michael Fougere, ending his bid for a third term as mayor.

The other big news last night was that three incumbent councillors will not be returning: Barbara Young was defeated in Ward 1 by Cheryl Stadnichuk, Joel Murray was defeated in Ward 6 by Dan LeBlanc and Sharron Bryce lost her seat in Ward 7 to Terina Shaw.

Shanon Zachidniak won in Ward 8, where longtime councillor Mike O'Donnell chose to not run again, and Landon Mohl won Ward 10, which Jerry Flegel vacated so he could run for mayor.

This means six of the 11 people on council will be new to the job.

It's hard to describe how massive this change is. A lot of people point to Pat Fiacco as being the Regina mayor with the most noteworthy legacy. He gave us Mosaic Stadium and the downtown plaza, after all. But Fougere was first elected to council in 1997 and has been involved in every council decision since then. Thanks to that lengthy career at city hall, he became an influential presence there long before he became mayor.

Monday's municipal election will go down in my diary as the second most interesting I've ever covered.

The most interesting election I covered, no question, was 2012, the year Fougere was first elected mayor. Nine candidates. Six debates. Acrimony. Recriminations. Near weekly claims of electoral monkeyshines between various third- and fourth-tier candidates. A secret meeting with a campaign manager who alleged his candidate's website and social media had been hacked by foreign agents in the employ of a rival campaign.

The 2020 election was important because it will determine how council approaches our recovery from a global pandemic, but 2012 was bonkers.

Since then, Fougere's leadership has focused on defending against the downloading of provincial responsibilities onto the city. When proposals involving housing, poverty mitigation, daycares or the environment were brought before council, he responded with an excess of caution, arguing the city didn't have the resources to take on those issues.

That narrow interpretation of city hall's role in the community had a profound influence over council's decision-making for nearly 23 years.

That legacy has come to an end.

Progressive council

The council that has just been elected is arguably the most progressive in recent memory.

Four of the incoming councillors received the endorsement of the Regina and District Labour Council: Stadnichuk, LeBlanc, Zachidniak and Mohl.

Meanwhile, the incumbent councillors who have been re-elected are those who had on occasion chafed at Fougere's cautious approach. They were instrumental in loosening the municipal purse strings to fund things like the Renewable City framework and the Maple Leaf and Wascana pool renewal projects.

As for Masters, it's too soon to say what kind of mayor she'll be. Will she stick to her promise to initiate an operations review with a target of 15 per cent in savings? Or will she lean into her promises to implement a poverty-reduction strategy and build a new aquatic facility? She could go either way. Or both.

Now that we've hit reboot on city council, they will have to grapple with the most significant economic crisis this city has seen in a generation. Based on the city's mid-year financial update, we will see a $5.1-million deficit at the end of 2020, thanks to the COVID pandemic. Fortunately, the last council shifted $7.1 million from capital projects to cover this kind of operating shortfall.

Still, that only leaves $2 million to deal with the pandemic's continuing impacts, such as a plunge in revenue as residents and business owners defer payment on their property taxes.

That's the kind of news our council will be greeted with as they move directly from their orientation session into meetings concerning the 2021 budget. It's going to be a tight, difficult year.

That Regina chose a group of relative newcomers to tackle this crisis is definitely an interesting outcome to this election.

This column is part of CBC's Opinion section. For more information about this section, please read this editor's blog and our FAQ.

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