Tyler & Paul from Economic Development
Download MP3We know our services and programs impact you. So let's talk about them. Together, we'll learn from the people behind the scenes and get to know our city a little better. From the city of Winnipeg, this is Our City, Our Podcast.
Natalie:This podcast is recorded in Treaty 1 Territory, the home and traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Enu, and Dakota peoples, and the national homeland of the Red River Metis. We acknowledge that our drinking water comes from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation in Treaty 3 territory. Hi, I'm Tamara. And I'm Natalie. Well, today's episode sounds like a bit of a heavy lift.
Natalie:But I'm going to put it in this kind of context. You know, you're you're at the bookstore, you're in the magazine aisle, you want to look smart. Which one are you grabbing, Natalie? Well, you're gonna pick up The Economist or something like that. Today, we actually have two economists joining us.
Natalie:They're gonna talk about, you know, all of these raw numbers without talking about all those pesky numbers.
Tamara:But we do get into some stuff like property taxes and,
Natalie:you know, how's Winnipeg doing as a city? And we'll put it into context that, you know, someone like myself can understand. Like, say, if Winnipeg was a family member in the family of Canadian cities, Who are we?
Tamara:Let's find out with Tyler Kroeker and Paul Beckta.
Natalie:Hi, thanks for joining us. Now we keep joking that we have two economists today for the price of one. But let's start with the basics. What is a city economist? Tyler, maybe you can answer this for us.
Natalie:Why does Winnipeg have them now?
Tyler:So the city economist is really a role that is focused on understanding the economy in the city, understanding various statistics, and also just being able to have that skill set to dive into any data that we need to. So we get a lot of questions on population or census. We get a lot of questions about the economy. How is employment or unemployment changing? And so as economists working for the city, our focus is really to take these common questions and to answer them, but also to conduct research.
Tyler:We often get tasked with different types of questions that require either looking into data published by Statistics Canada or doing studies on certain policies. And so our role as a city economist is to sort of be a small team that can respond to sort of these broader inquiries that require a skill set that looking into data, being able to analyze large quantities of information and disseminate it in a way that makes sense to people.
Tamara:So, we're all going to get a little smarter with this one. You each specialize in a different type of economics, macro and micro. Now, if you're listening here, don't give up on us yet. Trust us, this is going be good. It's kind of like doctors having different specialties.
Tamara:So can you each give us an example of how these different types of economics show up differently in city decision making? Maybe Tyler, let's start with you.
Tyler:Yes, my focus in my role is more on the micro side of things. So, this involves taking a look at a lot of financial type of data. And also taking a look at things like how a policy or project might impact the public. So, on the finance side, I do a lot of projections or forecasting, particularly for our budget. And so this is mostly just staring at spreadsheets all day, which depending on who you are may be exciting, may not be exciting.
Tyler:But it's really trying to understand what drives some of these forecasts. Some things are going to be related to inflation, other things are going to be related to historical operating budgets, or going to be related to collective bargaining. So the micro side focuses sort of on these more minute details of the organization itself. And then on sort of the public side, understanding how some of the things that we do as a municipal government impacts the public. How do we calculate the benefits of certain projects that are applicable to the public?
Tyler:And just doing a lot of background research on things like property taxes, population, sort of these more smaller nuanced components of the economy.
Tamara:And Paul, you?
Paul:Yeah, so I cover really the macro side of it. You've touched a little bit in some micro, but broadly speaking, so my background is doing with macroeconomic statistics in a former job with the province. And then coming over here and bringing that expertise, it's really like, what's going on with the overall size of the economy? Where are we growing? Weaknesses?
Paul:And
Tyler:then,
Paul:you know, translating to things like employment as well. Part of that's also saying, okay, we analyze these numbers, but then it comes up into very specific scenarios, major events. Most recently, the tariff war, as I think is a pretty fair way to call it out these days between the Americans and the rest of the world. So back in January, he was asking like, well, the tariffs was laid out back then. What does that mean for Winnipeg's economy?
Paul:And then finding out actually it wasn't that much. It was about 6% of our GDP, which is pretty good. Prior to that, dealt with COVID for a few years where we plotted out scenarios. What do we think is going to happen with the pandemic? Then that means what is going to be public health rules, then for lockdowns, then what does that mean for the economy?
Paul:You can see which sectors would then be most impacted and where we actually think we're going to be okay. And then construction inflation is another one that I have inherited, which is also quite interesting. Yeah, not an easy thing to try and predict.
Natalie:We'll dive into some of those in moment here. Just for folks understanding, the city economists have been shuffled between departments over the years. And I wonder, does that reflect a growing recognition about what economists do in city government?
Paul:I would say it's in part figuring out how to use us. We were within the infrastructure planning office, within the CAO's office. And then we're what we were moved directly to the CAO and then economic development was created about two years ago. But yeah, having us more within our own group that's then allowed us to then go be internal consultants to everybody, which I think is where the organisation generally sees our value is being able to jump around those topics and not being placed in one spot.
Natalie:And is it fair to say it's a more common position right across Canada within municipalities?
Tyler:There's a few economists at municipalities that typically can be found in larger cities. So, know we have colleagues in the City Of Calgary, City Of Edmonton. I'm not quite sure about the other municipalities in Canada.
Paul:Toronto does.
Tyler:Yeah. I think like as economists, we have a pretty broad skillset, but a very narrow lens, I would say. Like there's skillset in data analysis, skillset in looking at spreadsheets, skillset in retrieving data, you know, running different types of statistical analysis, but the lens tends to be on things like the economy in terms of GDP, employment, unemployment, land development, and how does that impact the economy. So I think, as Paul mentioned, I don't know if I would say struggle, but there can be sometimes a challenge in how to best utilize economists and their skill set. And I think that we've been able to help out the organisation in a variety of different ways, but that's always evolving.
Tyler:Right now, yeah, we're under economic development. We're not economic development officers. So, sometimes people confuse that. Our job isn't to go out and try and attract companies or businesses or anything like that. Our focus is more on the analytical policy side.
Paul:Just although that said, there are times when companies are coming to the city, sometimes through EDW or other means. And then we do our office does start to get engaged with doing like land site inspections and things like that. So, I've had to we've dealt with a couple of those as part of something pointed to me smaller files. But, yeah.
Natalie:And then to tie it again back to decision making. Gosh, we hear so much more than we ever did in the past about doing your own research. And what are the facts? Basing a decision in the work you do. Sell me on it.
Tyler:Mean, Paul, maybe you feel differently, but I don't know if I would say hard decisions are made based off of the work that we do. But I think comments I've heard from other people, elected officials, is that our role is to help inform the decisions that get made. And we don't often tend to make recommendations like, yes, you should do this, no, you should not. It's more so our data is there to sort of provide an unbiased perspective on an issue. And so, we've done work in the past on analyzing overtime in a specific department and seeing if additional staff would help reduce the financial cost that that department has in terms of staffing.
Tyler:And what's the trade off between having less employees work more overtime versus more employees working less overtime. And we don't necessarily make a recommendation, but our analysis kind of feeds into that decision that will ultimately be made by someone else.
Tamara:Paul, you had mentioned that you're really like internal consultants. So, what are some of the questions that come across your desks?
Paul:I think bigger ones, wallets, again, going back to tariffs. People were really losing their mind about like, and rightfully so, about the economic impact of what those tariffs that were announced would be. And that was to go and provide an actual context, clear, concise numbers, say, hey, guess what? It's actually not as bad as everybody's saying it is. We're in a more unique position on that front.
Paul:But the questions to me really jump around a lot, Tyler. There isn't one common theme.
Tyler:Yeah, like in my experience, like as an organization, as a city, we do our best to plan. Winnipeg had a period of stagnant growth in the 90s. And so, I feel like maybe planning during that time kind of wasn't seen as important because the city wasn't growing. In recent two decades, Winnipeg has grown quite significantly. And so, one of the things that we do now is we do a long term population forecast.
Tyler:And we used to purchase that on a five year, every five years we would purchase a forecast from a private agency. And now we've developed the in house tools to do that ourself. And then every year we do that exercise. We take the latest information and estimate where Winnipeg's population is gonna be in twenty five years. And then we disseminate that to departments.
Tyler:And we use that to help inform sort of any projections they're doing in terms of land use or where housing is going to go, or what level of infrastructure investment is needed to sort of accommodate that population growth. So that's sort of an example where we've taken something that was typically handled by an external consultant. We've built our own internal tools so that we can do this more frequently on a more cost effective basis.
Paul:Yeah, and just wanna add one thing from the macro side thinking about that question again. Through I think some nudging from the outside was to say what's Winnipeg's GDP? Before we initiated this project, we went and produced GDP for the six economic regions for the province of Manitoba, of which Winnipeg is one of Winnipeg proper plus Headingley. Prior to that, what was defined as GDP for the city was the Census Metropolitan Area, which I think is about 16 or so rural municipalities plus Winnipeg. So if you're in the comments for the city of Winnipeg, what I mostly care about is GDP for the Winnipeg itself, not broader surrounding area.
Paul:So that's where we went and actually went and built a model, just like 16 or so Excel files all talking to each other to then go produce that, which we then are starting to now use for other analyses, including tariffs. It's really the first big one.
Natalie:Okay. I want to keep going on this because you guys do have this really unique way of looking at things. You know, when I might talk to a friend about what's interesting and unique about Winnipeg, I might talk about the cold or that we call our hamburgers fat boys. But from your perspective, what makes economically Winnipeg unique?
Paul:Very diverse. We don't have one industry that really drives us in a boom bust cycle as you might think of oil and gas would ultimately drive Calgary or Edmonton. Which you'd say, okay, well, you're kind of boring. Fine. But that diversity gives us a strength as to if there is a downturn, well, it's only gonna hit one part and the rest is gonna be more resilient.
Paul:So we have that stability here. That ultimately is a huge benefit to us.
Tyler:I think one thing that also sticks out, Winnipeg compared to other cities in Canada, is as a municipality, the majority of our province's population, Manitoba's population is within the city of Winnipeg. It's 56% of Manitobans live within Winnipeg as of last year. And when you take a look at all other provinces in Canada, that's not the case anywhere else. I think the next closest one I think is Halifax where 40 plus percent of people in Nova Scotia live in Halifax. But Winnipeg is the center of Manitoba and Manitoba's population is highly concentrated with the over majority living within the city of Winnipeg.
Tyler:And you don't see that across other provinces. A lot of provinces either have two major cities like Alberta has Calgary and Edmonton or in Saskatchewan there's Regina and Saskatoon. But the result of that is that the population is less concentrated and more dispersed across the province. Manitoba is very unique in that sense. And I think that makes our economy unique.
Tyler:It also makes it like a major center for other people from across the province come here for healthcare, they come here to shop at, Costco or whatever it might be. So, kind of have that weight, that gravity that other jurisdictions in Canada don't have.
Paul:Yeah. And that same also goes for GDP where I think about you're saying the POPs about 55, 56%, Winnipeg's in Manitoba, but GDP is closer to about 60%. So, you want Manitoba's economy to grow well and be strong? You need Winnipeg to grow well and be strong to get that overall headline number to move.
Tamara:So, you mentioned that it's unique that we have so much of the province's population here. But what also makes us unique is that we're also so far away from other major cities. What effect does that have on us?
Tyler:I mean, from pure economic standpoint, mean, transportation costs are higher. You want to go somewhere as you have to drive or fly. If you're a business or working in an industry where you have to import goods, it has to come from further away. So I think that is a potential issue, though it may be pretty marginal. I also think it generates a sense of isolation and a bit of a, dare I say echo chamber among people.
Tyler:We complain about issues happening in Winnipeg because we're mostly aware of only what's happening in Winnipeg. I think of other provinces, if you're in the GTA, you're probably aware of what's happening in Hamilton or what's happening maybe in Ottawa, or if you're in Alberta, you're aware of both Edmonton and Calgary. But in Manitoba, it's basically just Winnipeg. And so, when something good or bad happens, it kind of dominates the news cycle across the entire province.
Paul:Yeah, just to pick up on that, I think there's also then the issue that there's a lot of a small town mentality in this city. Yet we're at what, 843,000 people? Approximately like The biggest the big
Tyler:small town.
Paul:That's a big city. The biggest small town. And sometimes I think people struggle to deal with big city issues in the right context.
Natalie:So if Winnipeg were, say, a person in the Canadian family of cities, what do say? Who would we be? Are the stable middle child? Are we the faraway artsy cousin?
Paul:I mean, we do have a heck of an art scene here. So it's kind of the middle child and yeah, we're a few different things.
Tyler:Yeah, I mean, you take a look at like the distribution of where people work, like what industries. I mean, Winnipeg heavily leans towards people working in healthcare, social assistance, transportation, warehousing. So, it might be a bit more of like the blue collar brother who decided to become an electrician or something like that. Just kind of steady as she goes type thing, not necessarily overly fancy and not necessarily overly, you know, struggling with income growth or anything.
Paul:We're the middle child. Yeah.
Tamara:Everything that we do here at the city really comes down to our residents, the taxpayers, and we are accountable to them. When it comes to the work that you do, how is that kind of in the back of your mind about how if you're running financial analysis, things like that for future projects, are residents they factored in somehow?
Tyler:So, that's a great question. I think as economists, we really think at a high level in terms of a more holistic picture of how the actions we choose or how the projects we choose can sort of impact the public. So one of the examples of the work that we do is we analyze potential land development in the city. Land development is very different depending on which area you want to develop, who's doing the development. Some areas require a lot of infrastructure investment on behalf of the municipality, others require very little.
Tyler:And so one of our roles as economists is to take a look at a proposal and to contrast that to all the cost of providing services to that development. And the goal, our end goal is to present information to the public and to elected officials and say, Hey, look, if you're going to develop this area of the city, if you're going to develop this land, this is all the revenue you could expect, and this is all the costs that you can expect. And from there, we hope that people will make good decisions around, well, let's modify this development or let's not go ahead or yes, let's go ahead, depending on sort of the financial outcome. And so we're sort of there to provide sort of an informed picture of how the current policies set by our elected officials translate to financial sustainability, or perhaps, it's not a good investment to develop this land. So that's one way that we try and take sort of that financial sustainability and that taxpayer perspective when analyzing potential development.
Tamara:So, a few of the high profile cost benefit analysis over the past couple of years deals with roads, specifically Route 90, widening and Chief Peguis Trail extension. Tell us a little bit more about those projects.
Tyler:This is an area where the city would, you know, most cities would hire consultants to do this work. And so this work is sort of in its infancy for us taking it on. But we do see value in sort of developing that skill set to analyze these types of things. But when we're getting into evaluating the benefits of public infrastructure, I think it gets a really, really gray area. How do you tell the public, you know, we're going to take say 500,000,000 of your tax dollars and we're going to invest it in building a road?
Tyler:And how do you calculate the benefits for that? And there's a whole area of economics where you try and quantify this. There's various guidelines and rules on the best way to do this. But for something like Route 90, what we're doing there is the proposal is to add a lane, which is to ease congestion and enhance transportation times. And so it's not a toll road.
Tyler:It doesn't generate revenue for us as a city. So how do you quantify those benefits? And so there's guidelines, there's a lot of common practice among other large jurisdictions when doing cost benefit analysis. And we say, okay, well, how much time is the public going to save if we build this asset? Is it going to reduce emissions or is it going to increase them?
Tyler:Is it going to increase the value of active transportation in that area? Is it going to induce more people to bike or to walk because we've improved the facilities around them? So, we have a whole exercise that we go through to evaluate these benefits that a project would provide to the public and then monetize them. And then we contrast that to the costs and that suggests or provides information to the public and to elected officials on, hey, this is what it's going to cost to do the project, but this is the types of benefits, the valuation of those benefits that the public can expect to get over a defined period of time. And so that's sort of a new practice that is ongoing.
Tyler:But I think it's a step in the right direction because it helps quantify a lot of these intangibles that we haven't done before.
Natalie:And yet speaking of one of the intangibles, the city vision includes language like a vibrant city. How do you assess something like the vibes? Or things like community pride or what's joyful and meaningful? How on earth do you account for those type of things in your work?
Paul:I'd say we don't bluntly. That's outside I think of the scope of what the work we do. It's such a soft thing to measure in the first place to go and try and like pull stats on that. You can say like kill happiness measured for different cities or provinces. It is important and it does then translate into economic indicators.
Paul:Arguably if people are really attracted to live in a certain area then land values, property values in that area will go up. You'll then see more activities like restaurants and the rest of it. But to try and really get that nitty gritty on the vibe side of it, no.
Tyler:I think there's just some areas where economics maybe shouldn't stray Agreed. Shouldn't try and encroach on these areas. And in our reports we often comment on sort of these intangible qualitative measurements, you know, vibes. You can't measure it, right? So we say, hey, look, like this is the economic lens, but there's multiple lenses you can use to evaluate an infrastructure investment or some sort of policy or proposal.
Tyler:Like there's a whole bunch of different lenses and the economic side of things is just one. And so I think, we try our best to communicate where possible that, hey, this is just one perspective, take it for what it's worth. But there are other perspectives that we have to acknowledge.
Tamara:Now you both don't just work, you live and play in the city. And sometimes it can be hard to leave your work out of it. I'm sure there must be some misconceptions that you hear out there about the city and our economy. I know, I see a smirk over there maybe property taxes?
Paul:Property taxes. I've had many arguments in the group chat with my buddies about how they're calculated and all the way through from like just how they're set to then what's in your final bill. And it's actually an easier tax to understand when you go on assessment tax website and you sort of walk through the steps and the math versus trying to figure out your income tax. But I think people just think generally, Oh, my property value went up. So my property taxes will go up.
Paul:No, that's not how it works. You go look at their most recent bylaw council, there's a bunch of warehouses, the boring parts of these bylaws, but then gets the end of day saying, hey, we need to go raise X amount of dollars to go for our budget to balance it. And then from there, we've got an assessment value. And then off that, we'll then go calculate the mill rate. So you're moving around, like there's three or four different moving variables to this, but it's not just, oh, your home went up, so therefore your property taxes go up, which then becomes more of a both fiscal issue and political issue because you've got the province and the feds where the economy grows, okay, income tax is going up, sales tax is going up.
Paul:You don't have change your tax policy. It just grows with the economy. And so the average voter, you might not be as happy, okay, I'm earning more money so I have to go pay income tax. But you just sort of accept it. Whereas on the property tax front, council has to go and literally vote every year, say, this is what we need to raise in property taxes for our budget, so we're gonna go move the overall, know, the rates around accordingly.
Paul:And people get upset with that because they see that choice or the decision being made year after year after year without actually understanding of how this system works.
Tyler:Property taxes have a long history in Winnipeg. There's actually a commission in the mid-90s that was struck because Winnipeg actually did have relatively high property taxes for the average homeowner in the mid-90s. And there was an argument made that, hey, this is deterring people and businesses from moving to Winnipeg, and that's why we're not growing because Winnipeg didn't grow much in the 90s. And so we had a period of property tax freezes. They were even reduced for a few years in the early 2000s, And then they were frozen for a long time.
Tyler:And I think that had a lot of knock on consequences that we're still feeling today. But flip side of that is the average property tax for an average homeowner in Winnipeg is relatively low compared to other major Canadian cities. And I think that committee that was struck, I mean, that did have effect, but I think there's still in the back of some people's minds that Winnipeg does have high property taxes. And if you feel that way, that's okay. But I think just on paper, as economists, what we see is the numbers.
Tyler:And so it's just interesting to understand that history, why things were the way they were and sort of how they've progressed.
Paul:And the other thing just to add is people, I think they look at the whole property tax bill and without actually trying to break out a bit, oh, there's this piece called education property tax. Yes, we collect that for school divisions, but counsel doesn't make that decision at all. But people just normally come and blame counselors unfairly for that. Whereas, yeah, go talk to your school trustee if you don't like your school taxes.
Natalie:And then to follow-up maybe the misconceptions, if you could maybe magically create some data sets for yourself for Winnipeg that didn't exist yet. Is there something that you really wish you did have access to or you could measure?
Tyler:Oh man, like I would, I have a laundry list. It'd like Christmas getting some of this data if I could. I think that one of the things I would find useful is every piece of line in the city is divided up into a parcel is what we call it. I would like to know, and this is probably an invasion of your privacy, but I would like to know how many people live on each parcel and how many people work and in what industry they work on each parcel. Because, you know, it sounds invasive, but I think from like just a decision making or data driven level, I think it really helps us understand the structure of the city, where people are living, where they're commuting to, where they're commuting from, the type of employment and industry, the type of job creation, the type of products that are being produced on a particular piece of land.
Tyler:If we had that information, it'd really help us understand better things like what's driving our revenue, what's driving our cost, what's driving the economy, what areas of the city are more at risk if an industry faces a specific downturn or what areas might grow if an industry is gonna face strong growth. So we proxy that information using custom census data that we purchase from Stats Canada, But it's a little bit rough. We obviously don't get down to that level of detail because that's a violation of people's privacy. But if we're just saying whatever we want, that's something that I would love to get my hands on, but it doesn't exist and it probably shouldn't.
Paul:And occasionally a census is impacted by a global pandemic. That doesn't help for five years now I'll go take that from the micro to the macro. One was called so the national level, we've got the Canadian system of macroeconomic accounts. It tells you GDP, it's gonna tell you how much people brought in in gross income, their profits, taxes, going to different levels of government, dividend income, interest payments, all of it. It's really tracking all the money flowing around.
Paul:And then you can look on the other side, like the balance sheets and your financial transactions. So it's like you're buying and selling stocks, moving money in and out of your deposit accounts, then moving across money moving across different sectors, like banking to households or to corporations and governments, whatever. That's great at the national level. You can go do really interesting models with that. Most of that data doesn't exist the provincial level.
Paul:And then when you get to the city level, basically none of that exists. You've got GDP and what stats cam puts out is GDP for the CMA. It's one headline number. It's not adjusted for inflation, and it's about three years old. So by the time it comes out, who cares?
Paul:So that's why you've got private forecasting groups, they'll come out and produce numbers for the CMAs, why we're doing our own for the economic region. But I would love to have a much richer sense of the economic activity that is happening within Winnipeg on both sort of the transaction side. So you think of like, you know, going buying a car or something, but then also on the flip side, the financial piece to it. So how was it financed? Did someone just pay for it in cash?
Paul:Or did go get a car loan? And then how would all the balance sheet piece fall off? Because that gives you a much better sense of the health of your economy if you can begin to tipping points.
Tamara:Finally, you both obsessively track news and trends. And I think I've heard before that increase in frozen pizza sales can be correlated into how people are doing financially at home. Are there some of those small, you know, maybe you wouldn't give a second look to economic signs that really trigger something for both of you that say, here we go again, something's coming.
Paul:At the city level, not really because it comes back to the lack of data we actually have at a municipal level to understand what's going on with the health or economy. The best short term indicator we have are the labor market statistics, but labor market indicators are always lagging indicators. So the last thing a firm is gonna do is fire their employees. They'll deal with sales, they'll cut hours, and I think so. By the time you're seeing numbers, employment starting to decline, it's already started.
Paul:So I would start with what's going on with credit growth. If you've got more borrowing happening, more so in the private sector, that's gonna stimulate demand moving forward and then you're gonna see GDP grow from there. But that's on a national level. So it's at a Citi standpoint, it's hard. It is really hard.
Paul:And that's where you also have to then push sometimes here, especially earlier on to get people to think outside of Winnipeg. And that's where you go look at those bigger macro numbers.
Tyler:I think at a national level there, you you always have people and bloggers and even private firms trying to find some sort of niche dataset that's going to predict the future before anything else can. They try and use like frequently updated satellite imagery of warehouses and ports and stuff like that to try and track economic activity. There's a lot of volatility in that type of stuff. Maybe at a local level, pay attention if you see stores having lots of sales that normally wouldn't, that might be an indicator that they're trying to move product when they can't. The sign of consumers not spending as much money as they otherwise would.
Tyler:So sales trying to entice that. But other than that, just kind of keep an eye out for what's going on. Talk to your friends. I know like the summer labor market has really struggled for high school students looking for a summer job or university students looking for summer jobs. So I think that is causing a little bit of uneasiness right now across Canada.
Tyler:So I'm not quite sure if there's a specific like niche dataset. I think the big banks, they'll take their own credit card data or their own consumer spending data that we would never have access to. And they publish reports. So, you can go to TD and they'll write a report on how consumer spending for TD credit card users is changing. So, you could always try and tease out read between the lines for that type of stuff too.
Paul:Yeah. And it's one piece to add and like sort of what city or data does city economists get access to. A lot of the data that we would have is actually not going be linked to economic growth. Again, we can pick on property taxes all day. Does not The economy goes up by 1%.
Paul:Property taxes don't go automatically up by 1%. Building permits will some extent show you that, but that's just part of more of your broader investment cycle. But that's also not capture all types of investments or anything that's engineering construction. So, bring it back to us, roads, that's not a building permit or the same thing if you go a little bit broader, Manitoba Hydro is building a dam, that's not gonna be showing up in a building permit. Yeah, so I would say it's more harder than not.
Natalie:You hear a lot, anything to this? Winnipeggers love a deal? I have to ask you guys.
Tyler:I I'd say it's true. I mean, the Costcos are always jam packed. It's huge news when another Costco comes here. And take a look at average incomes. Average income in Winnipeg is slightly lower than other major cities.
Tyler:So it would to some degree explain the frugality.
Paul:Personal experience putting things on Facebook Marketplace. We just renovated the house that we're now just sold. Had a fridge, put out Facebook Marketplace, gone within a week. Dishwasher, same thing. Microwave, same thing.
Paul:Whistles bang, bang, bang. We had a bunch of bricks that we had to get rid of behind our house. It said free. Someone came and picked it up within two hours. Like it's yeah.
Paul:Winnipegger's love a deal.
Natalie:Well, guys, thank you so much for this. I I do feel a little smarter. One last question for you. And it is something we ask every guest on the show. You've taken us down a lot of interesting roads here.
Natalie:But for the last one, if you could share something about Winnipeg that you wish everybody knew, what would it be? It can be work related, but it doesn't have to be. Maybe Paul, would you wanna go first?
Paul:Not so much Winnipeg in general, but I'm gonna go back to property taxes. I just wish everybody understood why property taxes go up, how they're not linked to economic growth. And when you see a news article in the winter every year, hey, council voted to raise property taxes by X, what it means and why. It's really important to understand that point.
Tyler:I think I might take a more positive approach here. Winnipeg has a certain perception at the national level across Canada. But I think Winnipeg can really be a great place to live depending on the type of lifestyle that you're looking for. But Winnipeg, you live in Winnipeg, you have great access to lot of beautiful provincial parks within driving distance. You have the White Shell.
Tyler:You have access to nice beaches, believe it or not. Grand Beach is a beautiful beach. Winnipeg has relatively affordable housing, especially if you're coming from Vancouver or Toronto. I think it's a great place to purchase a house. It's one of the few places where younger ish people can still buy a house without overly leveraging themselves.
Tyler:And I think, I've seen headlines about NHL players coming here and hating on Winnipeg because hotel sucks or it's dark and cold. Like, I mean, yeah, you can't change the weather. But what we don't hear is you don't hear about why Winnipeg is the smallest city to have an NHL team in the league. Like you hear the other side like, Oh, it's the smallest city, it sucks. But like, where's the commentary about how Winnipeg somehow is a small city and does have an NHL team?
Tyler:So I think we have a tendency to be pretty negative about ourselves. But I definitely think if we just flip some of those questions, we might have a bit more of a positive perspective about where we live.
Tamara:Coming up on next month's podcast, we're revisiting some of those lessons that we all learned as kids. Does stop, drop, and roll sound familiar? We're bringing it back.
Natalie:You know what no one wants to listen to? A smoke alarm. You know what you do wanna listen to? A podcast about fire prevention. So you'll wanna tune in for that.
Natalie:In the meantime, though, please reach out to
Tamara:us if you have any ideas for guests that we should have or topics to cover on our show. You can email city podcastwinnipeg. Ca.
Natalie:Talk to you soon.
