When Nathine Dagdick asked to be part of our 2026 Civic Election series, it was easy to see why. The city employee says he’s watched Transcona taxpayers, transit users and drivers pay the price for bad planning and poor service delivery.
Part 1– Episode 33 opens with a brief review of the upswing in our Season 7 Funding Drive (and Facebook group membership) and how you can help us get to the month-end goal of $3000, plus the reactions to his latest Winnipeg Sun columns:
Augustine Centre snubs Osborne Village residents safety meeting
Parking permit renewal: new location, same old confusion
“Downtown revitalization” charade ignores chaotic Riverwalk encampment proliferation
8.40 Part 2- This observation from Transcona candidate Nathine Dagdick on his campaign website struck us as something we would have reported:
“Every Transcona resident has a story about calling or emailing 311 to report a pothole, a damaged park bench, or a missed snow plow, only to receive a generic tracking number and absolutely zero follow-up. Our current 311 system operates like a black hole where resident complaints go to die. As a municipal operator, I know our front-line crews want to fix these issues, but the internal tracking system disconnects the resident from the worker on the ground.”
A City infrastructure equipment operator, Dagdick’s central theme is that Winnipeggers are not getting value for dollar because of insider resistance to reforming wasteful policies.
“I have seen the orders that have been given to us (by) City Hall and the department heads and as the person doing them, we constantly see it’s not working. We know other ways… that can save taxpayers money at every avenue- but because we’re the worker ants our say just goes out the window.”
Citing the spiraling North End water treatment plant costs and the rejected housing plan for South Transcona, Dagdick says “The City to me has no foresight.” He spoke about how pie-in-the sky development proposals are based on off-loading extraordinary costs onto longtime property owners.
He attended the 12 hour committee meeting about the plan and notes one woman estimated adding sewer and water lines would “cost them almost $1.4 M. That is not a benefit, that’s an eviction notice… that’s not OK to me.”
Dagdick also blasted the “private-public walkway” development concept where “they want the homeowners to maintain the trail that would cut through their land.”
28.03 Part 3 – Dagdick pitches “the 1-10 Rule” to guide City road maintenance on streets rated “Good” where proactive low-cost cleaning and sealing of potholes can save expensive reconstruction later.
“What we do is not a solution, it’s a band-aid” and as a result, taxes are spent “patching the same holes every spring.”
37.00- Dagdick says at the door voters say the Transit rehaul has failed the ward- fares keep going up while service goes down. He lauds Coun. Cindy Gilroy posting videos of her own experiences with late buses, missed connections and long walks to stops.
Dagdick proposes daily users and drivers – “the people who rely on it every single day” should steer the Transit Advisory Committee:
“I’ve had three people now tell me they’ve had to quit their job because they could not make it to work on time or get home because buses stopped running.”
43.38- Dagdick addresses how wasteful spending led Mayor Gillingham and City Council to wrongly demolish Happyland Pool, noting the community had raised the operating funds to keep it open.
While encampments are not a visible issue in the ward, Dagdick agreed council should consider the “Gatineau model” which “insulates the commercial and cultural core to spur private investment, while concentrating and managing street-level vulnerability in designated, controlled zones.”
Part of the trend of younger Winnipeg residents going on the ballot, Dagdick maintains “a 100% generational shift is coming… the winds of change are a-howling.”
Watch Nathine Dagdick’s candidate interview on YouTube
*****
Check out our Donate Page for links to the Civic Election podcast episodes and Marty Gold’s columns published this summer in the Winnipeg Sun