Mayoral candidate Jim Elliott on the ballot for a fourth time

A mainstay of public life in Regina is making another run at becoming mayor.

Jim Elliott is running his fourth campaign on a platform of environmental issues, confronting racism, reducing poverty and ending homelessness.

Elliott has served in a wide range of positions for various organizations, many of them non-profits and advocacy groups.

Some of them include chairing the Council of Canadians Regina chapter and the Al Ritchie Community Association. He has been a co-ordinator and consultant for the Regina Folk Festival for nearly 40 years and has been on a number of city advisory committees.

The first time he ran for mayor was in 2009, doing so because he didn’t think an acclamation for Pat Fiacco was healthy for democracy.

Elliott said that first campaign planted issues like housing in the public consciousness. After that, he says he was “hooked,” running again in 2012 and 2016.

For him, attending meetings, reading briefing notes and agendas is about contributing to society.

“It’s the nature of what I am. I like reading, I like checking things out. I like having my input there,” Elliott says. “I’m blessed with a university education so I can understand some of the more technical stuff.”

Elliott says his experiences help him relate to the city’s most vulnerable. For one, he has lived on welfare before.

He also isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, volunteering with a needle patrol to pick up discarded syringes.

“I’ve walked the streets of North Central in the evening. I’ve been in the neighbourhood cleanups,” he says. “I’ve been in the community engagement process for close to 20 years now. It’s definitely a part of me that I don’t see in the rest of the candidates.”

Elliott is a proponent of taking down the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald in Victoria Park. He is also calling for a partial renaming of Dewdney Avenue, between Albert Street and Pinkie Road, to Buffalo Avenue.

He chose that stretch of Dewdney for renaming because it runs through North Central, which has a large Indigenous population. A residential school cemetery is located just off Dewdney on Pinkie Road.

“Let’s begin that true discussion about how we want to relate to our Indigenous peoples in this city and this province. Where are things that are barriers to that real strong relationship?” Elliott says.

As a well-known environmentalist, Elliott also wants the city to become fully renewable by 2050, a goal he believes is not just realistic but a job creator. He believes it would be a source of civic pride.

“We’re probably one of the sunniest and, in some cases, windiest cities, where that energy is right outside our door … As long as we just harness it appropriately, we can be in a position of moving this city but also in some cases moving the province and the country along with us,” he says.

The municipal election is slated for Nov. 9.