William McBeath joins to critique Calgary’s politicians—Mayor Naheed Nenshi and Councillor Peter DeJong—who faced backlash at a pro-pipeline rally after dismissive remarks, like Nenshi’s French gaffe and DeJong’s 2000-strong crowd calling them "climate change deniers" while Alberta’s energy sector suffers from BC/Quebec blockades. Councillor Jeremy Farkas’ transparency violations and Council’s climate-over-economy stance highlight deeper tensions, while the Beltline safe injection site’s rising violence contradicts harm reduction claims. Save Calgary’s grassroots push for fiscal responsibility and accountability in 2019 underscores public distrust of both federal and municipal leadership amid Alberta’s economic strain. [Automatically generated summary]
After three terms in office, is the bloom finally coming off the rose of Calgary's progressive and secretive Mayor Nahid Nenshi?
Tonight, my guest and I discuss that and all the latest comings and goings down at Calgary City Hall.
I'm Sheila Gun Reid and you're watching the gun show.
Calgary held yet another massive lunchtime rally, where well over 2 000 people showed up at Calgary's Municipal Plaza to show their support for Canada's battered and beleaguered oil
and gas industry.
The speakers at the rally included Calgary municipal politicians, which should not have been unusual, nor should it have been controversial, except for the fact that those speakers made themselves seem unusual and controversial.
I want to show you a couple of clips from the rally.
In these clips, you're going to see the crowd booing two municipal politicians.
The first politician being booed is Mayor Nenshi.
The second is Calgary City Councillor Peter DeJong.
Just watch.
I've been asked by the organizers because it's important that this message carry across the whole country.
So I've been asked by the organizers to say a few words in French, so I will do that now.
Jané Guillaque, Francais.
Let me give you a little bit of advice.
If you want someone to listen to you, you have to speak their language.
We should be talking about supporting launchers.
Wow!
Really?
And you guys call yourselves Canadians?
Why?
No, not!
Now we can argue the merits of them being booed for their remarks all day.
Did they deserve it?
Did they not deserve it?
I think you know where I probably stand on this.
I certainly don't think a pro-pipeline rally comprised of devastated and desperate Calgarians is the right place to lecture people on supporting Quebec's dairy industry and the value of fighting climate change.
But what's really telling is the response from those two politicians to being criticized by the public.
The politicians instantly became petty and condescending.
They couldn't handle the criticism and they revealed themselves to be completely tone deaf and out of touch with the issues that really matter.
But is it the sort of response that one might expect from Calgary's most well-paid yet secretive mayor and council?
I think so.
And that rally and the booing, well, that was really just the start of Calgary City Council's very bad week.
Tonight, my guest and I discuss how the rally went sideways for Calgary's Purple Prince and City Council's latest attempts to keep a lid on one renegade city councillor who's trying to shine a light on what goes on behind closed doors at Calgary City Hall.
We even talk about the failings of Calgary City Council's new safe injection site.
Joining me tonight from Calgary via Skype is my friend, William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
So joining me now from Save Calgary is my friend and good friend of the show, William Macbeth.
William, it is a crazy week in Calgary municipal politics already, and we are recording this at just afternoon on Tuesday.
Where do we start?
Where do you want to start?
It's hard to imagine how the week could get any crazier, except that it seems to be hour by hour.
So even, yes, you say we're recording this right now on Tuesday afternoon.
By the time it goes out, who knows what else will have happened.
But I mean, I think we can talk about what's been happening in Calgary over the last while and the series of rallies that have been held showing, I think, the scale of the anger that Albertans and Calgarians are feeling about the fact that the federal government has refused to do anything to get pipelines built.
And that's costing us hundreds, you know, 100,000 jobs in this province and in this city.
So I think that's been the major story.
We had that rally yesterday.
Politicians expecting sympathy or empathy from Calgarians and Albertans for Quebecers seriously misread the political mood of that crowd.
Yeah, that was really something that, you know, Nenshi, to his credit, he faced the crowd, and that's good.
He should be, sorry, he should be the face of what's happening in Calgary.
And really, he's been noticeably absent as far as that goes.
But, and, you know, he did make a debatable mistake.
He tried to communicate to the crowd in French because, I don't know, for some reason, people think the problem with not getting pipelines done and sold to the people of Quebec is a translation error.
I don't know.
But, I mean, he faced some backlash from the crowd.
And that whole issue is debatable.
What I have a real problem with is how he condescended to the people in the crowd afterwards instead of realizing these people are out of work.
They're on the verge of losing everything.
And a lot of them, quite frankly, do blame opposition in Quebec.
And it's rightfully placed.
I think you're absolutely right.
I mean, we saw the fact that Quebecers continue to receive the lying share of equalization payments.
And those payments primarily come from Alberta.
And while it's not the case that Alberta writes a check to the government of Quebec, Alberta pays a lot in taxes and has done so gladly over the years because we have always seen ourselves as a part of the Canadian Federation.
And in exchange for paying equalization payments, we believed that the rest of the country would, in turn, support Alberta's most important industry and the industry that is funding those equalization payments.
So when you see one part of the country really kicking another part of the country that's down, it makes you start to question whether or not Alberta, by being such a good part of the Federation over the years, is getting a fair shake in return.
And it's leading many to start to question if it's not time for a conversation about the relationship between Alberta and the Canadian Federation.
And certainly I think that's what we saw at the rallies over the past few weeks.
You know, I think so too.
And I think, you know, it was just so tone-deaf for Nenshi to take that opportunity to lecture that crowd on climate change.
What a terrible, terrible time to be talking down to these people, to be calling them, quote-unquote, climate change deniers.
They're there rallying for their jobs and, you know, and a future for their kids.
It's not a time to lecture us, Catherine McKenna style, about the virtues of fighting climate change.
I mean, the tone-deafness of the remark, too, when you think about it, Nehet Nenshi is Canada's highest paid mayor.
He earns more than any other municipal politician in this country.
And for him to be talking about climate change and several others of our city council, you know, Councillor Farrell, who, while I agreed and appreciated her support against the Olympics when that was happening, don't agree with her on a lot of other issues.
And when council was passing its We Support Alberta energy motion, Councillor Farrell said she would not support any initiative which would stop her unfettered support for climate activism.
So to me, you think, where are your priorities?
Are they in Ottawa, in with Catherine McKenna, who travels internationally talking about the importance of climate change, or as a city of Calgary politician, are your priorities here?
The 100,000 Calgarians who are looking for jobs who are struggling to pay their bills, to pay their mortgages.
And she seemed to think that it was more important to talk about her climate activism than it was to talk about the very real problem facing Calgarians right now.
You know, and Nenshi wasn't alone in his tone deafness at that rally.
You had Councillor DeMong say that it's not time to be talking about boycotts and trade embargoes.
We want to encourage trade, not restrict it.
And then he, then, wait, wait, sorry to cut you off.
But he said, we need to be spreading the word about how this industry is a world leader in gender equality.
We should be talking about how to support Quebec's dairy industry by buying Canadian cheese.
And then he said, we should be talking about supporting Ontario.
And then he was cut off by the booze.
And then his response, again, just like Nenshi's, saying, wow, really.
And you guys call yourselves Canadians.
Wow.
Yeah, it was, it was, you have to wonder if that was pre-planned, his approach, or if it was just extemporaneous remarks that went badly wrong in the moment.
I hope it's just spontaneous remarks that he now regrets having made, because on some other issues, Councillor DeMong is usually pretty sensible, but in this case, way out to lunch.
And not only way out to lunch, but when you're having a difficult time, sort of the relationship with Alberta and the rest of Canada, it is not the time to talk down to Albertans about how great other parts of this country are and how we need to be supporting them.
The conversation has to be, what is the Canadian Federation doing to support us?
What are they doing to support Calgary?
What are they doing to support the critical lifeblood of the Canadian economy, our energy sector?
And for Councillor DeMong to say, let's buy more Cape Waikwa cheese.
I mean, I have to say, I have started to read labels more carefully now just to wonder if something's made in Quebec, because frankly, being kind of pissed at them, I don't really want to support them right now.
And to say to a bunch of out-of-work, struggling Calgarians otherwise, I think, is just politically not the best move he's ever made.
Well, especially when you literally can't afford cheese in Canada.
And they're telling you, no, we're going to save the Confederation by buying cheese.
I don't know if, like you said, I hope that he didn't pre-prepare those remarks because those are some of the dumbest I've ever heard.
Yeah, and then, you know, sort of that whole wow, and you call yourselves Canadians.
And the answer is, yes, we do call ourselves Canadians.
But we're Canadians frustrated with how Canada happens to be working right now.
We're frustrated that British Columbia is blocking our pipeline to the west.
And we're frustrated that Quebec is blocking our pipeline to the east.
And we're frustrated that the federal government hasn't done more to help our pipelines go south.
So these are legitimate questions Albertans have about how Canada operates as a confederation.
And it doesn't mean we're not proud to be Canadian, but it means we're also not going to ignore all of these problems because apparently questioning how the federation works somehow makes you a traitor.
Being a doormat makes you a good Canadian as far as these people are concerned.
Shut up and pay the bill seems to be the attitude from a lot of people.
Now, I want to talk to you a little bit more about the tone deafness happening down at City Hall.
I guess we can start with Councillor Jeremy Farkas and what unfolded with him early this week.
Jeremy has definitely had a bumpy week on City Council.
In fact, I haven't looked to see what's happening right now.
He may not even still be allowed to be back on City Council yet.
That's a conversation I think that's still happening.
Jeremy wanted, you know, in this tough economic times, which you and I have talked about here in Calgary, we've got one out of four office towers vacant, a huge hole in the taxes that we used to collect from those office towers and how we were going to make up the difference.
And Jeremy said, look, council has to lead by example.
I think we should take a 5% pay cut.
As city councilors, so many in the private sector have had to take pay cuts.
The least council can do is follow suit and send the message that we're serious about looking for ways to restore Calgary's economic stability.
He couldn't even get a seconder on his motion to cut by 5%.
So that didn't go anywhere.
He then brought in a motion that said, well, then let's freeze council pay.
And before he could, Councillor Sutherland actually got that motion moved, another city councillor, and it went for debate.
Now, it looks like, based on the hard information we have until November, the council was in line for a 2 point something percent pay increase.
A bureaucrat, a city bureaucrat in attendance at the meeting said, well, we haven't finished crunching the numbers, but it now looks like there might be a very small pay decrease because Calgary City Council pays based on how the economy is growing or contracting overall.
And that led to a bunch of counselors voting against, including Councillor Sutherland, voting against his own motion.
Jeremy put out the hard information we had.
He said, this is what we know.
And because he did that and didn't report the unofficial information, city council decided he had to go and take a walk and they kicked him off council.
You know, that's astounding.
They tried to censor him because didn't this all happen behind closed doors again?
Because it's Calgary City Council.
Nothing happens in the open.
But what he tried to do was try to tell the people, this is what's happening behind closed doors.
While you're outside rallying because you don't have a job, city council is voting itself to have a raise.
No, you're absolutely right.
And it did happen behind closed doors because that's how we govern here in Calgary.
We don't like people to know what's happening.
But I think why, I think, if you look at what Jeremy said, he said, here is the hard information we have from the city administration.
We know until November, up until now it says pay increase.
Gender Lens in Procurement00:04:31
Possibly it's going to change and we'll come in with a decrease.
I think Jeremy would have been very happy to have a motion that said, if it's a salary increase, we're not going to take it.
We're going to freeze pay.
And if it's a decrease, we're going to take the decrease.
To me, that would have been a perfectly reasonable thing.
But this really wasn't about what Jeremy had posted on Facebook.
This was all of City Council deciding that they had had enough of being embarrassed by a counselor who is trying to make this city council more accountable and more fiscally responsible.
So they took him out to the woodshed and they punished him for that.
You know, it's astounding too, like how one counselor who just is advocating for transparency is really shaking things up at City Hall.
Like I've never seen this sort of discontent and discord and controversy happening at Calgary City Hall, which leads me to believe that for years, for decades, there have been just counselors going along to get along, to get their paycheck.
And they really didn't seem to care about what the people who are paying the bills should know.
I think you're right.
I mean, if you ask some of these counselors, they say things like, City Council used to be a lot more collegial, would be one of their words.
But I think clubby would be a better one because what it was was a bunch of political insiders who nobody was really paying that much attention to on a day-to-day basis were funding the projects that were important to them that were raising taxes year after year after year without, you know, without really having anybody stand up and fight for fiscal responsibility.
And now, suddenly for the first time, they can't get away with it anymore.
It's no more, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine, and let's just put the bill on to taxpayers.
Jeremy is making that impossible for them, or at least a lot more difficult.
And for a lot of them, I think they're really upset that their chummy insider world has been so badly shaken.
You know, I think that's great.
I wanted to talk to you about something that I just read in the news today.
I see that Calgary is moving towards a social procurement strategy.
Did you hear about this?
I've only glanced at it.
I have to tell you, on the surface, it doesn't sound like something I would particularly like.
I don't like the word social.
I think you add the word social when it means you're not going for value for money as the primary driver for how the city's going to pay for things and buy for things.
Right.
See, that's the part that really bothers me about all these sorts of things.
It's the same as the federal liberals' gender lens that they're running pipelines through right now.
The bottom line should always be the best value for the taxpayer and the best person for the job.
This just all seems very expensive to me to be examining the social impacts of procurement as opposed to the fiscal impacts of procurement.
And this is not extra dollars that the city council really has.
No, look, maybe if times were really good, we could afford the luxury of all of these other, you know, sort of modern programs and modern and in vogue practices that the left so much love on these sorts of things.
But it's tough times here in Calgary.
We should be looking at who can get the job done the most effectively.
How can we build this and get the best value for money?
You know, how can we build a community and do so in a way that's going to meet the needs of the maximum number of Calgarians?
That should be how we look at things.
And if we start going down, I mean, you'll have to laugh at the gender-based or the gender lens on the budget.
The federal minister of Seattle Women, when she introduced it, gave such an incomprehensible explanation for what it actually meant.
And I read it over and over again.
Still have no idea what she was actually talking about in that particular thing.
So for me, rather than dwelling on all of the in-vogue PC culture type things, we should be looking at how to get value for Calgary taxpayers because we need it now more than ever.
There's something else I wanted to talk to you about.
Safe Injection Sites Controversy00:05:57
Again, something I read in the news today that the safe injection site at the Beltline, police, now this is not anecdotal reporting.
These are police statistics.
They say that they are seeing a rise in violence and drug dealing around the safe injection site.
Who could have figured that a safe injection site would attract drug dealers?
You know, I think it was surprising.
We talked a little bit about it in the election, but a lot of people just sort of glossed.
There was so much other thing, many other things to talk about, the election that it didn't get the kind of attention that perhaps it deserved.
But you're absolutely right.
Drug dealers go where drug buyers and drug consumers are.
And that is now the safe injection site.
So we've now got in the heart of Beltline, a community that has really started to invest and improve and make itself a community where people want to live, you know, close to the urban core.
But now we filled it with drug dealers and we filled it with discarded syringes and we filled it with people who are high out of their minds.
And to me, it is exactly opposite to what Beltline as a community was trying to achieve, which was to shake off that image of being dangerous, of being, you know, sort of decaying inner city, all sorts of things.
So, but yeah, who would have thought that the drug dealers would go where the drug buyers are?
That apparently never occurred to our city council.
Well, no, and, you know, the one thing about the opioid crisis is that it hits the suburbs just as hard as the inner city.
It hits the affluent and the children of the affluent just as hard as it does those struggling in the inner city.
But these safe injection sites always end up in low-income areas where people are, young families can actually afford housing in these recovering areas.
But then they have to compete with the fact that the city is actively corralling criminality into their neighborhoods.
I thought that journalist Tristan Hopper, who lives in Edmonton, and he lives in an inner city neighborhood too, very much like Beltline would be here at Calgary.
And he talked about how, having moved his family there, his children are now playing in playgrounds and walking down streets where there are discarded used syringes.
And after he made that statement online, the level of leftist viciousness that was unleashed upon him was truly amazing to be seen.
You would have thought he had called for the invasion of another country.
The level of outrage that we saw from the left on that, they seem to have a failure to understand the concerns that homeowners and parents have about having drug dealers and drug consumers in their neighborhoods.
And it doesn't make any sense to me about how they won't accept.
And they think people who have those concerns are wrong and that they're hateful.
And I think that just shows the intolerance of the left when it comes to this issue.
Well, yeah, I mean, they look at you when you say, yeah, I sort of kind of expect for my child to be able to play on the community playground infrastructure that my taxes pay for without catching hepatitis.
And they look at you like you are, you know, a horrible person.
And they'll say, well, these drug addicts need to go somewhere.
Yeah, treatment.
I have absolutely, I have absolutely a lot of sympathy for people who are struggling with addictions and their families.
And I don't think there's really a place for the government to be enabling all of it and shuffling it out of sight into inner city neighborhoods.
No, I concur exactly.
The argument being used is harm reduction.
The idea that if they're consuming drugs in a supervised environment and using clean syringes, it is making, it is less harmful to drug users.
The only problem is, is that it's not actually reducing harm, the real harm, which is the consumption of illegal drugs in the first place.
And to me, if you put up a safe injection site, you're actually solving the wrong problem.
You're solving the symptom, not the cause.
And you're never going to make tangible progress on this if you don't start addressing the real cause.
And, you know, the same people who are so pro safe injection site are also deep against tougher penalties and tougher laws on drug dealers and resellers.
So to me, that's an absolute disconnect.
If you're going to put the money somewhere, it should be into reducing the supply of illegal drugs, not into making those illegal drugs safer to consume.
You know, what a fantastic point.
You know, there are people who are bringing these poisons into our neighborhoods, and it's really doing nobody any favors, especially people who espouse sympathy for those suffering with drug addiction.
It's doing them no favors to create a revolving door justice system for the dealer.
Absolutely.
The dealers are parasites.
They are making money off of marginalized people and destroying neighborhoods in the process.
Why on earth we wouldn't have the toughest possible laws and punishments for these people?
It boggles my mind.
Well, and, you know, we're spending a lot of time on this, but, you know, like this all came out of Vancouver, InSight, and then it's been rolled out across the country.
But Insight is not seeing any success.
Really, that neighborhood is still awful.
People are still drug addicted.
People are still dying.
There's still prostitution.
There's still gangs.
There's still sex trafficking.
The Best Way to Stay Informed00:07:04
It hasn't really made an impact or the impact that they said it would on the social circumstances of the downtown East Side in Vancouver.
No, and I don't think any community looks to downtown East Vancouver as the model for what it wants for its own city.
You know, that's from your lips to God's ears.
Now, I wanted, this is the year sort of end wrap up, or at least my time with you.
I'll probably be speaking to you quite a bit in the new year.
But I wanted to ask you what is on the horizon for Safe Calgary coming up in the new year.
Well, I mean, we're really very proud of what we were able to achieve this past year from everything from, you know, starting to actually remind and let voters know how their city councilors were voting on things, which, you know, surprisingly, council doesn't make all that easy to figure out who's voting for higher taxes, who's voting for more secret meetings, things like that, to, you know, our success working with a coalition of people to stop Calgary's Olympic insanity,
which was a great moment, I think, for common sense Calgarians and frankly, common sense Albertans and common sense Canadians who are also going to be on the hook for these games.
In the new year, we're looking at what we're going to be able to do, but I will say that part of it's going to be about if we have the resources in order to be able to keep pursuing this kind of work.
We operate, as I think you know, Sheila, on a pretty small budget.
We are primarily driven by people who are passionate about Calgary and want to see Calgary be a truly great city.
And we don't take money from the city.
We found out this week, the Pembeda Institute got $340,000 to attack Calgary's energy sector.
We don't get any money from the city of Calgary.
We're reliant on the donations and the support of everyday Calgarians.
So for us, we're really going to be looking to them to help us financially so we can keep up this work in 2019.
You know, I think that you have done some incredible work, like you just pointed out with your shoestring budget and your skeleton crew at Save Calgary.
I mean, you effectively led the no charge in the Olympics and defeated the deep pockets of the yes side, which had the Chamber of Commerce and the City of Calgary funding their campaign.
They put out an advertising blitz in the last week, and somehow still you at Safe Calgary were able to overcome that.
I think you have a very big job, but you've been able to do a lot with a little.
And I would love to find out what you can do with even a little bit more.
You know, we're starting to look now.
I think next year is the year we're going to start looking towards the 2021 Calgary municipal election.
You cannot wait till six months before an election because otherwise, if you do, you're not going to win.
So for us, next year will be the year where we start to get ready for 2021.
And that could be including trying to find some municipal candidates, to find people to run for city council, to find someone to run for mayor, to get them the team they need, the training they need, the support they need to be really successful.
But that is all going to rely on the financial support of Calgarians.
So I guess my question to Calgarians who are seeing this and to, doesn't have to be Calgarians, could be anybody who thinks a strong Calgary is good.
If your investment, your $20, your $50, if you give that to us, we're going to use it in the best way we possibly can in order to try and create the Calgary that's going to be good for everyday Calgarians or for taxpayers.
So I hope that enough of them are going to be able to look at what we've done and think it's worthwhile to make a contribution so that we can keep doing the job we have been doing right through until the next campaign.
So I guess my final question to you is, what's the best way for people to find out what Safe Calgary is up to and also the best way for them to throw you a few bucks throughout the year?
The best way to stay on top of what we're doing, there's three things.
One, go to our website, savecalgary.com.
You can also certainly make a donation there online through our website.
That's great.
Go visit us on Facebook, facebook.com slash savecalgary.
We post a lot of content through our Facebook channel and we like to try and keep you up to date and informed on what's happening on City Council.
And the third way is when you're on our website, sign up to our mailing list.
We put out a newsletter every single week on an issue of concern to Calgary voters.
And that's the best way to stay on top of what we're working on and what's happening down at City Hall.
So those three things.
We would really encourage you.
And it would mean a lot to us and our success if you were to do that.
Well, and those, I got to tell you, those emails are incredibly well written.
And I think you're the author.
They're clever.
You know, you get a lot of political fundraising emails and press releases in a day, but I actually look forward to reading the ones from Save Calgary.
William, I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas and I want to wish you a very successful 2019.
And I want to thank you for being so generous with your time with me this year.
And I hope that that continues into 2019.
Well, thanks, Sheila.
And a very Merry Christmas to you and to yours.
And thank you also for giving our group the coverage that you have and talking about the issues that so many others in the mainstream media aren't talking about.
And that's a real shame.
So we really appreciate it too over here at Save Calgary.
It's a Christmas love-in.
Okay, William.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
We'll talk to you in the new year.
Thanks, Sheila.
There really are just a handful of voices fighting for transparency for the Calgary city taxpayers.
Councillors Sean Chu and Jeremy Farkas are two on council who are doing it from inside the machine of government.
And Save Calgary really is the loudest and yet the most underfunded voice holding city council accountable from the outside.
But they are just so effective.
I mean, they helped stop the Olympics juggernaut despite having all the odds stacked against them.
It was a David and Goliath story.
But you heard it here tonight.
Their job is far from done.
Well, everybody, thanks for watching the show tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.