Sheila Gunn-Reed exposes Calgary’s $801 property tax inflation loophole, where bills jumped from $3,500 in 2006 to $4,802 in 2019 instead of $4,001, amid a 7.5% homeowner and 40% business tax hike. The city’s 55-year-old "golden parachute" system—like $100K+ bonuses for Councillor Jones—goes unchecked despite economic collapse, while bike paths, climate divisions, and public art persist as frivolous spending. A broken recycling program forces contaminated waste into heated warehouses, with $200K bureaucrats enforcing garbage rules. Gerrymandering favors incumbents, who rarely face accountability, prompting Save Calgary’s 2020 push to recruit conservative challengers for the 2021 election. Union resistance stifles transparency, leaving taxpayers footing the bill for unaccountable excess. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm Sheila Gunread and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
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Now tonight, my guest is my friend William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
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Minister Calls Councilors Spending Freaks00:15:19
Looks like Calgary's ultra-progressive mayor is on Santa's naughty list.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
They've skyrocketed for a decade.
Look at this report as published first in the Calgary Herald, but as penned by the folks at the Fraser Institute.
A property that started with a $3,500 tax bill in 2006, but was subject to inflation-only increases since 2007 would receive a bill this year for $4,001.
Instead, the bill is $4,802, an $801 difference.
So what's Calgary doing with all the money?
Well, besides wasting it on art and novelty positions like a climate change officer, Calgary City Council members and bureaucrats have been giving themselves a golden parachute when they retire or get unelected for, I don't know, about 50 years now.
Joining me now to explain how much of Calgary City Council and especially Mayor Nahid Nenshi have put themselves on Santa's naughty list for their wasteful ways in 2019 is my friend William Macbeth from Save Calgary in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
So joining me now from his home in Calgary is my friend William Macbeth from Save Calgary.
You know, people, we were just talking off air.
People say, Sheila, you're always ragging on Calgary.
Why don't you give Edmonton a hard time?
I feel like Edmonton's a lost cause and generally I'm a hopeful person.
But I feel like Edmonton is, at least at the municipal level, so progressive.
And William, you made a great point that their mayor has like a Trudeau vibe.
He's young and attractive.
No offense to Nenshi, but he's just not.
And I feel like there's hope to save Calgary from Nenshi, and I'm not sure that we could ever save Edmonton from themselves.
Anyway, that's off my chest.
Thank you for joining me, William.
We've got so much to talk about when it comes to Calgary municipal politics.
I think the biggest thing right now, and it's like stories coming out every minute about the mystery bonuses happening at Calgary City Hall.
Please fill us in about this because the more I read about it, the more outrageous it is.
You know, it's funny.
It started off as something fairly, you know, something fairly understandable.
But the more we've learned about it, the stranger the situation has become.
So unlike almost, I think, any other jurisdiction in Canada, when you leave your job, either as a city employee or as a city councilor, there's this special golden handshake you get from taxpayers.
It's based on how long you've been employed there, how long you've been a city councilor.
But what's funny is nobody can actually recall a city council authorizing this extra retirement bonus for either employees or counselors.
So they did digging and it discovered that this is something that's been going on in Calgary for 55 years.
For 55 years, we've been paying people who are retiring from their jobs at the city or choosing not to run again for city council or who voters kick to the curb after an election from city council.
It makes absolutely no sense.
It's unparalleled as far as we can tell in any other jurisdiction and it's an unconscionable use of taxpayer money.
Okay, let's stop and just fill people in about the amount.
Like it is not a pittance.
It's not like it's $10,000 in some cases.
Like it is five figures.
Oh, absolutely.
And if you look at city council, it's two weeks for, I think, every year you've been on city council.
So someone like Councillor Jones, who's been here since the Victorian era, well, he's going to get a payout of over $100,000 from taxpayers.
And that's on top of his very generous taxpayer-funded pension that he's also getting.
So they're the highest paid city council in the land.
They get the best pension of any city council in the land.
And now they get a $100,000 golden handshake when they finally decide to stop taking up space at city council meetings.
And that's, of course, in the middle of Calgary facing the worst economic crisis we've faced in a generation.
So the fact that there are skilled counselors trying to defend this, you know, trying to keep their snout so firmly in the trough of the taxpayers' money.
Well, it's only because it's out of self-interest and it's absolutely outrageous.
How are they defending this?
I mean, like you point out, this is the worst economic downturn in at least a generation.
Taxes are going up, retail space is sitting empty, commercial space is sitting empty.
Calgary is really in a crisis and it's firmly on the backs of taxpayers to keep all of this afloat.
Who's defending this?
And why can't they just say, in the interest of shame?
Like just the fact that the public now knows about this, shame should prompt them to end this, but they aren't.
Who's defending it and why?
Well, I've enjoyed some of the things I've heard from Calgary Council.
One of them said it might be hard to attract really quality people to city council if we take away some of the lavishness of being a city councilor.
And I thought to myself, well, if this is who we're getting under the current system, I don't think the current system is doing that great a job of attracting top talent.
Others have argued that it would be unfair to switch a system midstream because people will have been planning for this massive payout coming at the end of the term.
To me, it's pretty simple.
If you're sitting on city council and you decide not to run again, well, that's your choice.
You are voluntarily stepping down from office.
Surely you should have planned for the day that this would happen and made arrangements for it and saved.
The fact that you're the highest paid city council means you should be banking some of that money for whatever's going to come next.
The alternative is voters have decided you did a terrible job and they no longer want you in council.
And in that case, why would we give a bonus to someone the voters just fired?
I don't see a scenario where this payout makes sense.
Now, for city employees who also get this special retirement permit, it isn't as generous as those facing city councilors, but it's still hefty, five figures in some cases.
Well, they're already very generously compensated and they get a full index link pension and they get the very best benefits.
No other job just pays you an extra sum of money because they like you, especially when it's coming off the back to taxpayers who are already struggling with property tax increases, higher fees and levies, and the worst economy, certainly in my memory, and I think for most people in their lifetime.
You know, it's shocking.
You know, it's happening at the municipal level.
It's also happening at the provincial level where we have these government workers who are just so insulated from the reality facing the people who are actually paying their salary.
And the entitlement is just astounding.
It paints such a picture of how really out of touch they are and how insulated they've been from what the world is.
I mean, in one of my former jobs before being laid off, I had to take a salary cut.
That's just what the company had to do in order to keep, you know, in order to protect people's jobs and keep its doors open.
When that no longer became possible, we were, you know, laid off and it was difficult.
And that's the pain that I think a lot of families here in Calgary, in fact, all across Alberta, are going through.
And then to see civil servants paid for by tax dollars complaining that they won't get a large enough salary increase this year, or that through things like attrition, we're going to try and reduce the size of the government's bureaucracy.
Well, for them, they just consider that the end of the thin end of the wedge.
And I just don't, I don't think any Albertan can really wrap their head around how out of touch that seems because for them, we're just happy if we still have work, if we can still pay our bills, if we can still keep our houses and keep rooms over our head, let alone are we asking for salary increases during these tough times.
So, no, I think, and I think it's creating a lot of resentment on the part of voters who are scrimping and saving to pay their tax bills to then see these out-of-touch elite civil servants demanding more money.
Now, let's talk to, or let's talk about something else.
Now, Nenshi, he's got this constant grind going with the provincial government who, you know, the provincial government is moving towards what the left calls austerity.
I would call it financial responsibility and care with taxpayer dollars.
And he's currently in a bit of a fight with the municipal affairs minister.
And I think this is the first time in a generation we've actually seen a municipal affairs minister who's actually trying to do things in the interest of municipal taxpayers.
And, you know, our mayors of our big cities are sort of shocked by it.
No, you're absolutely right.
And I think people need to understand the difference between some of the previous provincial governments and the one they have now.
And I'll say, out of fairness, both NDP and before them, PC governments who were kind of wishy-washy on many of these municipal issues.
So, both of those former governments were well on their way to giving cities like Calgary and Edmonton special new taxation powers.
The ability to create a Calgary sales tax.
Everything you buy in Calgary would have an extra tax put on.
The ability to raise more money through taxes outside of property taxes.
These are things that were seriously being considered by previous governments.
Under this government and Minister Maddie in particular, all of those are off the table.
He has said Calgary is already taking in well more than it needs to run its operations.
Sorry to interrupt you.
Sorry to interrupt you.
I'm just looking at an article here.
Minister Maddie called Calgary City Councilors spending freaks.
How refreshing and great.
Sorry to interrupt you, but I just had to put that marker down.
It's a great line.
And I think it accurately describes.
I mean, for these people, we just went through a budget cycle where, once again, Calgary raised taxes.
They are raising taxes on property, on homeowners by 7.5%, on businesses by 20%, 30%, 40%, even though those businesses are already struggling.
Why?
Because they couldn't agree on a package of spending cuts in order to preserve or hold taxes at their current level.
And it makes you ask the question: are we really only spending money on super critical things here at the city of Calgary?
And a cursory look at how they spend their money indicates: no, we're not.
They're implementing more bike paths at a cost of millions of dollars.
Bike paths very few people use in this city.
They have an entire climate change division, despite the fact that Calgary is not a coastal city and does not face the risk of rising ocean levels.
We have a mountain range between us and the nearest ocean.
We're going to be fine.
We spend money on public art that is an embarrassment to the citizens of this city.
And all of these things, we ask ourselves: why can't we save some money by being a little bit less generous on some of those, you know, quote-unquote, nice to have, while protecting things like fire and police services that keep our citizens safe?
And they just don't want to do it.
These counselors would just rather keep hiking taxes year after year than ever have an honest conversation about spending.
And Minister Maddie has called them out on it.
He said, this is unacceptable.
We are overtaxed.
You have built a government that is too expensive for your taxpayers to afford.
Cut spending.
And I guess we'll see what happens in this ongoing war of words.
But I have to say that for the first time in a long time, I feel that those of us on the anti-tax better spending side have a real new champion in Minister Madhu.
He's been one of my favorites since the campaign.
And he's working out to be absolutely fantastic.
He's irritating all the right people.
And, you know, just his concern for municipal taxpayers, because really municipal taxes, I mean, when you fill out that municipal tax check, that's a huge chunk of money.
And it's the tax layer that affects you most first.
You know, if you're writing that big check and there's a pothole at the end of your driveway that'll knock the earrings out of your ear, you wonder what happened to your money.
And I'm so happy to see Minister Maddie just ripping it up and taking on these out-of-control big city mayors.
Next thing I want to talk to you about: Calgary Herald had an article about garbage bin snooping.
Tell me what that's all about.
So, you know, it's funny.
Calgarians pay extra for the privilege of the city to come pick up their garbage.
Now, in many cities, that's why you pay property taxes, is to get basic affordable services like having your garbage picked up.
But in Calgary, you pay extra.
You pay between $20 and $40 a month to have the garbage sometimes picked up from your house.
So what the city has decided is Calgarians aren't abiding closely enough to the very stringent rules that the city has set for garbage.
what goes in which bin at what time and placed in what distance from your house and all of this.
And so first they used to leave no-no notes, which was just basically instead of picking up your garbage, they slap a little note on your garbage bin telling you exactly why they wouldn't pick up your garbage that week, which of course, since you paid for it, is infuriating.
Now they've decided to go further.
They pay people $200,000 specifically to go rifling through your trash.
to make sure you are complying with the city's garbage rules.
So there will now be bureaucrats rifling through your trash to see if you're following the rules, the garbage snoopers of Calgary.
It is a truly ridiculous use of our money.
And frankly, I don't know if I want city of Calgary staff burrowing through my garbage to see, you know, my phone bill or my visa bill or something like that, personal information that I've thrown out and expect to be treated as garbage and put into some sort of landfill or incinerated.
But that's Calgary for you.
Why spend money on infrastructure or on priority services like fire and police when we could pay people to snoop through your trash?
I can think of nothing more horrific to a municipal taxpayer than paying some overpaid bureaucrat to behave like a raccoon and go through your personal paperwork.
Garbage Snoopers of Calgary00:08:21
It's terrifying.
And how does this really save money?
How does this really make the system more efficient?
It seems like it's a make work project to punish taxpayers.
And we know the recycling program at the city of Calgary is completely broken.
Well, this is it.
Their argument is that one of the things that makes recycling so expensive is the fact that people aren't doing a good enough job pre-sorting their trash.
You know, so there's contamination is the word I think they use to talk about recycling.
But the entire recycling industry has become just a farce here in Calgary.
We force the recycling of things like plastic, which is difficult to recycle, and hence we aren't recycling it.
We are keeping it in warehouses that are heated and protected, keeping plastic garbage safe and warm and dry because there's nobody out there who wants to recycle it.
And we're doing that with so many things because there isn't capacity to recycle all of the things that Calgary is trying to recycle.
At some point, we may have to say, this isn't working.
We can't endlessly afford to house garbage in its own affordable housing complex.
So I'm hoping that this latest act on the part of the city raises enough ire that maybe some counselors will be brave enough to ask the administration some hard questions about trash.
At this point, I think we have to look at more viable options like either increased landfills or incineration and just really start to deal with this problem rather than just kicking the can down the road.
Now, tell me, there's controversy going on in Calgary about reworking the boundaries for the wards.
Some counselors are calling it, I believe the word they use is gerrymandering.
Some counselors want it rejected.
What's the problem with rejigging the boundaries?
Well, it is true that something weird is happening down at City Hall when it comes to ward boundaries.
So if you look at how other jurisdictions handle this, whenever they feel the need to redraw riding boundaries because of population growth or because things have materially changed, some places, of course, have more people moving into them than others.
So they have an arm's length process that is independent from politicians who decide ultimately where those boundaries will be.
At Calgary, there is a citizen committee who provides a recommendation, but then counselors themselves actually make the final call and oftentimes reject what the Independent Citizens Committee has recommended and redraw the lines themselves.
No, it's outrageous.
I mean, already, if you look at, you know, Calgary as an example, no incumbent lost their re-election bids in 2017.
Incumbency is a huge advantage.
Now they want to be able to to draw the lines around their little groups of supporters and say, okay, these are the people who will vote for me in the next election.
I say, look, if you want to just rig the election, be honest about it and just go rig it.
Don't pretend this is anything other than your own political self-interest doing what's good for city councilors rather than what's good for voters.
It's an outrageous process.
And I'm worried that not enough people are aware that it's happening, that council will get away with this, with basically this attack on democracy because not enough people will know what's going on.
Yeah, it's really shocking.
It's a city, like it's not a kingdom.
You just can't decide that you can rig the system so that you can be elected forever.
I mean, why would you even bother having the citizens vote?
The last thing I wanted to ask you about was recall at City Hall.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has introduced this.
It's got a very wild rosy feel, which appeals to me.
What do you think?
You know, I think if you look at the polling that's come out, city council's approval rating is dismal here in Calgary.
Very few people actually approve of the job being done by their elected city council.
And I think it's a case of buyers' remorse on the part of a lot of voters, because I'll tell you what happens.
In an election, all of these incumbent counselors, or almost all of them, will present themselves as being conservative.
They'll talk about treating tax dollars with respect.
They'll talk about wanting to keep more money in the voters' pockets.
They'll make sure their lawn signs are blue because everybody knows that lawn sign means conservative.
So that's how they present themselves during an election.
But once the vote's over and they get back to City Hall, they're big spending liberals to a T, almost all of them.
And so, you know, I think voters say, well, look, you told me and I voted for you because you said you were going to cut my taxes or hold the line on taxes.
You were going to get me better value for money.
I feel betrayed.
And now I think maybe recall would give voters the ability to express their frustration democratically in between elections.
You know, even if someone doesn't get actually recalled, the fact that the provision is there may be enough to force some of these city councilors to listen a bit more closely to what their voters are telling them, to the opinions their voters are expressing, because of the fear that a recall initiative might come forward.
I think almost all of them, I give credit, and I don't do this often, to Ward 7 counselor Drew Farrell, who ran as a socialist and behaved exactly like that while in office.
So I don't like it, but at least she was honest about it.
Yeah, it's fair.
I think recall is a tool that even if it's never used, it's something that gives accountability back to the voter so that they don't have any tools to hold government to account in between elections.
It's basically, you know, you get what you get for four years or whatever the term is, and that's just what they have to suffer with.
At least this gives a tool to the taxpayer in the middle of an election cycle.
And if it never gets used, that's fine.
At least it's there.
Now, I wanted to ask what is on Save Calgary's agenda for 2020.
What are your projects that you're working on?
What are you guys focusing on?
So 2020, I think, is going to be a really big year for the city of Calgary from a politics standpoint.
We are now past the halfway point heading into the next municipal election, which will be in the fall of 2021.
So I would say 2020 is when we're going to get serious about trying to find candidates, really good candidates to contest the next election for City Hall and for the mayor.
I think, you know, the problem we had last time is so many candidates came on board just a few months or, in some cases, a few weeks before election day, and they did well, but they couldn't beat those incumbents who, of course you know, helped redraw those ward boundaries so that they would be insulated against new people challenging them just.
I'm sure it's a coincidence, but yeah, so we want to go out and find some really good candidates who are prepared to work for months and months and months, sending the message that they're different, that they believe in respecting tax dollars, that they're fiscally conservative, and I think that will take up a big chunk of 2020.
The other thing I think that really needs to happen in in the next year is is the realization that we cannot keep affording to spend as much as we are on salaries wages, benefits and pensions.
Uh, those have grown out of control at the city of Calgary and, while many counselors admit privately that something has to be done, in public they're all too afraid to really take this on because of the pushback they're going to get from the big union.
Well, i'm sorry, but sometimes being an elected official means doing what's right, even if doing what's right is difficult.
So we want to make sure that that conversation happens in 2020.
Uh, first of all, ideally so that we can get some rollbacks and some concessions from salaries and wages from employees, or at least so we can get on the record where every counselor stands on this by a vote, so that voters will know exactly what they're getting when they go to vote next time.
Realizing Fiscal Responsibility00:02:37
You know, I think that's fantastic.
Um, like you rightly pointed out, everybody in municipal politics, especially in Calgary, with save for ONE, runs as a conservative, but it's good to track their behavior after the fact.
Do a little bit of a municipal review on them now.
Lastly, what if people want to give themselves the gift of a municipal watchdog, a well-funded municipal watchdog and give SAVE Calgary a gift for christmas?
How do they do that?
Well, thank you, Sheila.
It really is the season of giving uh, as we head into christmas and uh, you know, we would be uh very appreciative if, if voters value the fact that there is one group who consistently stands up for tax reform, for spending cuts, for fiscal responsibility and for real accountability at city hall, then I would hope they might think that it was worth giving a gift to SAVE Calgary through our website at Savecalgary.com.
Uh, you know, while you're there, please sign up to our weekly newsletter.
Please check out some of the content that we've been posting.
We're very excited that, starting in 2020, we're going to have a new video series that gives you a really quick rundown of what's happening at city hall, because so much of it happens behind closed doors or in 12 or 14 hour meetings, it's hard to keep track, so we want to give you a really quick summary of here's what's coming up at city hall.
Uh, mostly because we're tired of them spending your tax dollars without you know that's coming up.
So, if you're in the mood for giving I did read that it is better to give than to receive then I would, I would hope you would consider going to Savecalgary.com and making a donation.
We would very much appreciate it.
That's great, William.
Merry christmas, happy new year.
I'll talk to you in 2020 and enjoy the time off with your family well, thank you, merry christmas to you too, Sheila.
Thanks William, You know, I'm very glad and excited to hear that SAVE Calgary is working to identify potential conservative challengers to Nihid Menshi.
It should always be campaign mode when you're holding a bad government to account on behalf of beleaguered taxpayers.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.
Have a very Merry Christmas, a blessed remainder of Advent, happy Hanukkah, or just, you know what, a plain old secular Christmas, whatever you're celebrating, be sure to have a great one.