Calgary Mayor Nahid Nenshi hiked property taxes by 13–40% during COVID-19—despite a $235M budget shortfall, 13–25% unemployment, and underused city services—while Save Calgary’s William Macbeth exposed misleading claims in her letter, noting 85% tax growth since 2010. The $5B+ Green Line LRT, scaled back to half its original plan with $500M already spent, faces criticism for lack of transparency and public input, mirroring past transit failures. Macbeth pushes for an Alberta Pension Plan to retain $3B/year currently sent to the CPP, arguing it could fund local projects like oil and gas. Without accountability, Alberta risks repeating Ottawa’s fiscal recklessness, leaving taxpayers trapped by unchecked spending. [Automatically generated summary]
You're listening to a free audio-only recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gun Show.
Tonight, my guest is William Macbeth from Save Calgary, and we are discussing the catastrophic property tax hike levied on Calgarians in the middle of the worst economic downturn in about 100 years.
Now, if you like listening to the show, then I promise you're going to love watching it.
But in order to watch, you need to be a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's what we call our long-form TV-style shows here on Rebel News.
Subscribers get access to my show, which I modestly think is worth the price of admission.
But you also get access to Ezra's nightly Ezra Levant show and David Menzies' fun Friday night show Rebel Roundup.
It's only eight bucks a month to subscribe.
That's quite a deal.
And just for my podcast listeners, you can save an extra 10% on a new Rebel News Plus subscription by using the coupon code podcast when you subscribe.
Just go to rebelnews.com/slash subscribe to become a member.
And now please enjoy this free audio only version of my show.
Justin Trudeau isn't the only liberal politician raising taxes during the pandemic.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
...3 is experiencing between 13 and 25% unemployment, depending on how you measure it.
Cowtown's being hammered by low oil prices, lack of pipelines, and the carbon tax, as well as the coronavirus lockdown.
However, just like Trudeau, Mayor Nahid Nenshi is raising taxes.
In some instances, people are complaining of a 20% hike on their property taxes.
The city is seeing a drop in, quote, revenue and fees caused in part by city-run places being closed to ward off the spread of the coronavirus.
Once again, though, the city has come knocking, looking for more money from the embattled and in some instances, unemployed and broke taxpayers to pay for services and infrastructure they have not been allowed to use for about the last 90 days.
The city, though, they're not going to be cutting spending and putting some big projects on ice.
Oh no, they're coming right back to the trough.
It's crazy and inhumane and it's causing rightful outrage.
You see, the cupboards in Calgary are bare.
So joining me tonight to talk about the lack of restraint at Calgary City Council while the citizens of Calgary are doing their best to watch their nickels and dimes is William Macbeth from Safe Calgary.
his home in Calgary is my friend William Macbeth from Save Calgary And it's been a long time since you've been on the show because of this horrible coronavirus lockdown.
So there's a lot to talk about.
A lot of things have happened in Calgary, even though it seems like there's not a lot happening in the world.
Let's go back a little bit to the $235 million budget shortfall in the city of Calgary.
So that's, you know, a quarter of a billion dollars.
And so naturally, the solution to this is not to cut spending, rain in spending, rain in pensions down at City Hall, but rather to raise taxes on homeowners during probably the worst economic crisis in 100 years.
No, you're absolutely right.
What's interesting, of course, is that the economic crisis didn't start in Calgary in March of this year.
We have been in an economic crisis for several years now.
The vacancy in our downtown office towers, higher unemployment, all of these things have been in place since at least 2015.
But the city really hasn't changed its spending behavior since then.
And even in the last budgeting cycle, which happened in November and then December of last year, so pretty recently, no concerted effort was made to actually reduce spending between this year and last year.
They claim that they have cut spending, but how the city cuts spending is different than how you or I cut spending.
We look at cutting spending.
If we spent $100 on groceries last month and now we're spending $75 on this month, we would consider that a cut.
But for the city, if they spent $200 last month and they plan to spend $300 this month and now they're only going to spend $250, they call that a cut, even though it's still an earning increase.
So that's kind of the situation Calgary found itself in is when COVID hit, some of their tax revenues dried up.
There were fewer people taking transit.
There was less money coming in from different fees, surcharges, and levies.
And as a result, the city found itself in a budget crunch.
And they did what they always did.
They passed that on taxpayers in the form of higher taxes.
Yes.
And I've been looking at some of the tax hikes.
And there are homeowners, homeowners who, you know, could be unemployed.
I think the latest numbers I've seen are like one in five people are unemployed right now, completely unemployed.
And those folks, some of them are getting like a 20% hike in their municipal property taxes in Calgary.
That's absolutely outrageous.
How does Nenshi expect the taxpayer to bear this sort of tax hike?
Well, we're actually not 100% sure what's in the mayor's head right now.
The mayor sent home a piece of propaganda with everybody's tax bill this year.
He sent a letter.
And in that letter, he makes a lot of claims.
He claims that spending has remained flat, even though it hasn't.
He's claimed that most people saw very modest increases in their taxes, which we know isn't true based on all of the people who have come forward talking about their outrageous tax bills.
He's claimed that the city has made cut $740 million in savings, even though spending is at its highest level ever in the history of the city of Calgary.
So it's possible the mayor just doesn't realize we're having a problem because he's so out of touch with what's been happening to Calgary homeowners.
But certainly the idea that people are facing these small tax increases is absolute baloney.
People are getting hammered by higher taxes, and they're getting hammered in two ways.
They're getting hammered because taxes are just going up, and they're getting hammered because they're shifting more of the tax burden onto homeowners and away from businesses.
We lobby that if they were going to do this, all they should do is cut business taxes.
They should reduce the tax burden on businesses.
But city council decided instead to put that burden on the backs of homeowners.
And you're absolutely right, many of whom are really struggling during this tough economic time as businesses have been closed down and people have been laid off.
Yeah, I see a real crisis that's going to happen for homeowners and specifically those who have secondary residences that they're renting out because now they're not working and their renters aren't working and property taxes have increased on both locations and yet there's very little reprieve for these people and I worry about the number of foreclosures that are heading towards Calgary.
I saw some numbers today in Blacklocks.
CMHC says there won't even be close to a recovery until 2023.
And yet Nenshi's raising taxes right now.
I can think of two governments that have raised taxes during this pandemic.
One is Justin Trudeau on April 1st, raising the carbon tax 50%, which also hits Calgarians.
But then Nenshi also raising municipal property taxes.
It's truly outrageous.
You're right.
But it's absolutely park for the chorus.
Since 2010, Calgary's property taxes have increased by 85%.
Holy.
And they show absolutely no sign of abating.
And the claims from the city, things like, oh, we've kept property taxes below population plus inflation.
Well, that's just not true.
Since 2014, I did the math.
Population plus inflation came out to roughly 19%, and Calgary's municipal taxes have gone up 24%.
So they're charging significantly higher tax rates, tax increases than property plus inflation.
So, no, if you think about it, if your income is stagnant or severely decreased from what it normally is because of this, you don't have any more money to go off and pay for higher taxes.
There's just no money left for you to do that.
So you're either going to have to cut expenses somewhere else.
You're going to have to maybe cut your health care expenses, cut your food, cut whatever you can, or you're going to just have to sell some of your possessions or even give up your house if you can't afford to pay those property tax hikes.
And when we say massive, in some cases, people are seeing 20, 30, or 40% increases in their tax bills.
And that translates to hundreds of extra dollars per month in property tax hikes.
So these are not these small tax increases that the mayor keeps trying to sell Calgarians through his propaganda.
Now, speaking of propaganda, I suppose one of the pesky conservatives at Calgary City Council, Jeremy Farkas, he did a rebuttal letter to the letter that Mayor Nenshi sent out to Calgary homeowners explaining why he needed to gouge more money out of them, despite the fact that services are not going up in Calgary.
Farkas went through and I guess point by point kind of debunked everything the mayor was saying to sell the property tax.
Like, by the way, that mail out from the mayor seems pretty political, and yet it seems he's using city resources to do that.
No, well, you're absolutely right.
You know, this is the mayor who's never shied away from spending the taxpayers' money on whatever he thinks is important.
I think, you know, when Safe Calgary went through the mayor's letter, the mayor's letter, we found at least five or six just identifiably false statements included within it.
So, you know, you think to yourself, it's bad enough that the mayor is using our tax dollars to pay for this propaganda, but he's actually using our tax dollars to send out a misleading, you know, some might even say false letter to every homeowner along with their property tax bill.
And it would be one thing if maybe city council recognized there was a problem.
But the city council doesn't recognize that they are still firing the spending on all cylinders.
They are spending money at an unprecedented rate right now.
And they're about to ramp that up even further if all of the proposed projects they're considering are given the green light to go ahead.
It's frightening.
Now, I'm glad you mentioned these proposed projects because the green line.
Let's talk about the green line.
Maybe give a little history of the green line so people really understand what a boondoggle this is.
And then we can talk about, you know, when the mayor says there's no efficiencies to be found and we just can't cut spending, you have this behemoth of the green line that has just been a money pit since it started.
Why isn't the city looking at doing something about rolling back the green line just to save money during this pandemic?
Well, it's a very valid point, and it's one of the issues that we've been deeply concerned about.
The green line has been around for about 10 years as an idea.
It's been through a dozen iterations.
It's seen almost every one of its senior managers walk off the job at one point or another.
It has been redesigned fully, at least on three separate occasions.
But it's undead.
It's the LRT line that keeps going.
And here's where we're at right now.
We have a proposal to build about half the original Green Line.
It's going to run from just north of the river to somewhere in the mid-south.
And the original Green Line proposal called for transit and LRT service to go to the far, far, far north of Calgary and the far, far, far south, basically where people live in suburbs and in emerging communities.
But they can't afford that.
They're going to spend more than $5 billion to build less than half the original size of the green line.
And even though people have raised so many red flags about this project, about the cost, about the technical complexity of the project and how it seems needlessly complex at points, there are simply those on city council and who, you know, the special interests who say, damn, whatever the torpedoes are, we're going to build this Kumpheller High Water.
Public Plebiscite Pushback00:04:22
But this isn't like some other projects.
This project is so big and so expensive, it risks Calgary's financial viability.
If this project goes off the rails, it could literally bankrupt our city.
And yet, they seem to just be wanting to push this through regardless of everyone's concerns.
And let's, you know, there's a few things that we find interesting.
First of all, they haven't laid a single kilometer of track, single meter of track in this green line.
Yet they've already spent more than $500 million on it.
So why do I think this green line is probably going to go ahead?
Because they've already spent half a billion dollars on it.
So if they stop now, that's just, you know, in their mind, they've wasted half a billion dollars.
Second of all, it is still one continuous line with an underground, extensive underground tunnel section through downtown Calgary.
There's no reason why this has to be one continuous line.
Who are these people who need to go from the far north to the deep south of Calgary?
I'm sure there's some, but there's very few.
What people need are ways of getting from the suburbs into and out of downtown.
That's where most people use our transit system for.
So the idea that it has to be one continuous line is just this vanity exercise on the part of city councillors.
So we have so many issues about this, and it's coming up for a vote, a final vote of council, in about a week.
And we're worried that council is going to put us on the hook for a project in the middle of an economic crisis that we simply can't afford to build.
When we think about the just sheer expense of this project, it is in line with the proposed Olympics, billions-wise.
And yet, there doesn't seem to be the same level of public input into this, at least for me from the outside looking in.
The public were very engaged in the Olympic bid.
They were to, I suppose, Nenshi's credit, I can't believe I'm saying this, but the public were allowed to give feedback and participate in a plebiscite about that.
And yet, council's probably going to go ahead with the same level of spending on this green line.
And the public who are on the hook for it all, they're really not getting a voice in any of this.
You're right.
Now, let's not give Nenshi too much credit.
No, I won't.
You may remember, city council opposed holding a plebiscite into whether or not we should hold the Olympics.
It was actually forced on them by the former new Democrat government.
I'll say one nice thing about them.
They made the right call by requiring a plebiscite.
But no, there's no vote on this.
And there's been such limited public engagement because of COVID-19.
So we haven't been able to organize some of the things we might have been in the past, rallies, demonstrations, having lots of people come speak at city council, because all of those things are forbidden.
Well, they're sort of forbidden.
Apparently, you can still hold mass protests depending on the issue.
We were told it was absolutely forbidden to hold a public event.
So you're right.
They may just be able to slip this thing through.
I think, though, that people just need to understand the scale of this project.
This project costs more than the entire city spends to run itself for more than a year.
So it's actually close to two years worth of spending.
And that assumes everything goes according to plan.
And how often does a massive, complicated LRT project go perfectly according to plan?
You can ask Ebenton, whose metro line suffered from problems for years and is still not fully functioning.
The city manager got booted because that went so bad.
You can ask Ottawa, who built an LRT line at great expense, and it's years behind schedule.
And now that they're finally done, it doesn't work.
It does not work properly.
So we're rushing through the most complex and expensive project in Calgary's history, and it could well end up following in the same line as those other LRT projects, a complete disaster.
Alberta's Pension Plan00:08:02
Wow, I'm glad you guys are watching all this spending.
Doesn't seem like there are a lot of municipal watchdog groups, particularly here in the north, where the work you do is so needed.
Now, I wanted to talk to you about another campaign that Save Calgary is running, because, you know, you guys are Calgary focused, but there are provincial issues that you talk about.
And you have, I suppose, it's an awareness campaign about an Alberta pension plan.
Why do you guys think that's such a great idea?
Look, I don't need convincing, but maybe some of the viewers do.
So I think if you ask a typical Albertan, if you say, do you think Alberta gets a fair deal from the federal government?
The response would be overwhelmingly no.
And I think that's not a crazy position to hold by any stretch of the imagination.
A lot of work's been done showing exactly how much money Albertans are transferring to other provinces through federal transfer and equalization programs.
But a huge one that doesn't get the kind of attention that maybe it does is the Canadian Pension Plan.
Albertans subsidize the Canadian pension plan for the entire rest of the country because we have a few unique characteristics.
First of all, we are one of, if not the youngest, provinces.
The average age of an Albertan is far younger than an average age of a Nova Scotian or even someone who lives in BC.
Albertans are, there are more Albertans participating in the workforce.
A larger percentage of Albertans, if they can find work, go to work and pay taxes and pay payroll taxes, including pension contributions.
And a larger portion of Albertans are in higher salaries.
We're maxing out our contributions to the Canadian pension plan.
And as a result, there are regions in Canada who don't have these characteristics.
They're a net drain on the Canadian pension plan, and it's Albertans who are footing the bill to keep that going to the tune of $3 billion a year.
We believe an Alberta Pension Plan would, first of all, keep Alberta money in Alberta.
It would keep Albertans' own taxes for the benefit of Albertans.
It would not have to subsidize the rest of the country whose productivity and contributions are lower.
And thirdly, we've seen Ottawa, particularly under the Liberal government, become increasingly politically interfering in the affairs of things like the, well, certainly the RCMP has seen political interference.
Well, how long is it before Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government decide the Canada Pension Plan won't invest in any oil or gas for carbon tax reasons?
Well, we can keep our own pension plan and have it invest in things that make sense for Alberta and Albertans, including if it's a good investment in Alberta oil and gas.
So we think this is a great idea.
We think it follows in the steps of provinces like Quebec who already have established their own pension plan.
And it means that Alberta retirees will get to keep the same level of retirement payouts, but even may pay lower premiums.
So we could keep more money in the pockets of hardworking Albertans.
We think it's a good idea.
We think it should be talked about.
We think Albertans should see the options that are available.
And we think that this is a good one for people to consider.
Now, do you think this is going to be in Jason Kenney's Fair Deal panel?
And also, are we ever going to see the Fair Deal panel?
Because we were supposed to see it and then, oh, a virus came along and now we're supposed to see it again.
What are your predictions for the Fair Deal panel?
So I understand that it is supposed to release its report to us, the voters, the everyday people of Alberta, next week after it's been held close by the government for a few weeks now.
My guess, and it's only a guess, is that they will be pretty status quo friendly, that they won't particularly be brave and bold when it comes to recommending new measures for Alberta.
And I think it's one of the reasons why we've seen Alberta take a few small steps, things like appointing its own chief firearms officer and its own parole board, because they're going to try and show they're doing something because when the report comes out, they're actually not going to do very much.
So we wanted to make sure Albertans knew what was being considered by the Fair Deal panel before that report came out, just in case the government decides to try and wash it all under the table.
So, you know, if they do that, we're going to try and hold them to account because we think these are important ideas.
They're good for Alberta.
But I have to be honest, I'm not really holding my breath about this Fair Deal panel and its report.
Yeah, me neither.
Governments are nothing if not predictable and they are generally not bold.
William, how do people support the very important work that you do?
Because not only do you run education campaigns, but you also are key in stopping these massive spending projects, particularly in Calgary.
I would say that you and another group with your little shoestring budgets, you stopped the Olympics and saved Calgary taxpayers billions of dollars.
Could you imagine if they were trying to hold the Olympics right now, like trying to get ready for the Olympics?
I mean, just the foresight that Safe Calgary had to stop that, good gracious.
Calgary owes you guys a debt of thanks, but how do they support the work that you do?
Because even just a little bit of money, you guys use that to make a huge impact.
Well, and thank you very much, Sheila.
I think all too often, the biggest enemy of good government at the local level is just people not knowing what's going on down at City Hall.
So we think it's important that there's at least one group whose job is to tell people what city councilors are doing, especially given how often they try and raise your taxes.
So if you think that's an important role, if you think that it isn't just big companies or big unions who should have lobbyists, everyday taxpayers should have lobbyists too, and that's what we consider ourselves.
Safecalgary.com is our website.
You can follow us on all our social media channels.
They're all Save Calgary if you search for them.
You can make a contribution to us online through our website, and we appreciate every single dollar that hardworking people contribute to us.
And sign up to our mailing list so you can keep on top of what's happening down at City Hall.
A lot of people don't know when they're raising your taxes because the city's budgeting is so opaque.
I tried to look up how much Calgary was proposing to spend this year, and after a few days of research, I still couldn't.
Why?
Well, one of the reasons is the budget document is 600 pages long.
And nowhere does it actually say total spending for 2020.
They don't want you to know.
So we're going to keep that fight.
We're going to keep trying to make sure people know what's happening down at City Hall with their tax dollars.
And if you go to savecalgary.com, sign up to our mailing list or make us a contribution.
That really helps the work that we're trying to do.
Fantastic, William.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
And it has to be a lot sooner than it was between now and the last time you were on the show.
Well, thanks for having me back.
I appreciate it, Sheila.
Thanks William.
The city is flatly refusing to reassess its spending habits.
But the city of Calgary isn't special.
Trudeau is also doing the same.
Spending and spending on pet projects and legacy virtue signaling, the bill will eventually come due.
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.